Vance deployed. Wirz did not. Problem is Wirz intimated or outright said he did.
Did W say he flew combat missions in Viet Nam? No. He said he flew the F-102 as part of the Texas ANG. So, W was part of the Guard and never served in combat; and, Wirz was part of the Guard and never served in combat. But, the left-wing media attacked W and defends Wirz.
John Kerry served in Viet Nam as a swift boat commander. He was awarded the silver star, the bronze star with v, and three purple hearts; having previously served aboard the frigate USS Gridley. He was discharged just short of four years because he was wounded three times. He remained in the Naval Reserve another eight years. Kerry originally enlisted in the Navy (possibly because he otherwise would have been drafted into the army), and got his commission through OCS.
He wound up with a chest full of medals (like some of my fellow cadets who entered ROTC after coming back from Viet Nam). Some people claim the medals weren’t fully deserved, that the military was handing medals out in Viet Nam like candy. I am sympathetic to the argument that standards were relaxed in Viet Nam, but not just for Kerry. I don’t think Kerry was the beneficiary of special treatment. And, I don’t think there was anything wrong about the standards in Viet Nam. The guys who fought in that war did so without the support of the country. There were no parades for them when they came back home. They were told to, quick, change into civilian clothes. Instead of being honored with a monument in the open, they got a monument in a low spot in a secluded place on the Washington Mall. Nevertheless, a beautiful and poignant monument.
Why did Swift Boat allegations of stolen valor stick with John Kerry? I believe it was because after coming home, he joined the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society, a bunch of communists), and even attended meetings where they planned to assassinate U.S. Senators, and because he (Kerry) threw his medals away.
You won’t find this information in wikipedia. They’re scrubbed this derogatory information from history. They want you to think John Kerry was Swift Boat’ed for no reason other than politics, when Kerry crossed over to the other side.
Nowadays, the whole Democratic Party is like the SDS. Wirz, in particular, is cool with the pro-Hamas wing of his party. He allows the right kind of people to riot in the street, engaging in vandalism and arson, and at the same time he locks people up for insurrection for as little as trespass. Wirz covets power and wants to transform this country into a green-neo-Marxist totalitarian state.
I’m sorry to tell you, but we not only lost in Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan. We are in danger of losing here.
What’s a Wirz?
“Vance deployed”
Vance was a REMF
Kerry’s issue was that he got awards for valor in combat, some of which do not appear to have been in combat, and purple hearts which also were either negligible scratches or did not occur in combat, and told a variety of stories about people in his squadron which were demonstrably not true. He wrote his own awards, as an officer, but they include claims of a combat for which he received a purple heart that allowed him to go home early, that in other narratives he told occurred before he had ever faced combat.
It wasn’t that some guys came out against him, it was that no one in his squadron not in his boat and not rewarded by him supported anything of consequence he said - though some things he said even his crew agreed were not true.
Kerry also made a big deal about blaming Nixon for sending him to Cambodia in 1968 and then lying about it on TV, yet that was before Nixon was President. Johnson was.