Posted on 08/09/2004 11:49:25 PM PDT by kattracks
John F. Kerry has succeeded in making his military service in Vietnam an issue in the campaign, but not quite in the way he expected.
The war hero who threw away his medals (or medals borrowed for the occasion) thought his Silver Star and three Purple Hearts would render him the Sergeant York and Audie Murphy of his generation.
Maybe those medals will do it yet. The jury is still out on exactly who and what Lieutenant Kerry was in Vietnam, but it's a jury that Candidate Kerry never expected to be called to sit in late judgment on what he did, and where, three decades and more ago. He thought George W. Bush would be the candidate with the explaining to do.
Monsieur Kerry trotted out most of his crewmen from Swift Boat PCF 94 at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, to tell tales of valor and blooded courage in the Mekong Delta in that war now fading swiftly into the murk and memory of the past. They told tales of a handsome Boston naval officer walking tall into the jungle, dispatching a fearsome enemy with a single burst of gunfire, returning to his boat to prowl again the swamps and brown water of a deadly delta, searching for more evil to dispatch to the nether regions. (Whatever those heroics were, and maybe all the tales are true, "PCF 94" doesn't quite evoke the poetry and romance of the real JFK and "PT-109.")[snip]
Mr. O'Neill, who was a John Edwards man during the Democratic primary season, and Mr. Corsi, who has never been particularly identified as a partisan, portray Lieutenant Kerry as a reluctant warrior who stayed "in country" just long enough to acquire his medals, some by fraud, and retired from the battlefield
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Who was it that said, "Bring it on"? Be careful what you wish for there Ketchup Boy.
Did Kerry and Rassmann "exchange" write ups for medals? If Rassman and Kerry "traded" citations for valor, then Kerry's Bronze Star will be seen as counterfeit. (Remember, 4 others were pulled from the water that night, and no medals were awarded for them. It was just doing your job.)
As far as the Silver Star, I'd love to follow that recommendation all the way through. Who wrote up the original citation? Who "suggested" that citation be written and forwarded? Did the originator of the recommendation get rewarded with medals of his own, or an early-out from combat?
Inquiring minds want to know.
This is really boiling up. :-)
http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/images/day2/05.htm
seems someone wrote up his crew whe he got his... who did write him up?
What I would also like to know is why Rassmann switched parties from Republican to Democrat at just this moment in history? Seems very odd to me.
a very interesting compilation of articles and links..somewhere here rassman and kerry can't agree on which boat rassman was on...kerry says rass was on the other boat and rass says kerry's boat..we need the records!
http://airbornecombatengineer.typepad.com/airborne_combat_engineer/2004/01/whats_the_true_.html
You have to remember, too, that these questions were asked a month or two ago. And some posting here became almost indignant that - no soldier awards himself a medal, no soldier writes himself up, etc., as if that were some kind of answer. So whoever those folks, were, and I don't see them posting here, now, I suspect more than just myself are still wondering - who wrote up those citations, based on what and as told by who, and what written authorization was required, was background paperwork, and so on? Those basic questions, about the basic citations, and basic military procedures, are NOT going to go away until they are answered.
LONG, LOVELY, SEXY LEGS!!! So much for the naysayers who said this would be a 24 hour story. This controversy is going to be around until Nov. 2. Heard any Abu Graib stories lately . . . ?
Remember, he not only took a super 8mm movie camera, he took a typewriter for personal use.
"In a signed affidavit he provided to the ad sponsors on July 21, Elliott suggested Kerry did not deserve his Silver Star, stating, "I was never informed that he had simply shot a wounded, fleeing Viet Cong in the back."
On Friday, the day after the ad started airing in three presidential battleground states, the Boston Globe quoted Elliot as saying, "It was a terrible mistake probably for me to sign the affidavit with those words. I'm the one in trouble here."
The Globe reported that Elliott thinks Kerry did deserve the medal. "I still don't think he [Kerry] shot the guy in the back," the Globe quoted Elliott as saying.
Later Thursday, however, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth released another signed affidavit from Elliott saying he had been misquoted by the Globe.
The new affidavit does not specify how Elliot was misquoted, however, and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth did not respond to a request to interview Elliott.
'Many sources'
At issue is an event in which Kerry killed a fleeing Viet Cong guerrilla while on patrol on the Mekong River. According to accounts Kerry and his swift boat crewmates provided to Kerry's biographers, Kerry left his boat and pursued the guerrilla because the man was carrying a Russian-made rocket launcher capable of penetrating armor.
Kerry and eyewitnesses to the event have long claimed that the guerrilla posed a serious threat, despite having suffered an undisclosed injury, and Kerry has denied shooting him in the back.
Elliott, in his latest affidavit, said he had no personal knowledge concerning Kerry's killing of the guerrilla and that in accusing Kerry of lying about what happened in Vietnam, he had relied upon "many sources," including a Kerry biography published by Boston Globe reporters.
"Had I known the facts, I would not have recommended Kerry for the Silver Star for simply pursuing and dispatching a single wounded, fleeing Viet Cong," Elliott stated in his latest affidavit.
Anatomy of a shooting
The Boston Globe biography upon which Elliott relied includes a portion of the after-action report concerning Kerry's battlefield heroics, saying Kerry "chased VC inland behind hooch and shot him while he fled, capturing one B-40 rocket launcher with round in chamber."
"I don't have a second's question about that, nor does anybody who was with me," Kerry told the Globe biographers in recalling his decision to shoot. "He was running away with a live B-40, and, I thought, poised to turn around and fire it."
When the Globe asked if he had shot the guerrilla in the back, Kerry replied, "No, absolutely not. He was hurt, other guys where shooting from back, side, back. There is not a scintilla of question in any person's mind who was there [that] this guy was dangerous. He was a combatant, he had an armed weapon."
But Elliott said in his affidavit Thursday: "While I suppose the fleeing, wounded Viet Cong could have been backpedaling, I have never heard this faintly suggested by anyone, and I do not understand why he would have to turn around to face Kerry if he was fleeing backwards."
http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/news/content/shared/news/politics/stories/08/07kerryads.html;COXnetJSessionID=BZQoXwaO9YLRNHQb1cJXuP2Ux8tfgvTV732RejKRDVSwR9Q2awBh!-1666936571?urac=n&urvf=10921616408670.4105117790384618
The question for some might be, did the kid deserve to be shot, anyway. If it was he who opened fire on the PCF, with the intent of basically killing everyone on board, then was it fair that he get his, as it were? even if Kerry had tied him to a tree, stepped back, and shot him in the side of the skull, execution style.
Once Brinkley wrote "Tour of Duty" and released it in January of this year, the SBVFT saw for the first time what Kerry received the awards for and Kerry's description of the events. With one year tours and people constantly rotating in and out, no one is that aware of who is getting wht awards. In many cases, the presentation of the awards was made at the next duty station.
The SBVFT must have compared notes for the first time after reading Brinkley's book. They didn't recognize the events Kerry was talking about. Elliot can be forgiven for not being aware that the award nominations were bogus, especially if Kerry wrote them up and his crew vouched for them. It would be interesting to track his crews' awards, which he wrote up for them.
Ahem, naysayer here. I did say 24 hours. Now, what are you hearing and seeing on the MSM? Please list below...
1.
I didn't think so. This article is from the WashTimes. What have you seen in the ComPost? CBS, NBC...etc. etc. blah!
"Remember, he not only took a super 8mm movie camera, he took a typewriter for personal use."
The reporting is excellent here on FR. However, are you hearing and seeing this in the MSM?
How else will the sheep hear about this news?
It's uphill, but we get it from FR and the blogosphere to talk radio and FOX, and then it reaches a point where the MSM can't ignore it without looking like biased fools.
..."MSM can't ignore it without looking like biased fools."
They now admit to helping Kerry. They do not care how they look this time. This is WAR.
The B-40 rocket, a.k.a. rocket propelled grenade(RPG) was fired from the ubiquitous, reloadable shoulder fired launcher we still see in the news today. IIRC, it has a minimum arming distance that the rocket must fly before the warhead can detonate. That was the rationale for beaching the boat, getting in so close that the weapon was useless, even though their SOP was supposed to be de-ass the kill zone, IIRC. One of Kerry's superior officers made the comment, in effect, that he didn't know if he should decorate or court martial Kerry.
Kerry may have committed a war crime, but there were no other witnesses. From the way it's described, it's hard to say if any command would prosecute him. There were links on another thread days ago describing Kerry as being reckless, and that the command wanted to get rid of him. That's why Kerry was the only one to leave the command without completing a whole tour.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=3539
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1182814/posts?q=1&&page=1
Rassman and Rassman don't seem to be able to agree on that either. I've seen a thread here on FR that has Rassman quotes telling the story two different ways.
In one version, he was on a boat behind kerry's boat. In the other one, he was on it. I'll try to find a link to it.
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