SwiftVets.com

[ROTC DAD]

According to at least two of you, I can't say whatever I want because supposedly I wasn't there and can't understand anything.

Navy_Navy_Navy; the question was whether or not I served. Time and place were never specified. I could have served in Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War I, Bosnia, Gulf War II, any number of conflicts. So your first criticism I'm sorry to say is null and void.

Your second criticism is made null and void by the other posters as they seem to argue that I really can't say what I want if it doesn't match their message.

As for your third point - the stories differ and we weren't there. The only people who know what happened are John Kerry and the members of his crew.

Greenhat; as I have stated in numerous posts, you have taken one phrase out of context and built your whole arguement around it. I also stated that he fought for our rights to say whatever we want. It's in the Constitution, you may want to look it up.

And again, whether I understand the Oath of Commissioning or not is not at issue here. To say that Kerry is the only military officer to come back from Vietnam feeling the way he did and saying the things he did just shows that you wish to ignore what was happening in America at that time. Kerry was neither the first nor the last Vet to speak out against the War. He may at this point be the most prominent one, but to attack his credibility and honor while in uniform is just political grandstanding.

I would guess then that you also hold Kissinger responsible for meeting with the enemy. As I stated, officers do meet with the enemy in many situations. But that's neither here nor there. Your purpose is simply to smear Kerry's war record.

waltjones; My Lai happened before Kerry came back from Vietnam. I suppose he made that up just to slander you. There are more, btw, which have been investigated and substantiated.

As for your anger, I'm sorry about that. I can't help you there. If you feel he betrayed you, that's your right. But then you must feel that at least half the population of the US betrayed you. If that's true, I think the issue may be more personal than anything else.

carpro; I am sorry that you still feel so angry about this. If we look back on Vietnam, the one thing we can say with any certainty is that it polarized and still polarizes America.

[Navy_Navy_Navy]

[carpro]

[ROTC DAD]

Navy_Navy_Navy,

I didn't say you said I couldn't say what I wanted; I said that there were at least two posters who were making that statement. If you look at what waltjones and Greenhat have said concerning my posts, you'll see what I mean.

Hope that clears that up.

[sparky]

NNN said:

[Navy_Navy_Navy]

[sparky]

Liars: Those claiming that Kerry "admitted to being a 'war criminal'"

Nonliars: Sparky*

NNN says:

[carpro]

A writer with The New Yorker named Warsh quoted the Swift boat's former gunner Tom Belodeau, as saying the Viet Cong soldier who Kerry chased "behind a hootch" and "finished off" actually had already been wounded by the gunner.
Warsh wrote that such a "coup de grace" would have been considered a war crime.
Later, Belodeau, with Kerry by his side, said he had been misquoted. He conceded that he had fired at and wounded the Viet Cong, but denied Kerry had simply executed the wounded man.

Hardly "groundless" innuendo, Sparkmeister.

So, what do you think? Silver Star for murder or not?
_________________
"If he believes his 1971 indictment of his country and his fellow veterans was true, then he couldn't possibly be proud of his Vietnam service."

[sparky]

Hell, you even managed to put in innuendo in the same post you deny innuendo!

The column in The New Yorker was by the writer James Carroll who had this to say about Warsh in the Boston Globe:

Warsh had violated the "honor of journalism," and that the paper's editors had exercised poor judgment in running Warsh's piece.

And staffer Charles Sennott, who wrote a lengthy profile of Kerry last month, is furious -- not only that Warsh ignored Sennott's misgivings, but that he cited Sennott's work twice, the second time after Sennott had asked him not to. (Warsh says he did so "very reluctantly," at editor Matt Storin's request.)

"I really think that what Warsh wrote was dishonest, disingenuous, and gutless," Sennott told the Phoenix, in an unusually harsh display of anger even by newsroom standards.

From the Globe about that incident:

An enemy was just feet away, holding a weapon with enough firepower to blow up the boat. Kerry's forward gunner, Belodeau, shot and clipped the Viet Cong in the leg. Then Belodeau's gun jammed, according to other crewmates (Belodeau died in 1997). Medeiros tried to fire at the Viet Cong, but he couldn't get a shot off.

In an interview, Kerry added a chilling detail.

"This guy could have dispatched us in a second, but for ... I'll never be able to explain, we were literally face to face, he with his B-40 rocket and us in our boat, and he didn't pull the trigger. I would not be here today talking to you if he had," Kerry recalled. "And Tommy clipped him, and he started going [down.] I thought it was over."

Instead, the guerrilla got up and started running. "We've got to get him, make sure he doesn't get behind the hut, and then we're in trouble," Kerry recalled.

So Kerry shot and killed the guerrilla. "I don't have a second's question about that, nor does anybody who was with me," he said. "He was running away with a live B-40, and, I thought, poised to turn around and fire it." Asked whether that meant Kerry shot the guerrilla in the back, Kerry said, "No, absolutely not. He was hurt, other guys were shooting from back, side, back. There is no, there is not a scintilla of question in any person's mind who was there [that] this guy was dangerous, he was a combatant, he had an armed weapon."

http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061603.shtml

Even the National Review disowns Warsh:

May 06, 2004, 8:27 a.m.
Overspun Defense
Why two of John Kerry’s critics were defending him in 1996.

By Jim Geraghty

The Kerry campaign clearly didn't want Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to go unanswered this week. A candidate who had rocketed to the Democratic nomination on a war-hero biography and by referring to his service in Vietnam in almost every answer to every question, including ones on animal rights, didn't need a boatload of his former commanders declaring him "unfit to be commander in chief."

So after Swift Boat Veterans for Truth made their presentation at the National Press Club Monday, the Kerry campaign arranged for two of the candidate's crewmates to appear at a later news conference along with positive evaluations from his former commanders.

The Kerry campaign also showcased what it appeared to believe was a smoking gun: video of two of Kerry's critics, Capt. George Elliott, and retired Cmdr. Adrian Longsdale, at a 1996 news conference at the Charlestown Navy Yard.

Navy Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, who commanded U.S. Navy forces in the Vietnam War, also appeared with Kerry that day. His son, retired Lieutenant Colonel Jim Zumwalt is among the Kerry critics. The Kerry campaign also made sure reporters got a sheet of quotes from the press conference eight years ago.
But they appear to have omitted that the veterans' 1996 appearance wasn't a typical, "hey,-isn't-John-Kerry-a-great-guy-who-should-be-reelected" backslapping photo opportunity.

They were there to defend Kerry against the charge of committing a "war crime" from a Boston Globe columnist.

On October 27, 1996, nine days before Election Day, Kerry was locked in the fight of his political life against Republican Governor William Weld. In the Sunday edition of the biggest paper in the state, business columnist David Warsh wrote about discrepancies in recent accounts of day that Kerry won the Silver Star.

According to the citation, ". . . an enemy soldier sprang up from his position not 10 feet from Swift boat 94 and fled. Without hesitation Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry leaped ashore, pursued the man behind a hootch and killed him, capturing a B-40 rocket launcher with a round in the chamber."
Twice more the expedition came under fire before returning safely to base, according to the citation. Ten Viet Cong were killed during the day and one was wounded; many weapons were captured; no Americans were hurt.

Last Monday, as he described the long-ago events to me, Tom Bellodeau said with no inflection in particular, "You know, I shot that guy. He jumped up, he looked right at me, I looked at him. You could tell he was trying to decide whether to shoot or not. I expected the guy on Kerry's boat with the twin 50s to blast him but he couldn't depress the guns far enough. We were up on the bank." Bellodeau said he fired at the man, wounding him.

But didn't Kerry shoot him? "When I hit him he went down and got up again. When Kerry hit him, he stayed down," said Bellodeau....

What's the best interpretation? That a breathless young lieutenant, his pulse pounding with the exhilaration of battle, ran some distance from the river bank in pursuit of a soldier, turned the corner behind the hootch and came face to face with an enemy ready to kill him — and that he fired in self-defense.

What's the ugliest possibility? That behind the hootch Kerry administered a coup de grace to the Vietnamese soldier — a practice not uncommon in those days, but a war crime nevertheless, and hardly the basis for a Silver Star. And that he went back the next day with a movie camera, perhaps to build his own case for what happened. Different people will draw different conclusions from the limited information that is available, depending on their experiences."

Kerry was outraged, and his Senate reelection campaign quickly set out to refute the allegation.

Zumwalt, who commanded U.S. Navy forces in the Vietnam War, said at the conference that the column "was such a terrible insult, such an absolutely outrageous misinterpretation of the facts, that I felt it was important to be here."

The Boston Globe reported:

Kerry said that his fatal shooting of the Vietnamese soldier, who was carrying a loaded rocket launcher, occurred in full view of Belodeau and crewmember Michael Medeiros.

"I was never out of sight of Tom Belodeau or Mike Medeiros," Kerry said. "I went straight out from the boat to the path so I had a line of fire. I never went behind the hootch, and this is the first time in 30 years that anybody has suggested otherwise."

Zumwalt said he traveled to Boston from Washington because "a wartime commander has a lifetime responsibility to look out for the guys under him." Kerry's conduct on that day was also commended by retired Capt. George Elliott, Kerry's commander at the time; and retired Cmdr. Adrian Longsdale, who supervised shoreline operations.

Kerry was helped by the fact that Belodeau stood beside him and said he had been misquoted.

"This man was not lying on the ground. This man was more than capable of destroying that boat and everybody on it. Senator Kerry did not give him that opportunity," Belodeau said. He also said that he was not sure whether or not he had hit the attacker.

Kerry went after Warsh personally at the press conference. "This was a firefight, life or death, and it was that way every single day, and for some desk jockey who wants to come in, who hasn't seen a firefight in his life, to try to say that, it's just wrong. Period. Wrong."

It's worth noting that Lonsdale and Elliot didn't say during that conference what a great president Kerry would make, or that his accusations of war crimes in 1971 weren't distortions or a hurtful betrayal, or even that they endorsed him for the Senate. They just said that they believed Kerry earned his Silver Star in that encounter and that they recalled nothing to justify an accusation of war crimes.

The controversy burned out as quickly as it flared up. Weld didn't touch the issue, and the column didn't make much impact on the rest of the race. The Globe's Ombudsman, Mark Jurkowitz, later wrote, "Warsh may have added something — the possible wounding — to the record. But the evidence does not justify raising even the specter of a "war crime" by a senator in the final days of a bitter and close election campaign. Not by a long shot."

Does the appearance of Lonsdale and Elliot at a 1996 event to fortify Kerry's denial of war crimes invalidate what they have to say about Kerry's war protests today? Not by a long shot.

[sparky]

I'm starting to think that much of the conservative viewpoint comes from a simple misunderstanding: snopes.com is about phony stories called "urban myths," not about things you should believe.

Claim: John Kerry's Vietnam War service medals (a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts) were earned under "fishy" circumstances.

Status: False.
Example: [Collected on the Internet 2004]

Here's the myth part:

[carpro]

See how easy it is.

The actual quote from gunner Bellodeau , that you so thoughtfully provided for us, is " You know, I shot that guy. He jumped up, he looked right at me, I looked at him..." then he said he fired at the man, wounding him. " When I hit him he went down and got up again. When Kerry hit him, he stayed down."

Just by my asking a question, without even trying to provide any evidence, you jump to the conclusion, that I am accusing Kerry of murder.
John Kerry repeated allegations made by others that he made no attempt verify, and millions of people are left with the impression that ALL Vietnam veterans are murderers, rapists, and arsonists because this decorated war hero said so.

For your information, I do not now nor have I ever believed that Kerry committed murder by killing this man.

Thanks for your help.
_________________
"If he believes his 1971 indictment of his country and his fellow veterans was true, then he couldn't possibly be proud of his Vietnam service."

[carpro]

Sparky

Your previous post also reveals Kerry to be a liar.

You have quoted him extensively saying about 50 cal. guns..."which we were granted and ordered to use,which were our only weapon against people."

He shot that wounded Viet Cong with his M-16.

Thanks again.
_________________
"If he believes his 1971 indictment of his country and his fellow veterans was true, then he couldn't possibly be proud of his Vietnam service."

[waltjones]

Bull, ROTC_DAD - you're about as sorry as your ******* of a hero. You don't give a crap about any Vietnam vets or the way they feel; you're just a Kerry political operative with no standing or credibility here. And no, I'm not mad at half the country - I don't hate you, but I sure as hell do hate John F'ng Kerry.
_________________
Walt Jones (USMC, '65 - '69) It says much about the person who defends a man with no honor.

[Greenhat]

[JN173]