[Phil Harmonic]

Wade Sanders, long-time Kerry supporter, peddles boilerplate Kerry rehab for the umpteenth time...and the smell hasn't improved over time. Lipscomb and the blogs will have a field day with this one...

[Beckwith]

I would like Wade to explain just one thing for me.

How does anyone receive 3 Purple Hearts without missing any duty or having no scars?

Besides falling of a bar stool at the Officer's Club.

[bmwcyle]

Attacks on John Kerry Discredited by Dishonest Liberals

[bitt]

LT ping...

hey, he's okay, we made a mistake, Wade Sanders said he was a good guy....

[CholeraJoe]

Sanders is real Kerry butt-boy isn't he?

[Doc Savage]

I assume this demented piece of dreck is mentally ill???

[areafiftyone]

Well everyone you can guess from this article that Kerry will be running in 2008 and wants to make sure he can counter the Swift Boaters. He has been planning this since he lost in 2004 - BE PREPARED FOR MORE OF THIS ABOUT HIS MILITARY RECORD! We are going to need the Swifties again to counter this or Kerry will try to make himself out to be a hero and not a traitor to the American people.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

The SBVFT would have had much less impact if Kerry and his followers had not over reacted. What if his spokesman had said something to the effect, "Memories vary and the perspective of career military people [I know they weren't all career military] are often different than those of us who serve our terms [even if he hadn't] and got on with our lives. We'll just have to agree to disagree." All the caterwauling by the Kerristas only amplified and validated the charges. A simple dismissal might have worked better. The NYT/Boston Globe assault on the SBVTF only convinced people that they had hit a nerve.

[RVN Airplane Driver]

Wade Sanders is a lawyer and democratic operative that lives in San Deigo. His motives are that he thinks he would be sec of defense under a kerry admin. He fancies himself quite the intellectual.....I have his phone number some place.....in that I had a nice battle with him during the election.

[Libertina]

Unfortunate that this person has grabbed the URL Military. com

[ladyinred]

I dare say John Kerry's own mouth is all of the evidence I need to know he is anti-American. The attempt to pretend anything else is falling on deaf ears.

[Fedora]

Sanders spends a lot of time here sidestepping issues, using irrelevant data and ad hominem attacks to distract the reader, but despite his pretense he adds nothing new to resolve the various discrepancies in Kerry's record. On one of the few concrete points he discusses, he claims:

According to Zumwalt, he actually wanted to give Kerry an even higher award, the Navy Cross, but decided upon a Silver Star because he wished to make the award as expeditiously as possible.

Where did Zumwalt say this?--I am curious where Sanders is getting this from. Below is my own summary of what was on the public record on this as of the 2004 campaign, with the sources indicated. Off the top of my head I believe the Nicosia and Brinkley references are the ones relevant to the Navy Cross issue, especially Nicosia who quotes someone on it (I think he quotes either Kerry, Zumwalt, or Robert Drinan but I'm not sure without looking). I'd draw attention to my use of the word "allegedly" below--my recollection (again, off the top of my head) is that I included this qualifier because I could find no corroboration for the claim asserted by Nicosia's source in particular. I do not have a copy of Nicosia's book handy, just my 2-year-old notes, so if someone has it and wants to check what I have here against the actual text of Nicosia, page 70 that might be useful:

Forging a Paper Hero: The Mystery of Kerry’s Medals

According to Kerry’s account as reported by biographers Gerald Nicosia and Douglas Brinkley, paperwork was submitted requesting that Kerry be awarded a Navy Cross (a very rare award only given to 120 Naval personnel during the entire Vietnam War)20, but Admiral Zumwalt intercepted the paperwork and changed the request to a Silver Star in order that he could authorize the request himself and bypass the lengthy process of Congressional approval, for the sake of boosting the morale of Coastal Division 11, allegedly. But the paperwork for Kerry’s Silver Star contains puzzling discrepancies. According to the original Silver Star citation bearing Admiral Zumwalt’s signature, “Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY leaped ashore, pursued the man behind a hootch and killed him”. The original citation was later revised twice, and the two revisions omit any mention of Kerry shooting the man behind the hootch. The third version of the citation bears the signature of Reagan administration Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, who states, “It is a total mystery to me. I never saw it. I never signed it. I never approved it. And the additional language it contains was not written by me.”21

[SOURCES for n20 and n21:]20”Navy Cross”, Department of the Navy: Naval Historical Center, http://www.history.navy.mil/medals/navcross.htm(August 5, 2004).

21 E.R. Zumwalt, Jr., “Citation”,JohnKerry.com, http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/jkmilservice/militaryrecords_1.pdf, 7-8 (August 28, 2004); John Hyland, “Citation”, undated and John Lehman, “Citation”, undated, JohnKerry.com, http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/jkmilservice/Silver_Star.pdf (August 28, 2004); Glen Johnson, “Kerry assails columnist who questioned war service”, New Standard, October 28, 1996, reprinted online at SouthCoastToday.com, http://www.s-t.com/daily/10-96/10-28-96/a03sr015.htm (August 5, 2004); James Carroll, "Annals of Vietnam: A Friendship that Ended the War", New Yorker, October 21, 1996, 130-156; David Warsh, “Behind the Hootch: Did Kerry Commit a War Crime?”, The Boston Globe, October 27, 1996; Nicosia, 70; Kranish, “Heroism, and growing concern about war”; Brinkley, Tour of Duty, 293-294; ”John Kerry’s Vietnam Service Timeline”; O’Neill and Corsi, 80-86; Alex Katz, “Man refutes candidate’s critics”, Alameda Times-Star, August 12, 2004, posted at Naval Air Station Alameda, http://www.nasalameda.com/temp/article-mike-medeiros-john-kerry.html (August 29, 2004); Alex Katz, “Local vet recalls time on Kerry’s swiftboat”, Tri-Valley Herald, cached at http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:7mmMYic6f-UJ:www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86%25257E10671%25257E2334602,00.html+Local+Vet+Recalls+Time+on+Kerry%27s+Swiftboat+&hl=en, August 14, 2004 (August 29, 2004); William B. Rood, “Feb. 28, 1969: On the Dong Cung River: ’This is what I saw that day”, Chicago Tribune, August 22, 2004, reprinted at Shepherd Express, http://www.shepherd-express.com/shepherd/25/35/news_and_views/news.html, August 26, 2004 (August 29, 2004); Thomas Lipscomb, “Kerry citation a ‘total mystery’ to ex-Navy chief”, Chicago Sun-Times, http://www.suntimes.com/output/elect/cst-nws-lips28.html, August 28, 2004.

[Lumper20]

Kerry was never at CCS MACVSOG, nor did we have any SEALS, much less any Navy types at CCS or at any of our launch sites. Please tell me all about the Navy and CCS, MACVSOG?

[Radix]

The MSM is apparently determined to keep posting lying BS as this until Kingdom come.

Or at least until Kerry gets his ass handed to him in another presidential campaign.

That lying puke is so over.

[eleni121]

military.com....yeah right.

We sell Dem BS too. You can get cash for your votes too.

[Doctor Raoul]

One of the core group of Kerry butt sucking "shipmates" is a union electrician and democrat party official.. Low level, but active in the 'Rat party. Was a convention delegate too if I recall correctly. Wonder if Wade's the one?

[Richard Kimball]

Kerry was legitimate? Here's what I have to say about that:

The guy was only there for 90 friggin' days. I had friends who served two hitches in the DMZ and didn't come back with the medals he had. No way those are legit. He was either able to write himself up for them or he had a friend up the chain who was rubber-stamping them. Three purple hearts and no missed time should be the most obvious clue. Guy who used to live next door to me (passed away) got a purple heart at Normandy. He suffered heavily, and told me sometimes he couldn't talk about it, and sometimes he had to.

I'll tell you one other d*mned thing. I've known several true war heroes, and none of them bragged on themselves. You had to drag information out of them.