*Making a Dent in Liberal Disinformation--The Swift Boat Vets, Part 2
Written by Lester Dent
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Make a Dent in Liberal Disinformation--Swift Boat Vets, Part 2
Q: Jim Rassmann was the Green Beret Kerry pulled from the Bay Hap River, for which Kerry was awarded the Bronze Star. He claims that there was shooting from the shore, while the SBVFT claim there was no shooting. Shouldn’t we believe the man whose life was saved?
A: By his admission, after falling off one of the Swift boats in the group of 5 (which one, seems to be a real problem, Rassmann has said he was on Kerry’s boat and the boat behind Kerry’s, while the Kerry campaign fairly consistently says he was on the boat behind). According to Rassmann’s story, he dived to the bottom of the small river five or six times to escape the propellers of the boats overhead. He states that he was also fearful of being shot. Thus Rassmann was not in a position to see what Kerry’s boat or any other boats did. The skippers and crews of the other boats were in a better position to see what was going on, and exposed as they were, they were much more vulnerable to being hit by the small arms and automatic weapons fire that Rassmann reports. Even though John Kerry reported that they went through 5000 meters (3.1 miles) of enemy fire from both banks of a 75-yard-wide river, and reports indicate that it took an hour and a half to secure and tow the damaged PCF-3 boat to safety, there was no bullet damage to any boat or bullet wounds for the crews. All of the physical evidence supports the conviction of the SBVFT sailors that they were receiving no fire from the shore.
While Kerry supporters point to the statements of award citations as ''proof'' of the events, one demonstrably false element of his Bronze Star citation refutes this. The citation states that Kerry’s arm was bleeding when he pulled Rassmann aboard, but the medical reports show a “contusion (minor)”--in other words, a bruise that would not have bled.
Q: Hasn’t the media exposed the lies of the SBVFT? Doesn’t Larry Thurlow’s Bronze Star citation for the action where Kerry pulled Rassmann from the river also state that they received enemy fire? Didn’t Commander Elliott retract his statement used by the SBVFT and state that he should not have said it?
A: To date, none of the claims of the SBVFT have been proven false. Larry Thurlow received his Bronze Star commendation three months after returning home from Vietnam; he states that he believed it was for his action in jumping from his boat to the disabled PCF-3 boat after it hit a mine, aiding the crew members, and preventing the boat from sinking. While his award does state that they were receiving enemy fire, this reflects the spot report Kerry wrote. Thurlow does not have a copy of his actual commendation, and was not aware that it stated that they were taking fire. He has stated that if this was the reason he was awarded the medal, then it was as fraudulent as Kerry’s. Thurlow has agreed to sign the SF 180 form releasing all of his military records, which Kerry refuses to do.
Commander Elliot was interviewed by Kerry biographer Michael Kranish of The Boston Globe and made a statement that he probably should not have stated that Kerry shot in the back a wounded, fleeing Vietcong since he had not witnessed it. He stated that he is convinced from many sources that this happened (including Kerry’s earlier interviews in which he stated that he was afraid the VC would turn and fire on him at any time). After reading The Boston Globe article in which he was quoted as backing down from his statements in the first SBVFT ad, Commander Elliot signed a new affidavit stating he was misquoted and reaffirming his support of his ad statements and his support for the SBVFT. The media has presented this as a waffling, when the second affidavit was only needed to reaffirm the first after he had been misquoted in a newspaper article.
Quite the contrary, it has been the Kerry campaign that has had to admit that some of the charges made by the SBVFT are true. When faced with the charge that Kerry’s claim to have been in Cambodia on Christmas in 1968 was untrue, the Kerry campaign initially stated that Kerry had never said that, then when shown his Senate speech to that effect went silent for a couple of days, and finally came out with a defense that Kerry had not been in Cambodia in 1968 but had made at least one secret mission there in 1969 or had variously operated ''on the border'' of Cambodia. This last is a far cry from Kerry stating that he was five miles inside Cambodia. This has been denied by all of Kerry’s superior officers, by his crew (even those supporting him), and by U.S. officials responsible for dealing with complaints of incursions into Cambodia.
Similarly, Kerry has made it a point to claim that he was the only boat to return to pick up Rassmann because he would leave no one behind. The Kerry campaign (faced, in part, with Kerry’s recollections in his authorized biography, ''Tour of Duty'') has since had to acknowledge that the other three undamaged boats did remain with the damaged PCF-3 boat after the mine explosion, so that actually no one had been left behind. Indeed, from his own statements (as well as his Bronze Star certificate) it is evident that Kerry’s boat was the only one that traveled down river, as he states he had to return ''several hundred yards'' to pick up Rassmann. A recent Washington Post graphic, created to illustrate the incident, shows Kerry’s boat as the only one fleeing downriver. washingtonpost.com
Finally, the latest admission that the SBVFT had the facts right occurred when Kerry campaign officials were quoted by Fox News saying that it was indeed possible that John Kerry’s first Purple Heart commendation was the result of an unintentional, self-inflicted wound. This was in direct contradiction of the story that Kerry has always told:
''My M-16 jammed, and as I bent down in the boat to grab another gun, a stinging piece of heat socked into my arm and just seemed to burn like hell.'' (Brinkley, ''Tour of Duty,'' p. 147.)
If Kerry had been firing an M-16 and was injured as he bent to retrieve another weapon, he could not have sustained ''an unintentional, self-inflicted wound'' of shrapnel. The SBVFT (in the persons of then-LTJG William Schachte and LTCMDR Grant Hibbard) have consistently maintained that when his M-16 jammed, Kerry grabbed an M-79 grenade launcher and fired at the nearby shoreline, whereupon shrapnel from that round injured Kerry. Absent enemy fire, which only Kerry states occurred, this would not qualify as a Purple Heart wound.
Q: Who is this Lieutenant Schachte, and why does he have any credibility?
A: William Schachte has recently come forward to state that he was with John Kerry on 2 December 1968 when Kerry received the wound that he would later submit for a Purple Heart. Then a lieutenant (junior grade), Schachte had developed the tactic used that night for interdicting Viet Cong smugglers using a Boston Whaler backed up by a Swift boat. He reports that on the night in question, there was no enemy fire and Kerry was wounded when he fired an M-79 grenade too close to the boat.
LTJG Schachte remained in the Navy following his year-long tour of duty in Vietnam. He rose to the rank of Rear Admiral before retiring in 1993. Career highlights include:
Head of the Law of the Sea Branch, International Law Division, Office of the Judge Advocate General
U.S. Delegation to the UN Conference on Law of the Sea
Deputy Assistant Judge Advocate General (Military Personnel)
Deputy Assistant Judge Advocate General (International Law)
Deputy DOD Representative for Ocean Policy Affairs
Acting Judge Advocate General of the Navy
Q: Why do the SBVFT claim that Kerry intentionally wounded himself to get Purple Hearts?
A: The SBVFT make no such claim. The claim is that at least two of his wounds were ''self-inflicted'' in the absence of enemy fire. Kerry’s first Purple Heart was for a wound which witnesses claim was caused when Kerry fired a M-79 grenade at rocks near the boat he was in (a Boston whaler on a special interdiction mission). The doctor who treated Kerry removed a small piece of shrapnel from his arm (about a half inch long and an eighth of an inch in diameter), and was told by Kerry’s crewmates who accompanied him to the infirmary that it had been caused by the round Kerry fired, and that they had not been shot at. The senior lieutenant in charge of the mission had berated Kerry for firing so close to the boat, and told his commander that they had received no enemy fire that night. Lieutenant Commander Grant Hibbard, Kerry’s operational commander, denied Kerry’s request for a Purple Heart for the wound, which was covered by a Band-Aid. Kerry received a Purple Heart for this wound three months later, after Commander Hibbard and all involved in the action that day had rotated from the base. The Kerry campaign has refused to release the application for this Purple Heart. A Purple Heart may be awarded for a non-negligent self-inflicted or friendly fire wound if it occurs during enemy action and requires medical treatment by a medical officer. The events as detailed by the officer in charge of the mission and sailors who were there did not qualify it as a Purple Heart wound. While Kerry’s wound could have been treated by Hospitalman First Class J. C. Carreon, who indeed signed the medical papers, Dr. Louis Letson actually treated the wound as he generally treated all officers. All of the evidence, and all of the sworn statements aside from Kerry’s, fit this version of the facts over Kerry’s.
The third Purple Heart that Kerry received is also questioned, either as a self-inflicted wound or one not received during an enemy action. Kerry’s diary and Rassmann’s statements to this day note that earlier on March 13, Kerry had been on shore and, along with Jim Rassmann, had thrown a grenade into a rice bin, causing Kerry to receive a shrapnel wound in his buttocks. Kerry reported this wound, along with a minor arm bruise, as happening in the mine explosion that damaged PCF-3 (Kerry was on PCF-94), thus making it eligible for a Purple Heart (the accident with the rice bin would not have qualified). One version of the story by Rassmann has Kerry himself throwing the grenade into the rice bin to destroy it, hence the ''self-inflicted'' label again.
No one is claiming Kerry deliberately wounded himself to get the medals, but that he altered the reports to make the minor wounds eligible for the Purple Hearts.
Q: Isn’t John O’Neill, co-author of the SBVFT book ''Unfit for Command,'' a long-ago tool of the Nixon administration against John Kerry? Isn’t he just repeating the role he has played for 30 years?
A: John O’Neill is an Annapolis graduate who took over command of PCF-94 after John Kerry left Vietnam. He had never met Kerry until after both returned to the States, but he heard stories going around their unit about the guy known as ''Quick John'' (as in here and gone quickly). When he returned to the United States after his year-long tour on Swift boats in Vietnam, O’Neill heard some of Kerry’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (where he claimed war crimes were daily occurrences known to all levels of command). He wrote a letter to the committee asking for a few minutes to rebut Kerry, but was refused. Hearing a news conference for a group called Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace, O’Neill contacted their spokesman and began giving his own press conferences. He caught the attention of Charles Colson in the Nixon White House, and had a 40-minute meeting with Nixon in which he introduced himself as a Democrat who had voted for Humphrey. Nixon gave him encouragement but nothing more. O’Neill also met with prominent Democrats, like Senator Henry ''Scoop'' Jackson and Congressman Olin Earl ''Tiger'' Teague, who gave him the same encouragement.
Before the Nixon meeting, O’Neill had been challenging Kerry to a televised debate. Kerry finally agreed, choosing the friendly venue of the Dick Cavett show where he had appeared previously and struck up a friendship with the anti-war Cavett. While SBVFT critics today charge without foundation that the Cavett debate was set up by the Nixon White House, Cavett credits his ''alert staff'' with arranging it. (ToD, p. 403.)
After the debate, O’Neill made a speech at the 1972 Republican Convention and dropped out of politics. He refused the offers from Kerry’s political opponents over the years to become involved. It wasn’t until February 2004, while recovering from donating a kidney to his wife, that O’Neill saw Kerry after a primary win with several PCF vets. The thought of him being president and commander in chief ''summoned many of us from long political slumber'' and started various Swift vets organizing what became SBVFT. (O’Neill and Corsi, ''Unfit for Command,'' p. 19.)
Q: Weren’t these medals and awards approved and investigated by the Navy before Kerry got them? This proves that they were legitimate, and it is a better criterion than people 35 years later questioning them.
Award citations are generated from several pieces of paperwork. In a normal routine, these are reviewed at levels above the immediate commanders. The review looks at the recommendation and any attached affidavits of witnesses, after action reports, medical reports, battle damage assessments, etc.
In the case of Kerry’s Silver Star, this process was not followed. His medal was awarded just two days after the incident without full review, in part because the Swift command was looking to make ''impact awards'' which boosted morale. Commander Elliott, who made the recommendation, did so based upon Kerry’s after action report. Reading Kerry’s report, the efforts of the other two boats in the patrol (commanded by William Rood and Don Droz) are minimized as are the actions of the infantry troops on board the ships. Kerry’s actions as reported in the citation and after action report does not match the recollections of those aboard Kerry’s boat, William Rood’s recent statement, and the narrative given in ''Tour of Duty.'' Elliott is on record as stating that had he known the true events of the day he would never have recommended Kerry for the Silver Star.
In the case of Kerry’s first Purple Heart, it was turned down by his commander after the incident when an ''investigation'' (i.e., discussion with the officer in charge of the mission, enlisted men, and the treating doctor) was conducted by Grant Hibbard. Only after Hibbard and the others who had first-hand knowledge of the incident had left Vietnam was the wound re-submitted and approved two months later. The Kerry campaign refuses to release the application for the award, which should have been accompanied by an after action report showing enemy contact. Since no after action report was filed for the incident, the big question remains of who submitted the request for the Purple Heart, what it said, and how the need for a spot report was handled. The officer who signed the Purple Heart is dead, and the Kerry campaign simply responds to requests for the documentation with ''the award speaks for itself.''
Should there be questions of decisions made by the military? Do the Kerry campaign and the media feel that President Bush’s honorable discharge speaks for itself and should not be questioned?
Q: Why do the SBVFT criticize Kerry’s 1971 Senate testimony about atrocities and war crimes in Vietnam? Everyone knows about the My Lai massacre, and other barbarities.
A: The SBVFT do not deny that there were atrocities in Vietnam, but they do deny Kerry’s characterization of these isolated acts as being day-to-day experiences with full awareness and support of all levels of command. Kerry stated that the U.S. was, ''more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions.'' He said crimes such as rape, murder, dismemberment, arson and torture were ''not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.'' (http://www.c-span.org/2004vote/jkerrytestimony.asp, bold italics added.)
Here is the infamous listing of these crimes which Kerry claimed occurred routinely:
They told the stories at times they 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.
Kerry derided Vice President Spiro Agnew’s description of the American soldiers in Vietnam as our ''best men.'' Kerry said that characterization filled him with ''a very deep sense of revulsion.'' He elaborated:
It is a distortion because we in no way consider ourselves the best men of this country… And we can not consider ourselves America's best men when we are ashamed of and hated what we were called on to do in Southeast Asia.
When pointedly asked by John O’Neill in the Cavett debate whether he had witnessed any atrocities in Vietnam, Kerry replied:
I personally didn't see personal atrocities in the sense that I saw somebody cut a head off or something like that. However, I did take part in free-fire zones; I did take part in harassment interdiction fire. I did take part in search-and-destroy missions in which the houses of noncombatants were burned to the ground.
Indeed, John Kerry had committed some of the very crimes he was reporting to the Senate committee. George Bates, a fellow PCF skipper in Coastal Division 11, reports that on a routine patrol on the Song Bo De River in January Kerry beached his boat in a deserted hamlet (the villagers had fled) where he directed fire from his boat to kill all the farm animals milling about and personally set fire to the three or four grass huts. There were no flags, weapons or political symbols, no enemies (or even civilians) about, and no reason to suspect this was an enemy encampment. Kerry simply razed the community “in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.''
Far from these war crimes being a day-to-day occurrence with full awareness of all levels of command, the only war crimes Kerry witnessed were those he perpetrated.
Q: Kerry has been criticized for leaving his tour of duty in Vietnam after only four ½ months. Didn’t he agonize over this and worry that he was leaving his men behind, but that he had a greater duty to stop the war?
A: Kerry stated during the Dick Cavett debate with John O’Neill in 1971:
The fact of the matter remains that after I received my third wound and was told that I could return to the United States, I deliberated for about two weeks because there was a very difficult decision in whether or not you leave your friends because you have an opportunity to go.
But I finally made the decision to go back and did leave of my own volition because I felt that I could do more against the war back here. (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/weekinreview/29cavett.html, bold italics added.)
Kerry chose to take advantage of a regulation that allows military with three Purple Hearts to leave the combat theater. He states that this was not an easy decision that he made.
Yet facts are a stubborn thing. Kerry received his wound for which he was awarded (improperly) his third Purple Heart on 13 March 1969. From documents available on his web site, his request for reassignment was in Washington, D.C. four days later, after having been typed up in An Thoi and signed by the commander there on 17 March, 1969. (http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/jkmilservice/Thrice_Wounded_Reassignment.pdf.)
There were no two weeks of deliberation. Kerry had to have made the request (which is not on Kerry’s web site, and is one of the many missing pieces of documentation contradicting the Kerry claim of releasing all records) within a day or two of his last injury. He intentionally abandoned his crew as soon as he could.
What sets this in such stark contrast was his indictment of U.S. military commanders in his testimony before the Senate:
These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded.
The Marines say they never leave even their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They have left the real stuff of their reputation bleaching behind them in the sun in this country. (Bold italics added.)
It appears that, in addition to his other self-confessed war crimes, he committed what he states is the most ''serious crime in the law of war''--he abandoned his men.
Note: To read Part 2 of this Swift Boat series, go to: chronwatch.com |
