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August 18, 2004
Developing...
Posted by Jon Henke
A couple interesting developments in the Kerry/SBV story.....
* Captain Ed points to a story about Kerry's personal journal, in which he claims he has not been shot at....a week after the event for which he received his first purple heart....
According to Art Moore, Kerry's account of taking incoming fire as the reason for his first Purple Heart injury is disputed by his own journal:
A previously unnoticed passage in John Kerry's approved war biography, citing his own journals, appears to contradict the senator's claim he won his first Purple Heart as a result of an injury sustained under enemy fire. Kerry, who served as commander of a Navy swift boat, has insisted he was wounded by enemy fire Dec. 2, 1968, when he and two other men took a smaller vessel, a Boston Whaler, on a patrol north of his base at Cam Ranh Bay.
But Douglas Brinkley's "Tour of Duty," for which Kerry supplied his journals and letters, indicates that as Kerry set out on a subsequent mission, he had not yet been under enemy fire.
[...]
This is what Kerry's journal said at the time, according to Moore, and apparently Brinkley:
"They pulled away from the pier at Cat Lo with spirits high, feeling satisfied with the way things were going for them. They had no lust for battle, but they also were were not afraid. Kerry wrote in his notebook, 'A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn't been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven't been shot at are allowed to be cocky.'" If this is true -- and Brinkley wrote the book using Kerry's journal as a prime resourse -- it absolutely destroys his first Purple Heart claim.
Short version:
- Dec 2, 1968: "was slightly wounded on his arm, earning his first Purple Heart on his first day of serious action".
- Dec 11, 1968: From Kerry's journal...."A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn't been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven't been shot at are allowed to be cocky."
Interesting, but I'm hesitant to stake too much on this story right now, especially since Kerry's journal statement is sufficiently vague that we can't really tell whether he was talking about himself, his boat, his crew, or even that particular mission. I'll wait for the explanation before reaching any conclusions on this. (in fact, I'm generally leaning towards agnosticism on the whole Kerry/Vietnam issue, though I think it's interesting to follow)
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* Beldar--who is getting blogrolled--finds some discrepancies between the official story Kerry is telling now, and the story John Kerry told previously....
Like so many of Sen. Kerry's other written and oral recollections of his Vietnam service, however, this one contains discrepancies that are hard to reconcile. In it, among those "most challenging and terrifying moments" of their lives, Sen. Kerry recounts what clearly seem to be the same incidents out of which young Lt. Kerry was awarded his Silver Star and his Bronze Star. With regard to the latter:
There was the time we were carrying special forces up a river and a mine exploded under our boat sending it 2 feet into the air. We were receiving incoming rocket and small arms fire and Tommy was returning fire with his M-60 machine gun when it literally broke apart in his hands. He was left holding the pieces unable to fire back while one of the Green Berets walked along the edge of the boat to get Tommy another M-60. As he was doing so, the boat made a high speed turn to starboard and the Green Beret kept going — straight into the river. The entire time while the boat went back to get the Green Beret, Tommy was without a machine gun or a weapon of any kind, but all the time he was hurling the greatest single string of Lowell-Chelmsford curses ever heard at the Viet Cong. He literally had swear words with tracers on them! The "Green Beret" in question almost certainly must have been Mr. Rassmann. In this account, however, Mr. Rassmann is not sitting and eating a chocolate chip cookie when he's thrown into the river, but rather moving to get Mr. Belodeau another weapon when a "high speed turn" caused him to fall overboard. This version only mentions one mine, which is consistent with the recollection of the SwiftVets who've described the episode from their perspectives on the other boats in formation with PCF 93; but this story has the single mine exploding under Sen. Kerry's boat. And indeed, in this version, enough time had passed between the single mine explosion and the loss of Mr. Rassmann overboard that Mr. Belodeau's M-60 had time to "[break] apart in his hands." Thus, this version events as told in Mr. Belodeau's eulogy fits none of the other published accounts from any of the participants, including Sen. Kerry as he's told of these events on other occasions, orally and in writing.
Meet the newest member of the Republican Smear Machine....John Kerry! Read the rest of Beldar's post and Captain Ed's post for more information on this new Karl Rove operative.
Again, I'm largely agnostic about the whole Kerry/Vietnam thing, but it certainly is interesting to note the discrepancies. (...discrepancies between Kerry's stories, and discrepancies between the way his supporters handle this "question about Vietnam service" and the way they handled that of Bush)
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