I was in the Delta shortly after he left. I know that area well. I
> know the operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and the
> doctrine used. I know the equipment. Although I was attached to
> CTF-116 (PBRs) I spent a fair amount of time with CTF-115 (swift
> boats), Kerry's command.
>
> Here are my problems and suspicions:
>
> (1) Kerry was in-country less than four months and collected a Bronze
> Star, a Silver Star and three purple hearts. I never heard of anybody
> with any outfit I worked with (including SEAL One, the Sea Wolves,
> Riverines and the River Patrol Force) collecting that much hardware so
> fast, and for such pedestrian actions. The Swifts did a commendable job.
> But that duty wasn't the worst you could draw. They operated only
> along the coast and in the major rivers (Bassac and Mekong). The rough
> stuff in the hot areas was mainly handled by the smaller, faster PBRs.
>
> (2) Three Purple Hearts but no limp. All injuries so minor that no
> time lost from duty. Amazing luck. Or he was putting himself in for
> medals every time he bumped his head on the wheel house hatch? Combat
> on the boats was almost always at close range. You didn't have minor
> wounds. At least not often. Not three times in a row. Then he used
> the three purple hearts to request a trip home eight months before the
> end of his tour. Fishy.
>
> (3) The details of the event for which he was given the Silver Star
> make no sense at all. Supposedly, a B-40 was fired at the boat and
> missed. Charlie jumps up with the launcher in his hand, the bow gunner
> knocks him down with the twin .50, Kerry beaches the boat, jumps off,
> shoots Charlie, and retrieves the launcher. If true, he did everything
> wrong.
> (a) Standard procedure when you took rocket fire was to put your
> stern to the action and go balls to the wall. A B-40 has the ballistic
> integrity of a Frisbee after about 25 yards, so you put 50 yards or so
> between you and the beach and begin raking it with your .50's.
> (b) Did you ever see anybody get knocked down with a .50 caliber
> round and get up? The guy was dead or dying. The rocket launcher was
> empty. There was no reason to go after him (except if you knew he was
> no danger to you just flopping around in the dust during his last few
> seconds on earth, and you wanted some daring do in your after-action
> report). And we didn't shoot wounded people. We had rules against that,
> too.
> (c) Kerry got off the boat. This was a major breach of standing
> procedures. Nobody on a boat crew ever got off a boat in a hot area.
> EVER! The reason was simple. If you had somebody on the beach your
> boat was defenseless. It couldn't run and it couldn't return fire. It
> was stupid and it put his crew in danger. He should have been relieved
> and reprimanded. I never heard of any boat crewman ever leaving a boat
> during or after a firefight.
>
> Something is fishy.
>
> Here we have a JFK wannabe (the guy Halsey wanted to court martial for
> carelessly losing his boat and getting a couple people killed by running
> across the bow of a Jap destroyer) who is hardly in Vietnam long enough
> to get good tan, collects medals faster than Audie Murphy in a job where
> lots of medals weren't common, gets sent home eight months early,
> requests separation from active duty a few months after that so he can
> run for Congress, finds out war heroes don't sell well in Massachusetts in
> 1970 so reinvents himself as Jane Fonda, throws his ribbons in the dirt
> with the cameras running to jump start his political career, gets
> Stillborn Pell to invite him to address Congress and Bobby Kennedy's
> speechwriter to do the heavy lifting, winds up in the Senate himself a
> few years later, votes against every major defense bill, says the CIA is
> irrelevant after the Wall came down, votes against the Gulf War, a big
> mistake since that turned out well, decides not to make the same mistake
> twice so votes for invading Iraq, but oops, that didn't turn out so well
> so he now says he really didn't mean for Bush to go to war when he voted
> to allow him to go to war.
>
> I'm real glad you or I never had this guy covering our flanks in
> Vietnam. I sure don't want him as Commander in Chief. I hope that
> somebody from CTF-115 shows up with some facts challenging Kerry's
> Vietnam record. I know in my gut it's wildly inflated. And fishy.
>
> know the operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and the
> doctrine used. I know the equipment. Although I was attached to
> CTF-116 (PBRs) I spent a fair amount of time with CTF-115 (swift
> boats), Kerry's command.
>
> Here are my problems and suspicions:
>
> (1) Kerry was in-country less than four months and collected a Bronze
> Star, a Silver Star and three purple hearts. I never heard of anybody
> with any outfit I worked with (including SEAL One, the Sea Wolves,
> Riverines and the River Patrol Force) collecting that much hardware so
> fast, and for such pedestrian actions. The Swifts did a commendable job.
> But that duty wasn't the worst you could draw. They operated only
> along the coast and in the major rivers (Bassac and Mekong). The rough
> stuff in the hot areas was mainly handled by the smaller, faster PBRs.
>
> (2) Three Purple Hearts but no limp. All injuries so minor that no
> time lost from duty. Amazing luck. Or he was putting himself in for
> medals every time he bumped his head on the wheel house hatch? Combat
> on the boats was almost always at close range. You didn't have minor
> wounds. At least not often. Not three times in a row. Then he used
> the three purple hearts to request a trip home eight months before the
> end of his tour. Fishy.
>
> (3) The details of the event for which he was given the Silver Star
> make no sense at all. Supposedly, a B-40 was fired at the boat and
> missed. Charlie jumps up with the launcher in his hand, the bow gunner
> knocks him down with the twin .50, Kerry beaches the boat, jumps off,
> shoots Charlie, and retrieves the launcher. If true, he did everything
> wrong.
> (a) Standard procedure when you took rocket fire was to put your
> stern to the action and go balls to the wall. A B-40 has the ballistic
> integrity of a Frisbee after about 25 yards, so you put 50 yards or so
> between you and the beach and begin raking it with your .50's.
> (b) Did you ever see anybody get knocked down with a .50 caliber
> round and get up? The guy was dead or dying. The rocket launcher was
> empty. There was no reason to go after him (except if you knew he was
> no danger to you just flopping around in the dust during his last few
> seconds on earth, and you wanted some daring do in your after-action
> report). And we didn't shoot wounded people. We had rules against that,
> too.
> (c) Kerry got off the boat. This was a major breach of standing
> procedures. Nobody on a boat crew ever got off a boat in a hot area.
> EVER! The reason was simple. If you had somebody on the beach your
> boat was defenseless. It couldn't run and it couldn't return fire. It
> was stupid and it put his crew in danger. He should have been relieved
> and reprimanded. I never heard of any boat crewman ever leaving a boat
> during or after a firefight.
>
> Something is fishy.
>
> Here we have a JFK wannabe (the guy Halsey wanted to court martial for
> carelessly losing his boat and getting a couple people killed by running
> across the bow of a Jap destroyer) who is hardly in Vietnam long enough
> to get good tan, collects medals faster than Audie Murphy in a job where
> lots of medals weren't common, gets sent home eight months early,
> requests separation from active duty a few months after that so he can
> run for Congress, finds out war heroes don't sell well in Massachusetts in
> 1970 so reinvents himself as Jane Fonda, throws his ribbons in the dirt
> with the cameras running to jump start his political career, gets
> Stillborn Pell to invite him to address Congress and Bobby Kennedy's
> speechwriter to do the heavy lifting, winds up in the Senate himself a
> few years later, votes against every major defense bill, says the CIA is
> irrelevant after the Wall came down, votes against the Gulf War, a big
> mistake since that turned out well, decides not to make the same mistake
> twice so votes for invading Iraq, but oops, that didn't turn out so well
> so he now says he really didn't mean for Bush to go to war when he voted
> to allow him to go to war.
>
> I'm real glad you or I never had this guy covering our flanks in
> Vietnam. I sure don't want him as Commander in Chief. I hope that
> somebody from CTF-115 shows up with some facts challenging Kerry's
> Vietnam record. I know in my gut it's wildly inflated. And fishy.
>
