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The charges levelled by war vets
Sunday Times, South Africa

http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/2004/08/15/news/world/world04.asp

FOUR major charges have been levelled against John Kerry by a group of Vietnam war veterans opposed to the Democratic presidential challenger.

Charge One: Kerry is lying when he said he was sent, illegally, into Cambodia, on missions that made a mockery of official US claims that American forces were not in Cambodia, a neutral country.

According to a forthcoming anti-Kerry book, Unfit for Command : "All the living commanders in Kerry's chain of command... indicate that Kerry would have been seriously disciplined or court-martialled had he gone" to Cambodia.

Steven Gardner, the gunner's mate on Kerry's boat, has denied any knowledge of illegal CIA missions.

Kerry's account of Christmas 1968 is being questioned. On March 27 1986 Kerry told the US Senate: "I remember Christmas of 1968, sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there."

Charge Two: A medal-hungry Kerry falsely claimed to have been wounded in combat. He earned three Purple Hearts, the US medal awarded for any injury sustained in combat.

The allegation is that Kerry lied to obtain his first Purple Heart. Critics say he fired a grenade too close to his boat, injuring himself with a tiny metal fragment which was removed with tweezers.

Anti-Kerry veterans have produced, as their star witness, Dr Louis Letson, who said he treated the first wound. Pro-Kerry veterans retort that Letson's name is not on the relevant medical records.

The anti-Kerry group also query his third Purple Heart, saying that he lied when he said a mine had gone off under his boat, smashing his arm. They say the mine hit another boat, many kilometres away. His only wound was from rice grains blown into his buttocks after he threw a grenade into a rice store.

In response, the Kerry campaign produced Jim Wasser, the boat's radar operator, who said: "I never witnessed anything like what they're claiming."

Charge Three: Kerry lied to win a Bronze Star for risking his life to pull a special forces officer, Jim Rassman, from the water under hostile fire.

Anti-Kerry veterans on other boats insist there was no hostile fire near Rassman, and Kerry was, in fact, fleeing an outbreak of heavy fighting when he found Rassman, and pulled him aboard his boat.

Rassman, however, says there was hostile fire, and is backed by Del Sandusky, a crewman from Kerry's boat at that time.

Charge Four: Kerry lied to win a Silver Star after beaching his boat in the face of an enemy ambush and killing an enemy soldier.

The anti-Kerry veterans say that the enemy was a "skinny kid" in a loincloth, who was shot as he ran away, already wounded.

Kerry's backers say the "skinny kid" was carrying a rocket launcher and that the Silver Star was awarded for beaching his boat in the face of "intense fire" and leading a landing party against the enemy. - © The Telegraph, London
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