SwiftVets.com

[vickie]

Is this story true?

Navarro:Do you have any pets that have made an impact on you personally?

Kerry: I have always had pets in my life and there are a few that I remember very fondly. When I was serving on a swiftboat in Vietnam, my crewmates and I had a dog we called VC. We all took care of him, and he stayed with us and loved riding on the swiftboat deck. I think he provided all of us with a link to home and a few moments of peace and tranquility during a dangerous time. One day as our swiftboat was heading up a river, a mine exploded hard under our boat. After picking ourselves up, we discovered VC was MIA. Several minutes of frantic search followed after which we thought we'd lost him. We were relieved when another boat called asking if we were missing a dog. It turns out VC was catapulted from the deck of our boat and landed confused, but unhurt, on the deck of another boat in our patrol. I also fondly remember a parakeet in college, Dodi Faustus. Dodi was a smart bird who learned a few words of French and Italian, but not smart enough to avoid having to be rescued from a tree once. My daughters and I had a Golden Retriever named Winston. Today, Teresa and I have a German Shepherd named Cym and a yellow parakeet.

http://www.humaneusa.org/2004_presidential/question/jkerry_2004.pdf
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[LewWaters]

I wonder if he ever perfromed CPR on it too? Or, does he reserve that for hamsters?

In my Army unit, we had a dog too, Rotortail we called her. As guys rotated, she ended up being ignored by newcomers and soon disappeared.

Can't say anything about the truthfulness of it, but question another boat radioing if any other boat was missing a dog.
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Clark County Conservative

[afanofosc]

From the washington post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22247-2004Jul28.html

[GoophyDog]

[scraper3]

On Hugh Hewitt's show today Steve Gardner says he never saw VC.......dog that is.

[karmadave]

I saw this dog story for the first time in the August 25 Inside the Beltway column by John McCaslin. My first thought was: "What a good human interest story for Sen. Kerry to use. At least it could could show a little of his humanity and compassion during his Vietnam tour". Then the engineer in me got to thinking about what actually would have happened if this story were true. I concluded that there would be no swift boat controversy at all because Sen. Kerry would would be dead, killed by the force of the mine explosion.

I saw another post about a dog he had in Vietnam that he carried inside his flak jacket, presumably the same dog. I would guess the dog to weigh about 10 pounds. Surely swift boats kept some kind of minimum separation for maneuver while on patrol, say about thirty feet. Now, imagine a force applied underneath that dog sufficient to propel her through the air thirty feet or more, not to mention what would happen to her if she landed on a hard object. But, more importantly imagine what would happen to a human subjected to that same force. We are talking here about a heavy swift boat accelerating upward out of the water fast enough to launch a ten pound animal a long way!

A mine is a bomb. It does its damage be releasing a large amount of energy over a very short period of time (we are talking microseconds here). What happens when this energy hits objects (boats, dogs, people) is that some well know physics principles come into play--namely inertia, impulse and momentum.

I'm not going to give a physics lesson here, but my point is that an explosion big enough to propel that dog through the air also would have:

1. Broken Kerry's boat in two and sunk it.
2. Gravely injured if not killed most or all of the human occupants.
3. Been a big enough story that there would be no doubt about its truthfulness.

Giving Sen. Kerry the benefit of the doubt, I will admit that maybe his dog fell overboard and a trailing boat picked it up for him. That's believable. But, the story he tells about the mine and all is just a big whopper. Why does he do that?

[cjg]

Kerry was so busy filming his great adventure to show his herosim why
are there no pictures of the dog? He would have known it would make
for great advertising of his humane side, but failed to get a picture of
the dog he took such care of, holding him in is jacket to avoid him
being hurt. This is the usual balony from him and yet another lie.
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Swiftvets rock!

[tvaughan]

This is not hard to confirm:

How many times did a boat Kerry was riding hit a mine?

Boats do not hit exploding mines and then not have any record of the incident.

He's lying. Kerry wouldn't even flinch at such a lie. He probably quickly forget he even said it.
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[vickie]

http://hughhewitt.com/#postid832

I also caught up with Steve Gardner on today's program, a Swift Boat vet who served from November, 1968 to January 23, 1969 on Kerry's Swift Boat 44. I asked him about Kerry's tale of "VC --combat dog:"

HH: "Steve, was there a dog named VC on your boat?"

SG: ""Buddy, to the best of my knowledge (laughing), I never saw any dog at any time on the 44 boat."

HH: "Is it possible that it was on the other boat."

SG: "Oh, a distinct possibility (laughing)."

HH: "In the time that you were on the swift boats --totally-- did any of the swift boats have a dog?"

SG: "Never saw one, ever."

HH: "Would it have been a good idea to have a dog on the swift boats?"

SG: "Not likely."

HH: "Why not?"

SG: "Because there was just too much action going on. We had hot brass rolling around there any time we were in a firefight. He would have got beat up."

HH: "Is this the first time you have ever heard of the dog story?"

SG: "It sure is."

Look. It is possible that Kerry had a dog named VC after Gardner left Kerry's command. And it is possible that VC the combat dog got blown off the boat when the boat hit a mine --even though there's no reference to the mine that would fit the occasion. And just because many of my listeners have e-mailed me to note that there was a dog on Martin Sheen's boat in Apocalypse Now doesn't mean that Kerry "borrowed" the dog from the movie.

But that so many people have concluded just that does underscore John Kerry's massive credibility problem --a problem that grows larger and larger every day he doesn't meet the press. Jon Stewart asked him last night if he'd ever been in Cambodia. Kerry lamely played it for a laugh by not answering --by not saying anything at all. Who is advising him? Has Bush-Cheney got plants in the Kerry organization?


http://hughhewitt.com/#postid830
No military records on Mr. Kerry's Web site, which aides say is a complete accounting, mention a mine exploding under his boat or any dog. The only report of a mine detonating "near" Mr. Kerry's PCF 94 was March 13, 1969, when Mr. Kerry says he was injured and a man knocked overboard."

?
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[RogerDraftDodger]

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I am awed by you guys...

[Stevie]

RogerDodger...

That's a darling puppy! wish I could have it! I already have 2...

face it, if Kerry had a dog there .... and his boat hit a mine etc...

Kerry would have another PH and so would the dog!
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Stevie
Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage
morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should
be arrested, exiled or hanged.

[Wing Wiper]

Another interesting thing about that picture is that Kerry shows no signs of a wound anywhere that I can see. Can somebody with a knowledge of the Swiftboat configuration confirm that the picture has not been mirror-imaged? It appears to be his left arm, any way to verify this? Got any more pictures like that, or the date it was taken? These kind of pictures could be very useful in the following weeks, folks.

[vickie]

Thsi is the only pic I have seen where Kerry looked human... well a sad little boy, but a least human. So unlike his ego-on-wheels Robot persona...
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[BuffaloJack]

Is this story true ?
Probably.
There was a small dog there (Cat Lo) that looked a lot like the one in Kerry's photos. In May or June of '70, the dog moved from the swift base at Cat Lo to the CSC at Vung Tau (4 or 5 miles away) when one of the guys shifted assignments (work force reduction due to Vietnamization). It stayed at CSC Vung Tau from then on. It was still there when I left 12/71. The cook used to reward it with table scraps for its extremely effective efforts at killing poisonous snakes on the base.
PS - I have more respect for the dog than I ever will for Kerry. The dog earned his keep.

[cipher]