I don't buy the premis that the Swiftboat Vets contradict themselves at all, and I don't buy the premis that emergent evidence damages their assertions. As for emergent evidence, it looks as though Kerry's boat might just have taken another hit, with Runyon and Zaldonis, two of Kerry's "I was there" supporters, taking a little shrapnel themselves.:
Quote:Swift boat interview
Robert Novak
August 27, 2004
NEW YORK -- Retired Rear Adm. William L. Schachte Jr. said Thursday in his first on-the-record interview about the Swift boat veterans dispute that "I was absolutely in the skimmer" in the early morning on Dec. 2, 1968, when Lt. (j.g.) John Kerry was involved in an incident which led to his first Purple Heart.
"Kerry nicked himself with a M-79 (grenade launcher)," Schachte said in a telephone interview from his home in Charleston, S.C. He said, "Kerry requested a Purple Heart."
Schachte, who also was then a lieutenant junior grade, said he was in command of the small Boston whaler or skimmer, with Kerry aboard in his first combat mission in the Vietnam War. The third crew member was an enlisted man whose name Schachte did not remember.
Two enlisted men who appeared at the podium with Sen. Kerry at the Democratic National Convention in Boston have asserted that they were alone in the small boat with Kerry, with no other officer present. Schachte said it "was not possible" for Kerry to have gone out alone so soon after joining the Swift boat command in late November of 1968.
Kerry supporters say that no critics of the Democratic presidential candidate ever were aboard a boat with him in combat. Washington lawyer Lanny Davis has contended that Schachte was not aboard the Boston whaler, and the statement in "Unfit for Command" that he was aboard undermines that critical book's credibility.
Schachte until now has refused to speak out publicly on this question and agreed to give only two interviews. One was a television interview with Lisa Myers of NBC News. The second was a print interview with me.
Schachte described the use of the skimmer operating very close to shore as a technique that he personally designed to flush enemy forces on the banks of Mekong River so that the larger Swift boats could move in. At about 3 a.m. on Dec. 2, Schachte said, the skimmer -- code-named "Batman" -- fired a hand-held flare. He said that after Kerry's M-16 rifle jammed, the new officer picked up the M-79 and "I heard a 'thunk.' There was no fire from the enemy," he said.
Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis are the two enlisted men who said they were aboard the skimmer and did not know Schachte. However, two other former officers interviewed Thursday confirmed that Schachte was the originator of the technique and always was aboard the Boston whaler for these missions.
Grant Hibbard, who as a lieutenant commander was Schachte's superior officer, confirmed that Schachte always went on these skimmer missions and "I don't think he (Kerry) was alone" on his first assignment. Hibbard said he had told Kerry to "forget it" when he asked for a Purple Heart.
Ted Peck, another Swift boat commander, said, "I remember Bill (Schachte) telling me it didn't happen" -- that is, Kerry getting an enemy-inflicted wound. He said it would be "impossible" for Kerry to have been in the skimmer without Schachte.
"I was astonished by Kerry's version" (in his book, "Tour of Duty") of what happened Dec. 2, Schachte said Thursday. When asked to support the Kerry critics in the Swift boat controversy, Schachte said, "I didn't want to get involved." But he said he gradually began to change his mind when he saw his own involvement and credibility challenged, starting with Lanny Davis on CNN's "Crossfire" Aug. 12.
The next time he saw Kerry after the first Purple Heart incident, Schachte said, was "about 20 years" later on the U.S. Senate subway in the basement of the Russell Senate Office Building. "I called, 'Hey, John.' He replied, 'Batman.' I was absolutely amazed by his memory." He said they "talked about having lunch" but never did.
Schachte said he has never been contacted by or talked to anybody in the Bush-Cheney campaign or any Republican organization. He said he is a political independent who has voted for candidates of both parties.
©2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc
Cyc wrote: ... How have the 'memories' changed given new details? How can a man who previously said 'Kerry sure saved my life that day' now be convinced that Kerry is a liar and did not, in fact, save his life that day?
No one said anything about memories changing. Opinions changed.
Quote:Much more likely is the fact that, Gasp! Politics are involved!
I'm sure politics plays a part in how the whole flap plays.
Quote:And, your answer to my second question is misleading. You didn't actually answer it.
If your experiences were different than the reports Kerry was given and subsequently reported to Congress, are you claiming that widespread abuses such as the ones he reported did not, in fact, happen? Is that your contention, that Kerry is a liar becuase atrocities were not committed in Vietnam and drug use was not a major problem amongst the soldiers?
I answered it, you just didn't like the answer. I do not assert there were not outrages and atrocities perpetrated by US military personnel. I reject, on basis of intimate personal experience, the premis that such were "widespread" or "commonplace". Among any sufficiently large group of humans, there will be some who will undertake criminal activity, whether you're looking at a warzone or not. Courts Martial and sanctions relating to criminal activity of all sorts in Vietnam are matters of abundant record, as they have been in all conflicts. Some criminals were prosecuted and convicted for things such as theft, rape, murder involving other US military, or fordrug use or insubordination, and some criminals were prosecuted for crimes directed against indigenous civilians. It is, by the UCMJ, incumbent upon any officer or enlisted man witnessing or having knowledge of any criminal activity immediately to report that activity through proper command channels, on pain of exposing the non-reporting service member to related prosecution. Apart from that, there is personal honor and unit morale. If Kerry, or any one whose testiony he later recounted, witnessed or had knowledge of criminal activity, failure to report same was itself a crime. I note that many of the "Winter Soldiers", including the founder of VVAW, subsequently were found never to have been in Vietnam, that many who were at some point were In Country were not in combat or other field units, and that some in fact never were in the military.
Not all criminal incidents were reported nor were all criminals prosecuted; to assume otherwise would require one disregard the history of the human race. There always have been and will be thugs. A thug is a thug, however, in or out of uniform. A very small proportion of the literally millions of Americans who served in Vietnam were thugs. Overwhelmingly most of them did the best they could with what they had to do a job they didn't like. Far, far more of them were legitimate heroes than were thugs.
Yes, there was drug use. In some essentially non-combat outfits, it was rampant. On the whole, however, it was my experience that there was far more drug use here in The US than I noticed over there. I do know for a fact my immediate contemporaries and I took a very, very dim view of any sort of substance abuse while we were in any situation subject to hostile contact; the well being of the entire group is critically dependent on the competent performance of every individual member of the group. We were assigned a druggie from time to time, but they never stayed long in the unit. You don't trust your life to a doper. A little grass and/or booze off-duty in a secure area was another matter (and the occasion of some humorous anecdotes), but in Indian Country, especially while On Operation, everybody wanted everybody else sharp (and my outfits spent a helluva lotta time On Operation).
"Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that."
Richard M. Nixon, television broadcast, 3 Nov. 1969
