SwiftVets.com

[drjohn]

From William Rood in the Chicago Tribune

"John O'Neill, author of a highly critical account of Kerry's Vietnam service, describes the man Kerry chased as a "teenager" in a "loincloth." I have no idea how old the gunner Kerry chased that day was, but both Leeds and I recall that he was a grown man, dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore.
The man Kerry chased was not the "lone" attacker at that site, as O'Neill suggests. There were others who fled. There was also firing from the tree line well behind the spider holes and at one point, from the opposite riverbank as well. It was not the work of just one attacker. "

from the Michael Kranish book John F. Kerry

"On the beach a few feet away, a teenager in a loincloth popped out of a narrow spider hole, clutching a grenade launcher..." p.101

Rood chastises O'Neill for the teenager in a loincloth description, but it was Kranish who wrote it first. Rood conveniently ignored that little detail.

[Beldar]

O'Neill made this point (i.e., that the loincloth description in Unfit for Command actually came from Kranish) in some of his TV interviews right after the Rood piece came out. The more important point, which he also made, is that it matters not a whit whether they guy was in a loincloth or full body armor, or whether he was a teenager or an old man, or whether Kerry shot him in the back or not. What matters is that Kerry didn't lead an assault into heavy fire against numerically superior forces. That's what the Ruff-Puffs did back at the original ambush site, and it's their valor that Kerry conflated to look like his own to turn his routine duty -- chasing down and killing this one wounded VC -- into Silver Star-caliber gallantry.

[drjohn]

What I want to know, Beldar, is how the hell Kerry's Silver Star citation had the phrase "numerically superior force" added to it after the fact.

It never happened that way.