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The book quotes Mr. Kerry's fellow combatants as saying two of his Purple Hearts came from friendly fire, not the enemy. The veterans also will dispute other stories Mr. Kerry has told.
"Unfit for Command" will not be released until Sept. 25, but the online Drudge Report yesterday broke news of what it called a "bombshell book." The book hit No. 2 on Amazon.com's best-seller list. Radio and TV hosts were clamoring for Mr. O'Neill to appear.
Some of the book's charges have been aired by Veterans for Truth.
Retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, who commanded Mr. Kerry's task force in Vietnam, is one of the book's sources.
Adm. Hoffmann said yesterday he has supplied several instances of Mr. Kerry's purported lies. One example, he said, is Mr. Kerry's contention that he warned admirals of the folly of a certain river operation. Adm. Hoffmann said he and others were at the meeting, and that Mr. Kerry never made such a statement.
"The real truth is he didn't say a ... word," Adm. Hoffmann said. more>
Kerry's Vietnam Whitewash - Kerry now denies ever making those well-preserved, well-remembered, well-documented statements about Winter Soldier campaign with Jane Fonda and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
KERRY WAR COMRADES PREPARE BATTLE -- AGAINST KERRY - Capped by Kerry's primetime speech to accept the Democratic Party's nomination, Thursday's program will include appearances and remarks by Kerry's Swift Boat crewmates, the Kerry-Edwards campaign announced in a press release this morning.
But a group of veterans will soon try to convince a nation how what is presented on the convention stage tonight -- may not be the full story: "Only 2 of John Kerry's 23 fellow Swift boat commanders from Coastal Division 11 support his candidacy today."
A new bombshell book written by the man who took over John Kerry's Swift Boat charges: Two of John Kerry's three Purple Heart decorations (#1 and #3) resulted from self-inflicted wounds, not suffered under enemy fire.
Kerry's War Wound Called 'Fingernail Scrape' - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry insisted on being awarded his first Purple Heart in Vietnam even though his injury amounted to no more than a "fingernail scrape," his commanding officer at the time now says.
Retired Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard tells the Boston Globe that he can still recall Kerry's wound, and that "it resembled a scrape from a fingernail," the paper said.
"I've had thorns from a rose that were worse," Hibbard insists.
Still, the former Navy man remembered that Kerry insisted on receiving a Purple Heart for the wound he said was incurred during a Dec. 3, 1968 skirmish with Viet Cong near Cam Ranh Bay.
"He had a little scratch on his forearm, and he was holding a piece of shrapnel," Hibbard told the Globe. "People in the office were saying, 'I don't think we got any fire,' and there is a guy holding a little piece of shrapnel in his palm."
Much to Hibbard's chagrin, Kerry persisted in his quest for a war decoration for the scratch.
"I finally said, 'OK, if that's what happened ... do whatever you want,'" Hibbard said. "After that, I don't know what happened. Obviously, he got it, I don't know how."
Kerry's campaign refused to say whether he remains certain that his skimmer boat had come under fire or whether he recalls his superior officer raising doubts about whether he was entitled to the Purple Heart. more>
Purple Heart wound treated with Band-Aid - Doctor recalls hearing of Kerry's boast he'd be 'next JFK from Massachusetts' - The wound that made John Kerry eligible for the first of three Purple Hearts was not severe enough to warrant consideration, according to the physician who treated him in December 1968.
Louis Letson, now a retired general practitioner in Alabama, said he has "a very clear memory of an incident which occurred while I was the Medical Officer at Naval Support Facility, Cam Ranh Bay," according to National Review Online White House correspondent Byron York.
Kerry's Purple Heart and the two others he won later allowed him, under Navy regulations, to request and receive leave for the United States after just four months of his 12-month tour of duty.
Letson, according to NRO, says he remembers his brief encounter with Kerry 35 years ago because "some of his crewmen related that Lt. Kerry had told them that he would be the next JFK from Massachusetts." more>
Setting Straight Kerry’s War Record - Taking a look at Mr. Kerry’s much-promoted Vietnam service, his military record was, indeed, remarkable in many ways. Last week, the former assistant secretary of defense and Fletcher School of Diplomacy professor, W. Scott Thompson, recalled a conversation with the late Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. that clearly had a slightly different take on Mr. Kerry’s recollection of their discussions:
Mr. Kerry was assigned to Swiftboat 44 on December 1, 1968. Within 24 hours, he had his first Purple Heart. Mr. Kerry accumulated three Purple Hearts in four months with not even a day of duty lost from wounds, according to his training officer. It’s a pity one cannot read his Purple Heart medical treatment reports which have been withheld from the public. The only person preventing their release is Mr. Kerry.
By his own admission during those four months, Mr. Kerry continually kept ramming his Swiftboat onto an enemy-held shore on assorted occasions alone and with a few men, killing civilians and even a wounded enemy soldier. One can begin to appreciate Zumwalt’s problem with Mr. Kerry as commander of an unarmored craft dependent upon speed of maneuver to keep it and its crew from being shot to pieces.
Mr. Kerry now refers to those civilian deaths as “accidents of war.”And within four days of his third Purple Heart, Mr. Kerry applied to take advantage of a technicality which allowed him to request immediate transfer to a stateside post.
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Unfit for office - Veteran John O'Neill: I was on Mr. Kerry's boat in Vietnam. He doesn't deserve to be commander in chief. Like John Kerry, I served in Vietnam as a Swift Boat commander. Ironically, John Kerry and I served much of our time, a full 12 months in my case and a controversial four months in his, commanding the exact same six-man boat, PCF-94, which I took over after he requested early departure. Despite our shared experience, I still believe what I believed 33 years ago--that John Kerry slandered America's military by inventing or repeating grossly exaggerated claims of atrocities and war crimes in order to advance his own political career as an antiwar activist. His misrepresentations played a significant role in creating the negative and false image of Vietnam vets that has persisted for over three decades.
Neither I, nor any man I served with, ever committed any atrocity or war crime in Vietnam. The opposite was the truth. Rather than use excessive force, we suffered casualty after casualty because we chose to refrain from firing rather than risk injuring civilians. More than once, I saw friends die in areas we entered with loudspeakers rather than guns. John Kerry's accusations then and now were an injustice that struck at the soul of anyone who served there.
During my 1971 televised debate with John Kerry, I accused him of lying. I urged him to come forth with affidavits from the soldiers who had claimed to have committed or witnessed atrocities. To date no such affidavits have been filed. Recently, Sen. Kerry has attempted to reframe his comments as youthful or "over the top." Yet always there has been a calculated coolness to the way he has sought to destroy the record of our honorable service in the interest of promoting his political ambitions of the moment. more>
Vet: Officer told Kerry to leave Vietnam - colleagues couldn't take John's behavior, attitudes anymore. Sen. John Kerry was told to leave Vietnam by three colleagues upset with his behavior and attitudes, according to a fellow swift-boat officer during the war.
Thomas Wright says the misbehavior of the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate got to the point where he no longer wanted him in his boat group. So, at Wright's request, his divisional commander assigned Kerry to another group.
Then Wright and like-minded boat officers took matters into their own hands, according to John B. Dwyer, a Vietnam veteran and military historian writing in the online magazine American Thinker.
"When he got his third Purple Heart, three of us told him to leave," Wright said, according to Dwyer. "We knew how the system worked and we didn't want him in Coastal Division 11. more>
Veterans to Kerry: stop using photo - Ex-colleagues say adoption by campaign 'a total fraud'. A group of more than 220 veterans who served in Sen. John Kerry's swift-boat unit in Vietnam are calling on the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate to stop unauthorized use of their images in national campaign advertising.
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which has declared the Massachusetts senator "unfit to be commander in chief," says 11 of the 20 officers in one photo Kerry uses have signed a letter condemning him. more>
Veterans, Vietnamese unite to oppose Kerry, while photo of candidate with Jane Fonda circulates on the internet - Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry was founded by Ted Sampley, a U.S. Army Green Beret and veteran of two combat tours in Vietnam. A Vietnam veterans organization and a Vietnamese-American group have united in opposition to Democratic presidential front-runner Sen. John Kerry.
"We represent hundreds of thousands of American veterans who do not want to see John Kerry anywhere near the Oval Office," said Ted Sampley, founder of Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry. Sampley is a U.S. Army Green Beret and veteran of two combat tours in Vietnam.
Said Sampley: "I have personally dealt with John Kerry on the issue of U.S. POWs left behind in Vietnam. Kerry is not truthful and is not worthy of the support of U.S. veterans. Many Vietnam vets have been duped into thinking Kerry is their friend. He is not. To us, he is 'Hanoi John.'"
Dan Tran is president of the Vietnam Human Rights Project and a member of Vietnamese Americans Against John Kerry.
"John Kerry aided and abetted the communist government in Hanoi and has hindered any human rights progress in Vietnam," Tran said. more>
Video Shows Kerry Conducting 'War Crimes' Interviews - a 1971 videotape shows Sen. John Kerry taking an active roll at the infamous Winter Soldier Investigation by personally grilling Vietnam vets about alleged war crimes they committed. more>
Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry - On the campaign trail, Sen. John Forbes Kerry regularly mentions his Vietnam War combat experience, during which he received three Purple Hearts, the Silver Star and Bronze Star.However, the Massachusetts Democrat doesn't like to talk much about how he received the awards or the time after he returned home when he was rubbing shoulders with Hanoi Jane Fonda as a much-celebrated organizer for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), one of America's most radical pro-communist groups. more>
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