SwiftVets.com

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By Al Young
Aug 21, 2004

The fact that Thurlow's citation mentions "enemy fire" still doesn't get Kerry out off the hook. Thurlow says he did not file the After-Action Report even though he was the senior officer of all the boats but left it to Kerry to do it. Although NAVY policy required that every commander filed an After-Action report for multi boat missions, the policy was somewhat relaxed during Viet Nam. This is even more damming to Kerry because he must have written the report to match Rassmann's account of the incident.

Sounds like John Kerry "volunteered" often to write up After-Action Reports in order to tell the story any way he wanted. Seems like Kerry was his unit’s designated After-Action Reporter.

Kerry’s own records show that he filed 4 After- Action Reports from March 10 to March 13 which included the Rassmann incident. All reporting was done on the honor system, no one bothered to double check them. Knowing this, Kerry took advantage of the system. Since Kerry's report mentioned "enemy fire" and so must have Rassmann's recommendation for Kerry's medal, the top brass reading both also decided to give a medal to Thurlow because he was the mission’s Senior Officer in Charge. It was all based on Kerry’s records.

I am sure that Thurlow was surprised to get a medal since he didn't even know that Kerry had got one until Kerry's book Tour of Duty came out.

It is understandable that when Thurlow got his medal he didn't make a big deal of it because medals during VN took a very long time to be awarded. I believe Kerry's took two years. The delay was because of the thousands of medal recommendations received for review by the NAVY. The medal awards were so many that quite a lot of them were awarded posthumously or after people left the service. In fact Thurlow received hi medal notification 3 months after he left the NAVY, a long time after the March 13, 1969 incident.

The other three commanders did not get medals. Three officers on the scene, Pease, Odell and Chenoweth along with four sailors agree with Thurlow to the fact that there was no enemy fire. The fifth commander died in action some months later.

According to Thurlow, it took approximately ninety minutes to rescue the crew from PCF3, to get the boat under control from not sinking and to secure ropes for towing. Under heavy fire from both sides of a 75 yard wide waterway there would have been a massacre and the boats heavily damaged. No casualty reports were filed nor damage reports on the boats. A most amazing situation to be believed if the 5 boats were under crossfire for 90 minutes all crowded around PCF3.

Today’s (8/20/04) story in the NYT reveals that one of the 5 boats had 3 bullet holes but no mentions of any other damage on the other boats. If the NYT is trying to make us believe that the 3 bullet holes on ONE boat is proof of “intense enemy machinegun fire from both sides of the river” during the ninety minutes that it took to get PCF3 and it’s crew under control, the NYT is insulting our intelligence.

I still ask the same old question: Why is only Rassmann speaking for Kerry and not any of his “Band of Brothers”? Answer: The Kerry Campaign has shut them down. Without “handlers” there is no guarantee that they will not spill the beans. A couple of them already broke on the Cambodia Christmas story (Wasser and Medeiros).

Officials from the Kerry campaign have also refused to be interviewed. Only Kerry continues to “cry in his soup” that the SwiftVets are financed by a Bush supporter who gave the group $200,000. No mention of the fact that George Sorros has given ~$20 million to moveon.org and has pledged his fortune to bring down Bush.

The NYT also charges that the SwiftVets are funded by former Bush supporters. That is an undeniable fact but other undeniable facts are the contents of the advertisement and the contents of the book Unfit for Command. The Bush supporters did not write the book. The book was written by more than 60 eyewitnesses who were present in each of the incidents in which Kerry got his medals and other incidents reported in the book.

I didn’t see any outrage from the Democrats nor Kerry when the moveon.org ad appeared comparing Bush to Hitler. I didn’t see any outrage from the Democrats and Kerry when the Michael Moore “documentary” came out. In fact they honored Moore by giving him a seat in the Presidential box sitting next to Carter at the DNC Convention. The DNC prominently paraded Moore all 4 days of the convention always accompanied by top Democrats.

Also today, Kerry and his boys demanded that the publisher of Unfit for Command stop publishing the book because it is filled with lies. Did Kerry demand Moore to stop showing his proven slanderous filthy “documentary” or demand Richard “The Liar” Clarke to take his book off the market?

In addition to demanding the book to be erased from the face of the Earth, Kerry has filed a complaint against the SwiftVets with the FEC accusing them to be coordinating their ads with the Bush Campaign.

When will Kerry stop sending his pack of legal dogs after the SwiftVets, first threatening TV stations against law suits if they carry the ads and now complaining to the FEC? Shouldn’t he be using his energy in signing the form to release of his service records and directly answering the charges? If he was innocent he would do just that. His actions are of a guilty liar.

The only way to for Kerry to prove that the SwiftVets are lying is for Kerry to release ALL of his service records from which it could be confirmed who submitted the After-Action reports, what was described in the reports and who submitted all medals recommendations and the basis for the recommendations. Kerry doesn’t want to go there. He rather makes claims and we are just supposed to believe them because he is Kerry and served in Viet Nam.

Sen. Kerry must have taken military service embellishment lessons from Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA). Harkin also tried to pass himself off as a Viet Nam NAVY “ACE” fighter pilot hero until records were discovered in 1984 that showed he only had gone to Viet Nam but a few times from Japan delivering aircraft to the NAVY.

Harkin was busted and Kerry is in the process.