<font size=4>Did Kerry Admit To Falsifying His First Purple-Heart Report?
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Captain Ed
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CQ Reader Amelia picked up this intriguing report on World Net Daily, which may not be the most reliable resource on the Internet. However, this should be rather easily cross-checked, and would be if the mainstream media would ever get off its duff and started doing its job. According to Art Moore, Kerry's account of taking incoming fire as the reason for his first Purple Heart injury is disputed by his own journal:
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A previously unnoticed passage in John Kerry's approved war biography, citing his own journals, appears to contradict the senator's claim he won his first Purple Heart as a result of an injury sustained under enemy fire. Kerry, who served as commander of a Navy swift boat, has insisted he was wounded by enemy fire Dec. 2, 1968, when he and two other men took a smaller vessel, a Boston Whaler, on a patrol north of his base at Cam Ranh Bay.
But Douglas Brinkley's "Tour of Duty," for which Kerry supplied his journals and letters, indicates that as Kerry set out on a subsequent mission, he had not yet been under enemy fire.
While the date of the four-day excursion on PCF-44 [Patrol Craft Fast] is not specified, Brinkley notes it commenced when Kerry <font color=green>"had just turned 25, on Dec. 11, 1968,"<font color=blue> which was nine days after the incident in which he claimed he had been wounded by enemy fire.<font color=black>
This is what Kerry's journal said at the time, according to Moore, and apparently Brinkley:
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"They pulled away from the pier at Cat Lo with spirits high, feeling satisfied with the way things were going for them. They had no lust for battle, but they also were were not afraid. Kerry wrote in his notebook, <font color=green>'A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn't been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven't been shot at are allowed to be cocky.'"<font color=black>
If this is true -- and Brinkley wrote the book using Kerry's journal as a prime resourse -- it absolutely destroys his first Purple Heart claim. It shows that Kerry set out to get as many PH awards as quickly as possible, probably in order to build a political resume as a war hero. It also demonstrates that Kerry felt free to lie about his actions for the sake of self-promotion.
If it's true, it's devastating, and also devastatingly stupid, removing yet another supposed qualification for the presidency for Kerry. If it's true.
Anyone have a copy of ToD handy to check it out?
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