Part two Swift summation
<font size=4>VI. Christmas in Cambodia (Unfit for Command pages 45-49)
Thirty year long claims made over 50 times or more in public, that Kerry was forced to make an illegal mission to Cambodia on Christmas in 1968 while Nixon was president, an event which was <font color=blue>"seared -- seared"<font color=black> into his being and described to Michael Kranish, biographer for the Boston Globe, in addition to other reporters and historians, as the entire basis for the most critical turning point in his life.
1) On March 27, 1986, Kerry argued on the Senate floor against supporting the anti-Communist forces in Nicaragua and stated passionately, <font color=blue>"Mr. President, I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia, I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory, which is seared--seared--in me, that says to me, before we send another generation into harm's way, we have a responsibility in the United States Senate to go the last step, to make the best effort possible in order to avoid that kind of conflict."<font color=black>
2) In June 2003 Kerry spoke in considerable detail about his experience spending Christmas 1968 in Cambodia with the Boston Globe
3) In June 2003 Kerry showed reporter Laura Blumenfeld his <font color=blue>"good luck hat"<font color=black>, which he revealed he keeps in a special, secret hidden compartment of his briefcase and was <font color=blue>"Given to me by a CIA guy as we went in for a special mission in Cambodia."<font color=black> as reported in the Washington Post
4) Richard Nixon was inaugurated President of the United States on January 20, 1969
5) No crewmate of Kerry's has ever testified accordingly and/or, in fact, dispute Kerry's ever having gone to Cambodia at any time during their tenure with him (NY Post)
6) No records, amongst all which are long since declassified and publicly available on the internet and elsewhere (Operation SEALORDS), neither mention nor reference any such purported Swift Boat missions.
7) Kerry's entire Chain of Command denies any such orders were ever issued and state flatly Kerry would have been officially court-martialed if he'd tried it.
8) Former US Foreign Service official and Cambodian station chief Andrew Antippas, in letters to the Washington Times, has come forward to deny any such incident involving a swift boat ever took place in articles published August 13, 2004 and
9) <font color=blue>Kerry campaign now readily admits he was not in Cambodia on Christmas, 1968<font color=black>
10) Further revision of Kerry's history during this period is precluded by his statements to Douglas Brinkley, in Tour of Duty, that he had never crossed the border before. <font color=blue>"John Kerry's Final Mission in Vietnam"<font color=black>.
STATUS: <font color=green>Obfuscations aside, this was an obvious lie on the part of John Kerry which has been thoroughly debunked revealing deeply rooted psychological traits which appear delusional & narcissistic.
<font color=black>
VII. Silver Star was not warranted (Unfit for Command pages 80-86)
Kerry filed a false report describing an incident when Kerry shot a young boy in the back, misportraying & misreporting his actions in grandiose terms, above and beyond the call of duty, to an extent actually worthy of such honors & citations.
1) Citation for Kerry's medal (and others) states:<font color=green>
On a request from U.S. Army advisors ashore, Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY ordered PCFs 94 and 23 further up river to suppress enemy sniper fire. After proceeding approximately eight hundred yards, the boats were again taken under fire from a heavily foliated area and B-40 rocket exploded close aboard PCF 94, with utter disregard for his own safety and the enemy rockets, he again ordered a charge on the enemy, beached his boat only ten feet from the VC rocket position, and personally led a landing party ashore in pursuit of the enemy. Upon sweeping the area in an immediate search uncovered an enemy rest and supply area which was destroyed. The extraordinary daring and personal courage of Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY in attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire were responsible for the highly successful mission.<font color=black>
2) No witnesses to this event have described Kerry facing such force or fire.
3) William Rood of the Chicago Tribune, this year, describes no such <font color=blue>"numerically superior force"<font color=black> being faced by Kerry and, to the contrary, only recalled <font color=blue>"seeing a loaded B-40 launcher pointed at the boats. It wasn't fired." <font color=black>
4) A photograph of Kerry taken afterwards confirms Rood's assertions as it shows a loaded rocket launcher.
5) Admiral Roy Hoffman and Kerry's other superiors were led to believe Kerry's false renditions of these tales as Kerry had originally submitted, indicating he - near alone - actually & personally <font color=blue>"routed the enemy"<font color=black>.
6) Commander George Elliot, who wrote up the initial draft of Kerry's citation, also testifies he was also - until more recently - unaware of the true circumstances of the incident and that if he'd known the actual facts at that time, he would not have awarded Kerry the Silver Star.
7) Records reveal that, over time, Kerry has repeatedly modified the official records pertaining to this incident, rendering at least three different versions of his citation and analysis + commentary reveals <font color=purple>"it has come to light that his Silver Star award is fraught with other peculiarities"<font color=black> - including the revelation <font color=purple>"that Kerry's DD 214 ("Report of Transfer or Separation"), displayed on his website, shows his Silver Star embellished with an unauthorized <font color=blue>"V"<font color=purple> for valor-which makes it facially false and at variance with official government records.<font color=black>
8) <font color=blue>Records withheld by the Kerry campaign or otherwise missing and not released include the nomination form for the Silver Star, the official investigation required, or the statements required of two witnesses.<font color=black>
STATUS: <font color=green>Given no witnesses have described the incident consistent with Kerry's citation and the Kerry campaign's unwillingness to release the records, it appears clear that the premise under which this citation was issued for Kerry was, indeed, falsified on his behalf, and his medal was wrongly awarded.
<font color=black>
VIII. Faked 3rd Purple Heart with self-inflicted wound to buttocks (Unfit for Command pages 86-92)
Kerry injured himself while detonating a grenade in a rice pile resulting in rice & shrapnel in his buttocks and then fraudulently attributed such injuries to an underwater mine in claiming his third Purple Hear, promptly leaving Viet Nam just a few days later.
1) Kerry admits to the incident in Douglas Brinkley's authorized biography Tour of Duty, page 313, <font color=blue>"I got a piece of small grenade in my ass from one of the rice-bin explosions"<font color=black>
2) Official Records confirm wound was to Kerry's <font color=green>"left buttocks"<font color=black>.
3) Kerry supporter Jim Rassman confirms being present & participating in the rice incident on Page 105 of John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography By The Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best, by Michael Kranish, Brian C. Mooney, and Nina J. Easton (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), describing the incident as <font color=blue>"hilarious" and ""it was more embarrassing than painful."<font color=black>
4) Other witnesses offer similar accounts, including Swift Boat Veteran Larry Thurlow who recalled the event in detail and has testified accordingly.
5) Kerry campaign has acknowledged medical records only reflect a slight wound on Kerry's buttocks and that <font color=green>"treatment"<font color=black> only involved application of Neosporin and a band-aid.
6) Kerry prepared the 3rd Purple Heart casualty reports on March 13, 1969 and left Viet Nam on March 17, 1969, arriving home in New York (Kennedy Airport), whereupon his then fiancée, on page 329 of Tour of Duty, recalled Kerry appeared to be <font color=blue>"bandaged"<font color=black> so heavily <font color=blue>"some of it was sticking out".<font color=black>
STATUS: <font color=green>Given the odds that Kerry could suffer the exact same kind of wound in exactly the same place on his body within hours on the exact same day are highly unlikely, and with nobody able confirm the story he supplied for the records, plus his own admissions about the incident in his authorized biography, it appears Kerry's 3rd Purple Heart was fraudulently obtained in a concerted & premeditated effort to go home.
<font color=black>
IX. Bronze Star account is disputed (Unfit for Command pages 86-92)
Kerry fled the scene after a mine explosion disabled one of the group of swift boats, only to return a short while later, while the SwiftVets saved the damaged boat and rescued injured crew mates, indeed rescuing Rassman who'd actually fallen off his boat, after which Kerry left fellow sailors behind again and returned to a Coast Guard cutter offshore, falsely recasting the entire sequence events with him as the hero in his official records & reports, his personal biography and DNC movies entitled <font color=blue>"No Man Left Behind"<font color=black>.
1) Recent admissions by the Kerry campaign and detailed analysis by the Washington Post depicted in this diagram reveal Kerry's boat left the scene while other boats gathered around the injured vessel to help save the craft and rescue the crew, with Kerry returning to retrieve Rassman as another of the remaining vessels moved to save him.
2) <font color=blue>Kerry admits the boat damage he officially reported for this mission as damage from a mine was actually due to a prior experience noting "All the windows on my boat and on [Larry Thurlow's PCF-53] boat had been blown out in the ambush two days earlier" from Douglas Brinkley's authorized biography of Kerry in "John Kerry's Final Mission in Vietnam"
3) Kerry admitted Rassman fell off his own boat in his own statements on the floor of the US Senate, From Congressional Record: January 28, 1998 (Senate) Page S186-S187 :
JOHN KERRY.<font color=blue> Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the text of the eulogy I gave for my friend, Thomas M. Belodeau, on November 10, 1997.
There was the time we were carrying Special Forces up a river and a mine exploded under our boat sending it 2 feet into the air. We were receiving incoming rocket and small arms fire and Tommy was returning fire with his M-60 machine gun when it literally broke apart in his hands. He was left holding the pieces unable to fire back while one of the Green Berets walked along the edge of the boat to get Tommy another M-60. As he was doing so, the boat made a high speed turn to starboard and the Green Beret kept going--straight into the river. The entire time while the boat went back to get the Green Beret, Tommy was without a machine gun or a weapon of any kind, but all the time he was hurling the greatest single string of Lowell-Chelmsford curses ever heard at the Viet Cong. He literally had swear words with tracers on them!<font color=black>
4) Kerry's own records confirm wound Kerry reported <font color=blue>"contusion on right forearm"<font color=black>. A contusion is <font color=green>"contusion"<font color=black> is an <font color=green>"injury to tissue usually without laceration"<font color=black>.
5) From Unfit for Command page 91:<font color=purple>
When Chenoweth's boat left a second time to deliver the wounded PCF 3 crewmen to a Coast Guard cutter offshore, Kerry jumped into the boat, leaving the few remaining officers and men the job of saving PCF 3, which was then in terrible condition, sinking just outisde the river. Kerry's eagerness to secure his third and final Purple Heart evidently outweighed any feelings he may have had of loyalty, duty, or honor with regard to his fellow sailors. Thurlow and the brave sailors who saved PCF 3 and towed it out did not seek Purple Hearts for their "minor contusions." Indeed, several of the PCF 3 sailors did not seek or receive Purple Hearts. Chenoweth, Odell, and their boat-mates who fished out and saved the sailors of PCF 3 likewise had no thought of seeking medals but only of rescuing their comrades and saving PCF 3. Kerry, however, portrays himself towing the disabled PCF 3 to safety after saving it. Another lie: The damage control on PCF 3 was done by Thurlow. While Kerry's boat, PCF 94, participated in towing PCF-3, Kerry was no longer on it for most of the trip (he was safely on the Coast Guard cutter), and Thurlow and Chenoweth are certain that Kerry played no role in saving PCF 3 or its crew.
When Chenoweth and Thurlow (as well as several other Swiftees who were there on March 13, 1969) first saw the Kerry ads, they believed the event that Kerry had described in his campaign biography and that was portrayed in his campaign television ads (as well as in the medal citations) had to be different events involving different people. What they had experienced on March 13, 1969, was so unlike the incident Kerry described that they could not imagine that he was describing the same event. They were horrified when they finally realized Kerry had received medals for the incident they remembered.<font color=black>
STATUS: <font color=green>It is up to Kerry to release his records in order to confirm whether Kerry was the source for orinal, erroneous, exaggerated reports, and to reconcile whether there was enemy fire, other than the mine itself, is only source of contention regarding this event. Kerry and his crew state there was, as does Rassman, who repeatedly submerged himself after falling off Kerry's boat as he first fled the scene. Numerous others, also at the scene, including the other boat commanders, and the gunners, report no enemy fire and that Rassman was confused by the tremendous volley of fire which the boats first engaged in an automatic defensive posture immediately after the mine first exploded. Kerry's description & official reporting of the events reflect over 5000 meters of intense enemy fire (literally more than 2-1/2 miles), a battle scene representative of the Battle of Gettysburg.<font color=black>
X. Kerry betrayed his fellow veterans (Unfit for Command pages 126-137)
Kerry slandered fellow troops by falsely accusing vets of mass atrocities and war crimes, consorted with the enemy by meeting with Madame Binh as the official representative for the North Vietnamese Communist regime at the 1971 Paris Peace Talks, praised Ho Chi Min, and was present during the plotting for assassination of US Senators who opposed the Viet Nam war.
1) John Kerry's testimony before the US Senate included his infamous & slanderous allegation that US troops <font color=blue>"had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country" and that these were "crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."<font color=black>
2) In subsequent interviews and on television Kerry repeated the charge that <font color=blue>"yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed."<font color=black>
3) In recent interviews, John Hurley, Kerry's former comrade from VVAW and now head of Vietnam Veterans for Kerry, Kerry stands by his 1971 Senate testimony.
4) John Kerry wrote a book entitled <font color=blue>"The New Soldier"<font color=black> which slandered Vietnam Vets with further <font color=blue>"Winter Soldier"<font color=black> accusations of war crimes and defaced the Iwo Jiwa Memorial, which represents the flag-raising on Mount Suribachi in 1945, a battle that claimed the lives of 6,821 Marines, with a mocking representation combined with an upside down American flag on its cover.
5) Historical writers Neil Sheehan and James Reston exposed the sources for John Kerry's <font color=blue>"Winter Soldier"<font color=black> allegations as fabrications and their perpetrators as frauds who, in many cases, hadn't even served in Vietnam such as Al Hubbard, Kerry's VVAW counterpart who often appeared in public events together, was revealed to have personally lied himself & later officially joined the Communist Party.
6) Numerous POWs, including Paul Galanti, Ken Cordier, Jim Warner, John Flynn and many others have come forward and testified in detail to the use of John Kerry's 1971 Senate Testimony and other VVAW related activities, albeit documentary representations or audio recordings played over the P/A (Public Address) systems duing torture sessions at some of Vietnam's most heinous and notorious prisons to include <font color=blue>"The Hanoi Hilton"<font color=black> and <font color=blue>"Skid Row"<font color=black>. See SwiftVet Ad <font color=purple>"SELLOUT".<font color=black>
7) <font color=blue>Kerry first admitted meeting with communist representatives in Paris in 1970, in his own testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971, at a time he remained an officer in the US Naval Reserve<font color=green> and in apparent violation of U.S. code 18 U.S.C. 953, which disallowed private citizens from negotiating with foreign powers.<font color=blue> Kerry stated, "I have been to Paris. I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PVR)."<font color=black>
8) On March 24, 2004, Michael Meehan, official spokesman of the Kerry campaign, confirmed that John Kerry indeed traveled to Paris in 1971 and met with Madame Binh and also admitted he met with other members representing both the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (the North Vietnamese) and the Provisional Revolutionary Government (the Viet Cong).
9) Michael Kranish and Patrick Healy report <font color=blue>"Kerry Spoke of Meeting Negotiators in Paris"<font color=black>, in the Boston Globe, March 25, 2004.
10) On July 22, 1971, John Kerry held a public press conference in which he advanced the positions stated & outlined in his personal meeting with Madame Binh.
11) <font color=green>In publicly FOIA released FBI Documents reveal Kerry was present in the discussion & planning for the assassination of prominent US Senators who were deemed to support US participation in the war against the Vietnamese Communists, to include Senate legends John Tower of Texas and Senator John Stennis of Mississippi, for whom the Navy Aircraft Carrier USS Stennis CVN-74 is named after.<font color=black>
12) Writing in the New York Sun, March 12, 2004, Thomas Lipscomb writes about <font color=green>"HOW KERRY QUIT VETERANS GROUP AMID DARK PLOT"<font color=black>
13) From Unfit for Command, page 137: <font color=purple>FBI field surveillance reports document a speech that Kerry gave in 1971 in which he praised Ho Chi Minh, the founder of Vietnamese Communism. The occasion was a speech Kerry gave to a group at the YMCA in Philadelphian on June 14, 1971. As reported by the FBI:
<font color=green>
On June 29, 1971, [BLACKED OUT SECURITY EDIT] advised that JOHN KERRY of the National Office of the VVAW, spoke at the YMCA, Philadelphia, on June 14, 1971. In this talk he stated that HO CHI MINH is the GEORGE WASHINGTON of Vietnam. Ho studied the United States Constitution and wants to install the same provisions into the Government of Vietnam. KERRY criticized United States activities in Vietnam, saying we are destroying villages, cities, crops, and the people there and these activities must be stopped.<font color=black>
14) A photograph featuring John Kerry meeting with the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Comrade Du Muoi today hangs in honor at the Vietnamese Communist War Remnants Museum (formerly known as the War Crimes Museum) in Ho Chi Mihn City (formerly Saigon), within a room titled <font color=blue>"The World Supports Vietnam in its Resistance"<font color=black> amongst the many other exhibits <font color=blue>"honoring"<font color=black> all those who had helped the Vietnamese Communists win their war against the United States.
STATUS: <font color=green>To date the Kerry campaign has not chosen to dispute his prior statements or any of the official records which have been made available to the public.<font color=black><font size=3>
precisetruth.blogspot.com. |
