The letter from the Swift Boat Veterans to Kerry

http://www.swiftvets.com ^ | May 5, 2004 | spoiler2

[spoiler2]

May 4, 2004

Senator Kerry,

We write from our common heritage as veterans of duty aboard Swift Boats in the Vietnam War. Indeed, you should note that a substantial number of those men who served directly with you during your four month tour in Vietnam have signed this letter.

It is our collective judgment that, upon your return from Vietnam, you grossly and knowingly distorted the conduct of the American soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen of that war (including a betrayal of many of us, without regard for the danger your actions caused us). Further, we believe that you have withheld and/or distorted material facts as to your own conduct in this war.

We believe you continue this conduct today, albeit by changing from an anti-war to a "war hero" status. You now seek to clad yourself in the very medals that you disdainfully threw away in the early years of your political career. In the process, we believe you continue a deception as to your own conduct through such tactics as the disclosure of only carefully screened portions of your military records. Both then and now, we have concluded that you have deceived the public, and in the process have betrayed honorable men, to further your personal political goals.

Your conduct is such as to raise substantive concerns as to your honesty and your ability to serve, as you currently seek, as Commander-in-Chief of the military services.

It is vital that the American public have as much information as possible about candidates for President of the United States. In various ways, you have rightly called upon President Bush to be fully accountable and to provide full disclosure. In the same spirit, now that you are the presumptive nominee of your Party, we believe it is incumbent upon you to make your total military record open to the American people.

Specifically, we the undersigned formally request that you authorize the Department of the Navy to independently release your military records (through your execution of Standard Form 180), complete and unaltered, including your military medical records. Further, we call upon you to correct the misconceptions your campaign seeks to create as to your conduct while in Vietnam. Permit the American public the opportunity to assess your military performance upon the record, and not upon campaign rhetoric.

Senator Kerry, we were there. We know the truth. We have been silent long enough. The stakes are too great, not only for America in general but, most importantly, for those who have followed us into service in Iraq and Afghanistan. We call upon you to provide a full, accurate accounting of your conduct in Vietnam.

Respectfully,

Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, USN Captain Charley Plumly, USN (ret)

Mr. Alvin A. Horne

Mr. Bill Lannom

Mr. John O'Neill

Mr. Wey Symmes

Mr. William W. Franke

[spoiler2]

Knowing this document is headed down the memory hole in the regular media, the least we can do for these honorable men, is display their letter to Kerry, here on an open forum that generates a bit greater traffic than their own website

[Pox]

Well, they seem to have exceeded their allotted bandwidth at the moment. :)

[So Cal Rocket]

Their website is down... bandwidth limitations have been exceeded... so SOMEONE is visiting their site.

[not-alone]

bump

[ken5050]

Kerry has just asked that his name be put on the Vietnam Wall, ASAP, because as he said, "Vietnam has just killed him"

[GottaLuvAkitas1]

"Their website is down... bandwidth limitations have been exceeded... so SOMEONE is visiting their site."


I am afraid the left have crashed their site.

[spoiler2]

It takes BANDWIDTH to get the truth out these days, so here's another opportunity for Free Republic to help their cause.

[Made In The USA]

Wouldn't be surprised if a left wing organization launched a denial of service attack on the website. The answer is this website, Freerepublic, and our own email distribution lists. Let's all have at it!

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

Their site is up!

[BMC1]

John Kerry is a premeditated opportunist. It came out last night that Kerry took his own MOVIE CAMERA with him to Vietnam. He did so to take movies of himself to use in future political campaigns in order to project himself as a war hero.

If Mr. Kerry isn't hiding anything about his four months in Vietnam, he should release ALL RECORDS INCLUDING MEDICAL RECORDS.

I would like to know how this opportunist got THREE PURPLE HEARTS IN A FOUR MONTH PERIOD. It sounds more like calculated move that heroism.

[antiRepublicrat]

I am afraid the left have crashed their site.

I am afraid FreeRepublic is responsible for a particular Slashdotting.

[spoiler2]

bttt

[Ciexyz]

God bless these men for their honorable service.

[GottaLuvAkitas1]

LOL Actually I have no idea how bandwith works.
How can they be helped with this? A donation for more storage space or something?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Regarding the purple hearts:

__________________________________________________________________________

	E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend <% printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>Print Version

May 04, 2004, 4:26 p.m.
Kerry Purple Heart Doc Speaks Out
The medical description of his first wound.

By Byron York

Some critics of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry have questioned the circumstances surrounding the first of three Purple Hearts Kerry won in Vietnam. Those critics, among them some of Kerry's fellow veterans, have suggested that a wound suffered by Kerry in December 1968 may have made him technically eligible for a Purple Heart but was not severe enough to warrant serious consideration, even for a decoration that was handed out by the thousands. Whatever the case, Kerry was awarded the Purple Heart, and, along with two others he won later, it allowed him to request to leave Vietnam before his tour of duty was finished.

Kerry was treated for the wound at a medical facility in Cam Ranh Bay. The doctor who treated Kerry, Louis Letson, is today a retired general practitioner in Alabama. Letson says he remembers his brief encounter with Kerry 35 years ago because "some of his crewmen related that Lt. Kerry had told them that he would be the next JFK from Massachusetts." Letson says that last year, as the Democratic campaign began to heat up, he told friends that he remembered treating one of the candidates many years ago. In response to their questions, Letson says, he wrote down his recollections of the time. (Letson says he has had no contacts with anyone from the Bush campaign or the Republican party.) What follows is Letson's memory, as he wrote it.

I have a very clear memory of an incident which occurred while I was the Medical Officer at Naval Support Facility, Cam Ranh Bay.

John Kerry was a (jg), the OinC or skipper of a Swift boat, newly arrived in Vietnam. On the night of December 2, he was on patrol north of Cam Ranh, up near Nha Trang area. The next day he came to sick bay, the medical facility, for treatment of a wound that had occurred that night.

The story he told was different from what his crewmen had to say about that night. According to Kerry, they had been engaged in a fire fight, receiving small arms fire from on shore. He said that his injury resulted from this enemy action.

Some of his crew confided that they did not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a mortar round at close range to some rocks on shore. The crewman thought that the injury was caused by a fragment ricocheting from that mortar round when it struck the rocks.

That seemed to fit the injury which I treated.

What I saw was a small piece of metal sticking very superficially in the skin of Kerry's arm. The metal fragment measured about 1 cm. in length and was about 2 or 3 mm in diameter. It certainly did not look like a round from a rifle.

I simply removed the piece of metal by lifting it out of the skin with forceps. I doubt that it penetrated more than 3 or 4 mm. It did not require probing to find it, did not require any anesthesia to remove it, and did not require any sutures to close the wound.

The wound was covered with a bandaid.

Not [sic] other injuries were reported and I do not recall that there was any reported damage to the boat.

 

	http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200405041626.asp

[SpinyNorman]

A useful statistic would be the number of soldiers that availed themselves of the same technicality to bail out of Vietnam. And subcategorized by degree of injury, i.e. critical, severe, substantial, trivial, Kerry level. (snicker)

[spoiler2]

Degrees of injury:

Kerry level- Injury is superficial enough to be treated in minutes, can be completely covered with a band-aid, yet the patient INSISTS on receiving a Purple Heart medal for his grevious level of suffering.

Mandatory- Wuss-alert to be placed on patient's permanent service record.

[EdReform]

BTTT

[StarCMC]

Bump and ping

[cyncooper]

Well, they seem to have exceeded their allotted bandwidth at the moment

I had that problem this morning but just clicked and got in.

I wish they would put up a complete transcript of yesterday's news conference. I understand they have limited resources, though.