Historian Burkett: Kerry Must Disclose Full Record (WARNING: KERRY MEDAL CONTENT)

[Cool Hand Luke 22:36]

Historian Burkett: Kerry Must Disclose Full Record

Looks like Kerry's belated partial release of his service records is raising more questions than it answers. Looks like the wheels are coming off the Kerry campaign.

_________________________________________________________

Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Monday, April 26, 2004

A leading historian of the Vietnam War doubts the Kerry campaign's denials that it is withholding parts of the senator's military records.

Since Kerry's presidential campaign made the belated decision to go public with the former Navy lieutenant's records on its Web site, questions about his file – and what he is actually releasing – have deepened.

As the Boston Globe reported last week, one former military commander said Kerry had posted his, not Kerry's, after-action report.

"All of Sen. Kerry’s U.S. Navy military records will be posted on his Web site," spokesman Michael Meehan has promised.

More than 120 pages from Kerry’s naval service records were posted on the candidate’s official Web site by Wednesday. Shortly afterward, the number of pages shot past 200 as the campaign added after-action combat reports (“spot†reports), the command history of Coastal Division 11 – 1969, and the Presidential Unit Citation for Task Force 115.

Though the release of such records might appear like full disclosure, the release has been clouded by claims that some of those newly released after-action combat reports might not be germane to Kerry’s own combat history.

On the campaign's site, Kerry was described as the skipper of Navy boat No. 94 during actions in late January 1969.

But Edward Peck, who was the skipper of the 94 before Kerry took over, told the Globe that after-action combat reports posted by the campaign for January 1969 involve combat when he, not Kerry, was the skipper. “Those are definitely mine,†Peck said. “There is no doubt about it.â€

The reports at issue include references to an ambush of Patrol Craft Fast 94, or PCF 94.

In a posted summary of what happened on Jan. 26, 1969, the campaign said:

"Kerry served on boat No. 94 alongside another boat, No. 66. “PCFs 94 and 66 escorted troops up the Ong Doc River early in the morning when they were ambushed by gun and rocket fire from approximately 40 men on both sides of the river. Two B-40 rounds hit close to Kerry’s boat, while PCF 66 received 2 B-40 rocket hits. Three men on PCF66 were wounded. A junk containing South Vietnamese troops was also sunk, killing 11 South Vietnamese troops. Intelligence reports after the mission indicated that the Viet Cong troops may have planned the ambush in advance.â€

However, Peck said that he was the skipper of the 94 boat then, and that Kerry was definitely not even on board.

In another summary of combat action, the campaign summarizes action that took place on Jan. 29, 1969:

“While Kerry’s boat and another [PCF 72] were probing a canal along the river, Kerry’s boat came under heavy fire and was hit by a B-40 rocket in the cabin area. One member of Kerry’s crew – Forward Gunner David Alston – suffered shrapnel wounds in his head. His injuries were not considered serious and he was sent to the 29th Evac Hospital at Binh Thuy.â€

But Peck said he was the skipper on this day too, recalling it well since he was severely wounded in the action.

Furthermore, the Navy combat report posted by Kerry's campaign states that Peck and Alston were injured in the same event. But there is no mention of Kerry in that report.

Burkett: How Kerry Can Give Full Disclosure

Closely following all these developments is B.G. Burkett, the co-author of “Stolen Valor,†a highly acclaimed book on the Vietnam War.

Burkett, who has advised the FBI and sometimes the media on cases involving fraudulent military records, said that what inflamed him about the Kerry case was that the American public was being spoon-fed the record.

“Kerry is not being forthright,†complained Burkett, who wants to see the unabridged, uncensored version of the record.

He is demanding that the candidate bite the bullet and sign off on a Standard Form (SF) 180, giving the media the power to examine and cull the full record, not just bits and pieces selected by the Kerry camp.

This is the only way the public and press can be assured they have and may review Kerry’s full military record, Burkett says.

Meanwhile, Burkett is digging below the surface of the official paperwork – revealed and yet unrevealed – hoping that the relatively small Vietnam Swift Boat community will come forth and reveal a more realistic picture of Kerry’s truncated tour in Vietnam.

That tour was cut short by Kerry invoking an informal regulation that permitted thrice-wounded Navy personnel to leave the combat zone early.

Retired Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard, his commanding officer at the time, now says the wound for which Kerry was awarded his first Purple Heart "resembled a scrape from a fingernail."

Burkett, who has been receiving intelligence from the field, wonders why one particular fellow Kerry vet, who parked his boat next to Kerry’s for a good portion of the famous tour, “didn’t know that Kerry was ever wounded.â€

Burkett finds that factoid amazing, citing that the sailor recounted that the first time he was ever aware of wounds suffered by Kerry was when he was told that the apparently hale and hearty young officer was departing station for being wounded three times.

Although Burkett told NewsMax that he had personally spoken to the serviceman in question, he declined to identify him because of the sailor’s request for anonymity.

“He’s not going to come forward,†Burkett explained. “He had a good relationship with Kerry in those days and wants to leave it at that.â€

Burkett found it curious that the sailor could not recall a single anti-war remark by Kerry during their association in-country.

The crusading author and investigator would also like to find just one person who was a reliable on-the-scene witness to what happened when Kerry jumped ashore from his boat to confront a hostile in the jungle.

For that action Kerry was awarded the Silver Star. Included in the citation: “With utter disregard for his own safety and the enemy rockets, he again ordered a charge on the enemy, beached his own boat only ten feet from the VC rocket position, and personally led a landing party ashore in pursuit of the enemy.â€

About Those 'Atrocities'

But facts can be elusive after so many years, admitted Burkett, who realistically believes that Kerry’s Achilles' heel in all the recent brouhaha might not come from nitpicking the facts but from a hue and cry from the Swift Boat community still reeling over charges that Kerry levied on Capitol Hill in 1971 that he and the Swift-Boaters, as well as many others in-theater, were chronically guilty of “war crimes.â€

Burkett pointed to a simmering rebuke to Kerry now festering in the Swift Boat clan.

According to the author, a letter is being prepared by a group of Kerry former comrades-in-arms charging the candidate with lying about the scurrilous charges of war crimes for political gain.

The movement, ironically, is being spearheaded, Burkett said, by none other than fellow vet John O’Neil, who once debated Kerry on the issue decades ago on the old Dick Cavett show.

O’Neil, an attorney in Houston, is preparing a stinging letter to Kerry signed by as many former Swift boat personnel as possible and released to the public.

Debunking Kerry is not a new chore for Burkett.

His book “Stolen Valor†challenges Kerry’s facts and figures that were touted in the old “Winter Soldiers†campaign, which featured ostensible combat vets grieving at the horrors of what the U.S. perpetrated in Vietnam.

Burkett took special notice of Kerry's claim that the core of the war protesters contained 150 honorably discharged vets of the conflict. His own painstaking research indicates that scores of the membership did not, in fact, serve. In some cases, there was no record of some individuals having ever matriculated in the U.S. armed forces.

Like so many vets, says Burkett, he is affronted by Kerry’s about-face – first being shamed of his Vietnam service, but now touting it at every opportunity.

 

[Tom C.]

I suspect it is worse than it appears. I suspect that, in addition to the Purple Hearts being fake, the other medals are also fabrications. When you write the reports, you can put yourself in for anything. The records that Kerry put on his website, claiming to be combat records from his boat, turn out to be from his boat prior to his arrival. They were after action reports from his predecessor, who is not amused that Kerry is claiming them as his own.

 

[Cool Hand Luke 22:36]

The records that Kerry put on his website, claiming to be combat records from his boat, turn out to be from his boat prior to his arrival. They were after action reports from his predecessor, who is not amused that Kerry is claiming them as his own.

The Kerry campaign finally pulled those records from its website just last night after a week's worth of denials.

Kerry's campaign is collapsing like cheap lawn furniture...

 

[bountyhunter]

YAWN

I didn't read what was posted on his website... but here is what is on record about how, when and why Kerry was awarded his medals. Decide for yourself if you think they were legit:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/kerry/service.asp



In Vietnam, Lieutenant John Kerry served aboard 50-foot aluminum boats known as PCFs (from "patrol craft fast") or "Swift boats" (supposedly an acronym for "Shallow Water Inshore Fast Tactical Craft"). Despite the implications contained in the piece quoted above ("that duty wasn't the worst you could draw"), Swift boat duty was plenty dangerous:
. . . two weeks after [Kerry] arrived in Vietnam, the swift boat mission changed — and Kerry went from having one of the safest assignments in the escalating conflict to one of the most dangerous. Under the newly launched Operation SEALORD, swift boats were charged with patrolling the narrow waterways of the Mekong Delta to draw fire and smoke out the enemy. Cruising inlets and coves and canals, swift boats were especially vulnerable targets.

Originally designed to ferry oil workers to ocean rigs, swift boats offered flimsy protection. Because bullets could easily penetrate the hull, sailors hung flak jackets over the sides. The boat's loud engine invited ambushes. Speed was its saving grace — but that wasn't always an option in narrow, heavily mined canals.

The swift boat crew typically consisted of a college-educated skipper, such as Kerry, and five blue-collar sailors averaging 19 years old. The most vulnerable sailor sat in the "tub" — a squat nest that rose above the pilot house — and operated a pair of .50-caliber machine guns. Another gunner was in the rear. Kerry's mission was to wait until hidden Viet Cong guerrillas started shooting, then order his men to return fire.
It was not at all unusual that a Swift boat crew member might be wounded more than once in a relatively short period of time, or that injuries meriting the award of a Purple Heart might not be serious enough to require time off from duty. According to a Boston Globe overview of John Kerry's Vietnam experience:

Under [Navy Admiral Elmo] Zumwalt's command, swift boats would aggressively engage the enemy. Zumwalt, who died in 2000, calculated in his autobiography that these men under his command had a 75 percent chance of being killed or wounded during a typical year.

"There were an awful lot of Purple Hearts — from shrapnel, some of those might have been M-40 grenades," said George Elliott, Kerry's commanding officer. "The Purple Hearts were coming down in boxes. Kerry, he had three Purple Hearts. None of them took him off duty. Not to belittle it, that was more the rule than the exception."
And according to Douglas Brinkley's history of John Kerry and the Vietnam War:
As generally understood, the Purple Heart is given to any U.S. citizen wounded in wartime service to the nation. Giving out Purple Hearts increased as the United States started sending Swifts up rivers. Sailors — no longer safe on aircraft carriers or battleships in the Gulf of Tonkin — were starting to bleed, a lot.
John Kerry was wounded in his first significant combat action, when he volunteered for a special mission on 2 December 1968:

"It was a half-assed action that hardly qualfied as combat, but it was my first, and that made it very exciting," [Kerry said]. "Three of us, two enlisted men and myself, had stayed up all night in a Boston Whaler [a foam-filled-fiberglass boat] patrolling the shore off a Viet Cong-infested peninsula north of Cam Ranh . . . Most of the night had been spent being scared ????less by fisherman whom we would suddenly creep up on in the darkness. Once, one of the sailors was so startled by two men who surprised us as we came around a corner ten yards from the shore that he actually pulled the trigger on his machine gun. Fortunately for the two men, he had forgotten to switch off the safety . . ."

As it turned out, the two men really were just a pair of innocent fisherman who didn't know where one zone began and the other ended. Their papers were perfectly in order, if their night's fishing over. The fear was that they were VC. Allowing them to continue might have compromised the mission. For the next four hours Kerry's Boston Whaler, using paddles, brought boatloads of fisherman they found in sampans, all operating in a curfew zone, back to the Swift. It was tiring work. "We deposited them with the Swift boat that remained out in the deep water to give us cover," Kerry continued. "Then, very early in the morning, around 2:00 or 3:00, while it was still dark, we proceeded up the tiny inlet between the island and the peninsula to the point designated as our objective. The jungle closed in on us on both sides. It was scary as hell. You could hear yourself breathing. We were almost touching the shore. Suddenly, through the magnified moonlight of the infrared 'starlight scope,' I watched, mesmerized, as a group of sampans glided in toward the shore. We had been briefed that this was a favorite crossing area for VC trafficking contraband."

With its motor turned off, Kerry paddled the Boston Whaler out of the inlet into the beginning of the bay. Simultaneously the Vietnamese pulled their sampans up onto the beach and began to unload something; he couldn't tell what, so he decided to illuminate the proceedings with a flare. The entire sky seemed to explode into daylight. The men from the sampans bolted erect, stiff with shock for only an instant before they sprang for cover like a herd of panicked gazelles Kerry had once seen on TV's Wild Kingdom. "We opened fire," he went on. "The light from the flares started to fade, the air was full of explosions. My M-16 jammed, and as I bent down in the boat to grab another gun, a stinging piece of heat socked into my arm and just seemed to burn like hell. By this time one of the sailors had started the engine and we ran by the beach, strafing it. Then it was quiet.

"We stayed quiet and low because we did not want to illuminate ourselves at that point," Kerry explained. "In the dead of night, without any knowledge of what kind of force was there, we were not all about to go crawling on the beach to get our asses shot off. We were unprotected; we didn't have ammunition, we didn't have cover, we just weren't prepared for that . . . So we first shot the sampans so that they were destroyed and whatever was in them was destroyed." Then their cover boat warned of a possible VC ambush in the small channel they had to exit through, and Kerry and company departed the area.
The "stinging piece of heat" Kerry felt in his arm had been caused by a piece of shrapnel, a wound for which he was awarded a Purple Heart. The injury was not serious — Brinkley notes that Kerry went on a regular Swift boat patrol the next day with a bandage on his arm, and the Boston Globe quoted William Schachte, who oversaw the mission and went on to become a rear admiral, as recalling that "It was not a very serious wound at all."

Kerry earned his second Purple Heart while returning from a PCF mission up the Bo De River on 20 February 1969:

One of the mission's support helicopters had been hit by small-arms fire during the trip up the Bo De and the rest had returned with it to their base to refuel and get the damage inspected. While there the pilots found that they wouldn't be able to return to the Swifts for several more hours. "We therefore had a choice: to wait for what was not a confirmed return by the helos [and] give any snipers more time to set up an ambush for our exit or we could take a chance and exit immediately without any cover," Kerry recorded in his notebook. "We chose the latter."

Just as they moved out onto the Cua Lon, at a junction known for unfriendliness in the past, kaboom! PCF-94 had taken a rocket-propelled grenade round off the port side, fired at them from the far left bank. Kerry felt a piece of hot shrapnel bore into his left leg. With blood running down the deck, the Swift managed to make an otherwise uneventful exit into the Gulf of Thailand, where they rendezvoused with a Coast Guard cutter. The injury Kerry suffered in that action earned his his second Purple Heart.
Brinkley noted that, as in the previous case, "Kerry's wound was not serious enough to require time off from duty."

Kerry earned his Silver Star on 28 February 1969, when he beached his craft and jumped off it with an M-16 rifle in hand to chase and shoot a guerrilla who was running into position to launch a B-40 rocket at Kerry's boat. Contrary to the account quoted above, Kerry did not shoot a "Charlie" who had "fired at the boat and missed," whose "rocket launcher was empty," and who was "already dead or dying" after being "knocked down with a .50 caliber round." Kerry's boat had been hit by a rocket fired by someone else — the guerrilla in question was still armed with a live B-40 and had only been clipped in the leg; when the guerrilla got up to run, Kerry assumed he was getting into position to launch a rocket and shot him:

On Feb. 28, 1969, Kerry's boat received word that a swift boat was being ambushed. As Kerry raced to the scene, his boat became another target, as a Viet Cong B-40 rocket blast shattered a window. Kerry could have ordered his crew to hit the enemy and run. But the skipper had a more aggressive reaction in mind. Beach the boat, Kerry ordered, and the craft's bow was quickly rammed upon the shoreline. Out of the bush appeared a teenager in a loin cloth, clutching a grenade launcher.

An enemy was just feet away, holding a weapon with enough firepower to blow up the boat. Kerry's forward gunner, [Tommy] Belodeau, shot and clipped the Viet Cong in the leg. Then Belodeau's gun jammed, according to other crewmates (Belodeau died in 1997). [Michael] Medeiros tried to fire at the Viet Cong, but he couldn't get a shot off.

In an interview, Kerry added a chilling detail.

"This guy could have dispatched us in a second, but for . . . I'll never be able to explain, we were literally face to face, he with his B-40 rocket and us in our boat, and he didn't pull the trigger. I would not be here today talking to you if he had," Kerry recalled. "And Tommy clipped him, and he started going [down.] I thought it was over."

Instead, the guerrilla got up and started running. "We've got to get him, make sure he doesn't get behind the hut, and then we're in trouble," Kerry recalled.

So Kerry shot and killed the guerrilla. "I don't have a second's question about that, nor does anybody who was with me," he said. "He was running away with a live B-40, and, I thought, poised to turn around and fire it." Asked whether that meant Kerry shot the guerrilla in the back, Kerry said, "No, absolutely not. He was hurt, other guys were shooting from back, side, back. There is no, there is not a scintilla of question in any person's mind who was there [that] this guy was dangerous, he was a combatant, he had an armed weapon."
Another member of the crew confirmed Kerry's account for the Boston Globe and expressed no doubt that Kerry's action had saved both the boat and its crew:

The crewman with the best view of the action was Frederic Short, the man in the tub operating the twin guns. Short had not talked to Kerry for 34 years, until after he was recently contacted by a Globe reporter. Kerry said he had "totally forgotten" Short was on board that day.

Short had joined Kerry's crew just two weeks earlier, as a last-minute replacement, and he was as green as the Arkansas grass of his home. He said he didn't realize that he should have carried an M-16 rifle, figuring the tub's machine guns would be enough. But as Kerry stood face to face with the guerrilla carrying the rocket, Short realized his predicament. With the boat beached and the bow tilted up, a guard rail prevented him from taking aim at the enemy. For a terrifying moment, the guerrilla looked straight at Short with the rocket.

Short believes the guerrilla didn't fire because he was too close and needed to be a suitable distance to hit the boat squarely and avoid ricochet debris. Short tried to protect his skipper.

"I laid in fire with the twin .50s, and he got behind a hootch," recalled Short. "I laid 50 rounds in there, and Mr. Kerry went in. Rounds were coming everywhere. We were getting fire from both sides of the river. It was a canal. We were receiving fire from the opposite bank, also, and there was no way I could bring my guns to bear on that."

Short said there is "no doubt" that Kerry saved the boat and crew. "That was a him-or-us thing, that was a loaded weapon with a shape charge on it . . . It could pierce a tank. I wouldn't have been here talking to you. I probably prayed more up that creek than a Southern Baptist church does in a month."

Charles Gibson, who served on Kerry's boat that day because he was on a one-week indoctrination course, said Kerry's action was dangerous but necessary. "Every day you wake up and say, 'How the hell did we get out of that alive?'" Gibson said. "Kerry was a good leader. He knew what he was doing."
Although Kerry's superiors were somewhat concerned about the issue of his leaving his boat unattended, they nonetheless found his actions courageous and worthy of commendation:

When Kerry returned to his base, his commanding officer, George Elliott, raised an issue with Kerry: the fine line between whether the action merited a medal or a court-martial.

"When [Kerry] came back from the well-publicized action where he beached his boat in middle of ambush and chased a VC around a hootch and ended his life, when [Kerry] came back and I heard his debrief, I said, 'John, I don't know whether you should be court-martialed or given a medal, court-martialed for leaving your ship, your post,'" Elliott recalled in an interview.

"But I ended up writing it up for a Silver Star, which is well deserved, and I have no regrets or second thoughts at all about that," Elliott said. A Silver Star, which the Navy said is its fifth-highest medal, commends distinctive gallantry in action.

Asked why he had raised the issue of a court-martial, Elliott said he did so "half tongue-in-cheek, because there was never any question I wanted him to realize I didn't want him to leave his boat unattended. That was in context of big-ship Navy — my background. A C.O. [commanding officer] never leaves his ship in battle or anything else. I realize this, first of all, it was pretty courageous to turn into an ambush even though you usually find no more than two or three people there. On the other hand, on an operation some time later, down on the very tip of the peninsula, we had lost one boat and several men in a big operation, and they were hit by a lot more than two or three people."

Elliott stressed that he never questioned Kerry's decision to kill the Viet Cong, and he appeared in Boston at Kerry's side during the 1996 Senate race to back up that aspect of Kerry's action.

"I don't think they were exactly ready to court-martial him," said Wade Sanders, who commanded a swift boat that sometimes accompanied Kerry's vessel, and who later became deputy assistant secretary of the Navy. "I can only say from the certainty borne of experience that there must have been some rumbling about, 'What are we going to do with this guy, he turned his boat,' and I can hear the words, 'He endangered his crew.' But from our position, the tactic to take is whatever action is best designed to eliminate the enemy threat, which is what he did."

Indeed, the Silver Star citation makes clear that Kerry's performance on that day was both extraordinary and risky. "With utter disregard for his own safety and the enemy rockets," the citation says, Kerry "again ordered a charge on the enemy, beached his boat only 10 feet from the Viet Cong rocket position and personally led a landing party ashore in pursuit of the enemy . . . The extraordinary daring and personal courage of Lt. Kerry in attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire were responsible for the highly successful mission."
Kerry was injured yet again on 13 March 1969, in an action for which he was awarded both a Bronze Star and his third Purple Heart. According to Kerry's Bronze Star citation (signed by Admiral Zumwalt himself):

Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry was serving as an Officer-in-Charge of Inshore Patrol Craft 94, one of five boats conducting a Sealords operation in the Bay Hap River. While exiting the river, a mine detonated under another Inshore Patrol Craft and almost simultaneously, another mine detonated wounding Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry in the right arm. In addition, all units began receiving small arms and automatic weapons fire from the river banks. When Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry discovered he had a man overboard, he returned upriver to assist. The man in the water was receiving sniper fire from both banks. Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry directed his gunners to provide suppressing fire, while from an exposed position on the bow, his arm bleeding and in pain and with disregard for his personal safety, he pulled the man aboard. Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry then directed his boat to return to and assist the other damaged boat to safety. Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry's calmness, professionalism and great personal courage under fire were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.
According to the Boston Globe, this was the only one of Kerry's three Purple Heart injuries that caused him to miss any days of service:

Kerry had been wounded three times and received three Purple Hearts. Asked about the severity of the wounds, Kerry said that one of them cost him about two days of service, and that the other two did not interrupt his duty. "Walking wounded," as Kerry put it. A shrapnel wound in his left arm gave Kerry pain for years. Kerry declined a request from the Globe to sign a waiver authorizing the release of military documents that are covered under the Privacy Act and that might shed more light on the extent of the treatment Kerry needed as a result of the wounds.
Although there was no hard-and-fast rule, U.S. military procedure generally allowed any serviceman who received three Purple Hearts to request reassignment away from a combat zone, so Kerry talked to Commodore Charles F. Horne, an administrative official and commander of the coastal squadron in which he served. Four days after Kerry took his third hit of shrapnel, Horne forwarded a request on Kerry's behalf to the Navy Bureau of Personnel asking that Kerry be reassigned to "duty as a personal aide in Boston, New York, or Washington, D.C." Soon afterwards Kerry was transferred to Cam Ranh Bay to await further orders, and within a month he had been reassigned as a personal aide and flag lieutenant to Rear Admiral Walter F. Schlech, Jr. with the Military Sea Transportation Service based in Brooklyn, New York.

Kerry served with Admiral Schlech until the end of 1969, when requested an early discharge from the Navy in order to run for a Massachusetts congressional seat. Admiral Schlech approved the request, and on 3 January 1970 Kerry received an honorable discharge, six months early.

 

[bountyhunter]

Biased Much?

Burkett found it curious that the sailor could not recall a single anti-war remark by Kerry during their association in-country.

Yeah, that is curious that a naval commander in a combat zone would refrain from bad-mouthing the war he was serving in at the time.... even though doing so actually violates the UCMJ.

Burkett, who has been receiving intelligence from the field, wonders why one particular fellow Kerry vet, who parked his boat next to Kerry’s for a good portion of the famous tour, “didn’t know that Kerry was ever wounded.â€

Really? And that proves the wounds never happened? Kerry stated himself that two of them caused NO loss of duty time so he never missed a day and the other one only caused a couple of missed days.

If they posted incorrect dates about when Kerry was CO on the boat, then publish the corrected dates and set the record straight. This article is a hatchet job.

 

[BigG]

What was that remark about rats deserting a sinking ship?

 

[Standing Wolf]

Kerry's campaign is collapsing like cheap lawn furniture.

Well, ding, dang, darn it all to heck and back! I see no need to impugn the good name of cheap lawn furniture by comparing it to that Kerry creature's campaign.

 

[Cool Hand Luke 22:36]

YAWN

I didn't read what was posted on his website...

Wake up and smell the coffee, Kerry's a liar and a loser.

Kerry's campaign has pulled 20+ pages of "disclosed" material from his website because it credited Kerry with swiftboat actions that took place under another commander. Kerry has yet to release his medical records, i.e, the Navy corpsman's initial evaluation, regarding his first "wound." This is the "wound" received on a mission where Kerry's swiftboat did not receive enemy fire, a "wound" his commander described as looking like a "fingernail scratch", and the one where his commander who actually examined the "wound" turned down Kerry's request for a Purple Heart.

Snopes is good for debunking a lot of urban myths. However none of the questions about Kerry's medical records for his first Purple heart are answered by the Snopes website which is now about 2 months out of date.