-- by Roy Hoffmann
On Aug. 31, Senator John Kerry was given a golden opportunity to silence his most vocal and most persistent critics.
The day before Kerry's address to the American Legion convention in Nashville, Tenn., Swift Boat Veterans for Truth delivered a letter to his campaign. We stated that our advertising would cease -- if he clarified his actions in Vietnam and his statements about fellow veterans and shipmates after he returned home from Vietnam. We urged him to apologize for his exaggerated testimony before the U.S. Senate, his blanket indictment of fellow veterans and his discarding of medals and ribbons. We told him that this misconduct dishonored America and our armed forces, aided the enemy, and brought great pain to U.S. prisoners of war, veterans and their families.
We encouraged him to explain the conflicting accounts of the Bay Hap River incident of March 13, 1969 -- the incident for which he was awarded his Bronze Star and third Purple Heart. We wrote that he now has described three different versions of same incident. In the first version, described at the Democratic National Convention, he stated: "No man left behind," suggesting to the American people that he alone stayed on the river to rescue James Rassmann. Later, when forced to acknowledge conflicting eyewitness testimony from fellow swift boat veterans who saw it all and who stayed at the scene rendering first aid and conducting damage control, he admitted his boat left the scene of action only to return later to retrieve Rassmann from the river. In still another version of the same incident in the Congressional Record, he stated for the record that his boat struck a mine, and Rassmann went overboard. We asked him to say which version was the truth.
Would he confirm that the injuries for which he received his Purple Hearts never required any medical treatment beyond perhaps a bandage? Would he confess that in all instances his injuries were self-inflicted and thus did not qualify for the award instituted by the president who would not tell a lie? Would he admit that he was, therefore, ineligible to leave Vietnam eight months early?
We wrote that his own biographer is now saying that Kerry's claim of spending Christmas in Cambodia was "obviously wrong." Would he confess that this story -- something he told the U.S. Senate in 1986 was "seared, seared" in his memory -- was not fact but fiction? Would he admit he was never in Cambodia, not on Christmas, not at any time during his tour of duty in-country in Vietnam?
If he apologized for his misconduct, if he explained his contradictions, if he confessed his untruths, we pledged to do more than close our own personal chapters on Vietnam. We would do more than get Vietnam behind us. We pledged to halt our advertising altogether.
But our chapters are not closed. The misconduct is still real. The dishonor is still vivid.
Our advertising continues for one reason: John Kerry is unfit to lead the armed forces of the United States.
Retired Navy Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann is the founder and chairman of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
This article was published by The San Francisco Examiner
http://horse.he.net/~swiftpow/article.php?story=20040911070646197