← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · friedrich braun
Thread ID: 12471 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2004-02-23
2004-02-23 16:25 | User Profile
Subject: Israel Kerry (Something is Fishy about war record?)
This has been sent to me by two people today. Can it be true? Does sound about par for the political class, eh? Please pass on to everyone you know, as it does awaken serious doubts.
I received the following from a friend who is still sending e-mails to lots of other active and retired military. My friend is a Marine Lt. Colonel (retired) who has voiced the same doubts about Kerry that I have. I have no idea as to the e-mails authenticity, but it rings true of what I know of the river war in Vietnam. For what it's worth:
Max, I thought you would be interested in this email from Ed xxxxx and his brother Mike. Ed worked at Triad in the early days and is ex-military. His brother Mike has some interesting first hand experiences in the same area and at the time John Kerry served in Nam. Bill
Subject: John Kerry
A VERY interesting article by my brother, Mike, who won a bronze star in Vietnam. I hope this one becomes public.
Bigger things. I've long thought that John Kerry's war record was phoney. We talked about it when you were here. It's mainly been instinct because,as you know, nobody who claims to have seen the action he does would so shamelessly flaunt it for political gain. So I spent a couple of hours on the internet yesterday, made a bunch of notes, and I'm sending them as an attachment. In addition, look at the website [url]http://25thaviation.org/johnkerry/id15htm[/url]. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to chronicle Kerry's checkered career.
I was in the Delta shortly after he left. I know that area well. I know the operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and the doctrine used. 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 so 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) Three Purple Hearts but no limp. All injuries so minor that no time lost 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 was 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 Jap 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, requests separation from active duty a few months after that so he can run for Congress, finds out war heros don't sell well in Massachsetts in 1970 so 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 Bobby Kennedy's speechwriter to do the heavy lifting, winds up in the Senate himself a few years later, votes against every major defense bill, says the CIA is irrelevant after the Wall came down, votes against the Gulf War, a big mistake since tha! t turned out well, decides not to make the same mistake twice so votes for invading Iraq, but oops, that didn't turn out so well 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. And fishy.
Keep smiling,
Mike
2004-02-23 17:23 | User Profile
So I guess I better vote for Bush then.
Not that I care about Kerry, but compared to Jorge Dubya Boosh, he's Patton.
2004-02-23 18:49 | User Profile
Subject: Israel Kerry (Something is Fishy about war record?)
[QUOTE]I was in the Delta shortly after he left. I know that area well. I know the operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and the doctrine used. 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. [/QUOTE][COLOR=Red]Most marines were in I Corps some 500 miles north of the delta.[/COLOR]
Here are my problems and suspicions:
QUOTE Three Purple Hearts but no limp. All injuries so minor that no time lost 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 was 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.[/QUOTE][COLOR=Red]Does seem somewhat amazing, but I await further investigation. Could be real[/COLOR] QUOTE 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[COLOR=Red] B-40 has the ballistic integrity of a frisbie after about 25 yards,[/COLOR] 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). [COLOR=Red][I]And we didn't shoot wounded people. We had rules against that, too[/I][/COLOR].[/QUOTE][COLOR=Red]Yes, we did shoot the wounded.[/COLOR]The B-40 may have had problems with ballistic integrity, but the warhead's burst compensated. Here is what Hanson Baldwin of the New York [B][I]Times[/I][/B], a magnificent defense correspondent before the descent of that paper into sniveling kikism, had to say about grenade launchers. [QUOTE]Hanson Baldwin assessed the enemy weapons and gave the North Vietnamese an edge in reliability for their rifle and stated the United States had no wquivalent weapon to match the RPG-7, the rocket propelled grenade launcher.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]Here we have a [B][I]JFK [/I] [/B] 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 Jap 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, requests separation from active duty a few months after that so he can run for Congress, finds out war heros don't sell well in Massachsetts in 1970 so 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 Bobby Kennedy's speechwriter to do the heavy lifting, winds up in the Senate himself a few years later, votes against every major defense bill, says the CIA is irrelevant after the Wall came down, votes against the Gulf War, a big mistake since that turned out well, decides not to make the same mistake twice so votes for invading Iraq, but oops, that didn't turn out so well 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. And fishy. [/QUOTE]I agree mostly, but the lying about JFK has entered national memory
Another political stalwart exhibited his familiarity with war[QUOTE][B][I]Washington Monthly[/I][/B], p18, December, 1990 Using his political prerogative Mr. Quayle went to West Point's graduation ceremony. There he told the Class of 1989 that it was a "high honor" to be invited as commencement speaker. He had the gall to tell the young that "there is no more noble calling than serving your country". What other country would tolerate such a brazen liar and coward, even if politically excused by an electorate which tolerated such sins, sanctimoniously preaching to their young who would be asked to fight and die. While on tour in Latin America the Vice President had the opportunity to visit some military strongmen who evidently relished the visit by the ex-military man. A commemorative photograph was taken with the American hero interposed between two South American worthies. [I][COLOR=Red]To lend authenticity the hero has a grim look on his face while he holds a Soviet made rocket launcher. There was almost a Rambo-like quality about the picture. The only thing somewhat disturbing was that Mr. Quayle was shown holding the weapon backwards[/COLOR][/I][/QUOTE]