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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: michael97123 who wrote (32049)	2/27/2004 9:53:56 PM
From: E	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793575

Kerry has many vulnerabilities. I hope he isn't the candidate. But all I've heard is questions about how serious those wounds were. They weren't serious, is the answer. Over and over again, it remains the answer. But three wounds and you can request discharge, and I'm sure he was trying not to die as his five best friends had in an assignment with a 75% death rate. I have no doubt that Bush supporters will say he should have stayed and not gotten the early discharge. I have no doubt that they will find people to testify to anything they want. They got somebody to testify that Bush was with his NG unit, except that they got the dates wrong. I found a quote in which someone says that none of the wounds took him off duty: ""There were an awful lot of Purple Hearts -- from shrapnel, some of those might have been M-40 grenades," said Elliott, Kerry's commanding officer. "The Purple Hearts were coming down in boxes. Kerry, he had three Purple Hearts. None of them took him off duty. Not to belittle it, that was more the rule than the exception."" Shrapnel wounds count. When shrapnel is flying, you're not on any bar stool. Would moemac have all those purple hearts returned? Ridiculed? They won't be able to find a single soul who can claim that Bush served more bravely than Kerry. I see there is some info regarding the bronze star, too: ] ""The man was receiving sniper fire from both banks," according to Kerry's Bronze Star citation from that day. "Lt. Kerry directed his gunners to provide suppressing fire, while from an exposed position on the bow, his arm bleeding and in pain, with disregard for his personal safety, he pulled the man aboard. Lt. Kerry then directed his boat to return and assist the other damaged craft and towed the boat to safety. Lt. Kerry's calmness, professionalism and great personal courage under fire were in keeping with the highest traditions of the US Naval Service," Zumwalt's citation said. "

To: michael97123 who wrote (32049)	2/28/2004 9:48:52 AM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793575

There's an irony here. I'm not for Kerry as a candidate, and war heroics aren't impressive to me as proof of being presidential material. But I know naked, corrupt political mudslinging when I see it. What the Bush faction will do is to try to replace the fact of Kerry's medals and the citations that went with them with insinuations that he wasn't as good an American as Bush Junior. That his opposition to the war, born of seeing it firsthand, was less American than the Texas Souffle's partying and the time he spent in the NG. The big "scandal" on Kerry is that he left early, after many bloody engagements and while he, unlike his best friends, was still alive. Big deal. He no longer supported the war, which he'd seen up close, and worked to stop it after he returned. Good for him. Before he left, he got those of his men who had not yet been killed in the bloody battles they'd been in together reassigned to safer duty. As I've posted, I expect Bush to be the next president, and have never posted anything positive about Kerry, war heroics being unimportant to me as criteria. But this is too low. If the Bush people think they can transmute Bush's behavior in that war into a nobler or braver or more patriotic thing than Kerry's, well, they may succeed, but it will be an ugly and unrespectable success indeed. Kerry's early departure meant that he was leaving behind a crew that had suffered through many bloody battles with him. Worried that crew members would be killed, he arranged for them to receive a safer assignment. When one crew member, Medeiros, tried to stay, Kerry "came and talked to me and said, `I really would like you to go. ... I'd like to know you are safe, or safer."' Then, at the beginning of April 1969, Kerry left Vietnam. "I thought it was time to tell the story of what was happening over there," Kerry said. "I was angry about what happened over there, I had clearly concluded how wrong it was." By this point, five of Kerry's closest friends had died in combat, including Yale classmate Richard Pershing. Then, just days after Kerry left, another friend, Donald Droz -- a fellow skipper who had provided support for Kerry on the day he won the Silver Star -- died in a fiery ambush. Droz had an infant daughter. boston.com