booo...
Yooo Hooo... I'm over HERE!!!
Posted on 07/02/2008 2:27:45 PM PDT by Interesting Times
AN INCIDENT ON THE BAY HAP RIVER
Instead of "No Man Left Behind," the true story of that day is "One Man Left."
— John O’Neill
A war hero candidate
On January 17, 2004, two days before the crucial Iowa Democratic primary, the Kerry campaign staged a dramatic “reunion” between the candidate and Jim Rassmann, a former U.S. Army Special Forces officer who said Kerry had saved his life in Vietnam 35 years before. The tearful meeting of the two men was presented as spontaneous, though the campaign had paid Rassmann’s way to Des Moines and informed NBC anchor Tom Brokaw in advance of the carefully managed event. The images of Kerry and Rassmann embracing were widely credited with propelling Kerry to victory in the Iowa caucuses. “No Man Left Behind” would form the story line for tens of millions of dollars of TV advertising over the next few months, becoming the prime exhibit in a strategy of marketing John Kerry to the American public as a war hero. A campaign press release told of a dramatic rescue by Kerry after he was wounded by enemy fire:
On March 13, 1969, Rassmann, a Green Beret, was traveling down the Bay Hap river in a boat behind Kerry’s when both were ambushed by exploding land mines and enemy fire coming from the shore. Kerry was hit in the arm, while a mine blew Rassmann’s boat out of the water. With enemy fire coming from both sides of the river and swift boats evacuating from the area, Kerry’s crew chose to turn their boat toward the ambush to save Rassmann.
“We were still under fire, and he was wounded at the time,” recalled Rassmann. And with his boat’s gunners providing suppressing fire, Kerry extended his wounded arm into the water and the two lieutenants locked arms.
The old media enthusiastically embraced this tale of combat heroism. On February 8, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, “Rassmann’s river patrol of Swift Boats had been blown out of the water in a barrage of fire from Viet Cong AK-47s and rocket launchers. . . . Then miraculously, sailing back through a hail of artillery, was Kerry.”
More exciting details appeared on March 13 in a front-page Los Angeles Times story which claimed the patrol had been “led by the 25-year-old Kerry”—which would have been a surprise to LTJG Larry Thurlow, the actual task force commander. Rather than merely encountering a mine and an ambush as in the Kerry campaign’s press release, the unfortunate patrol was now “on the run, being chased down the Bay Hap River by enemy soldiers firing guns and rockets.” The Times wrote that Rassmann had been blown off a boat and was left behind by the Swift Boats while snipers shot at him from both banks. Rassmann was certain his “time had come” until the convoy turned around. “Kerry had ordered the boats back to pick up the man overboard.”
On April 13, USA Today reported:
Rassmann . . . says he is alive today because of Kerry’s courage during a vicious battle in March 1969. . . . Swimming in the river while being strafed from both banks, Rassmann was convinced he was about to die before Kerry’s boat returned. . . . “He was frankly nuts coming up to the bow and exposing himself to the barrage of bullets and mortars,” Rassmann says.On July 29, Democratic National Convention attendees were treated to a nine-minute biographical video of Kerry, titled A Remarkable Promise. Up on the giant convention hall screen, Jim Rassmann told the delegates:
We had gone up a canal and the boat to our left hit a mine; simultaneously we came under fire from both banks. John was wounded and I was blown off the boat into the water. By the time I surfaced the boats were gone and I was all by myself. John turned around; all of them came back for me. I grabbed a hold of the net and started climbing upside down and couldn’t get over the lip of the bow. I was just hanging there and all these rounds kept coming in, and John ran up and dropped down on his hands and knees and pulled me over. And had he not come out on that bow like that I’d be dead.
The video seemed to show actual footage of Kerry’s boat with bullets striking the water. However, as director James Moll later admitted, the film was merely “illustrative.” The New York Observer reported, “bullets in the water were not from the actual event.”
Distorted beyond recognition
The evidence that emerged in 2004 formed a very different picture of the event than the campaign and media versions. The January 17 press release had implied that Kerry had been wounded by enemy gunfire, which was not the case. Nor had the attack involved land mines, artillery, mortars, or rockets, as news reports had variously claimed. Most eyewitnesses said there was no enemy fire of any kind, just a single command-detonated water mine that exploded under the hull of Navy LTJG Richard Pees’ PCF-3.
For the Swift Vets, the most egregious distortion was the claim that other Swift Boats left the area while Kerry alone bravely returned into an ambush to save Rassmann. They said that in reality Kerry’s PCF-94 was the only boat to leave the scene, fleeing downriver while the other crews worked to rescue their fellow Swift Boat sailors and to stabilize PCF-3. Kerry only returned after it was clear there was no ambush, picking up Rassmann just before another boat arrived. Nor had Kerry towed PCF-3 to safety as he claimed. Instead, he abandoned PCF-94 and its crew, riding back on board another boat.
-- continued at link...
Most of us were not even aware of a policy rewarding people who received three Purple Hearts with a trip home from VietNam. It seems obvious to me that Kerry knew of this policy prior to receiving any such awards.
My brother-in-law spent months in a military hospital recovering from wounds received in Korea.
Kerry is an insult to any member of the military, such as my brother-in-law, who paid a price in blood for defending our nation.
Well, you need former shipmates and squadron mates telling that he lied about his awards and his accounts of them and you would need fellow POW’s telling people stories of McClain committing treason in some way, and all of it has to come from his former shipmates or POW’s to be SWIFTBOATING...only, you aint got anyone like that, do you?
Excellent comeback!
A jaw dropper, I’m sure.
Swift Boat Vets on Hannity Radio Show after 4PM EST
Posted on Thursday, August 05, 2004 03:59:35 PM by Darkwolf377
[a live thread]
show transcript part 1
show transcript part 2
show transcript part 3
show transcript part 4
Interesting Times, then and now, eh? God Bless You and the SBVfT for what you did and what you continue to do.
booo...Good. I’m glad to see this posted.
God bless you, John O’Neil ... and those who work with you!
Four years ago, the very hour i learned about
what you were doing,
despite the dire prospects at that time
... i knew we would be saved.
I have always saluted your name evermore.
Is this a new book, or more thorough research and interviews from the original?
Prob'ly heard it from him; nobody credible seems to confirm it, though.
That he was there, yes; that he served anyone or anything other than himself, though: no. ;-)
An explanation for how Kerry came to know about the "three Purple Hearts" policy is included in the linked chapter.
You might want to give it a look.
Unfortunately, the truth doesn't always prevail on its own.
It needs friends willing to help pass the word...
True enough. However, their legacy is still very much in question. If unopposed, the leftists who hate what they did will make their name synonymous with "McCarthyism."
Thanks very much. I remember trying to explain to Sean Hannity that Kerry didn't so much admit to war crimes in 1971 as pretend that standard US policies in Vietnam (the use of free fire zones, etc.) were criminal. Hannity was fixated on the idea that Kerry had confessed to personally committing atrocities, and didn't seem to get the point...
To Set The Record Straight: How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the New Media Defeated John Kerry was published earlier this year. The online release of the Bay Hap River chapter took place today, and a related press release is going out tomorrow morning.
I'm not John, but thanks anyway.
Happy Independence Day to our resident authors, Scott and Tim.....to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and to fellow freepers who seek the Truth always.
Leni
Thank you, Bahama Mama, and have a wonderful Independence Day.
The clincher was the Boston paper which supported Kerry doing a timeline on the incident. They concluded that Kerry’s boat was at a barricade in the river at the time the boat behind and to the left hit the mine. Their timeline showed Kerry’s boat heading beyond the barricade away from the damaged boat while the other boats stayed with the damaged craft.
This timeline certainly matched Kerry’s observation that they took enemy fire for several hundred yards up[or down?] the river. Of course, the author of the timeline should have wondered why Kerry was so far away from the initial mine explosion if he was “leading” the recovery effort.
Essentially, the diagram in the paper agreed completely with the story told by the Swiftboaters, but the paper writer still made excuses for Kerry.
.
NEVER FORGET
.
TOM BROKAW has yet to apologize to past, present & future U.S. 7th Cavalry Soldiers, & their loved ones, for falsely propagating a 1951 Korean War massacre story of Korean civilians by the U.S. 7th Cavalry under the Bridge at NO GUN RI.
A massacre that has since been proven...
...to have NEVER happened..!!
An Associated Press that was also quick to propagate this false Korean War story to the world has yet to return its ill-gotten NO GUN RI Pulitzer Prize.
It gets worse:
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-new/731900/posts
.
Signed:..”ALOHA RONNIE” Guyer
Veteran-U.S. 7th Cavalry’s 1st Major Battles for Freedom of the Vietnam War 1965-66
(Photos)
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_set1.htm
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_collection.htm
.
NEVER FORGET
.
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