Retired doctor makes light of Kerry wound

SCOTTSBORO - A retired family doctor said Thursday he used a Band-Aid to treat the first of three wounds Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry received in the Vietnam War.

Dr. Louis Letson of Scottsboro, who appears in a new 60-second TV ad questioning Kerry's war record, said Kerry came into his office at Cam Rahn Bay on the morning of Dec. 3, 1968, with an injury to his upper arm.

Letson said Kerry told him he and a boat crew of about five enlisted men were on patrol that night when they began receiving small arms fire and he was injured.

But Letson said the crew told a different story after Kerry left the office. "They were kind of amused by the whole thing," he said.

The crew members denied that they had been under enemy fire, Letson said. The crew said it was about 2 a.m. when they thought they saw some people on shore and Kerry fired a M79 grenade launcher.

"He had fired it up close against some rocks on shore when the grenade exploded" and he was hit in the arm by shrapnel, Letson said. "That's what caused the injury. The fragment was not from enemy fire" as Kerry portrayed it, the crew told him.

"The fragment was about the size of a match stick," Letson said. "It was sticking out of his arm. I grabbed it out and put a Band Aid on it. It didn't require an anesthesia or sutures."

Letson is among several swift boat veterans in the TV ad who say Kerry lied about his service, exaggerated his wounds to win war medals and betrayed soldiers with his antiwar protesting after he returned from Vietnam.

Letson said the crew said Kerry was not in charge of the boat that night, but was in training and that they were under the command of another lieutenant who was on board that night. He said the crew had joked how Kerry had told them he wanted to be the next JFK.

The late President John F. Kennedy was injured when a Japanese destroyer collided with the small patrol boat (PT-109) he commanded in World War II.

Letson said the base's commanding officer, Lt. Commander Grant "Skip" Hibbard, who now lives in Gulf Breeze, Fla., rejected Kerry's request for a Purple Heart for his injury that night. He said Hibbard told him that Kerry did not deserve the award because the injury was not combat-related. Efforts to reach Hibbard for comment were unsuccessful.

Letson said he is member of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which was organized in April. About 390 swift boat veterans belong to the group, he said.

Looked up the Purple Heart rules and found one that probably would give most folks pause while considering whether or not to authorize the award under the circumstances described in the lead article.

It's this one: (g) Accidents, to include explosive, aircraft, vehicular, and other accidental wounding not related to or caused by enemy action.

If ITEM G is applicable, the award is not made. The problem is the man was going out into bandit country and even if this was "accidental" it occurred in the midst of something related directly to "enemy action" ~ namely, the "enemy" was where they were going.

What we have is a triple-negative. It was partially clarified in a revision to the rules made in 1973.

Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia '68 with Johnson NOT Nixon

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/007405.php

If there is a consistent[ly] repeated story by John Kerry about his Vietnam experience, it is his story about how he and his boat spent Christmas Eve and Christmas of 1968 illegally present in Cambodia and, listening to President Nixon's contrary assurances, developed "a deep mistrust of U.S. government pronouncements." See Exhibit 24, Kranish book, p. 84. The point of his story was that his government and his commanders were lying about Kerry's presence in Cambodia on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. During a critical debate on the floor of the United States Senate on March 27, 1986, Senator John Kerry said:
Mr. President, I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the President of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia.

I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me . . . .

Exhibit 25, Congressional Record - Senate of March 27, 1986, page 3594.

By way of further example, Kerry wrote an article for the Boston Herald on October 14, 1979:

"I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real."

See Exhibit 26.

The Christmas in Cambodia story of John Kerry was repeated as recently as July 7, 2004 by Michael Kranish, a principal biographer of Kerry from The Boston Globe. On the Hannity & Colmes television show, Kranish indicated that Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia was a critical turning point in Kerry's life.

The story is a total preposterous fabrication by Kerry. Exhibit 8 is an affidavit by the Commander of the Swift boats in Vietnam, Admiral Roy Hoffmann, stating that Kerry's claim to be in Cambodia for Christmas Eve and Christmas of 1968 is a total lie. If necessary, similar affidavits are available from the entire chain of command. In reality, Kerry was at Sa Dec -- easily locatable on any map more than fifty miles from Cambodia. Kerry himself inadvertently admits that he was in Sa Dec for Christmas Eve and Christmas and not in Cambodia, as he had stated for so many years on the Senate Floor, in the newspapers, and elsewhere. Exhibit 27, Tour, pp. 213-219. Sa Dec is hardly "close" to the Cambodian border. In reality, far from being ordered secretly to Cambodia, Kerry spent a pleasant night at Sa Dec with "visions of sugar plums" dancing in his head. Exhibit 27, p. 219. At Sa Dec where the Swift boat patrol area ended, there were many miles of other boats (PBR's) leading to the Cambodian border. There were also gunboats on the border to prevent any crossing. If Kerry tried to get through, he would have been arrested. Obviously, Kerry has hardly been honest about his service in Vietnam.

The other aspect of this story that is completely phony, but is not noted by O'Neill, is that Richard Nixon was not the President in December 1968. Lyndon Johnson was. It is simply incredible to me that for many years, reporters have mindlessly repeated this obviously false story without, apparently, noticing that it couldn't possibly be true.

And, if you're thinking that Kerry may inadvertently have gotten the year wrong, forget about it: Kerry was only in Vietnam for four months, and he spent only one Christmas there. It was 1968.

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