I have. I'm prepared to argue specific facts, and points, if you wish.
The fact is, Gardner is not credible:
Which brought the interview to the crux of Gardner’s beef against Kerry. Gardner—who remembers no important dates or times or locales—claims that Kerry once threatened him with a court martial. The incident happened when Gardner, who told me he had “no trouble shooting gooks,” saw a Viet Cong guerilla with an AK-47 in a boat and started firing. “I lay the hammer down on him,” Gardner explains. “I just put a finger on the gun: boom, boom, boom, boom. He’s done. He got flipped out of the boat, he went straight down. That’s when Kerry came running out of the guntub screaming ‘ceasefire, ceasefire, ceasefire.’ Then he turned to me and said, ‘I ought to have you court-martialed for shooting.’ I said, ‘Hmmph…sorry big boy. When somebody brings a gun up on me I’m gonna shoot and I’ll ask questions later ‘cause I ain’t goin’ back in a body bag.’”
The hardnosed Gardner returned from Vietnam in February 1969; Kerry came home a month later. The two men haven’t spoken in nearly 35 years. Kerry has no recollection of any of Gardner’s accusations, including the threatening of a court martial. None of PCF-44’s crew trusts Gardner’s memory. Today Gardner claims he works at Millennium Services (an insurance inspection company) and is bitter about Kerry’s national prominence. At various times in our interview he complained about Kerry “running around with Hanoi Jane” after the war and having a “rich wife.” And—like Limbaugh—he is determined to convince people that Kerry is Slick Willy incarnate.
When informed of Gardner’s accusations Kerry, campaigning in Texas, simply stated they weren’t true. “He deserves respect because he served our country well,” Kerry says of Gardner.
Even though Gardner has attacked Kerry, and even though none of Gardner's crewmates agree with him, Kerry still praises him. That shows the character of the two men. |
