Posted on 05/04/2004 10:00:46 PM PDT by Indy Pendance
WASHINGTON, May 4 — A group of Vietnam veterans tried to pick apart Senator John Kerry's war-hero biography on Tuesday, questioning a combat wound and denouncing his antiwar activities as a betrayal that should disqualify him to be commander in chief.
The group cited a document from a doctor who said that in December 1968 he treated the wound for which Mr. Kerry received the first of his three Purple Hearts and that it probably resulted from an accident, not hostile fire.
"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," wrote the doctor, Louis Letson of Scottsboro, Ala., a member of the group. "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."
Dr. Letson's group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, seeks to discredit Mr. Kerry. It was organized by John O'Neill of Houston, who was recruited by the Nixon administration three decades ago to debate Mr. Kerry about the conduct of service members in Vietnam.
The group says it represents 200 men who, like Mr. Kerry, saw combat on Navy Swift boats. (The Swift Boat Sailors Association, a nonpartisan veterans group, estimates the total number of men assigned to the boats at 3,000 to 3,500.) Swift Boat Veterans for Truth held its first news conference here just a day after Mr. Kerry unveiled a $27 million advertising campaign highlighting his Vietnam service.
"Senator Kerry is not fit for command," said Adm. Roy Hoffman, retired, the leader of the group.
Steve Gardner, who served under Mr. Kerry, called him indecisive in combat, a description sharply at odds with evaluations by Mr. Kerry's commanders.
"If a man like that can't handle that six-man boat, how can you expect him to be our commander in chief?" asked Mr. Gardner, one of about two dozen veterans who flew here to discredit Mr. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
Kerry aides immediately dismissed the new group as a tool of President Bush's re-election campaign and accused it of engaging in "Nixonian dirty tricks."
Regarding Dr. Letson's recollection of Mr. Kerry's wound, Michael Meehan, a campaign spokesman, noted that a different person, J. C. Carreon, had signed the "sick call sheet" summarizing treatment of the injury, and asked, "Who is this guy? How do we know that he was the doctor who treated him?"
The aides produced several veterans to attest to Mr. Kerry's bona fides.
"I think it's going to sicken and revulse the vast majority of the American people," Wade Sanders, who fought alongside Mr. Kerry, said in a hastily arranged news conference that followed one by Admiral Hoffman's group.
Mr. Sanders predicted that the veterans' criticism would "backfire on this president and this vice president," and, paraphrasing a challenge to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, asked, "Is there no limit to the extreme that you will go in the destruction of someone who scares you?"
Mr. O'Neill, the group's founder, denied that the group was connected to the Bush campaign, saying he paid the $1,200 fee for use of a conference room for Tuesday's event himself. The group's publicist, Merrie Spaeth, worked in the Reagan White House and has given money to Mr. Bush's campaigns.
Good lord, that's weak.
John Wayne Gacy had a picture of himself with Rosalyn Carter.
The NY Times seems to think that highlighting someone as a "Republican" disqualifies them. However, they've been unable or unwilling, to highlight who is behind ANSWER.
In a telephone interview, Spaeth said her firm had nothing to do with the attacks on McCain, and she said her late husband lost the race for lieutenant governor and had not been endorsed by Bush. She said she had been scrupulous in ensuring that she had no contact with Republican officials in helping set up yesterday's news conference.
Prairie
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