Posted on 10/13/2004 12:54:03 AM PDT by politicket
Edited on 10/13/2004 1:07:27 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Excerpt:
Mystery Surrounds Kerry's Navy Discharge
BY THOMAS LIPSCOMB - Special to the Sun
October 13, 2004
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/3107
An official Navy document on Senator Kerry's campaign Web site listed as Mr. Kerry's "Honorable Discharge from the Reserves" opens a door on a well kept secret about his military service.
The document is a form cover letter in the name of the Carter administration's secretary of the Navy, W. Graham Claytor. It describes Mr. Kerry's discharge as being subsequent to the review of "a board of officers." This in it self is unusual. There is nothing about an ordinary honorable discharge action in the Navy that requires a review by a board of officers.
According to the secretary of the Navy's document, the "authority of reference" this board was using in considering Mr. Kerry's record was "Title 10, U.S. Code Section 1162 and 1163. "This section refers to the grounds for involuntary separation from the service. What was being reviewed, then, was Mr. Kerry's involuntary separation from the service. And it couldn't have been an honorable discharge, or there would have been no point in any review at all. The review was likely held to improve Mr. Kerry's status of discharge from a less than honorable discharge to an honorable discharge.
A Kerry campaign spokesman, David Wade, was asked whether Mr. Kerry had ever been a victim of an attempt to deny him an honorable discharge. There has been no response to that inquiry.
The document is dated February 16, 1978. But Mr. Kerry's military commitment began with his six-year enlistment contract with the Navy on February 18, 1966. His commitment should have terminated in 1972. It is highly unlikely that either the man who at that time was a Vietnam Veterans Against the War leader, John Kerry, requested or the Navy accepted an additional six year reserve commitment. And the Claytor document indicates proceedings to reverse a less than honorable discharge that took place sometime prior to February 1978.
The most routine time for Mr. Kerry's discharge would have been at the end of his six-year obligation, in 1972. But how was it most likely to have come about?
I have been to bugmenot.com about twenty times, and have yet to be offered a login and password that work.
type in http://www.nysun.com and it will give you different passwords than say www.nysun.com. The full article is arround here though.
Thanks for adding the excerpted header...
I would have bet money Carter was involved in this thing; looks like I'm right. No wonder he had the place of honor at the Democratic Convention.
Other than that, I don't see anything that will ring anyone's bells. We need a lot more than this for an October surprise.
I would hope that when a member of our armed forces chooses to consort with the enemy that he, too, might be called to account. Isn't that due some sort of review?
Why is Kerry exempt from penalty for his actions?
Sounds like a smoking gun that overshadows anything the Democrats have tried to throw against Bush's service record. It would also be quite instructive of why they tried so hard to tarnish Bush's record, when their candidate was a "genuine war hero". If Kerry had a BCD or DD, he'd have to be "toast" to a large part of the electorate during a time of war. They badly needed to innoculate Kerry against an "October surprise".
It's above the Bushie aristocratic sense of "fair play" for the Bush campaign to go after Kerry's service record on any basis (which makes charges by the left that Bush is behind the Swift Boat Vets all that more ludicrous). And, of course, not a single mainstream media organization, including Fox News with bring this up, or challege Kerry to sign his Form 180. If they had, we'd be long past the Vietnam war issue. This will be dismissed by the MSM as "all old news".
Of course Kerry's hiding his past. And, of course, his core 40% supporters know what he is, and they regard his pro-Communist treason during the Vietnam war as a real plus. Kerry is, in fact, the mainstream of the Democrat party, which today is just a bit to the political right of Lenin and Ho-Chi-Minh.
The fact that this is not blasting from a Drudge headline is about all you need to know about this story. It can't be news, because it'll never see the light of day beyond the New York Sun.
SFS
Looks to me that he was given a less than honorable and then when Jimmy Carter took office he was among the "lucky" people who had their dishonorables reversed. The last paragraph gives the biggest clue -- all his medals were reissued on one day in 1985. Since when someone received a dishonorable the medals are all revoked -- they had obviously been revoked and thanks to Jimmy reinstated.
Obviously, if he had nothing to hide, he would have signed the form 180. In my mind, a candidate for POTUS, that refuses to disclose his military record is unfit for said office. Were he a Republican, you can bet the farm that the national media would be hitting him very, very hard on this issue.
Drudge just missed it. Tomorrow AM is will be on his site, though maybe not the top headline.
That sounds about right--5-10. The thing is, the support for Kerry is SO shallow that it's not going to take a lot to take the drive out of certain voters who sorta kinda but don't really support him.
For the sake of argument let's say there is nothing to this--OK, then, why the heck doesn't Kerry release that information? Let's say he DOES release exculpatory information--why did he let this story get so far? If he had this data, why not get it out in the primaries--why keep it secret in the first place?
No one who COULD clear up such a story would let it sit out there, waiting for a time like this.
See also this thread, for pre-publication speculation and analysis:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1243434/posts
Wow! Good analysis...
We'll have to see what Rush, Sean, and Drudge do with this. If it stays only where it's at, then I give it a life of one day (the weekend will kill it).
Sadly, I agree. Now, if someone somewhere has something solid to go on—say, if one of the Swiftvets can prove that Kerry was dishonorably discharged—then we might be in business. However, this article has all the hallmarks of a reporter who's been chasing hard facts for months and finally given up and run with all he's got. There's no reason to believe this will scare out the proof the reporter failed to find over the summer.
Put it this way: If someone printed a story this flimsy regarding Bush, we'd fisk him to pieces and mock the bleeding remains. Which isn't to say I doubt this story at all—in fact, one of the legitimate questions about Kerry's alleged contacts with the North Vietnamese has been, "If that's true why wasn't he court-martialed?" But our believing a story, and Sally Soccer-Mom believing it enough to change her vote, are two very, very different things.
first someone from the era needs to compare the docs to their discharge, that will show a lot...One thing I thought was odd was it went through New Orleans..must be a reason for that...
Rush is off today, I believe Roger H. is the fill in for today.
Sorry, Travis. You're dreaming. If he has a past DD or BCD, for one thing, it may not even be in the records. When the CIC gets involved, a Service Record can clean up quite nicely. The tell-tail signs may be there, i.e. the Board convened 10 years late, reissued medals, etc., but there may not be a single word explaining the actions of the board, or why the action was taken.
I have very little hope that Kerry will sign the 180, nor that anyone in the mainstream press will challenge him to do so. All it would take is one question in one debate.. just one, and it'll never happen. Even if 100 people WANTED to ask that question in the last debate, ABC's Gibson would never allow it. What on earth would cause Kerry to fall on his sword at this point?
This is a dead issue. The only thing, and I mean ONLY thing that would reopen it is if the officers on the convening board spoke up, and to be honest, if I were one of the Flag officers on it, I think I'd be duty bound to say nothing, unless the Dept of the Navy directed me to comment. We need their testimony, and some "smoking gun" documents from before the Service Jacket purge.
SFS
Is there any way to determine who was on this board?
Would this be something done by executive order?
Mystery Surrounds Kerry's Navy Discharge - required review by board of officers
Makes a lot more sense than the phoney Rather, 60-minutes story.
News always breaks when Rush takes a vacation (including 9/11).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.