|
|
Kerry
war record (unconfirmed)
This was forwarded to me by
a friend
> Subject: FW:
John Kerry
>
>
>
>
> Max,
> I thought you would be interested in this email
> from Ed Morrison and his brother Mike. Ed worked at
> Triad in the early days and is ex-military. His
> brother Mike has some interesting first hand
> experiences in the same area and at the time John
> Kerry served in Nam.
> Bill <><
>
> Subject: Fwd: John Kerry
>
> A VERY interesting article by my brother, Mike,
> who won a bronze star in Vietnam. I hope this one
> becomes public.
>
>
>
> Bigger things. I've long thought that John
> Kerry's war record was phoney. We talked about it
> when you were here. It's mainly been instinct
> because, as you know, nobody who claims to have seen
> the action he does would so shamelessly flaunt it
> for political gain. So I spent a couple of hours on
> the internet yesterday, made a bunch of notes, and
> I'm sending them as an attachment. In addition,
> look at the website
> http://25thaviation.org/johnkerry/id15htm. Somebody
> went to a lot of trouble to chronicle Kerry's
> checkered career.
>
> 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
> retreives 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 frisbie 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 derring 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 coudn'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
> heros don't sell well in Massachsetts 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 tha! t 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
> out 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 wildy
> inflated. And fishy.
>
> Keep smiling,
>
> Mike
>
|
