In response to the issue about whether Kerry inadvertently found himself in the middle of a shooting war, see the Washington Post article that just came out:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34941-2004Apr22.html They talk about this and quote Kerry:
During that tedious stint off the Vietnamese coast, Kerry took note of light aluminum boats that were patrolling the coastal waterways with small crews and were mostly out of harm's way. The 50-foot open boats were known as patrol craft fast (PCF) -- "swift boats."
He decided that was the assignment he wanted -- his own boat and his own crew; and action that was not necessarily deadly. In February 1968, he requested to go to "in country" in Vietnam, seeking swift-boat duty.
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He trained for his new mission and arrived at the U.S. base at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam that November.
The duty was far more dangerous that what Kerry had signed up for. Under a program called Operation Sea Lords, swift boats were ordered to be more aggressive, to penetrate deeper into the Mekong Delta and Viet Cong enclaves -- and to smoke out the enemy. They were sitting ducks, loudly cruising the rivers with no cover.
"If given a choice, I didn't want particularly to be in a foxhole," Kerry said. "I preferred to be in war on a boat -- not in the day-to-day battle. There wasn't as much risk and constancy of battle at the time [in the boats]. Obviously, it didn't end up that way. But I had volunteered, so you do what you have to do." In his four months in country, he would command two swift boats.