Included in today's email of "The Daily Reckoning" (a contrarian investor newsletter) was the following:
>*** And now this about "Lucky Jack Kerry" from a source
>we're not sure we can reveal, said to be a retired Rear
>Admiral:
>
>"I was in the Delta shortly after he [Kerry] left. I know
>that area well. I know the operations he was involved in
>well. I know the tactics and the doctrine used. I know the
>equipment. Although I was attached to CTF-116 (PBRs) I
>spent a fair amount of time with CTF-115 (swift boats),
>Kerry's command.
>
>"Here are my problems and suspicions:
>
>(1) Kerry was in-country less than four months and
>collected, a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three purple
>hearts. I never heard of anybody with any outfit I worked
>with (including SEAL One, the Sea Wolves, Riverines and the
>River Patrol Force) collecting that much hardware so fast,
>and for such pedestrian actions. The Swifts did a
>commendable job. But that duty wasn't the worst you could
>draw. They operated only along the coast and in the major
>rivers (Bassac and Mekong). The rough stuff in the hot
>areas was mainly handled by the smaller, faster PBRs.
>
>(2) Three Purple Hearts but no limp. All injuries so minor
>that he lost no time from duty. Amazing luck. Or he was
>putting himself in for medals every time he bumped his head
>on the wheel house hatch? Combat on the boats was almost
>always at close range. You didn't have minor wounds. At
>least not often. Not three times in a row. Then he used the
>three purple hearts to request a trip home eight months
>before the end of his tour. Fishy.
>
>(3) The details of the event for which he was given the
>Silver Star make no sense at all. Supposedly, a B-40 was
>fired at the boat and missed. Charlie jumps up with the
>launcher in his hand, the bow gunner knocks him down with
>the twin .50, Kerry beaches the boat, jumps off, shoots
>Charlie, and retrieves the launcher. If true, he did
>everything wrong.
>
>(a) Standard procedure when you took rocket fire was to put
>your stern to the action and go balls to the wall. A B-40
>has the ballistic integrity of a Frisbee after about 25
>yards, so you put 50 yards or so between you and the beach
>and begin raking it with your .50's.
>(b) Did you ever see anybody get knocked down with a .50
>caliber round and get up? The guy was dead or dying. The
>rocket launcher was empty. There was no reason to go after
>him (except if you knew he was no danger to you just
>flopping around in the dust during his last few seconds on
>earth, and you wanted some daring do in your after-action
>report). And we didn't shoot wounded people. We had rules
>against that, too.
>(c) Kerry got off the boat. This was a major breach of
>standing procedures. Nobody on a boat crew ever got off a
>boat in a hot area. EVER! The reason was simple. If you had
>somebody on the beach your boat was defenseless. It
>couldn't run and it couldn't return fire. It was stupid and
>it put his crew in danger. He should have been relieved and
>reprimanded. I never heard of any boat crewman ever leaving
>a boat during or after a firefight.
>
>"Something is fishy.
>
>"Here we have a JFK wannabe (the guy Halsey wanted to court
>martial for carelessly losing his boat and getting a couple
>people killed by running across the bow of a Jap destroyer)
>who is hardly in Vietnam long enough to get a good tan,
>collects medals faster than Audie Murphy in a job where
>lots of medals weren't common, gets sent home eight months
>early, requests separation from active duty a few months
>after that so he can run for Congress, finds out war heroes
>don't sell well in Massachusetts in 1970 so reinvents
>himself as Jane Fonda, throws his ribbons in the dirt with
>the cameras running to jump start his political career,
>gets Stillborn Pell to invite him to address Congress and
>Bobby Kennedy's speechwriter to do the heavy lifting, winds
>up in the Senate himself a few years later, votes against
>every major defense bill, says the CIA is irrelevant after
>the Wall came down, votes against the Gulf War, a big
>mistake since that turned out well, decides not to make the
>same mistake twice so votes for invading Iraq, but oops,
>that didn't turn out so well so he now says he really
>didn't mean for Bush to go to war when he voted to allow
>him to go to war.
>
>"I'm real glad you or I never had this guy covering our
>flanks in Vietnam. I sure don't want him as Commander in
>Chief. I hope that somebody from CTF-115 shows up with some
>facts challenging Kerry's Vietnam record. I know in my gut
>it's wildly inflated. And fishy."
This sort of stuff is gonna dog Kerry's footsteps through the summer campaigning, and wouldn't be an issue except that the attack on Bush opened the door for it.
Looks like a wild and emotional political campaign...
Art