Posted on 08/26/2004 10:13:07 AM PDT by pookie18
Steve Gardner on Rush (w/Hedgecock)Now!
This interview should be played all over the country.
Gardner also stated that there was no way to get to Cambodia because it was blocked off.
I think it's crap: the Dems have been down that road three times before. If anything, it would surprise me if Bush didn't have a couple of his "brothers" held in reserve who will come out and say, "Oh, by the way, Lt. G. W. Bush and I flew together in Alabama in . . . ." I know one or two of these guys have written in the past, but I betcha W. has some ready to hit the talk shows.
Kerry will say he only brought his butler and not his gardener.
That hissing sound you hear is the air deflating from the "didn't serve with Kerry" spin routine.
Did ABS news use the sarcasm font?
"the media is just as corrupt as Kerry is"
No way in hell, they are far more corrupt, think about it!
first we "torture" them- then kill em/
Hedgecock asked Gardner whether he knew of anyone trying to dig up dirt on him and said he didn’t know and didn’t care.
Easy. Refuse to report it.
Gardner describes the "sampan incident" as a mess that happened because Lieutenant Kerry screwed up. It resulted in Gardner blasting a VC and the VC's child because they got too close for him to react in any other way. Had Kerry picked them up on the radar there would have been time to use normal interdiction prodecure from a safe distance.
Gardner gets to see that kid he blasted in his dreams for the rest of his life. Kerry gets to run for President while drawing a Senator's salary.
I don't know if any of this is true. God have mercy on Kerry's soul if it is.
The Sampan incident
Pat Buchanan (archive)
August 25, 2004
Steve Gardner will not forget the night as long as he lives. It was mid-January 1969. He was manning the double .50 caliber machine-gun mount in Lt. John Kerry's swift boat. "The PCF 44 boat, engines shut off, lay in ambush near the western mouth of the Cua Lon River," writes John O'Neill in his best-seller "Unfit for Command."
Kerry was in the pilothouse monitoring the radar. But, Gardner claims, Kerry had given his crew no heads-up when, suddenly, a sampan appeared right in front of them. The swift boat lights were thrown onto the sampan. Kerry, however, still had said nothing and was nowhere in sight. Gardner yelled to the sampan to stop. No reaction.
Then, as Gardner and crew thought they saw a man on the sampan holding or reaching for a weapon, they cut loose with the machine guns.
But when the crew boarded the sampan, they found no man on the boat, just a woman clutching a child no more than 2 years old and the shattered body of a boy. The man who had been piloting the sampan was believed to have been blasted into the water.
Here was a tragedy of war. But it is the contention of O'Neill and Gardner that Kerry bears responsibility for the boy's death. Had he been on the radar, he could have seen the sampan at a distance and ordered the crew to fire a warning shot. A slow-moving sampan was no threat to a swift boat that could shoot it to pieces from half a mile away. Nor could a sampan run away from a swift boat. While that child was killed in the fog of war, writes O'Neill, there should have been an inquiry:
"The inquiry would have focused on why the sampan was not detected early and why normal measures like a flare or small-caliber warning shot were not used. To be fair, it is likely that the purpose of such an inquiry would not be to fix blame on anyone, but to avoid future miscalculation. And the major questions would have been: Where was Kerry? Why was there no warning? Why was a gunner's mate making the critical life-and-death decision instead of the officer in charge?"
Kerry has offered his own versions of the sampan incident.
In one version, Kerry gave an order "to fire a few warning shots," but the crew opened up with machine guns. In "Tour of Duty" by Douglas Brinkley, Kerry explains that, because of the after-dark curfew, the river was a free-fire zone and, in some instances, boats had gotten close to U.S. patrol craft to throw bombs into their pilothouses. Yet the sampan had gone past the Swift Boat before the guns opened up.
We will probably never know exactly what happened that night. But a Boston Globe biography of Kerry cites a Navy report of a Jan. 20, 1969, "incident" involving an attack by Kerry's swift boat on a sampan:
"(W)hile Kerry said in a 2003 interview that he wasn't sure when the boy in the sampan was killed, a Navy report says a similar-sounding incident took place on January 20, 1969. The crew of No. 44 'took sampan under fire, returned to capture 1 woman and a small child, one enemy KIA (Killed in Action) ... believe four occupants fled to beach or possible KIA.'"
Was this the action in which Kerry was involved that night on the Cuan Lon River, the Globe asked his campaign. It did not respond.
Writes O'Neill, "The Commander Coastal Survey for Vietnam ... Quarterly Evaluation Report of March 29, 1969, states '... 20 January PCFs 21 and 44 operating in An Xuyen Province ... engaged the enemy with a resultant GDA of one VC KIA (BC) (body count), four VC KIA (EST) and two VC CIA (VQ 810650/44)."
In this report, writes O'Neill, the sampan incident is depicted as "Kerry's victory -- killing five imaginary Viet Cong, capturing two Viet Cong in action (an exaggeration of the mother and the babe in arms who were actually rescued from the sampan) and omitting the dead child."
On getting word of five dead V.C. at Kerry's hands with two more captured, Adm. Roy Hoffman sent his congratulations. "Upon learning of what Kerry had actually done," says O'Neill, "Hoffman recently expressed his contempt for Kerry as a liar, false warrior and fraud." As have other former Kerry commanders and comrades.
Surely the contempt the Swift Boat veterans have for Kerry is in part due to his slandering them as war criminals before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And we shall probably never know for certain the full truth about the firing that night on the sampan.
But Kerry should be asked whether he wrote a report saying five VC were killed and two captured, when Steve Gardner, the man who fired the guns, says one man was blown overboard, one child was killed, and only a baby and its terrified mother were taken into custody.
Yes he was his gunner. But was he facing John Kerry at all times? If he wasn't facing John Kerry at all times he can't say he served with him.
Then there is this.
Recently I have read that John Kerry has told the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that he was not referring to them in his senate speech in 1971, but to all the other Vietnam War veterans.
Well, we should apply the same standard to this that Kerry and his news pals used, that is;
That he did not serve in their tent, unit, team, foxhole, aircraft, patrol unit, or squad so therefore he cannot know what these men were doing or not doing.
Therefore, because by his own admission that by these rules above the SBVT couldnot have known, he should admit that everything he stated about Vietnam War veterans is a lie, as he had no first hand knowledge.
He did not serve with them!
And most will say they are glad that he didn't!
Thanks for posting this guys and for commenting. I knew I would find this info here. I heard Stephen Gardner on the show with Roger today.
Even us deskbound vets are used to abuse.
Stories like this, which I tend to believe because so many of them are coming out now, and it seems to corroborate with the evidence, make me dislike this fellow Kerry, which is too bad, since I would not like to hate the potential President. I know the Liberals LIVE for HATING Bush, but I would not ever want to be like THEM.
Stories like this make me sad then. Perhaps, as a man, he has changed since then, and I know alot of people did things over there that they are not proud of. I guess though, that not many of them came back and built a political career off of those same things.. Hmmmm..
Sucks to think that this guy might be rewarded for these deeds by becoming CIC... Heck, makes me wish for Howard Dean.
And this incident has nothing to do with any of the military awards disputes.
61 posted on 08/26/2004 10:36:06 AM PDT by Cboldt
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While I would not for a minute denigrate their service to our country,I think Skerry's"Band of Brothers"see"Visions of Sugar Plums Dancing in Their Heads"if they can help Skerry get elected POTUS!!It's"PayBack Time"(as Dick Cheney would say"Big Time"!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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