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Candidate made his military service an issue August 24, 2004 For most Americans, there are more important issues in the presidential campaign than whether John Kerry's wounds in Vietnam were serious or superficial, whether his Purple Hearts demonstrated heroism or opportunism. In terms of relevance to serving in the White House, the same is true of George Bush's stateside service in the Alabama National Guard, which also has been the subject of intense scrutiny. Yet the Kerry campaign now finds itself under assault by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an independent group that accuses the Massachusetts senator of inflating his...

I've been putting together a timeline of the end of Kerry's short tour in Vietnam, and I think the sequence highlights two events that have not been focused upon together and should be emphasized: (a) Kerry abandoned the other boats and fled from what he thought was a battle, and (b) he abandoned his own boat and rode home with the wounded. 13 Mar 1969 - Five Swift Boats are sent to raid a Vietcong village: Kerry PCF-94, Droz PCF-43, Pees PCF-3, Chenoweth PCF-23, and Thurlow PCF-51. Special Forces Lieutenant Rassman goes along for the ride on Kerry's boat. They...

For Immediate Release Tuesday, August 24, 2004 KERRY CAMPAIGN BACKTRACKS ON FIRST PURPLE HEART AWARD Campaign Says May Have Been Self-Inflicted Washington—In a reversal of their staunch defense of John Kerry's military service record, Kerry campaign officials were quoted by Fox News saying that it was indeed possible that John Kerry's first Purple Heart commendation was the result of an, unintentional, self-inflicted wound." "GARRETT: And questions keep coming. For example, Kerry received a Purple Heart for wounds suffered on December 2, 1968. But in Kerry's own journal written nine days later, he writes he and his crew, quote, "hadn't been...

At first blush, the treatment given to Michael Dobbs' page-one swift-boat article in Sunday's Washington Post seems at least vaguely reassuring. There's the neutral headline "Swift Boat Accounts Incomplete," but below that, a deck-headline informing readers that "Critics Fail to Disprove Kerry's Version of Vietnam War Episode." The banner treatment, running across three-fourths of the front page above the fold, places the onus of proof where it belongs -- on the accusers, not on Kerry, a point that Bob Novak and others have chosen to ignore, obscure, or even refute; and in announcing that the proof isn't there, it seems...

And even if the first violinist turns out to be a "Republican stooge," it's nonetheless stunning for so many vets to denounce a former comrade publicly. It just doesn't happen unless something's really wrong.

Last night while in the car, I was listening to Hugh Hewitt and heard an exchange so striking that it warranted a phone call to my husband at home to determine if anyone on FR was discussing it. Unless I missed a key word in my search, it doesn't seem to have been addressed, so I'll describe it here myself. I turned on the radio in the middle of an interview with Steve Gardner of the Swift Boat Vets, who was recounting an incident in Vietnam that involved the shooting of an adult and the inadvertent shooting of a child,...

The Officers-in-Charge of Swift boats PCF-51, PCF-23, PCF-43, and PCF-3 state that they were not receiving enemy fire after the mine explosion.I do not doubt the sincerity of Mr. James A. Rassmann regarding his version of events on March 13, 1969. My own experience and review of such part of the record as is available convinces me that then First Lieutenant James A. Rassmann is right about then Lieutenant Junior Grade John F. Kerry helping him out of the water. However, Rassmann is wrong about Kerry heroically saving his life.I was an Operations Officer for 2d Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment...

[This is a response to my email below] Mon, 23 Aug 2004 21:10:34 -0400 Dear Dr. Camhi, I'm not justifying anything, I'm relaying to you the result of my raising your concerns with the editors. Other readers have very similar concerns. Mr. Okrent has said that he will be writing about The Times's coverage of Senator Kerry and President Bush at some point between now and the election in November. I will keep your message on file for him to consider when he is ready to write. Sincerely, Arthur Bovino Office of the Public Editor [This is the email he...

John Kerry's troubles have largely been forced on him by the Democratic Party platform. He has been given the unenviable task of presenting it as the War Party when in fact it is not, nor does it want to be. The Democrats could have chosen to become a real anti-war party, in which case it would have nominated Howard Dean or it could have elected to become a genuine war party and chosen Joseph Lieberman. Instead it chose to become the worst of all combinations, an anti-war party masquerading as the war party.To carry out this program, it required a...

A number of people have written to me overnight stating that a Kerry campaign spokesman has acknowledged on Brit Hume's Fox news show that John Kerry's wound on 2 December 1968 came from an unintentionally self-inflicted wound -- an accident, in other words. So far, I find nothing on this on the Fox web site, but they are notoriously poor at posting transcripts, or even summaries of their own programs. Can someone post the link in the comments section of this post if any confirmation can be made? UPDATE: Here's the link to the Fox News report from Major Garrett....

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has promptly rejected the call of President Bush and Sen. John Kerry to stop exposing Kerry's record. "We intend to go forth with our ads to the last drop of money and effort that we have," spokesman John O'Neill said. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's new ad, being launched today, features veterans condemning Kerry's depiction in 1971 of American troops, including himself, as war criminals. Kerry, of course, continues to ignore President Bush's challenge to call off the multimillion-dollar hate groups that are doing the senator's dirty work for him, and the media establishment...

The clearest analysis I've seen on what probably happened during this incident is here. The author's conclusions match what I've been thinking, even down to the fact that Kerry's swift boat ran into something submerged instead of getting hit by another mine. At issue are the records concerning the Rassmann incident on March 13, 1969, in which PCF-3 struck a mine, Rassmann fell in the water, and Kerry pulled him out of the water. The media is especially enamored of the fact that Thurlow, who's making some of the main charges, got a Bronze Star which sites him for courage...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Were John Kerry and the veterans organization he led the real reason the Republicans broke into Watergate in 1972, with information on them the target of the espionage? Was doing so an early onset of Republican political paranoia against his work, a harbinger of the pending campaign against him in 2004? Bob Weiner, the 1971-72 Youth Voter Registration director for the Young Democrats office at the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and recently a Clinton White House staffer for six years, is asking these questions after doing a little research to refresh...

Kerry's Reaction John LeBoutillier Monday, Aug. 23, 2004 What the Swift Boat Controversy has done is show the world what many of us have known for years: John Kerry is a completely ruthless, calculating, pathological, overly-ambitious liar who will do anything to win the White House. However, as bad as things seem for him at the moment - and make no mistake that this controversy is the worst chapter in his campaign since the days of Howard Dean zooming ahead in the race a year ago - the fact that he is being proven to be a liar, an exaggerator,...

snip to ending... No informed person can seriously believe that Kerry fabricated evidence to win his military medals in Vietnam. His main accuser has been exposed as having said the opposite at the time, 35 years ago. Kerry is backed by almost all those who witnessed the events in question, as well as by documentation. His accusers have no evidence except their own dubious word. Not limited by the conventions of our colleagues in the newsroom, we can say it outright: These charges against John Kerry are false. Or at least, there is no good evidence that they are true....

Just as they once did so much to undercut our American armed forces in war against North Vietnam's still communist – and still lethally brutal – dictatorship, the New York Times and the Washington Post this weekend reinforced their reputation as bulletin boards for the Democratic National Committee, by desperately trying to smear 254 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The Post has been publishing obviously desperate page-one attempts to undercut and defame these veterans, who have just produced another one-minute – and devastating – TV spot. This second spot features former U.S. prisoners of the North Vietnamese – who, right...

Senator John Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards, has said melodramatically: "Ask the men who served with him in Vietnam!" But now that men who served with Kerry in Vietnam are coming forward and contradicting Kerry's version of what happened there, Senator Edwards is calling it a "smear." Apparently we are to listen only to those veterans who were hand-picked by the Kerry campaign. One of the photos used by the Kerry campaign shows Kerry as a young Navy lieutenant, surrounded by 20 of his fellow service men in Vietnam -- a "band of brothers." But now a new book...

The issue here, as I have heard it raised, is was he present and active on duty in Alabama at the times he was supposed to be. . . . Just because you get an honorable discharge does not in fact answer that question. ~~John Kerry A good rule in politics is that anyone who picks a fight ought to be prepared to finish it. But having first questioned Mr. Bush's war service, and then made Vietnam the core of his own campaign for President, Mr. Kerry now cries No mas! because other Vietnam vets are assailing his behavior...

Editors Grapple With How to Cover Swift Boat Controversy Aya Kawano By Joe Strupp Published: August 24, 2004 12:01 AM EST NEW YORK As the John Kerry swift boat controversy navigates itself from the shoreline of the 2004 presidential campaign into the mainstream, newspapers face a dilemma of how to report on the veterans group attacking the Democratic nominee's record without giving them undue credibility or blowing the issue out of proportion. Alison Mitchell, deputy national editor for The New York Times (Click for QuikCap), points to the changing media landscape and its impact on what newspapers choose to cover....