Alan,

If he answers exactly as you say on a show such as 60 minutes, this all goes away.

For the most part, I agree. Then we can move on to his conduct in the Senate with regards to POW/MIA.

...how about a anwser to this..http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=241..if this man gets elected...

Did Kerry ever go to Cambodia?

It's more than merely Plausible. It happened a lot during that period of the war. Missions got flown for both insertions and extractions, and no one save the ground mission commander knew exactly where the insertion or extraction point was. There were no signs on the border and no satellite locators at the time. There's a fellow hereabouts who was on the Riverine boats (smaller than the Swifts) who claims he was in Cambodia at least three times. I believe him.

Is Kerry actually lying, or are the SBVT members?

At the moment, the evidence indicates that it's the latter more than the former. We have a guy hereabouts -- a public prosecutor no less -- who has an affidavit claiming that Kerry is lying, but turns out that he -- like his other buddies -- never actually Witnessed the things he now asserts as Fact 30+ years later. If he tried to introduce his "affidavit" in any court of law in which he practices, it would be tossed under the Hearsay Rule. Which is Not a technicality.

If you wish to be a critic of how the war was conducted, look to The Idiot Westmoreland, then to McNamara and Rusk before 1969, and Kissinger and Nixon afterwards. We now know that McNamara knew beyond peradventure that the effort was a loser even before he left office, but he was too damned gutless to come out and say it. He should have been the one to have made the speech before the SFRC in 1971, but wanted to reserve his Special Place In History, apparently.

Only within the last two years, as he approaches his dotage, has he bothered to tell the Truth of what he knew then.

The officers who were interested in their OERs, FITREPs and action reports weren't the junior-grade folks like Kerry. FTMP, unless they were ring-knockers (who were mostly the Worst officers I ever had to deal with during some 20 months) or Lifer Wannabees, the junior types tended just to get the job done as best they could.

That description more fits Kerry than it does the Field Grade types who went through their 90-day field command rotations and wrote each other up for medals as part of their ticket-punching routine. Those of us who were close to the administrative side of the war knew full well that there was a lot of back-scratching amongst the WPPA going on, and the Senior NCOs were busily ensuring that their collective status was well protected as well. Nothing in the world is more pathetic than seeing a LTC bucking for Full Bird or a SSG looking to make SFC before his DEROS.

After the 52k dead, the greatest tragedy to come out of Viet Nam was the overall corruption of the Field Grade types, in my opinion. They were, by far, the Worst examples taken as a whole. The only ones who were worth a damn were those preparing to celebrate passover for the second time, or nearing their 20-yr retirement. Otherwise, there wasn't much to recommend them as they came madly rotating through.

Do try to remember -- we are talking about 24-26 year-old here when you discuss the junior officers, and the men were mostly in their late teens or early 20's. Most of them were Not Lifers -- and their attitude towards Lifers was at best one of tolerance. Respect was a Lot harder to earn. Few of the field grade types I knew ever really did.

What do we Know about Kerry's medals?

The PHs were automatic. He didn't put in for them himself -- the medical records did it for him. There is no requirement that one be blown apart in order to get one, no requirement that one be severely injured. Indeed, the regulations are specific -- a PH does not even require a lesion, no matter how small. It only requires an Injury that resulted from enemy action. That seems to be the case in each instance. This charge that they were "self-inflicted" has no evidence to back it up. How one would self-inflict a wound with a piece of shrapnel is, well, not entirely clear. Besides, the PH was not a much-coveted medal at the time. It was an acknowledgement mostly of Bad Luck -- certainly not of Heroism or even Meritorious Service. It acknowledged that you had fulfilled that Most Fundamental function of a combatant in wartime -- Successfully Being A Target. Its award was automatic -- if the medics submitted paperwork that indicated such an injury, it was Routinely forwarded upwards and Routinely approved by each level of command. If the USN says they were appropriate, then they were. Neither the SBVT not Bob Dole -- whose injury was certainly more severe, but then that doesn't really matter, since anyone dying in battle also gets the PH posthumously, so in comparison Dole is better off than they, just as Kerry is better off than him -- has any reason to second-guess the award now.

The Bronze Star w/V makes absolutely perfect sense, given the descriptions of the action (and those descriptions seem Not to confirm Thurlow's present-day tale of his own award of the same medal in the same action). Rassman submitted the nomination -- not Kerry. It was submitted for a Silver Star, not Bronze. The downgrade was not uncommon, and interestingly enough such downgrades occurred mostly at Higher Headquarters for seemingly unrelated matters, but not at the local command level. But given the best recitations of the action From Those Who Were Actually There, the award appears to be meritorious.

The Silver Star likewise. Clearly for a Swift Boat commander, the action of going onto land was Above And Beyond the usual sort of expectation. If he wanted to play it safe, all he Really had to do was to stay with the boat and orbit offshore laying down suppressive fire, rather than turn into the ambush and go after the VC onshore. Apparently there really Was an individual with a B40 -- Kerry brought one back. Apparently the individual was Not a loincloth-clad teenager -- where That one came from no one is quite sure, save that it seems to have been Made Up by someone trying to denigrate the entire incident.

Again, the USN has its own vetting procedures for such matters. Like the Bronze Star submission, it collected the appropriate affidavits, gave them the appropriate (and always critical) evaluation procedure (the services pay Lip Service to the idea that medals for Heroism ought not to be given out Too Freely, less the awards be cheapened in the process -- but that rule was suspended for Field Grade types, in my experience).

I know of only three actual Silver Stars awarded to living persons in my battalion, and in each instance the a/c of a helicopter did about the same thing that Kerry did -- put his ship on the ground and engaged the enemy directly while under fire. That action is considered Above and Beyond the normal course of duties for a helicopter pilot, and in my not at all humble opinion warranted the award without any particular question. (The fact that in two of those instances, the helicopter was shot down has some bearing on the matter -- but only a little. There were other incidents of aircraft being shot down where the a/c did Not attempt to actively engage the enemy, and those likewise did Not involve a Heroism award. Seems only Fair.)

If the US Army says those actions merited a Hero Badge, then who Now is in a position to say they did not? Likewise, if the USN said Kerry's actions merited a Hero Badge, who Now is in a position to second-guess an award that someone other than Kerry put him in for?

(There is one sidebar worth mentioning. Unit Commanders always rather liked having their men get Hero Badges. It reflected positively on their own OERs and FITREPs, and was good for their careers.)

To what degree are we now prepared to go back and re-open the awards of anyone who received one in Viet Nam? Witnesses have long since died or chosen to remain silent, paperwork is cursory or missing - not at all uncommon, military records that were handled by E3 and E4 draftees and enlistees who chose an administrative MOS to keep themselves out of fire at the time is, to put it mildly, somewhat less than entirely perfect.

None of that is Kerry's fault. Thurlow's medal indicates that he was Under Fire in the same action, after all. Is he likewise culpable for accepting the medal in which the citation asserts Facts that he now says might have been incorrect? (And this suggestion from him that he didn't know what was on the citation at the time is nonsense on its face. On that one, he's the apparent Liar -- and it's entirely plain. At the award ceremony for the medal, the citation -- in a form of a General Order -- is read out loud, and a copy of it is handed to the recipient as part of the ceremony. Thurlow got his at the time, and got several other copies of it later. That's how it Always worked. If Kerry's medal is "fraudulent" -- and it just Cannot be, given the circumstances -- then so is Thurlow's. And Thurlow knew it -- at the time and now. But he claims it as a means of bolstering his own credibility for his present purposes. I ain't buying it.

Dole weighs in about Kerry's injuries being "superficial." So what? The USN regulation does not require an injury to be serious or life-threatening to award the medal. It only requires An Injury -- nothing else. Sen Kay Baily Hutchison (R-KS) weighs in last night with "according to what I read in the papers" there's some doubt. The good Senator believes what she chooses from what she reads, and seems to want to believe the Most Negative stuff she reads, even if it makes No Damned Sense At All! And so we now have even more of the Armchair Heeroes chiming in, each of them asserting as Fact their own little piece of mere Hearsay.

See through it! Look at what's Really going on here. A GOP activist funded a group of his fellow True Believers who concocted a story to discredit Kerry's war record. The story makes No Sense at all, but it's now Out There. In the current era and election cycle, merely telling a story elevates it to the status of Fact.

It's when you start to take it apart, and ask if the story makes any sense that it falls apart. It's when you start to ask whether the SBVT were Actually There in the action on which they comment that it falls apart even more. It's when you compare what's Known from those who were there to what's merely Asserted by those who were not that it disintegrates altogether.

This whole attack is so utterly Dishonorable and Despicable that it boggles the imagination.

Don,

You are a joke... now you try the old "Baffle them with Bull Shit" routine.

You lose!

Lots of creative writing sizzle, Donny-boy and no steak. These guys stand by their story and have dared Kerry to sue them if he thinks their allegations are untrue. Kerry won't even face the press, let alone the discovery that goes with a lawsuit.

What's really going on here is a guy who has exploited Viet Nam and its participants every time it's been convenient has been caught lying by people who WERE THERE with him, and is getting his comeuppance.

You're like a battered wife: you should be more pissed off than anybody that Kerry sold this load of b.s. and stole your party's nomination, but all you can do is defend him. Maybe he won't burn you again -- right.

And how do you explain this? http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0408/schanberg.php

To clarify for leaddog:

It's a "Silver Star with V". Check the citation yourself, johnkerry.com.

No, they didn't issue "V"s with Silver Stars.

There are "Kerry Supporters" (Rood for instance) who have said using a 50 foot aluminum boat with twin propellers and twin V12 diesels for covert "insertions" is insane. If you want to say he used a Whaler that day, or a zodiac - fine. But... the reason Swift Boats were in so many freaking ambushes was they're LOUD.

But yes, if he gave those answers, he'd be fine.

LD2: You continue to offer nothing of substance.
But you're still not very good at even that.

AB: Make the case that it was Kerry himself who wrote up the citation, and not an EM Awards Clerk who did it. SS's didn't come along all that often, and it wouldn't be the first time that an E3 got it wrong. Nor would it be the first time that an incorrect citation got through the process. A good friend of mine was incorrectly awarded a certificate for a Bronze Star for Meritorious Service when it should have been with a V for Heroism In Ground Combat.

It was corrected in due time.

There's nothing of substance to that discussion.

TL: So they stand by their story. There are few convicted felons who do anything other than declare that they are Not Guilty.

The SBVT have this little problem -- they have no Actual Story to tell. Why? They Weren't There! The stories told by the Actual Eyewitnesses to the action, who really Were There, agree with Kerry -- and not with the SBVT.

As for the suing part, it's meaningless. Such a suit would take years to work through. Their intent was to do damage Now -- not at the end of a lawsuit.

Um, one of the SBVT was on Kerry's boat (Gardner) and many of the others (e.g., Thurlow) served in the same unit and were there. Have you read the booka and any of the analyses of it, or are you just making this crap up as you go along? NOBODY who served with Kerry, even the guys on stage, can corroborate the Cambodia stuff and the Kerry campaign has all but admited it didn't happen (they concede the best they can do is "near" Cambodia). Big difference.

And you're willing to equate these guys with convicted felons? Something tells me you aren't the vet you purport to be, but I let the vets on this board weigh in on that.

Congratulations, Don! In your three printed page comment, you incorrectly capitalized a word only 102 times. This is a vast improvement over your average post. And, assuming "Armchair Heeroes" was just a typo, you managed to avoid completely gratuitous misspellings for slanderous effect. Even though there's room for improvement, I definitely want to say keep up the good work!

Of course, later on, in a 7 line post, you did manage to incorrectly capitalize 11 words... I hate to say it, but you seem to do better in longer posts. Maybe you should consider more essays and less rants?

That's fewer rants, smart guy.

Alan Blue,

If this is your blog, you have the right to say what you choose and Ban me if you wish.

However, I posted a Link to the story on Kerry's Silver Star, which you obviously DID NOT READ as you posted a snide reference to Johnkerry.com.

The facts are these:

Johnkerry.com has already stated as follows:

1) They claimed he was the Vice Chairman of the Intelligence Committe (Oops! That was Bob Kerrey. Sorry! I forgot my name you know).

2) That Christmas is "seared", "seared" in my memory. (Actually this is a 1986 Senate speech and NOT on the Web Site that I can see).

3) Well, Michael Meehan says Kerry was in the watery border between Cambodia and Vietnam that Christmas. (Except for the fact that such a watery border DOES NOT EXIST. The Mekong River Delta is over 100 miles south of Cambodia).

4) I was in combat from Jan. 1st to Jan. 29th, 1969. (Except that was Peck's combat record that John Kerry attempted to steal). Those 20 Pages are NOW DELETED from JohnKerry.com.

5) The Silver Star is a honorable decoration. However, Johnkerry.com is NOT a Factually Accurate source.


I would suggest that you read the articles below before you comment again.


Why does John Kerry have a "V" for valor on his Silver Star when it is apparently against the law? Is it document forgery or not?



From Captain's Quarters

Has the Kerry campaign NOW backtracked on Kerry's first Purple Heart claim?

Read the story. It includes the following:

A number of people have written to me overnight stating that a Kerry campaign spokesman has acknowledged on Brit Hume's Fox news show that John Kerry's wound on 2 December 1968 came from an unintentionally self-inflicted wound -- an accident, in other words. So far, I find nothing on this on the Fox web site, but they are notoriously poor at posting transcripts, or even summaries of their own programs. Can someone post the link in the comments section of this post if any confirmation can be made?

UPDATE: Here's the link to the Fox News report from Major Garrett. It mostly covers the Chris Wallace interview with John Hurley and CNN's interview of Bob Dole. Towards the end, Garrett talks about the first Purple Heart:

GARRETT: And questions keep coming. For example, Kerry received a Purple Heart for wounds suffered on December 2nd, 1968. But an entry in Kerry's own journal written nine days later, he writes that, quote, he and his crew hadn't been shot at yet, unquote. Kerry's campaign has said it is possible his first Purple Heart was awarded for an unintentionally self-inflicted wound.
Score another one for the Swiftvets, and another retreat for Kerry, this time on a key contention for both a medal (which some, including me, felt were too difficult to argue effectively) and for his truncated tour of duty. Without that first Purple Heart, Kerry would have had to stay on the Swiftboat assignment past March 17th and remain in combat. Now that the Kerry campaign seems to have retreated from Kerry's citation, the fact that Kerry pushed this award weeks later up a different chain of command takes on a great deal more significance. Instead of bravely taking on combat, he now looks desperate to get out ahead of everyone else and willing to falsify records to do it -- which is exactly the impression that his later assertions have given us.

CQ mentioned the 2 December/11 December conflict back on August 18th in this post, based on a tip from CQ reader Amelia and an article in World Net Daily by Art Moore. Today's links to the Fox News report come from CQ readers Jay Howard and Jim Leonard. Thanks to the entire CQ community for keeping the media on its toes.

Thank you for pointing that out, Bananas. I'd like to be clear, however, that it's not the grammatical errors themselves that upset me. What upsets me i not being sure what Don is trying to imply every time he capitalizes a phrase. Just to pull one at random, "Actual Eyewitnesses." How do these differ from actual eyewitnesses? Have they been vetted by some oversight organization for their standard as eyewitnesseses, meaning that "Actual Eyewitness" is a title conferred by some neutral third party? Is this how Don justifies ignoring the testimony of Gardner, whom TL claims was on Kerry's boat? Where does Gardner submit his application to be upgraded from actual eyewitness to Actual Eyewitness? Who governs that august body? Is it simply Don himself who decides whether someone is enough of an eyewitness to bother listening to their testimony? So why doesn't Don say, "According to the eyewitnesses I choose to trust?" Oh, wait, that's obvious... he'd be laughed off the stage. Which is my main complaint about Don's gratuitous use of capitalization... I can't shake the nagging suspicion that it's a kind of innuendo that conceals the ultimate indefensibility of his argument. And, btw, all those questions are rhetorical... I could raise similar ones every time Don chooses to capitalize a word or phrase midsentence, but frankly, I don't really have the energy to discuss each one specifically. All I have energy for is condemning them all completely. Or ignoring Don. But I've ignored Don for long enough that I'm starting to feel I may actually be missing out on his valuable contribution, which is why I campaign to have him straighten out his language enough that it doesn't give me headaches to read his prose.

I know what you mean. I don't know why Don does it, and I can see how it could irritate as you try to discern intent. Try approaching the posts as extracts from a 300 year old novel. Maybe that's your chosen idiom, Don?

It pales before the tendency of some posters to capitalise entire words and phrases. If I ever feel the need to be harangued, I can drive to an economically rundown district and attempt conversation with derelicts. They'd probably be more coherent...

Well, if Don fully capitalized words, instead of just the first letters, I'd still be ignoring him. Start "shouting" at me, and I stop reading. It's simple.

"TL: So they stand by their story. There are few convicted felons who do anything other than declare that they are Not Guilty."

Blatant ad hominem by implication.

"The SBVT have this little problem — they have no Actual Story to tell."

Then that guy who saluted and said "Reporting for duty" at the DNC has no Actual Story either.

" Why? They Weren’t There! The stories told by the Actual Eyewitnesses to the action, who really Were There, agree with Kerry — and not with the SBVT."

Geeesh, Don. Did they have to be in his pants? His socks? His boat? What? MOF, one of them WAS in his boat! Fancy that!

"As for the suing part, it’s meaningless. Such a suit would take years to work through. Their intent was to do damage Now — not at the end of a lawsuit."

As in 1996 when Senator Kerry looked for support against the charge of being a war criminal, who stood up for him? Oh my... Must have been someone who could not offer Eyewitness Testimony.

Do you have that "Sinking" feeling yet, Don???

The italicized portion Posted by: Don at August 23, 2004 02:52 PM

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