Now the true stuff comes out..

[w1che]

VIET VETS CHARGE: KERRY KILLED A LONE, FLEEING, TEENAGE FOE; LIED TO SUPERIORS TO GAIN MEDAL

http://www.drudgereport.com/ufd1.htm

[~wildangel~]

dang:confusedthat's sad

[Puddin' Tain]

Originally posted by w1che
VIET VETS CHARGE: KERRY KILLED A LONE, FLEEING, TEENAGE FOE; LIED TO SUPERIORS TO GAIN MEDAL

http://www.drudgereport.com/ufd1.htm


Oh yeah, Drudge is SUCH an icon of journalistic Integrity.... like their report of Kerry's affairs...

[Dumbie]

Kerry explained that he shot the fleeing man who had a missile launcher, and his choice was to stop the man or allow him to shoot the weapon at his boat and men. The man wasn’t running away he was running to a new location to fire his weapon, others have testified that they were shooting at the man as well. Not being able to kill the enemy from the boat Kerry left the boat and pursued the man on foot to achieve his objective. He was reprimand for leaving his boat and given a medal for saving his mates lives. If he had to do it all over again he would, medal, reprimand or Court Marshal. :smash

[w1che]

:lol :lol A dam* Superman.. Wow..

I thought the guy had already fired the missile launcher and hit one boat but not Kerry's..

[Ateo]

I suppose you'd call Hiroshima an atrocity too, eh wunch?

DRUDGE ALERT!!!!

GEORGE BUSH DROPS BOMBS ON IRAQI CITIES!!!!! THOUSANDS OF INNOCENTS KILLED!!!!!! LIED ABOUT WMDS!!!!!

OH WAIT!!!! BUSH IS A REPUBLICAN LIKE ME!!! SO NEVER MIND!!!!!!

[DEAD ZONE]

Personally if he had any weapon loaded or otherwise he was a target and a lagitamate one ...fleeing or not.

[Dumbie]

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