Questioning the Kerry 'war record'...

So Kerry got shot at and earnt his medals,
Bush never got shot at and didn't earn any.

Now, youse say that Kerry may have not earnt
his medals. Kerry got them what because he was
a good man, trustworthy you say?


Thomas J. Paladino Jr. wrote:
Seems there is more to Kerry than the 'war hero' persona that has become so
popular with the gushing liberal media. There is a strong chance his war
record has been greatly exaggerated....
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The following was sent to a Marine chat net by a retired Marine Master
Sergeant who was in S-2, 3rd Bn, 1st Marines, Korea in 1954. It calls into
serious question John Kerry's military actions in Vietnam. We present it to
give our readers another perspective to the media's one-sided "war hero"
adulation, and to open his actions to the light of public discourse. -- The
Editors.

I was in the Delta shortly after John Kerry left. I know that area well. I
know the operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and the
doctrine used, and I know the equipment. Although I was attached to CTF-116
(PBRs) I spent a fair amount of time with CTF-115 (swift boats), Kerry's
command.

Here are my problems and suspicions:


(1) Kerry was in-country less than four months and collected a Bronze Star,
a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. I never heard of anybody with any
outfit I worked with (including SEAL One, the Sea Wolves, Riverines and the
River Patrol Force) collecting that much hardware that fast, and for such
pedestrian actions. The Swifts did a commendable job, but that duty wasn't
the worst you could draw. They operated only along the coast and in the
major rivers (Bassac and Mekong). The rough stuff in the hot areas was
mainly handled by the smaller, faster PBRs.

(2) He collected three Purple Hearts but has no limp. All his injuries were
so minor that he lost no time from duty. Amazing luck. Or he was putting
himself in for medals every time he bumped his head on the wheel house
hatch? Combat on, the boats were almost always at close range. You didn't
have minor wounds, at least not often. Not three times in a row. Then he
used the three Purple Hearts to request a trip home eight months before the
end of his tour. Fishy.

(3) The details of the event for which he was given the Silver Star make no
sense at all. Supposedly, a B-40 was fired at the boat and missed. Charlie
jumps up with the launcher in his hand, the bow gunner knocks him down with
the twin .50, Kerry beaches the boat, jumps off, shoots Charlie, and
retreives the launcher. If true, he did everything wrong.
(a) Standard procedure when you took rocket fire was to put your stern
to the action and go balls to the wall. A B-40 has the ballistic integrity
of a frisbie after about 25 yards, so you put 50 yards or so between you and
the beach and begin raking it with your .50's.
(b) Did you ever see anybody get knocked down with a .50 caliber round
and get up? The guy was dead or dying. The rocket launcher was empty. There
was no reason to go after him (except if you knew he was no danger to you
just flopping around in the dust during his last few seconds on earth, and
you wanted some derring-do in your after-action report). And we didn't shoot
wounded people. We had rules against that, too.
(c) Kerry got off the boat. This was a major breach of standing
procedures. Nobody on a boat crew ever got off a boat in a hot area. EVER!
The reason was simple: If you had somebody on the beach, your boat was
defenseless. It coudn't run and it couldn' t return fire. It was stupid and
it put his crew in danger. He should have been relieved and reprimanded. I
never heard of any boat crewman ever leaving a boat during or after a
firefight.

Something is fishy.

Here we have a JFK wannabe (the guy Halsey wanted to court martial for
carelessly losing his boat and getting a couple people killed by running
across the bow of a Japanese destroyer) who is hardly in Vietnam long enough
to get good tan, collects medals faster than Audie Murphy in a job where
lots of medals weren't common, gets sent home eight months early and
requests separation from active duty a few months after that so he can run
for Congress. In that election, he finds out war heroes don't sell well in
Massachsetts in 1970, so he reinvents himself as Jane Fonda, throws his
ribbons in the dirt with the cameras running to jump start his political
career, gets Stillborn Pell to invite him to address Congress and has Bobby
Kennedy's speechwriter to do the heavy lifting. A few years later he winds
up in the Senate himself, where he votes against every major defense bill
and says the CIA is irrelevant after the Berlin Wall came down. He votes
against the Gulf War (a big political mistake since that turned out well),
then decides not to make the same mistake twice so votes for invading
Iraq -- but that didn't fare as well with the Democrats, so he now says he
really didn't mean for Bush to go to war when he voted to allow him to go to
war.

I'm real glad you or I never had this guy covering out flanks in Vietnam. I
sure don't want him as Commander-in-Chief. I hope that somebody from CTF-115
shows up with some facts challenging Kerry's Vietnam record. I know in my
gut it's wildy inflated.

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