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Swiftvets.com - the real truth about Kerry

Discussion in 'Free Speech Alley' started by islstl, Aug 5, 2004.

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crawfish Founding Member

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marcmc99 said:

whine, moan, bitch. you any kin to Al Gore. It's obvious you are a democrat, no need trying to sway your vote.

Negative on the Purple Haze.

You talking about Archie Bunker's kid, or the black guy?

signed,
Mr. Not-So-Serious
Click to expand...

Black guy with the coke habit.

crawfish, Aug 6, 2004

#31
marcmc99 Founding Member

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CRAWFISH said:

Black guy with the coke habit.
Click to expand...

I wondered what happened to that guy. What, did he OD?
Some more sad news, I just overheard a guy here at work say Rick James had died. The world will never be the same.

marcmc99, Aug 6, 2004

#32
crawfish Founding Member

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marcmc99 said:

I wondered what happened to that guy. What, did he OD?
Some more sad news, I just overheard a guy here at work say Rick James had died. The world will never be the same.
Click to expand...

Lymphomia

He was in and out of drug rehabs. Howard was once arrested in BTR for a drug related charge.

crawfish, Aug 6, 2004

#33
red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

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Thought you folks would want to see this!

Veteran retracts criticism of Kerry

Here are the best parts:

Kerry won the Silver Star for his action on Feb. 28, 1969, in which he shot a Viet Cong soldier who had been carrying a rocket launcher and running toward a hut. All of Kerry's crewmates who participated and are still living said in interviews last year that the action was necessary and appropriate, and it was Elliott who recommended Kerry for the Silver Star. Yesterday, reached at his home, Elliott said he regretted signing the affidavit and said he still thinks Kerry deserved the Silver Star.

''I still don't think he shot the guy in the back," Elliott said. ''It was a terrible mistake probably for me to sign the affidavit with those words. I'm the one in trouble here."

Elliott said he was no under personal or political pressure to sign the statement, but he did feel ''time pressure" from those involved in the book. ''That's no excuse," Elliott said. ''I knew it was wrong . . . In a hurry I signed it and faxed it back. That was a mistake."

Meanwhile, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, urged Bush yesterday to disassociate himself from what he called a ''dishonest and dishonorable" attack. In response, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said, ''We have not and we will not question Senator Kerry's service in Vietnam."

The Associated Press reported yesterday that Houston home-builder Bob J. Perry, a major Republican donor, gave at least $100,000 to the organization sponsoring the ad, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

The Kerry campaign spokesman, Michael Meehan, said none of those in the ad had served on a boat with Kerry. ''Some of these men defended John Kerry's honor on his military record in 1996 and so they were either lying then or lying now," Meehan said. ''Either way, it is gutter politics."

red55, Aug 6, 2004

#34
red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

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This column is even better.

Swift Boat Veterans Start to Sink

"John O'Neill, the author of the soon to be released book that attacks John Kerry's Vietnam service, never even served on a swift boat at the same time as John Kerry.* Kerry was back home in the United States by the time O'Neill took command of his first unit!* O'Neill did not even know John Kerry until he was tapped by Richard Nixon.* Huh, what was that?* Yes, this story gets even more interesting."

red55, Aug 6, 2004

#35
marcmc99 Founding Member

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http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39850

Vet denies retraction
of Kerry war criticism
Boston Globe story saying he backed off 'extremely inaccurate', 'highly misleading'

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: August 6, 2004
2:16 p.m. Eastern

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

A Vietnam veteran who appears in a television ad critical of Sen. John Kerry says a Boston Globe article asserting he retracted his criticism of the presidential candidate's war service is "extremely inaccurate" and "highly misleading."

In a statement, Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth says "Captain Elliott reaffirms his affidavit in support of that advertisement, and he reaffirms his request that the ad be played."

The Globe story by Michael Kranish said Elliott, in an interview yesterday, backed off one of the key contentions of a book to be released next week by the veterans group, "Unfit for Command."

Elliott, according to Kranish, said he had made a "terrible mistake" in signing an affidavit that suggests Kerry did not deserve the Silver Star.

But the veterans group says the article is "particularly surprising given page 102 of Mr. Kranish's own book quoting John Kerry as acknowledging that he killed a single, wounded, fleeing Viet Cong soldier whom he was afraid would turn around."

Kranish, who is covering the Kerry campaign, wrote the foreword to the official Kerry-Edwards campaign book and is listed as the lead author, the Drudge Report noted today.

Telephoned for comment, Kranish declined to speak on the record with WorldNetDaily but forwarded a statement from the Globe which said the paper stands by the story.

"The quotes attributed to Mr. Elliott were on the record and absolutely accurate," said the statement by Globe Editor Martin Baron.

Baron asserted it is "completely untrue" that Kranish "was ever contracted to write for a Kerry campaign publication."

The editor explained that "earlier this summer, Kranish worked with Public Affairs, the publisher of the Boston Globe biography of Kerry, 'John Kerry: The Complete Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best,' to write a short introduction to a second project: an independent, unauthorized review of publicly available documents dealing with the platform and policy statements of Kerry and Edwards. "

Baron said that when Public Affairs "subsequently struck an agreement with the Kerry campaign to do an official campaign book, Kranish's relationship with the project immediately ended."

marcmc99, Aug 6, 2004

#36
red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

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Well, that really clears things up. :lol:

Bottom line: Nobody associated with this story has any credibility.

1. The guy (O'Neil) who wrote the book didn't even serve in Vietnam while Kerry was also there.
2. The rest of the "Swift-boat Veterans Against Kerry" were not members of Kerry's crew, who are on the record as affirming the official history and the military records, and who support Kerry for President.
3. The elderly former commanding officer who recommended Kerry for the Silver Star apparently agrees with whoever he is talking to, but he has disavowed the SBVAK story attributed to him--on the record.
4. Texas Republicans contributed $100,000 to the SBVAK to make this story happen. President Bush "has made no criticism of Senator Kerry's war record nor intends to do so."
5. Republican senator, war veteran, and former POW, John McCain describes the SBVAK charges as "dishonest and dishonerable". :dis:

red55, Aug 7, 2004

#37
dallastigers Founding Member

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About O'Neil
http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/rose200408061143.asp

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article appeared in the May 3, 2004, issue of National Review John O'Neill, the Vietnam Vet profiled by Alex Rose in this piece, is the co-author of the new book Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry.

More than 30 years after he returned to voluntary, and happy, obscurity as a Houston lawyer, 58-year-old John O'Neill is making a prime-time comeback. Who's John O'Neill? He was the Vietnam veteran — a former commander of a Patrol Craft Fast, better known as the Swift boat — who famously debated one John Kerry, a fellow Swift skipper, for 90 minutes on The Dick Cavett Show back in 1971. C-SPAN excavated this particular television gem a couple of weeks ago and re-broadcast it.

In 1971, Kerry was leveraging his military experience for political gain (old habits die hard, eh?) and had recently testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the American soldiers who, he believed, habitually committed war crimes. A few months earlier, Kerry had been involved in the "Winter Soldier Investigation," which proved to be less a serious inquiry into American actions than a rigged indictment of AmeriKKKa. It was later shown that many of the "eyewitness" participants, as well as many of Kerry's colleagues in Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), were frauds who had never been near a battlefield, let alone seen these crimes happen. Undaunted, Kerry claimed in his Senate testimony that 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." In other words, these alleged horrors were endemic to, and an officially sanctioned corollary of, the U.S. war effort in Vietnam.

Kerry, as we know, went on to great things, and perhaps may ascend to still greater ones, but what ever happened to John O'Neill? His biography, perhaps owing to its very ordinariness, is far more interesting than Kerry's flashier story of riches-to-riches. It is O'Neill, not Kerry, who embodies how countless regular Americans experienced, survived, and remembered Vietnam. His is a world away from the cynicism and the insanity, the cruelty and the self-hatred represented by the Winter Soldier Investigation and transmitted into the popular consciousness by such movies as Apocalypse Now and Platoon.

The first thing you need to know about John O'Neill is that the O'Neills were sea dogs through and through. Even today, there are some 90 first cousins living in and around Annapolis — home of the Naval Academy — many of them serving in America's fleets. O'Neill's grandfather taught at the Naval Academy; his father graduated in the early '30s, flew fighters, fought at Iwo Jima, and retired an admiral; O'Neill himself, who grew up in landlocked San Antonio, Texas, was in the Naval Academy Class of 1967 (two brothers also graduated, '57 and '59). An uncle, a fighter pilot, was killed at Pearl Harbor; another, also a naval pilot, in Korea. Several of O'Neill's nephews fought in the first Gulf War in the Marine Corps, and his brother-in-law commanded the Coast Guard, Atlantic Area. Nelson and Nimitz would have been proud of the O'Neills.

Young Ensign O'Neill chose to serve aboard a minesweeper, the Woodpecker. His fellow classmates had a good laugh. A minesweeper? Not exactly the most glamorous gig in the Navy, and an especially odd choice for a man whose class standing was so high he could have breezed into pretty much any posting he desired. But O'Neill's motive was nothing to laugh about: Mindful of the "family tradition of service," he says it was "important to me not to sit out the war" — and he supposed that he had a better chance of seeing action on one of the smaller boats than he would have cooling his heels aboard an aircraft carrier.

After a year on the Woodpecker, O'Neill transferred to the Swift boats in the spring of 1969, serving on them until the summer of 1970. His boat was fired on many times as it patrolled the Cambodian border, as well as the Uminh and Namcan forests in southern Vietnam. In the Swifts, says O'Neill, the average length of service was twelve months; John Kerry was in for four.

After a little over two years' duty, O'Neill himself departed Vietnam with two Bronze Stars (with "V"s for valor in combat) pinned to his chest. There were apparently several more decorations, but when I asked about them, his modesty triumphed over my curiosity. He also came home with a badly damaged knee and leg, which earned him some time in a military hospital. And it was there that John O'Neill started learning about the Senate testimony of someone named John Kerry. Distressed and angered by the future senator's allegations, none of which squared with his own experiences, O'Neill vainly wrote to the Foreign Relations Committee asking for a chance to testify himself.

Then he read an op-ed in the New York Times by Bruce Kessler, a former Marine and a leader of the new group, Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace, which disparaged the Kerry allegations. O'Neill wrote to Kessler, who got him involved in a Washington press conference. "We were convinced," says O'Neill, that "Kerry's charges were false." 60 Minutes and NBC both offered time for a debate — Kerry vs. O'Neill — but the former repeatedly balked. And then, miraculously, Kerry accepted an invitation from Dick Cavett to go head-to-head with O'Neill.

By this time, O'Neill had been star-spotted by President Nixon, and he met the president at the White House. (The sunny atmosphere turned a little frostier when O'Neill confided that he'd voted for Hubert Humphrey in '68: "The people all around me were shocked" when he told Nixon he was a Democrat.) He was also introduced to several Democratic congressmen and senators who didn't like Kerry's slanderous grandstanding.

As for the Cavett Show appearance, that was an invitation arranged by the television host himself, and had nothing to do with the White House; O'Neill even had to pay his own travel and hotel expenses. He wore "the only suit I had" — a not overly fashionable blue serge number unfortunately teamed with white socks. It mattered not. What mattered, says O'Neill, was that "I felt very passionate about the issue of war crimes. I had served in Vietnam with all those kids . . . and they reflected the people in the country as a whole. And the way [Kerry and his friends] falsely used war-crime charges involved a degree of political cynicism beyond my comprehension. I was outraged. I thought honestly about my friends who had died out there. And the unit we were in — Kerry and I — had suffered substantial casualties because of the restraints we placed on ourselves." O'Neill says that "Kerry, of course, knows this."

The debate was a success. "I always thought Kerry wouldn't be able to document evidence of war crimes," and so it was. His claim that these crimes were not isolated incidents but ordered by officers was nothing but a "barefaced lie." "Of course," O'Neill, with good humor, adds, "he was there for such a short time, he might not have known what was happening."

Well, the offers to do more TV appearances came rolling in, but O'Neill decided to pack his blue serge suit and go home. He went to the University of Texas Law School, and graduated first in a class of 554 with the third highest score in its history. In 1974, he clerked for U.S. Supreme Court justice William Rehnquist before returning to Texas to practice law. Specializing in large-scale commercial litigation — though he has often represented poor clients for free — he's been there ever since, founding along the way his own 35-lawyer firm (Clements O'Neill, for those of you with large-scale commercial-litigation needs).

He hasn't been politically involved since those heady days of the '70s. From 1972 onward, whenever people ran against Kerry, they asked O'Neill to spill some more beans, but he always declined — "because I believed in forgetting the thing." But I myself wondered, what suddenly prompted O'Neill to break his silence after all these years and talk to National Review? As he recuperated in an intensive-care unit after donating a kidney to his wife, Anne (now well on her way to recovery), a television story about Kerry leading the pack galvanized O'Neill. "It was déjà vu all over again; there was a Lord of the Rings quality to it, because here was the guy I had debated on the Cavett Show reappearing as the presidential candidate."

What O'Neill found particularly unsettling was that here was "a guy who believed everything we did in Vietnam was a crime" but who was now "campaigning on his record and claiming to be a war hero." In short, "the only reason I'm getting involved now is because he's running for commander-in-chief of the United States."

So there it is: a regular American — O'Neill, father of two, likes hiking, playing golf, and taking an active part in his church — not content anymore to allow Kerry and his kind to keep hijacking the Vietnam War.
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dallastigers, Aug 7, 2004

#38
dallastigers Founding Member

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About the doctor.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationalpolitics/2001920171_veterans05.html

Meehan questioned Letson's role, saying a J.C. Carreon signed Kerry's medical report of the wound. "This gentleman is not the man who is on the report," he said.

Letson said that Carreon, a lower-ranked "hospitalman," was "present at the time and he, in fact, made the entry into Lt. Kerry's medical record."

Kerry has said he was wounded by a piece of shrapnel as he and his crew engaged Vietcong fleeing on a beach. Kerry has said he was uncertain where the shrapnel came from.

The U.S. military's regulations for issuance of a Purple Heart require that an injury must be received during "action against an enemy of the United States."

According to Letson, Kerry told him during his visit that his crew "had been engaged in a firefight, receiving small-arms fire from on shore. He said that his injury resulted from this enemy action."

Later, Letson said, several of Kerry's crew members told a different version to medical personnel: "They did not receive any fire from shore," he wrote, "but that Kerry had fired a mortar round at close range to some rocks on shore. The crewmen thought that the injury was caused by a fragment ricocheting from that mortar round when it struck the rocks."
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http://www.nationalreview.com/kerry/kerryspot.asp

MORE LETSON [08/06 03:40 PM]

More from Letson: “It’s unfortunate that it’s come to a lot of name calling. I’ve been called a Republican shill. I’ll stand by what I have said. They can call me what they want. I’ll stack my record of integrity against theirs anytime.”

Having concluded the interview, one gets the feeling that the Kerry campaign better have a better defense than, "he's not Kerry's doctor, because didn't sign the report, another guy did." It shouldn't be hard to verify that Letson was the doctor in that location at that time.

LEWIS LETSON EXPLAINS KERRY'S WOUND [08/06 03:33 PM]

Lewis Letson, who discusses Kerry’s wound in the Swift Boat Vets’ ad, is appearing on NRANews.com with me.

“I am the doctor [who treated Kerry],” he said. “Let me explain that. My critics are pointing to the [signature on the medical record], J.C. Carreon. If they look it carefully a scribble after the words, saying, “HM1.” HM1 is a hospital man first class. Jesus C. Carreon was one of my medics at that naval base. He was a top-notch fella. Real prince of a fella.”

“Unfortunately, my friend Carreon died about 1992. He’s not around to back this up,” he said.

“Kerry might have thought my name was J.C. Carreon. I was the only medical officer at that base. September 68 to Sept. 1969. I can verify that with commanding officer.”

“I didn’t want to be a public figure. This has its downside, don’t have any desire to be notorious. This has some ill effects on an individual and my family. I had TV crew on my front lawn in the last hour, they just appeared at my house and rang my doorbell.”
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dallastigers, Aug 7, 2004

#39
dallastigers Founding Member

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©*2004*WorldNetDaily.com

Over the the past three decades, John Kerry has used a story of being ordered to illegally enter Cambodia during his Vietnam service as proof of war crimes and to argue against U.S. foreign policy, but a new book by Naval colleagues of the Massachusetts senator charges the account is false.

On the floor of the U.S. Senate, March 27, 1986, for example, Kerry attacked President Reagan's actions in Central America, charging they were leading the United States into another Vietnam. He claimed he could recognize the adminstration's errors because he had firsthand knowledge that the Nixon administration lied about American incursions into Cambodia.

In a Boston Herald story, Kerry is quoted as saying, "I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real."

But in "Unfit for Command," scheduled for release Aug. 15, John O'Neill, who took over Kerry's swift-boat command, and co-author Jerome Corsi say there are two problems with Kerry's claim.

One is simply that Nixon had not taken office yet.

The second, they say, is that during Christmas 1968, "he was more than fifty miles away from Cambodia. Kerry was never ordered into Cambodia by anyone and would have been court-martialed had he gone there."

At the time, Kerry was stationed at Coastal Division 13 in Cat Lo, which had a patrol areas extending to Sa Dec, about 55 miles from the Cambodian border.

All of the surviving officers in Kerry's chain of command deny he was ever ordered to Cambodia: Joe Streuhli, commander of Costal Division 13; George Elliott, commander of Coastal Division 11; Adrian Lonsdale, captain USCG and commander Coastal Surveillance Center at An Thoi; Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, commander of Coastal Surveillance Force Vietnam, CTF 115; and Rear Adm. Art Price, commander of River Patrol Force, CTF 116.

Also at least three of the five crewmen on Kerry’s PCF 44 boat -- Bill Zaldonis, Steven Hatch, and Steve Gardner -- deny that they or their boat were ever in Cambodia. The remaining two crewmen declined to be interviewed for the book.

The authors say the Cambodia incursion story is not included in Douglas Brinkley's "Tour of Duty." Instead, Kerry told of a mortar attack on Christmas Eve 1968 "near the Cambodia border" in Sa Dec.
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http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39856

dallastigers, Aug 7, 2004

#40

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