McCain condemns ad, Kerry's commander backs off

About the Rassman incident.

Quote:

Statement By Swift Boat Veterans for Truth Member Van Odell

A courageous, soft spoken man of the Midwest, Larry Thurlow has a heart bigger than the great plains and a commitment to truth and honesty that is boundless. He is under attack, because John Kerry is feeling the heat of truth at the hands of this honest man and others like him.

The Kerry Campaign is attacking the truthfulness of this man and the Bronze Star he so richly deserves for his actions on March 13, 1969. I was there. I saw what happened.

The mine's detonation lifted PCF-3 completely out of the water just yards ahead of me. All boats commenced suppression fire in case enemy small arms fire ensued. None did.

All boats came to the aid of PCF-3, except one: John Kerry's boat. Kerry fled.

Larry Thurlow piloted his boat straight toward the mine-damaged PCF-3 from which thick, black smoke billowed. He jumped aboard and personally led damage control operations that saved the boat and rescue operations that saved the lives of badly wounded men. Larry's leadership was in the highest traditions of the naval service. His leadership allowed the other men and boats of the mission to exit the river safely. This "single act of meritorious service" -- the chief requirement of the Bronze Star -- should be honored, not ridiculed, by the Kerry campaign and its allies in the mainstream media.

To reiterate, only one enemy weapon was deployed that day -- the command-detonated submerged mine that disabled PCF-3. Larry Thurlow's citation contained references to "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire," because that was the language chosen by John Kerry who penned the "spot report" on the action that day. There was no "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire" received that day. John Kerry's report was fiction -- a hoax on the entire chain of command. Larry Thurlow's heroism and meritorious service, however, is real.

To me Larry is one of the heroes of our country. He is a man who served his country when called and who returned home to be a productive citizen. Larry and men like him are the strong backbone of our society. I am proud to have served with him.

Source

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Quote:

Larry Thurlow's citation contained references to "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire," because that was the language chosen by John Kerry who penned the "spot report" on the action that day.

That is totally unsubstantiated. Nobody has any proof of that Kerry wrote that report by himself at all. Any or all of the skippers are supposed to write that report-and there were several skippers on this incident.

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Rassman seems to think there was small arms fire. So did others. And regardless of who wrote it, why did Rassman wait until now to say there was no small arms fire?

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The criteria for awarding a purple heart
The criteria for awarding a purple heart

The Purple Heart is awarded in the name of the President of the United States to any member of an Armed force who, while serving with the U.S. Armed Services after 5 April 1917, has been wounded or killed, or who has died or may hereafter die after being wounded. A wound for which the award is made must have required treatment by a medical officer.

Criteria:

For wounds or death sustained in action against an enemy of the United States;

In any action with an opposing armed force of a foreign country in which the Armed Forces of the United States are or have been engaged;

While serving with friendly foreign forces engaged in an armed conflict against an opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party;

As a result of an act of any such enemy of opposing armed forces;

As the result of an act of any hostile foreign force;

After 28 March 1973, as a result of an international terrorist attack against the United States by a foreign nation friendly to the United States, recognized as such an attack by the Secretary of the department concerned, or jointly by Secretaries of the departments concerned if persons from more than one department are wounded in the attack; or

After 28 March 1973, as a result of military operations, while serving outside the territory of the United States as part of a peacekeeping force.

After 7 December 1941, by weapon fire while directly engaged in armed conflict, regardless of the fire causing the wound (friendly fire).

While held as a prisoner of war or while being taken captive

To read the history of the Purple Heart:

http://www.homeofheroes.com/medals/purple_heart/purple_heart.html

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Navy regulations and criteria for awarding medals
Navy regulations and criteria for awarding medals:

http://neds.nebt.daps.mil/Directives/1650/one.pdf

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Text of John Kerrys 1971 statement to Congress
This is the statement by John Kerry that scared President Richard Nixon so much that he ordered the smear and destruction of John Kerry's reputation. The anti-Kerry Swift Boat smearers resulted from Nixon's order. They have charged Kerry with lies about his service when, in fact, they hate him for his anti-war activities after he was discharged. They have twisted his testimony to insinuate incorrectly as what Kerry said he saw in Vietnam when, in fact, he was merely reporting the experiences testimony of others as told to him. The anti-Kerry Swiftboaters are trying to kill the messenger and destroy his presidential aspirations because he reported what other Vietnam veterans had reported. ---BBB
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Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement by John Kerry to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations

April 23, 1971
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I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit - the emotions in the room and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

We call this investigation the Winter Soldier Investigation. The term Winter Soldier is a play on words of Thomas Paine's in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriots and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.

We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country, we could be quiet, we could hold our silence, we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out....

In our opinion and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.

We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.

We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American.

We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.

We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.

We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals.

We watched the United States falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against "oriental human beings." We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater. We watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the hill for reoccupation by the North Vietnamese. We watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point, and so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 81s and Fire Base 6s, and so many others.

Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese.

Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."

We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?....We are here in Washington to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country - the question of racism which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions such as the use of weapons; the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel of everything.

An American Indian friend of mine who lives in the Indian Nation of Alcatraz put it to me very succinctly. He told me how as a boy on an Indian reservation he had watched television and he used to cheer the cowboys when they came in and shot the Indians, and then suddenly one day he stopped in Vietnam and he said, "my God, I am doing to these people the very same thing that was done to my people," and he stopped. And that is what we are trying to say, that we think this thing has to end.

We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We're here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The marines say they never even leave their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They've left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this country....

We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped away their memories of us. But all that they have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission - to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more. And more. And so when thirty years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.

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This text is made available by the Sixties Project, sponsored by Viet Nam Generation Inc. and the Institute of Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. The Sixties Project is a collective of humanities scholars working together on the Internet to use electronic resources to provide routes of collaboration and make available primary and secondary sources for researchers, students, teachers, writers and librarians interested in the 1960s.

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kelticwizard wrote:

Brand X wrote:
Larry Thurlow's citation contained references to "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire," because that was the language chosen by John Kerry who penned the "spot report" on the action that day.

That is totally unsubstantiated. Nobody has any proof of that Kerry wrote that report by himself at all. Any or all of the skippers are supposed to write that report-and there were several skippers on this incident.

Furthermore,

a damage report to Mr. Thurlow's boat shows that it received three bullet holes, suggesting enemy fire, and later intelligence reports indicate that one Vietcong was killed in action and five others wounded, reaffirming the presence of an enemy.

And concerning the unsubstantiated claims of Kerry writing his own reports, the SVFT point "to the initials K. J. W. on one of the reports", but ...

"What's the W for, I cannot answer," said Larry Thurlow, who said his boat was 50 to 60 yards from Mr. Kerry's. Mr. Kerry's middle initial is F, and a Navy official said the initials refer to the person who had received the report at headquarters, not the author.

(from that NYT article)

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VIETNAM: A Television History
Homefront USA
Transcript

VIETNAM: A Television History is a 13-part documentary film series produced for public television by WGBH Boston, in cooperation with Central Independent Television/United Kingdom, and Antenne-2/France, and in association with LRE Productions. A six year project from conception to completion, the series carefully analyzes the costs and consequences of war in Vietnam for everyone involved, beginning with early history, through the French colonial period, and up to the fall of Saigon and unification of the country in 1975. Executive producer Richard Ellison, chief correspondent Stanley Karnow, and Director of Media Research Lawrence Lichty, with some 60 consultants and four production units, comprised the production team, centered at WGBH in Boston. Its members garnered hundreds of interviews, researched 70 film archives worldwide, and traveled the length of Vietnam to create perhaps the most exhaustive historical documentary series in television history.
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John Kerry references excerpts:

NARRATOR

The heartland remained conservative. But some Americans were coming back from Vietnam with changed perspectives. One of them was Lt. John Kerry, here filmed in the Mekong delta with his own 8 millimeter camera.

JOHN KERRY

A typical mission really didn't have any sense to it. The logic that was explained to us by the command in Vietnam was that we were quote, "showing the flag in the back yard of the enemy." There were people who believed, there were people who believed that we were fighting communism and that this was terrific and it was important, and who were all swept up in it. But I think most people did not. Most people began to see that we weren't gaining any territory, we weren't winning the hearts and minds of anybody, we certainly weren't securing any particular stronghold or strategic objectives, we were simply doing a very macho kind of public demonstration of our presence.

People did not listen to the veterans of the war. The press itself had diffi-culty in perceiving of a group of Vietnam veterans being opposed to the war. And that it was a story of profound importance, why the war itself was wrong. And why we were not going to be successful, and why we had to recognize that. We just felt that story had to be told, and the only way to tell it was to take it to Washington in that form.

VIETNAM VETERANS DEMONSTRATION, April 1971

VETERAN

I volunteered for the whole thing. Volunteered to go into the service. Volunteered for Vietnam. Volunteered for every single mission I went on.

I was there ten days and I was in Cambodia. You people don't know that. I was in Cambodia with orders. Talk to veterans. They're here all week. Talk to them. They'll tell you things you won't believe.

The House on American Activities Committee has rated our organization the third greatest threat to internal security in this country. Right after the Weathermen and the Black Panthers. Ladies and gentlemen, you know, I did it. You know? I did it because I'm an American. I haven't changed. My politics have changed in that I'm not willing to take it anymore. But, I am still non-violent. I still believe in this system. I'm still visiting my senator.

WOMAN

A lot of taxes goes to support just what you're doing today. I wish you'd get out and get a job and work!

VETERAN ON CAPITOL STEPS

I'm from upstate New York. And I'd like to turn in my Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. I lost my leg in Vietnam, and I'm totally opposed to this war we're carrying on over there. And Senator Buckley and Congressman James Hanley will receive my medals next week in the mail.

NARRATOR

One by one, decorated veterans flung away their medals on the steps of the Capitol. The American war was winding down, GI casualties were decreasing, but those veterans who opposed the war were asking for something more than an end to hostilities.

SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMM. HEARING, April 1971, Lt. John Kerry

We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped their memories of us. And so, 30 years from now, our brothers go down the street, without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask "Why," we will be able to say "Vietnam," and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead, the place where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.

NARRATOR

Across America, thousands of families by now were visiting the gravesites of their children killed in Vietnam. And millions of Americans were sharing their losses.

FAMILY AT GRAVE

Our father, who art in heaven...Hail Mary, full of grace...in his memory.
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FOR THE COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT OF THIS REMINDER OF THE STATE OF THE HOME FRONT DURING THE VIETNAM WAR:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/111ts.html

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Swiftboaters charges against Kerry listed as an urban legend
Swiftboaters' charges against John Kerry listed as an urban legend:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_swift_boat_veterans.htm

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Re: Anti-Kerry vets not there that day

BumbleBeeBoogie, excerpting William Rood's account, wrote:

Shame on the media for giving these people a platform.

Shame on the media for allowing dishonest men to dishonor honest men who served honorably.

Shame on you, swolf, McGentrix, Brand X and all the rest on this board for pretending this was a "he said/he said" situation, ignoring official Navy records and the testimony of everyone who was actually in a position to know.

Most of all, shame on all the chickenhawks and chickenshits who, 30 years from now, will do the same thing to some Iraq war veteran who went home and wondered out loud who will be the last American soldier to die for a lie.

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Look like the Bush campaign got one it's surrogates to grab a bunch of old drunks off the bar stool at the local VFW where they have been waiting for a way to get even with Kerry since he turned against the war thirty years ago.

The few like Elliot who used to support Kerry seem like they were the targets of an "intervention" process-the get surrounded by their old buddies who bring them over to their side.

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Quote:

Shame on you, swolf, McGentrix, Brand X and all the rest on this board for pretending this was a "he said/he said" situation, ignoring official Navy records and the testimony of everyone who was actually in a position to know.

After all YOU'VE done and said on this forum I should be ashamed? Laughing

Man, that is rich coming from YOU!

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Brand X, I've seen you as a barometer on this -- you said something about the SBVFT ads backfiring on Bush and I said whew, then you went back into the fray defending this and that and I said oh no he's taking it seriously?? And that's seemed to reflect what a surprising (to me) number of people were thinking. So what are you thinking now?

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sozobe wrote:

Brand X, I've seen you as a barometer on this -- you said something about the SBVFT ads backfiring on Bush and I said whew, then you went back into the fray defending this and that and I said oh no he's taking it seriously?? And that's seemed to reflect what a surprising (to me) number of people were thinking. So what are you thinking now?

So far I think Kerry exaggerated many things after the war when he had a willing media's ear and I'm glad these other vets are getting their 15 minutes of voice.

And still wondering why none of the 9 of Kerry's on stage vets aren't allowed to speak to media without approval from the Kerry campaign, seems they want to keep everyone 'singing off the same sheet of music' to me.

I do take them seriously but the dust is far from being settled, for example now there is a previously unmentioned crew member refuting Rood's account. Rolling Eyes

So I'm reading all these accounts and not much more clear on the whole thing though I can't dismiss it because Kerry put his service out front from the start.

Example:

Quote:

Kerry Defender Rood Contradicted by Crewmate

In a development that the establishment press is treating like bombshell news, former Swift Boat commander William B. Rood has stepped forward to defend John Kerry against the charge that he exaggerated his valor during the Vietnam War in descriptions of a foiled February 1969 ambush on his boat.

But unmentioned in coverage of Rood's story so far is one salient fact: His account is sharply contradicted by one of Kerry's own crewmates, who complained eight years ago that Kerry took credit for bravery he didn't deserve - in an action that earned him the Silver Star.

Story Continues Below

In Sunday editions of the Chicago Tribune, Rood backs Kerry's claim that he singlehandedly took out a Viet Cong attacker who planned to ambush his Swift Boat with a grenade launcher along the Bay Hap River.
Recalling what he saw from a different Swift Boat, Rood writes:

"Kerry, followed by one member of his crew, jumped ashore and chased a VC behind a hooch - a thatched hut - maybe 15 yards inland from the ambush site.

"Some who were there that day recall the man being wounded as he ran. Neither I nor Jerry Leeds, our boat's leading petty officer with whom I've checked my recollection of all these events, recalls that, which is no surprise. Recollections of those who go through experiences like that frequently differ."

They sure do.

Unmentioned by Rood in his Chicago Tribune report is the account of Tom Bellodeau, who, unlike Rood, was actually aboard Kerry's boat when the VC in question leveled his grenade launcher at them.

"You know, I shot that guy," Bellodeau told the Boston Globe during a 1996 interview, correcting an earlier Globe report that echoed Kerry's claim that he alone had neutralized the enemy ambusher.

"He jumped up, he looked right at me, I looked at him," Bellodeau continued. "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."

Only after the enemy soldier was wounded, said Bellodeau, did Kerry leap from the boat onto the beach and pursue him around the back of a nearby hut, where the would-be president finished him off.

Echoing ex-Commander Rood's version, Kerry's Silver Star citation credits him alone for taking down the Viet Cong soldier, making no mention whatsoever of Bellodeau, who has died in the intervening years.

"An enemy soldier sprang up from his position not 10 feet from Swift Boat 94 and fled," the combat award reads. "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."

And even though Kerry spoke at Bellodeau's funeral, he has done nothing to incorporate his crewmate's role in subsequent accounts of the encounter with the enemy fighter.

In a 1996 interview, Kerry made no mention of the first shot whatsoever.

"It was either going to be him or it was going to be us. It was that simple. I don't know why it wasn't us - I mean, to this day. He had a rocket pointed right at our boat. He stood up out of a hole, and none of us saw him until he was standing in front of us, aiming a rocket right at us, and, for whatever reason, he didn't pull the trigger - he turned and ran."

When pressed for more details, the top Democrat said: "I just won't talk about all of it. I don't and can't. The things that really turned me I've never told anybody. Nobody would understand."

Within hours of the Chicago Tribune's Saturday afternoon announcement that William Rood had decided to go public with his Kerry defense, more than 1,500 news outlets were touting the story on their Web sites, with the Associated Press offering no fewer than 10 updates.

None of them mentioned Kerry's crewmate Tom Bellodeau.

Yes, NewsMax

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BrandX:

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=853519#853519

BBB has assembled a huge list of articles that, if you truly are seeking to know the truth on this situation, you should read....

Cycloptichorn

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

BrandX:

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=853519#853519

BBB has assembled a huge list of articles that, if you truly are seeking to know the truth on this situation, you should read....

Cycloptichorn

I have read all, and still think the 'truth' lies somewhere in the middle.

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I'll give you credit Brand X, at least you're somewhere in the middle, trying to find it.

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Agreed.

Cycloptichorn

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McCain condemns ad, Kerry's commander backs off

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