Quoth Telamon in

ws.prodigy.com:

There are only 2 people that served with Kerry that support
him.

What bodily orifice do you pull this crap out of? You Bush
cultists slay me.

Are you trying to convince me that there were only two people
standing on stage with him at the Democratic convention? Who
should I believe, you or my own eyes?

Another Swift Boat commander just came out publicly for Kerry
today, sick of seeing the Smear Vets' lies.

Fellow officer steps up to defend Kerry

BY WILLIAM B. ROOD
CHICAGO TRIBUNE

August 21, 2004, 8:21 PM EDT

There were three swift boats on the river that day in
Vietnam more than 35 years ago -- three officers and 15
crew members. Only two of those three officers remain to
talk about what happened on Feb. 28, 1969.

One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate
who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I
am the other.

For years, no one asked about those events. But now they
are the focus of skirmishing in a presidential election
with a group of swift boat veterans and others contending
that Kerry didn't deserve the Silver Star for what he did
on that day, or the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts
he was awarded for other actions.

Many of us wanted to put it all behind us -- the rivers,
the ambushes, the killing. Ever since that time, I have
refused all requests for interviews about Kerry's service
-- even those from reporters at the Chicago Tribune,
where I work.

But Kerry's critics, armed with stories I know to be
untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened
were overblown. The critics have taken pains to say
they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what
others did, but their version of events has splashed
doubt on all of us. It's gotten harder and harder for
those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know
to be untrue, especially when they come from people who
were not there.

Calls for backup

Even though Kerry's own crew members have backed him,
the attacks have continued, and in recent days Kerry has
called me and others who were with him in those days,
asking that we go public with our accounts.

I can't pretend those calls had no effect on me, but
that is not why I am writing this. What matters most to
me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public
figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did.
My intent is to tell the story here and to never again
talk publicly about it.

I was part of the operation that led to Kerry's Silver
Star. I have no firsthand knowledge of the events that
resulted in his winning the Purple Hearts or the Bronze
Star. But on Feb. 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of
PCF-23, one of three swift boats -- including Kerry's
PCF-94 and Lt. j.g. Donald Droz's PCF-43 -- that carried
Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and a Navy
demolition team up the Dong Cung, a narrow tributary of
the Bay Hap River, to conduct a sweep in the area.

The approach of the noisy 50-foot aluminum boats, each
driven by two huge 12-cylinder diesels and loaded down
with six crew members, troops and gear, was no secret.

Ambushes were a virtual certainty, and that day was no
exception. The difference was that Kerry, who had
tactical command of that particular operation, had talked
to Droz and me beforehand about not responding the way
the boats usually did to an ambush.

We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial
volley and had a clear fix on the location of the ambush,
we would turn directly into it, focusing the boats' twin
.50-caliber machine guns on the attackers and beaching
the boats.
The Viet Cong in the area had come to expect that the
heavily loaded boats would lumber on past an ambush,
firing at the entrenched attackers, beaching upstream and
putting troops ashore to sweep back down on the ambush
site. Often, they were long gone by the time the troops
got there.

Under fire

The first time we took fire -- the usual rockets and
automatic weapons -- Kerry ordered a "turn 90" and the
three boats roared in on the ambush. It worked. We routed
the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The troops,
led by an Army adviser, jumped off the boats and began a
sweep, which killed another half-dozen VC, wounded or
captured others and found weapons, blast masks and other
supplies used to stage ambushes.

Meanwhile, Kerry ordered our boat to head upstream with
his, leaving Droz's boat at the first site.

It happened again, another ambush. And again, Kerry
ordered the turn maneuver, and again it worked. As we
headed for the riverbank, I remember seeing a loaded B-40
launcher pointed at the boats. It wasn't fired as two men
jumped up from their spider holes.

We called Droz's boat up to assist us, and 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. With our troops involved in the sweep of the
first ambush site, Richard Lamberson, a member of my
crew, and I also went ashore to search the area. I was
checking the inside of the hooch when I heard gunfire
nearby.

Questionable encounter

Not long after that, Kerry returned, reporting that he
had killed the man he chased behind the hooch. He also
had picked up a loaded B-40 rocket launcher, which we
took back to our base in An Thoi after the operation.

John O'Neill, author of a highly critical account of
Kerry's Vietnam service, describes the man Kerry chased
as a "teenager" in a "loincloth." I have no idea how old
the gunner Kerry chased that day was, but both Leeds and
I recall that he was a grown man, dressed in the kind of
garb the VC usually wore.

The man Kerry chased was not the "lone" attacker at that
site, as O'Neill suggests. There were others who fled.
There was also firing from the tree line well behind the
spider holes and at one point, from the opposite
riverbank as well. It was not the work of just one
attacker.

Our initial reports of the day's action caused an
immediate response from our task force headquarters in
Cam Ranh Bay.

Known over radio circuits by the call sign "Latch,"
then-Captain and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the
task force commander, fired off a message congratulating
the three swift boats, saying at one point that charging
the ambushes was a "shining example of completely
overwhelming the enemy" and that it "may be the most
efficacious method of dealing with small numbers of
ambushers." Hoffmann has become a leading critic of
Kerry's and now says that what the boats did on that day
demonstrated Kerry's inclination to be impulsive to a
fault.

Our decision to use that tactic under the right
circumstances was not impulsive, but was the result of
discussions well beforehand and a mutual agreement of all
three boat officers.

It was also well within the aggressive tradition that
was embraced by the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, then
commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Vietnam. Months before
that day in February, a fellow boat officer, Michael
Bernique, was summoned to Saigon to explain to top Navy
commanders why he had made an unauthorized run up the
Giang Thanh River, which runs along the Vietnam-Cambodia
border. Bernique, who speaks French fluently, had been
told by a source in Ha Tien at the mouth of the river
that a VC tax collector was operating upstream.

Ignoring the prohibition against it, Bernique and his
crew went upstream and routed the VC, pursuing and
killing several.

Instead of facing disciplinary action as he had
expected, Bernique was given the Silver Star, and Zumwalt
ordered other swifts, which had largely patrolled coastal
waters, into the rivers.

The decision sent a clear message, underscored
repeatedly by Hoffmann's congratulatory messages, that
aggressive patrolling was expected and that well-timed,
if unconventional, tactics like Bernique's were
encouraged.

In line with command

What we did on Feb. 28, 1969, was well in line with the
tone set by our top commanders.

Zumwalt made that clear when he flew down to our base at
An Thoi off the southern tip of Vietnam to pin the Silver
Star on Kerry and assorted Bronze Stars and commendation
medals on the rest of us.

My Bronze Star citation, signed by Zumwalt, praised the
charge tactic we used that day, saying the VC were
"caught completely off guard." There's at least one
mistake in that citation. It incorrectly identifies the
river where the main action occurred, a reminder that
such documents were often done in haste and sometimes
written for their signers by staffers. It's a cautionary
note for those trying to piece it all together. There's
no final authority on something that happened so long ago
-- not the documents and not even the strained
recollections of those of us who were there.

But I know that what some people are saying now is
wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they're saying
impugns others who are not in the public eye.

Men like Larry Lee, who was on our bow with an M-60
machine gun as we charged the riverbank, Kenneth Martin,
who was in the .50-caliber gun tub atop our boat, and
Benjamin Cueva, our engineman, who was at our aft gun
mount suppressing the fire from the opposite bank.

Wayne Langhoffer and the other crewmen on Droz's boat
went through even worse on April 12, 1969, when they saw
Droz killed in a brutal ambush that left PCF-43 an
abandoned pile of wreckage on the banks of the Duong Keo
River. That was just a few months after the birth of his
only child, Tracy.

The survivors of all these events are scattered across
the country now. Jerry Leeds lives in a tiny Kansas town
where he built and sold a successful printing business.
He owns a beautiful home with a lawn that sweeps to the
edge of a small lake, which he also owns.

Cueva, recently retired, has raised three daughters and
is beloved by his neighbors for all the years he spent
keeping their cars running. Lee is a senior computer
programmer in Kentucky, and Lamberson finished a second
military career in the Army.

With the debate over that long-ago day in February,
they're all living that war another time.




--
Where was AWOL George W. Bush?

http://www.glcq.com/bush_at_arpc1.htm

In article ,
Tom Betz wrote:

Quoth Telamon in

ws.prodigy.com:

There are only 2 people that served with Kerry that support
him.

What bodily orifice do you pull this crap out of? You Bush
cultists slay me.

Are you trying to convince me that there were only two people
standing on stage with him at the Democratic convention? Who
should I believe, you or my own eyes?

Snip

I talk out of my mouth. What do you use?

Your reading comprehension is off. The sniped story is one 1 mission
where 3 boats were involved. The group Kerry belonged to is a squad of 5
boats of 5 people each. I used numerals instead of spelling the numbers
to help your comprehension jerk.

Typical misdirection of a ideological jerk.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California

"Tom Betz" wrote

(snippage of words nuttier than squirrel ****, in the
interest of brevity)

Where was John Effing Kerrnedy on Christmas Eve
and Christmas Day, 1968?

73 'n stuff,

--
Steve Lawrence
KAØPMD
Burnsville, Minnesota

(NOTE: My email address has only one "dot."
You'll have to edit out the one between the "7"
and the "3" in my email address if you wish to
reply via email)


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"Stephen M.H. Lawrence" wrote:

"Tom Betz" wrote

(snippage of words nuttier than squirrel ****, in the
interest of brevity)

Where was John Effing Kerrnedy on Christmas Eve
and Christmas Day, 1968?

He apparently spent 'many' a Christmas in Cambodia!

So many stories, just a single day!

dxAce

"dxAce" wrote in message
...
|
|
| "Stephen M.H. Lawrence" wrote:
|
| "Tom Betz" wrote
|
| (snippage of words nuttier than squirrel ****, in the
| interest of brevity)
|
| Where was John Effing Kerrnedy on Christmas Eve
| and Christmas Day, 1968?
|
| He apparently spent 'many' a Christmas in Cambodia!
|
| So many stories, just a single day!
|
| dxAce

These crazy Democraps...inventing the Internet, driving/not driving SUVs,
not sleeping with/sleeping with "That woman, Monica Lewinsky..."

Do the Democraps and ComSymps care about the truth? Are they capable
of presenting an honest candidate?

I guess not....

73,

--
Steve Lawrence
KAØPMD
Burnsville, Minnesota

(NOTE: My email address has only one "dot."
You'll have to edit out the one between the "7"
and the "3" in my email address if you wish to
reply via email)


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Quoth "Stephen M.H. Lawrence" in
k.net:

"Tom Betz" wrote

(snippage of words nuttier than squirrel ****, in the
interest of brevity)

When you define truth as "squirrely", you only condemn yourself.

--
Where was AWOL George W. Bush?

http://www.glcq.com/bush_at_arpc1.htm

"Tom Betz" wrote in message
. 69...
| Quoth "Stephen M.H. Lawrence" in
| k.net:
|
| "Tom Betz" wrote
|
| (snippage of words nuttier than squirrel ****, in the
| interest of brevity)
|
| When you define truth as "squirrely", you only condemn yourself.

Typical Shuck-and-Jive Democrap nonsense.

I see you are pathologically incapable of answering
one simple question, but I'll give you the opportunity
to redeem your wretched reputation, thus:

Where was John Kerry on Christmas Eve, 1968?
And, which President was in office at the time?

Hoping you can answer just one question....

73,

--
Steve Lawrence
KAØPMD
Burnsville, Minnesota

(NOTE: My email address has only one "dot."
You'll have to edit out the one between the "7"
and the "3" in my email address if you wish to
reply via email)


---
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Tom Betz wrote:
Fellow officer steps up to defend Kerry

BY WILLIAM B. ROOD
CHICAGO TRIBUNE

A reporter steps up. I'll just bet he's the only Tribune reporter who
doesn't HATE BUSH.

August 21, 2004, 8:21 PM EDT

There were three swift boats on the river that day in
Vietnam more than 35 years ago -- three officers and 15
crew members. Only two of those three officers remain to
talk about what happened on Feb. 28, 1969.

However, lots of non-officers remain. Michael Medeiros and Larry Lee
are two among many who disagree with major parts of Kerry's story.
Medeiros was one of Kerry's own men, on PCF 94 with Kerry.

One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate
who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I
am the other.

The non-remaining officer was Donald Droz, whom Rood mentions later.

For years, no one asked about those events. But now they
are the focus of skirmishing in a presidential election
with a group of swift boat veterans and others contending
that Kerry didn't deserve the Silver Star for what he did
on that day, or the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts
he was awarded for other actions.

As I recall, Kerry brought it up. Somehow it's okay for Kerry to bring
it up, but not okay for others to point out the falsehoods, omissions
and errors in Kerry's stories.

[snip]
I was part of the operation that led to Kerry's Silver
Star. I have no firsthand knowledge of the events that
resulted in his winning the Purple Hearts or the Bronze
Star. But on Feb. 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of
PCF-23, one of three swift boats -- including Kerry's
PCF-94 and Lt. j.g. Donald Droz's PCF-43 -- that carried
Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and a Navy
demolition team up the Dong Cung, a narrow tributary of
the Bay Hap River, to conduct a sweep in the area.

Already we see differences between Kerry's glowing written report of his
actions and the testimony of others. Somehow Kerry forgot about all
those Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and the Navy
demolition team. Rood doesn't mention the US Army soldiers who were
there until later.

Note Rood names the Dong Cung; see subsequent.

The approach of the noisy 50-foot aluminum boats, each
driven by two huge 12-cylinder diesels and loaded down
with six crew members, troops and gear, was no secret.

Who said it was?

Ambushes were a virtual certainty, and that day was no
exception. The difference was that Kerry, who had
tactical command of that particular operation, had talked
to Droz and me beforehand about not responding the way
the boats usually did to an ambush.

We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial
volley and had a clear fix on the location of the ambush,
we would turn directly into it, focusing the boats' twin
.50-caliber machine guns on the attackers and beaching
the boats.

But Kerry's account doesn't mention this! Admiral Roy Hoffmann was
shocked to learn this.

Medeiros and Lee discuss this. Lee further recalls
"a prior discussion of medals for those participating. Bronze Stars
for selected landers were contemplated and Navy commendation for
others. Some crewmen dispute this, but none deny that the landing
had been calculated the night before." [book]

The Viet Cong in the area had come to expect that the
heavily loaded boats would lumber on past an ambush,
firing at the entrenched attackers, beaching upstream and
putting troops ashore to sweep back down on the ambush
site. Often, they were long gone by the time the troops
got there.

From Kerry's Silver Star citation (based on Kerry's report):

"Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY ordered PCFs 94 and 23 further up
river to suppress enemy sniper fire." [94 was Kerry's, 23 Rood's.]

Under fire

The first time we took fire -- the usual rockets and
automatic weapons -- Kerry ordered a "turn 90" and the
three boats roared in on the ambush.

"Kerry ordered"? It was prearranged. Perhaps Kerry was the first to
spot the ambush and alert the others; but Rood's phrasing suggests
(probably deliberately) that brave, brave Kerry rose to the challenge
and "ordered" the other presumably confused and incompetent boat
officers (including author Rood) into battle.

It worked. We routed
the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The troops,

"Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and a Navy demolition
team," according to Rood.

led by an Army adviser,

Doug Reese.

jumped off the boats and began a
sweep, which killed another half-dozen VC, wounded or
captured others and found weapons, blast masks and other
supplies used to stage ambushes.

From other accounts, the boat that PRO-KERRY Army veteran Doug Reese
was on (probably Droz'), NOT Kerry's, was the first to beach in the
ambush zone. Rood here does nothing to dispel Kerry's implication that
Kerry was first on the beach. Kerry remained on the boat while the
main fighting was taking place.

The Silver Star citation, based exclusively on Kerry's report, says:

"...all units came under intense automatic weapons and small arms
fire from an entrenched enemy force less than fifty feet away.
Unhesitatingly Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY ordered his boat
to attack as all units opened fire and beached directly in front
of the enemy ambushers. This daring and courageous tactic surprised
the enemy and succeeded in routing a score of enemy soldiers."

("Daring and courageous" doesn't seem congruent with a preplanned tactic.)

Meanwhile, Kerry ordered our boat to head upstream with
his, leaving Droz's boat at the first site.

It happened again, another ambush. And again, Kerry
ordered the turn maneuver, and again it worked. As we
headed for the riverbank, I remember seeing a loaded B-40
launcher pointed at the boats. It wasn't fired as two men
jumped up from their spider holes.

"A young Viet Cong in a loincloth popped out of a hole, clutching
a grenade launcher which may or may not have been loaded, depending
on whose account one credits." [book]

That would be the teenager Kerry shot in the back as he ran. Forward
gunner Tom Belodeau got him in the leg with an M-60 machine gun before
Kerry gave chase; one wonders how fast this kid could run.

We called Droz's boat up to assist us, and Kerry,
followed by one member of his crew,

Medeiros. There were many non-PCF troops in the boat with them; the
book suggests the *possibility* that some of them were with Kerry and
Medeiros.

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. With our troops involved in the sweep of the
first ambush site, Richard Lamberson, a member of my
crew, and I also went ashore to search the area. I was
checking the inside of the hooch when I heard gunfire
nearby.

Not long after that, Kerry returned, reporting that he
had killed the man he chased behind the hooch. He also
had picked up a loaded B-40 rocket launcher, which we
took back to our base in An Thoi after the operation.

John O'Neill, author of a highly critical account of
Kerry's Vietnam service, describes the man Kerry chased
as a "teenager" in a "loincloth." I have no idea how old
the gunner Kerry chased that day was, but both Leeds and
I recall that he was a grown man, dressed in the kind of
garb the VC usually wore.

The man Kerry chased was not the "lone" attacker at that
site, as O'Neill suggests. There were others who fled.
There was also firing from the tree line well behind the
spider holes and at one point, from the opposite
riverbank as well. It was not the work of just one
attacker.

Somehow no one but Rood remembers this (or at least no one else mentions
it).

Our initial reports of the day's action caused an
immediate response from our task force headquarters in
Cam Ranh Bay.

Known over radio circuits by the call sign "Latch,"

Kerry's callsign was "Boston Strangler". Kerry claims a different
callsign ("Square Jaw") which he used for a brief period, but he
reportedly used the Boston Strangler callsign for most of his tour
in Viet Nam.

then-Captain and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the
task force commander, fired off a message congratulating
the three swift boats, saying at one point that charging
the ambushes was a "shining example of completely
overwhelming the enemy" and that it "may be the most
efficacious method of dealing with small numbers of
ambushers." Hoffmann has become a leading critic of
Kerry's and now says that what the boats did on that day
demonstrated Kerry's inclination to be impulsive to a
fault.

"Admiral Roy Hoffmann, who sent a Bravo Zulu (meaning 'good work')
to Kerry upon learning of the incident, was very surprised to
discover in 2004 what had actually occurred. Hoffmann had been
told that Kerry had spontaneously beached next to the bunker
and almost single-handedly routed a bunkered force of Viet Cong.
He was shocked to find out that Kerry had beached his boat second
in a preplanned operation, and that he had killed a single, wounded
teenage foe as he fled." [book]

Our decision to use that tactic under the right
circumstances was not impulsive, but was the result of
discussions well beforehand and a mutual agreement of all
three boat officers.

"The planned nature of the action also calls Kerry's judgment into
doubt. The effect of beaching a boat is to risk the loss of all
aboard, as well as the boat itself, because of the Claymore mines
often found in front of bunkered positions. Moreover, the heavy
weapons of the boat, double .50-caliber machine guns and an M-60,
are unusable if friendly soldiers are in front of them. In effect,
a single sailor with no radio or means of communications, armed
with a single M-16, is substituted for the vast firepower of the
boat. Finally, once the boat is beached, speed and maneuverability
are obviously gone. The boat is frozen, shorn of its command
function, in a single spot.

"From a military viewpoint, the tactic displays stupidity, not
courage -- a point that has made it so hard for Vietnam Navy
veterans (sometimes called 'brown-water sailors' after the color
of the water in the muddy Vietnamese delta), from vice admirals
to seamen, to believe it. Brown-water officers and Swiftees willing
to forgive stupidity when the action is a spontaneous charge against
an enemy bunker undertaken by a foolhardy young officer, were
appalled to learn recently that the action was actually preplanned
by Kerry, who then wildly exaggerated the facts in his citation:
from the 'PCF gunners' capturing many weapons to his assault under
'intense fire' into a bunker manned by 'a numerically superior
force.' The only explanation for what Kerry did is the same
justification that characterizes his entire short Vietnam adventu
the pursuit of medals and ribbons. Kerry's self-serving exaggeration
of the action magnified the danger he faced and the supposed valor
he displayed, and minimized or showed no appreciation for the actual
nature of the risk or the contribution of the others involved."
[book]

It was also well within the aggressive tradition that
was embraced by the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, then
commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Vietnam.

"Zumwalt signed the May 4, 2004 letter condemning Kerry for his
own many misrepresentations of his record and the record of others."
[book]

Months before
that day in February... [snip flashback]

What we did on Feb. 28, 1969, was well in line with the
tone set by our top commanders.

Zumwalt made that clear when he flew down to our base at
An Thoi off the southern tip of Vietnam to pin the Silver
Star on Kerry and assorted Bronze Stars and commendation
medals on the rest of us.

"Commander George Elliott, who wrote up the initial draft of Kerry's
Silver Star citation... indicates that a Silver Star recommendation
would not have been made by him had he been aware of the actual
facts." [book]

My Bronze Star citation, signed by Zumwalt, praised the
charge tactic we used that day, saying the VC were
"caught completely off guard."

Based, of course, on Kerry's written report, which appears to be the
only written report filed.

There's at least one
mistake in that citation. It incorrectly identifies the
river where the main action occurred,

Remember earlier when I pointed out Rood named the Dong Cung? The
citation says:

"As the force approached the target area on the narrow Dong Cung
River..."

Rood calls it "the Dong Cung, a narrow tributary of the Bay Hap River".
That's not "incorrectly identif[ying]", that's a picky semantic nit.
Remember that the information Commander Elliott used to write the
initial draft of Kerry's Silver Star citation came from Kerry, so
mistakes in the citation can be attributed to... LYING GEORGE BUSH,
of course.

a reminder that
such documents were often done in haste and sometimes
written for their signers by staffers. It's a cautionary
note for those trying to piece it all together. There's
no final authority on something that happened so long ago
-- not the documents and not even the strained
recollections of those of us who were there.

But I know that what some people are saying now is
wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they're saying
impugns others who are not in the public eye.

Have we seen Rood also condemn Kerry's destruction of the morale of
the troops actively fighting in Viet Nam through his extremist actions
while with Vietnam Veterans Against The War? Kerry's cruel lies
impugned hundreds of thousands of people.

Men like Larry Lee, who was on our bow with an M-60
machine gun as we charged the riverbank,

Lee (mentioned earlier by me) is among those who debunks Kerry's stories.

Kenneth Martin,
who was in the .50-caliber gun tub atop our boat, and
Benjamin Cueva, our engineman, who was at our aft gun
mount suppressing the fire from the opposite bank.

"There was little or no fire after Kerry followed the plan (and the
earlier move of the first boat toward the beach)." [book]

Exactly how does it "impugn" these men to say:

"Kerry did follow normal military conduct and displayed ordinary
courage, but the incident was nothing out of the ordinary and to
most Swift and Vietnam veterans, Kerry's actions would hardly
justify any kind of unusual award." [book]

I don't see Lee or Martin or Cueva mentioned there.

Wayne Langhoffer and the other crewmen on Droz's boat
went through even worse on April 12, 1969, when they saw
Droz killed in a brutal ambush that left PCF-43 an
abandoned pile of wreckage on the banks of the Duong Keo
River. That was just a few months after the birth of his
only child, Tracy.

....not quite a month after Kerry went home. Kerry's last Purple Heart
(he blew up his butt with a hand grenade) was for action on March 13,
1969, but by March 17 at 7:42 AM his request for reassignment to
the States was at the Navy Department in Washington DC. By May, 1970,
he was out of the Navy, married, honeymooning in Paris (where he just
happened to run into "a leading Communist representative" and met with
Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, Central Committee for the National Front for
the Liberation of the South [Vietnam] and foreign minister of the
Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, for "fact-
finding" purposes of course) and either about to join Vietnam Veterans
Against The War or already a member.

--
Both Kerry and Edwards announced their candidacy near the beginning of September,
2003, so let's only count votes before then. From January, 2003, to August, 2003,
Senator Edwards didn't vote 69 out of 320 opportunities (~22%) and Senator Kerry
didn't vote 182 out of 320 opportunities (~57%). http://www.mwilliams.info/archives/001349.php

clifto wrote:

Tom Betz wrote:
Fellow officer steps up to defend Kerry

BY WILLIAM B. ROOD
CHICAGO TRIBUNE

A reporter steps up. I'll just bet he's the only Tribune reporter who
doesn't HATE BUSH.

August 21, 2004, 8:21 PM EDT

There were three swift boats on the river that day in
Vietnam more than 35 years ago -- three officers and 15
crew members. Only two of those three officers remain to
talk about what happened on Feb. 28, 1969.

However, lots of non-officers remain. Michael Medeiros and Larry Lee
are two among many who disagree with major parts of Kerry's story.
Medeiros was one of Kerry's own men, on PCF 94 with Kerry.

One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate
who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I
am the other.

The non-remaining officer was Donald Droz, whom Rood mentions later.

For years, no one asked about those events. But now they
are the focus of skirmishing in a presidential election
with a group of swift boat veterans and others contending
that Kerry didn't deserve the Silver Star for what he did
on that day, or the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts
he was awarded for other actions.

As I recall, Kerry brought it up. Somehow it's okay for Kerry to bring
it up, but not okay for others to point out the falsehoods, omissions
and errors in Kerry's stories.

[snip]
I was part of the operation that led to Kerry's Silver
Star. I have no firsthand knowledge of the events that
resulted in his winning the Purple Hearts or the Bronze
Star. But on Feb. 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of
PCF-23, one of three swift boats -- including Kerry's
PCF-94 and Lt. j.g. Donald Droz's PCF-43 -- that carried
Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and a Navy
demolition team up the Dong Cung, a narrow tributary of
the Bay Hap River, to conduct a sweep in the area.

Already we see differences between Kerry's glowing written report of his
actions and the testimony of others. Somehow Kerry forgot about all
those Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and the Navy
demolition team. Rood doesn't mention the US Army soldiers who were
there until later.

Note Rood names the Dong Cung; see subsequent.

The approach of the noisy 50-foot aluminum boats, each
driven by two huge 12-cylinder diesels and loaded down
with six crew members, troops and gear, was no secret.

Who said it was?

Ambushes were a virtual certainty, and that day was no
exception. The difference was that Kerry, who had
tactical command of that particular operation, had talked
to Droz and me beforehand about not responding the way
the boats usually did to an ambush.

We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial
volley and had a clear fix on the location of the ambush,
we would turn directly into it, focusing the boats' twin
.50-caliber machine guns on the attackers and beaching
the boats.

But Kerry's account doesn't mention this! Admiral Roy Hoffmann was
shocked to learn this.

Medeiros and Lee discuss this. Lee further recalls
"a prior discussion of medals for those participating. Bronze Stars
for selected landers were contemplated and Navy commendation for
others. Some crewmen dispute this, but none deny that the landing
had been calculated the night before." [book]

The Viet Cong in the area had come to expect that the
heavily loaded boats would lumber on past an ambush,
firing at the entrenched attackers, beaching upstream and
putting troops ashore to sweep back down on the ambush
site. Often, they were long gone by the time the troops
got there.

From Kerry's Silver Star citation (based on Kerry's report):

"Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY ordered PCFs 94 and 23 further up
river to suppress enemy sniper fire." [94 was Kerry's, 23 Rood's.]

Under fire

The first time we took fire -- the usual rockets and
automatic weapons -- Kerry ordered a "turn 90" and the
three boats roared in on the ambush.

"Kerry ordered"? It was prearranged. Perhaps Kerry was the first to
spot the ambush and alert the others; but Rood's phrasing suggests
(probably deliberately) that brave, brave Kerry rose to the challenge
and "ordered" the other presumably confused and incompetent boat
officers (including author Rood) into battle.

It worked. We routed
the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The troops,

"Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and a Navy demolition
team," according to Rood.

led by an Army adviser,

Doug Reese.

jumped off the boats and began a
sweep, which killed another half-dozen VC, wounded or
captured others and found weapons, blast masks and other
supplies used to stage ambushes.

From other accounts, the boat that PRO-KERRY Army veteran Doug Reese
was on (probably Droz'), NOT Kerry's, was the first to beach in the
ambush zone. Rood here does nothing to dispel Kerry's implication that
Kerry was first on the beach. Kerry remained on the boat while the
main fighting was taking place.

The Silver Star citation, based exclusively on Kerry's report, says:

"...all units came under intense automatic weapons and small arms
fire from an entrenched enemy force less than fifty feet away.
Unhesitatingly Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY ordered his boat
to attack as all units opened fire and beached directly in front
of the enemy ambushers. This daring and courageous tactic surprised
the enemy and succeeded in routing a score of enemy soldiers."

("Daring and courageous" doesn't seem congruent with a preplanned tactic.)

Meanwhile, Kerry ordered our boat to head upstream with
his, leaving Droz's boat at the first site.

It happened again, another ambush. And again, Kerry
ordered the turn maneuver, and again it worked. As we
headed for the riverbank, I remember seeing a loaded B-40
launcher pointed at the boats. It wasn't fired as two men
jumped up from their spider holes.

"A young Viet Cong in a loincloth popped out of a hole, clutching
a grenade launcher which may or may not have been loaded, depending
on whose account one credits." [book]

That would be the teenager Kerry shot in the back as he ran. Forward
gunner Tom Belodeau got him in the leg with an M-60 machine gun before
Kerry gave chase; one wonders how fast this kid could run.

We called Droz's boat up to assist us, and Kerry,
followed by one member of his crew,

Medeiros. There were many non-PCF troops in the boat with them; the
book suggests the *possibility* that some of them were with Kerry and
Medeiros.

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. With our troops involved in the sweep of the
first ambush site, Richard Lamberson, a member of my
crew, and I also went ashore to search the area. I was
checking the inside of the hooch when I heard gunfire
nearby.

Not long after that, Kerry returned, reporting that he
had killed the man he chased behind the hooch. He also
had picked up a loaded B-40 rocket launcher, which we
took back to our base in An Thoi after the operation.

John O'Neill, author of a highly critical account of
Kerry's Vietnam service, describes the man Kerry chased
as a "teenager" in a "loincloth." I have no idea how old
the gunner Kerry chased that day was, but both Leeds and
I recall that he was a grown man, dressed in the kind of
garb the VC usually wore.

The man Kerry chased was not the "lone" attacker at that
site, as O'Neill suggests. There were others who fled.
There was also firing from the tree line well behind the
spider holes and at one point, from the opposite
riverbank as well. It was not the work of just one
attacker.

Somehow no one but Rood remembers this (or at least no one else mentions
it).

Our initial reports of the day's action caused an
immediate response from our task force headquarters in
Cam Ranh Bay.

Known over radio circuits by the call sign "Latch,"

Kerry's callsign was "Boston Strangler". Kerry claims a different
callsign ("Square Jaw") which he used for a brief period, but he
reportedly used the Boston Strangler callsign for most of his tour
in Viet Nam.

then-Captain and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the
task force commander, fired off a message congratulating
the three swift boats, saying at one point that charging
the ambushes was a "shining example of completely
overwhelming the enemy" and that it "may be the most
efficacious method of dealing with small numbers of
ambushers." Hoffmann has become a leading critic of
Kerry's and now says that what the boats did on that day
demonstrated Kerry's inclination to be impulsive to a
fault.

"Admiral Roy Hoffmann, who sent a Bravo Zulu (meaning 'good work')
to Kerry upon learning of the incident, was very surprised to
discover in 2004 what had actually occurred. Hoffmann had been
told that Kerry had spontaneously beached next to the bunker
and almost single-handedly routed a bunkered force of Viet Cong.
He was shocked to find out that Kerry had beached his boat second
in a preplanned operation, and that he had killed a single, wounded
teenage foe as he fled." [book]

Our decision to use that tactic under the right
circumstances was not impulsive, but was the result of
discussions well beforehand and a mutual agreement of all
three boat officers.

"The planned nature of the action also calls Kerry's judgment into
doubt. The effect of beaching a boat is to risk the loss of all
aboard, as well as the boat itself, because of the Claymore mines
often found in front of bunkered positions. Moreover, the heavy
weapons of the boat, double .50-caliber machine guns and an M-60,
are unusable if friendly soldiers are in front of them. In effect,
a single sailor with no radio or means of communications, armed
with a single M-16, is substituted for the vast firepower of the
boat. Finally, once the boat is beached, speed and maneuverability
are obviously gone. The boat is frozen, shorn of its command
function, in a single spot.

"From a military viewpoint, the tactic displays stupidity, not
courage -- a point that has made it so hard for Vietnam Navy
veterans (sometimes called 'brown-water sailors' after the color
of the water in the muddy Vietnamese delta), from vice admirals
to seamen, to believe it. Brown-water officers and Swiftees willing
to forgive stupidity when the action is a spontaneous charge against
an enemy bunker undertaken by a foolhardy young officer, were
appalled to learn recently that the action was actually preplanned
by Kerry, who then wildly exaggerated the facts in his citation:
from the 'PCF gunners' capturing many weapons to his assault under
'intense fire' into a bunker manned by 'a numerically superior
force.' The only explanation for what Kerry did is the same
justification that characterizes his entire short Vietnam adventu
the pursuit of medals and ribbons. Kerry's self-serving exaggeration
of the action magnified the danger he faced and the supposed valor
he displayed, and minimized or showed no appreciation for the actual
nature of the risk or the contribution of the others involved."
[book]

It was also well within the aggressive tradition that
was embraced by the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, then
commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Vietnam.

"Zumwalt signed the May 4, 2004 letter condemning Kerry for his
own many misrepresentations of his record and the record of others."
[book]

Months before
that day in February... [snip flashback]

What we did on Feb. 28, 1969, was well in line with the
tone set by our top commanders.

Zumwalt made that clear when he flew down to our base at
An Thoi off the southern tip of Vietnam to pin the Silver
Star on Kerry and assorted Bronze Stars and commendation
medals on the rest of us.

"Commander George Elliott, who wrote up the initial draft of Kerry's
Silver Star citation... indicates that a Silver Star recommendation
would not have been made by him had he been aware of the actual
facts." [book]

My Bronze Star citation, signed by Zumwalt, praised the
charge tactic we used that day, saying the VC were
"caught completely off guard."

Based, of course, on Kerry's written report, which appears to be the
only written report filed.

There's at least one
mistake in that citation. It incorrectly identifies the
river where the main action occurred,

Remember earlier when I pointed out Rood named the Dong Cung? The
citation says:

"As the force approached the target area on the narrow Dong Cung
River..."

Rood calls it "the Dong Cung, a narrow tributary of the Bay Hap River".
That's not "incorrectly identif[ying]", that's a picky semantic nit.
Remember that the information Commander Elliott used to write the
initial draft of Kerry's Silver Star citation came from Kerry, so
mistakes in the citation can be attributed to... LYING GEORGE BUSH,
of course.

a reminder that
such documents were often done in haste and sometimes
written for their signers by staffers. It's a cautionary
note for those trying to piece it all together. There's
no final authority on something that happened so long ago
-- not the documents and not even the strained
recollections of those of us who were there.

But I know that what some people are saying now is
wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they're saying
impugns others who are not in the public eye.

Have we seen Rood also condemn Kerry's destruction of the morale of
the troops actively fighting in Viet Nam through his extremist actions
while with Vietnam Veterans Against The War? Kerry's cruel lies
impugned hundreds of thousands of people.

Men like Larry Lee, who was on our bow with an M-60
machine gun as we charged the riverbank,

Lee (mentioned earlier by me) is among those who debunks Kerry's stories.

Kenneth Martin,
who was in the .50-caliber gun tub atop our boat, and
Benjamin Cueva, our engineman, who was at our aft gun
mount suppressing the fire from the opposite bank.

"There was little or no fire after Kerry followed the plan (and the
earlier move of the first boat toward the beach)." [book]

Exactly how does it "impugn" these men to say:

"Kerry did follow normal military conduct and displayed ordinary
courage, but the incident was nothing out of the ordinary and to
most Swift and Vietnam veterans, Kerry's actions would hardly
justify any kind of unusual award." [book]

I don't see Lee or Martin or Cueva mentioned there.

Wayne Langhoffer and the other crewmen on Droz's boat
went through even worse on April 12, 1969, when they saw
Droz killed in a brutal ambush that left PCF-43 an
abandoned pile of wreckage on the banks of the Duong Keo
River. That was just a few months after the birth of his
only child, Tracy.

...not quite a month after Kerry went home. Kerry's last Purple Heart
(he blew up his butt with a hand grenade) was for action on March 13,
1969, but by March 17 at 7:42 AM his request for reassignment to
the States was at the Navy Department in Washington DC. By May, 1970,
he was out of the Navy, married, honeymooning in Paris (where he just
happened to run into "a leading Communist representative" and met with
Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, Central Committee for the National Front for
the Liberation of the South [Vietnam] and foreign minister of the
Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, for "fact-
finding" purposes of course) and either about to join Vietnam Veterans
Against The War or already a member.

--
Both Kerry and Edwards announced their candidacy near the beginning of September,
2003, so let's only count votes before then. From January, 2003, to August, 2003,
Senator Edwards didn't vote 69 out of 320 opportunities (~22%) and Senator Kerry
didn't vote 182 out of 320 opportunities (~57%). http://www.mwilliams.info/archives/001349.php

Your usual excellent work!

dxAce

Well a buddy of mine says he remembers the flies near shore being
really bad that day and there's no mention of that in Rood's story,
making the whole thing sound very, very, bogus. Anyway, he says that
at the last minute Dubya showed up overhead at the trigger of his
F-4's 20 mm and dusted the ****in' gook ******* (careful inspection of
the gook's drivers license back in base showed him to be a teenager,
albiet quite muscular for his age), saving Kerry's ass from the B-40
round, for which he owes him big time, and just like you comic book
chicken ****s with your magnifying glasses on every word of these real
world reports suspected all along. The great news: "Coker" Bush
wasn't hiding out AWOL with a bag of snort from taking any kiss ass
drug tests after all!! It's all in the records Kerry ain't releasing
but my buddy was there, and is here, now, in his own way.
Love,
Wayno.

clifto wrote in message ...
Tom Betz wrote:
Fellow officer steps up to defend Kerry

BY WILLIAM B. ROOD
CHICAGO TRIBUNE


Snipped to avoid repeating Tom Betz' pseudo-intellectual blather.
Also, grunts can't walk on water but many have tried.