Don't forget Kerry himself. He's the one who still brags that he committed war crimes - his words - in that short, four month period. And all those alleged heriocs. He was one busy boy, Hanoi John was. I vote he had his own meth lab and private time travel machine. No amount of speed could have put him into all the places, doing all the things he claims to have done.
Mind you, during his four months in Vietnam Kerry also walked off the Swift boats with other officers to go Saigon complain to the man in charge, Admiral Zumwalt.
And when that didn't get him out of harm's way, he went to the media to complain:
Senator SYMINGTON. There has been considerable criticism of the war's reporting by the press and news media. What are your thoughts on that?
Mr. KERRY. On that I could definitely comment. I think the press has been extremely negligent in reporting. At one point and at the same time they have not been able to report because the Government of this country has not allowed them to. I went to Saigon to try to report. We were running missions in the Mekong Delta. We were running raids through these rivers on an operation called Sealord and we thought it was absurd.
We didn't have helicopter cover often. We seldom had jet aircraft cover. We were out of artillery range. We would go in with two quarter-inch aluminium hull boats and get shot at and never secure territory or anything except to quote Admiral Zumwalt to show the American flag and prove to the Vietcong they don't own the rivers. We found they did own them with 60 percent casualties and we thought this was absurd.
I went to Saigon, and told this to a member of the news bureau there and I said, "Look, you have got to tell the American people this story." The response was, "Well, I can't write that kind of thing. I can't criticize that much because if I do I would lose my accreditation, and we have to be very careful about just how much we say and when."