SwiftVets.com

[coldwarvet]

I smell a trap hear guys. It appears too me that the pro Kerry people would like to define our mission as discrediting the Kerry medals. And at every opportunity change the topic too the defense of the Kerry medals. At all costs just keep them off the 1971 Kerry record. Am I just being paranoid or do you guys see this too?
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Defender of the honor of those in harms way keeping us out of harms way.

"Peace is our Profession"
Strategic Air Command - Motto

USAF 75-79 Security Police

[hist/student]

It's interesting, Keith Nolan has returned..... along with Doug Reese current to the advent of PHD candidate. All these just prior to the DNC convention.

Last night I was listening to drudge as I went to sleep and he made mention of Kerry bringing his fellow crew mates to the convention to support his 'war hero' status. Drudge then made a very quick assertion that his fellow crewmates who were his detractors outnumbered his supporters by a ratio of about 3 to 1 . He continued that this was likely to heat up the convention proceedings considerably.

I'm not one who believes in chance or coincidence.

[DougReese]

Tom,

Anyway, no complaints on you giving me what I wanted!

How does Conason know what Rupprath is doing? Apparently he has spoken to some people who were interviewed by him. I have to assume he isn't making all this up.

Conservative republicans? Now there is spin, along with the 527 comments and more comments about individuals.

Then there's the "factual paragraph" you mention, which is another way of saying Ruprath is trying to discredit Kerry -- at least in my opinion.

And about crew comments, taken by Sennott (he's the guy with that great piece on the "re-enactment" that I pretty much discredited, right?) out of context, well, yes, you can find what you want if you look hard enough. And I don't claim to be any great military tactitian (especially if I can't spell the word!), nor am I a Navy guy. . . . but I have never thought that what was done that day by stopping the boats was wrong. I was surprised, so many years later, when I found out some who thought it was.

All I can say is, that is the reason the VN soldiers were on the boats in the first place! If Kerry didn't hop off right away and do what he did, there might well have been hell to pay. All the complaining about this, I am convinced, is because Kerry is who he is.

If he was hell bent to get off the boat, why didn't he do so when our boat was beached? Even when his was beached, I don't believe he intended to get off. I mean, either the twin-50 or the M-60 would normally have been able to kill that guy right away. But, as it turned out, they weren't and Kerry was Johnny-on-the-spot. Good for him.

But that's OK. You have your opinion about that and I have mine. I damn sure am not going to change. I'm guessing you aren't either.

"Kerry's critics have tried to suggest that he recklessly endangered his crew by leaving the boat -- or that the guerrilla was already mortally wounded before Kerry shot him. Presumably the "Swift Boat" group hired Rupprath to find proof of such allegations, but so far he may not be making much progress. "

Apparently this is Conason's opinion -- either from what he's discovered from talking to someone (more than one) who was there, and/or from the fact that no one who was there has come forward to say the VC was wounded other than the leg wound -- quite the opposite. They have all, including myself, said that all he has was a leg wound, and that he was able to run. And use his trigger finger! And as for leaving the boat, well, he left the boat. He was given a Silver Star. If it was such a stupid, reckless thing to do, then the Navy was reckless and stupid to give him the award.

"Why would the interviewee refuse to be identified?" I can think of several reasons. And if it were me, I wouldn't want to be identified. I have already seen the hate on this board and others. That would be enough for me, I think. Anyway, if he isn't identified, does that mean he doesn't exist? And I know of no one who was there that day who has had anything all that deregatory to say about it, Sennott's and others with their little sound bites excluded.

Runyon was identified, and you seem to dismiss him because you hadn't heard of him. I believe he served with Kerry on that skimmer. (I say this without going back and re-reading that article, but that was my impression)

And the bit about the skimmer vs the Swift boat -- that's like saying flare/mortar/M-79. Those people (non-vets) will be getting those terms mixed up forever. Don't expect better.

And you don't need a fire fight to have a Purple Heart. Strange, but true.

And to say Merrie Spaeth is a republican activist, what is wrong with that, true or not? To deny that she is at the very least connected (to put it mildly) to that party, well, you'd have to have blinders on to do that.

All-in-all I see some spin in the article, but not all that much in factual errors -- at least not significant factual errors. All this assumes Conason isn't lying about who he spoke to, of course. And I would hope you do not assume, as does at least one person here, that to be on the pro-Kerry side of things is to be at the very least, a liar.

Anyway, once again we agree to disagree.

Doug

[DougReese]

[hist/student]

Doug I haven’t 'googled' the connason article but I am assuming it is from Salon dot com. Salon supposedly is a news outlet. News is not supposed to contain 'spin'. You readily admit there is more then a little spin in the piece.

This gets to the heart of the matter in 1968, 71, 2000, 04. This spin, in my humble opinion falls in the realm of intentionally misleading the general public. You make it clear that the average non military schmo really will never understand the difference between a mortar a flair..... etc... .

It is the duty of a 'reporter' to inform the public of facts. In so many cases today, including this connason piece quite the contrary is the case. Some facts are employed in a overall effort to ultimately keep the readers in the dark.

Some other 'random' points for you.

First and foremost, you seem to be oblivious as to why leaving the helm unattended on any boat, much less a navy warship is a high crime.

To reiterate..... leaving the helm of a vessel unattended is a 'high crime'. This has been the case throughout maritime history, it remains so today. The punishment is not so harsh as in Melville’s day, yet it remains very severe.

If there was any one man on that boat other then Kerry, he had no business leaving the helm unattended. Kerry might have pulled it off in that instance, but that is just dumb luck. The situation could have easily escalated to everyone having been killed, including you.

As you have read from Kerry's superior officers this is at the crux of why they gave him positive reviews and ultimately insisted he use the three purple hearts rule to get him out of their region. Kerry was reckless then and he remains so today.

They wanted to get him the hell out of their immediate sphere to minimize the damage he was causing to the overall mission.

Today and way back then he was reckless with what came out of his mouth and refuses to accept responsibility for his own words, blaming any gaffs on his speech writers. I think you may agree this is total B S.

A total mystery for me which you have the answer to is why on gods earth were you and the other advisors all on one boat that morning. My sources tell me that is hard to believe and also immeasurably reckless. You may have already covered this elsewhere here, so could you point me to where the explanation is as to why on gods earth something so unsound was being done that morning? Whose decision was it to put all the advisors on one boat and who was commanding the individual soldiers on each of the other boats without the advisors??

Got to go......

[coldwarvet]

[DougReese]

[DougReese]

[carpro]

OK, guys...here's a real shocker for you!

Conason says the swifties have hired a PI.

SO WHAT!!!

Does anyone think for one minute that the Kerry camp doesn't have its share of PIs?

Well...on second thought...maybe he doesn't need any.

The media (like Conason) does his investigative work for him.
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"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."

[DougReese]

[carpro]

[KeithNolan]

TO ASPB: Okay, I'm a weasel. But what does that have to do with my distress at the ease with which certain posters here degrade the honorable combat service of veterans with whom they have political and ideological disagreements?

There are those here who hate Kerry because he served as a spokesman for the VVAW, an organization which raised in a highly inflammatory way the issue of U.S. war crimes in Vietnam. These veterans feel the VVAW dishonored their service.

So what do you these individuals do in response? They attempt to degrade Kerry's service by resorting to innuendo and guilt by association. For all the mud-slinging that goes on here about Kerry having been a coward, an incompetent, a bungler, a murderer of civilians and helpless, wounded guerrillas, no substantial evidence has been presented to support these very serious charges. The fact remains that Lieutenant Kerry earned glowing fitness reports from his superiors in Vietnam, as well as the respect and admiration of fourteen of the fifteen young sailors who served on his Swift Boat. No evidence has yet to be presented which shows that the U.S. Navy erred in awarding Lieutenant Kerry the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts.

To defame Kerry's days with the VVAW, certain posters have found it neccessary to defame the membership of the VVAW. Thus, those combat veterans who came to different conclusions than they about the war and joined the VVAW are dismissed as misfits, frauds, liars, traitors, and dupes of the KGB.

I wrote that I doubt very much that there were many phonies who gave testimony at the VVAW's Winter Soldier Investigation in Detroit. In response, you noted that Mark Lane was involved in organizing this event, and that Neil Sheehan showed conclusively that a good number of the veterans in Lane's book on war crimes were indeed phonies. That's obvious from reading Lane's book. Many of the stories are preposterous on their face. Lane is not an honorable individual. I'm certainly not here to defend him.

However, none of Lane's phonies were allowed by the VVAW to testify in Detroit. The realization that Lane had included so many phonies in his book shook up the leadership of the VVAW and resulted in the organization doing its best to check the military credentials of those veterans who showed up to testify in Detroit. Now, every veterans organization attracts a certain fringe group, and I imagine a couple phonies did slip through in Detroit. Thirty-three years after the event in question, however, no one has ever been able to name a single phony who testified in Detroit.

Another thing about the Winter Soldier Investigation: aside from Joe Bangert's wild tales, nothing was described by the veterans in Detroit that hasn't shown up in the court-martial record from the war, or in memoirs written by Vietnam veterans, or in histories of the war written by academics and historians. I've personally heard the same kind of stories about burned villages, mistreated civilians, and summarily executed prisoners dozens of times over from Vietnam veterans who have no political sympathy for the left-wing politics of the VVAW.

Wars produce atrocities. Frustrating guerrilla wars produce a particularly horrific number of atrocities. That some individual soldiers and certain units responded with excessive brutality in Vietnam shouldn't really surprise anyone. For pete's sake, American soldiers committed the same kind of atrocities when fighting guerrillas in the Philippines following the Spanish-American War.

Many members of the VVAW spoke to individual war crimes they had witnessed. John Kerry, who says that he witnessed no such atrocities by his fellow sailors, spoke instead to the way in which the war was fought, condemning the forced removal of people from their land during search-and-destroy operations, the burning of villages, the use of H&I fire in populated areas, etc., etc., etc.

In this, the same Neil Sheehan who destroyed Mark Lane's credibility backs up John Kerry, at least indirectly. In A BRIGHT SHINING LIE, Sheehan decried the search-and-destroy tactics used by General Westmoreland, speaking to the devastation wrought on the Vietnamese people by the massive use of artillery, helicopter gunships, tactical air support, B52s, and Agent Orange in populated areas of the country. This scorched-earth destruction was counterproductive, argued Sheehan, in that it made the people more sympathetic to the Viet Cong.

Sheehan all but accused General Westmoreland of purposefully turning a blind eye to the issue of civilian casualties, writing of an interview he conducted with the theater commander during a helicopter flight: "At one point in the trip I asked the general if he was worried about the large number of civilian casualties from the air strikes and shelling. He looked at me carefully. 'Yes, Neil, it is a problem,' he said, 'but it does deprive the enemy of the population, doesn't it?'"

Sheehan also wrote of the infamous massacres in two hamlets (My Lai and My Khe) of the village of Son My in March 1968 by Task Force Barker of the Americal Division. As you know, Lieutenant Calley was convicted of mass murder for his part in the killings at My Lai. "Calley appears to have been a sadist, but his personality alone does not explain the massacre," wrote Sheehan. "What Calley and others who participated in the massacre did that was different was to kill hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese in two hamlets in a single morning and to kill them point-blank with rifles, pistols, and machine guns. Had they killed just as many over a larger area in a longer period of time and killed impersonally with bombs, shells, rockets, white phosphorus, and napalm, they would have been following the normal pattern of American military conduct. The soldier and the junior officer observed the lack of regard his superiors had for the Vietnamese. The value of Vietnamese life was systematically cheapened in his mind. Further brutalized by the cycle of meaningless violence that was Westmoreland's war of attrition, and full of hatred because his comrades were so often killed and wounded by mines and booby traps set by the local guerrillas and the peasants who helped them, he naturally came to see all Vietnamese of the countryside as vermin to be exterminated. The massacre at Son My was inevitable. The military leaders of the United States, and the civilian leaders who permitted the generals to wage war as they did, had made the massacre inevitable."

I don't know if Sheehan has ever made any public statement on the subject, but his sympathies would most likely be with John Kerry and the VVAW, not with John O'Neill and the VVFJP/SBVFT.

My only point through all of this has been the same: good men are allowed to disagree on something as tragic and convoluted as the Vietnam War without one side condemning those with a different political stance as being frauds, liars, traitors, etc.

Keith Nolan

[George F. Thompson]

I was just wondering. Was Al Hubbard present at the Winter soldier's testimonial? I,m sure the VVAW made every effort to check DD 214's of every participant to insure no phonies or wannabes were present and their testimonies were truthful. I'm sure Captain Hubbard was in charge of conducting the background checks and insuring the participants truthfulness. Did I say Captain Hubbard, I'm sorry I meant to say Staff Sergeant Hubbard.


George F. Thompson,




Christmas has come early, tell Kerry the mistletoe is on my back belt loop.

[Me#1You#10]

Admin note to the forum:

While I can understand the allure of conjecture as to the impetus behind someone's political point of view, the airing of those observations in this forum is just not acceptable and distracts from the dialogue.

Nor do I intend, in the future, to spend time cherry-pick editing and responding within posts to individual infractions. I will simply delete the offending material and, perhaps, your entire post.

For those who do choose to continue in this mode, I would suggest that you archive your posts, especially any lengthy ones, as they will no longer be in this forum for you to edit.

Thank you

[KeithNolan]

Al Hubbard did not testify at the Winter Soldiers Investigation. He might have been hanging around there, but he didn't get behind a microphone and give any testimony. As noted, not a single veteran who gave testimony in Detroit has yet to be identified as a phony veteran.

Al Hubbard lied about his rank and the extent of his military service. Al Hubbard was also a communist sympathizer, one of the most far-left members of the VVAW. Interestingly enough, John Kerry was Al Hubbard's greatest foe in the VVAW. Kerry was a moderate, work-within-the-system dissenter, not a bomb-throwing lunatic.

Al Hubbard was a professional radical. Al Hubbard did not speak for the rank-and-file of the VVAW, who were mostly country boys, blue-collar kids, and college students who had either been embittered by their war experiences, or simply thought the war a big mistake and a useless waste of American lives.

Keith Nolan