Setting Straight Kerry's War RecordSetting Straight Kerry's War Record
By Thomas Lipscomb
The New York Sun | March 1, 2004
Senator Kerry recently wrote a letter to President Bush complaining, "You
and
your campaign have initiated a widespread attack on my service in Vietnam,
my
decision to speak out to end that war," and warning, "I will not sit back
and
allow my patriotism to be challenged."
In the absence of any evidence from Mr. Kerry of an attack from the Bush
campaign, Mr. Kerry seems to have originated his own doctrine of
"pre-emption."
How valid are his concerns?
No one denies Mr. Kerry's four bemedaled months in "Swiftboats" or his
seven-months' service as an electrical officer on board the USS Gridley,
during
its cruises back and forth to California, or even his months as an
admiral's
aide in Brooklyn, before he was able get out of the Navy six months early
to
run
for office.
Taking a look at Mr. Kerry's much-promoted Vietnam service, his military
record
was, indeed, remarkable in many ways. Last week, the former assistant
secretary
of defense and Fletcher School of Diplomacy professor, W. Scott Thompson,
recalled a conversation with the late Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. that
clearly
had a slightly different take on Mr. Kerry's recollection of their
discussions:
"[T]he fabled and distinguished chief of naval operations,Admiral Elmo
Zumwalt,
told me - 30 years ago when he was still CNO -that during his own command
of
U.S. naval forces in Vietnam, just prior to his anointment as CNO, young
Kerry
had created great problems for him and the other top brass,by killing so
many
non-combatant civilians and going after other non-military targets.'We had
virtually to straitjacket him to keep him under control,' the admiral
said.
'Bud' Zumwalt got it right when he *****sed Kerry as having large
ambitions -
but promised that his career in Vietnam would haunt him if he were ever on
the
national stage." And this statement was made despite the fact Zumwalt had
personally pinned a Silver Star on Mr. Kerry.
Mr. Kerry was assigned to Swiftboat 44 on December 1, 1968. Within 24
hours,
he
had his first Purple Heart. Mr. Kerry ac***ulated three Purple Hearts in
four
months with not even a day of duty lost from wounds, according to his
training
officer. It's a pity one cannot read his Purple Heart medical treatment
re****ts
which have been withheld from the public. The only person preventing their
release is Mr. Kerry.
By his own admission during those four months, Mr. Kerry continually kept
ramming his Swiftboat onto an enemy-held shore on assorted occasions alone
and
with a few men, killing civilians and even a wounded enemy soldier. One
can
begin to appreciate Zumwalt's problem with Mr. Kerry as commander of an
unarmored craft dependent upon speed of maneuver to keep it and its crew
from
being shot to pieces.
Mr. Kerry now refers to those civilian deaths as "accidents of war."And
within
four days of his third Purple Heart, Mr. Kerry applied to take advantage
of
a
technicality which allowed him to request immediate transfer to a
stateside
post.
Once back in the States, Mr. Kerry joined "the struggle for our veterans,"
as he
called it last week in Atlanta, by joining a scruffy organization called
the
Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The VVAW's executive director, Al
Hubbard,
supposedly a former Air Force captain wounded in Vietnam, quickly
appointed
Mr.
Kerry to the executive committee.
Mr. Kerry participated with the VVAW at agitprop rallies such as Valley
Forge
and the "Winter Soldier" guerrilla theater atrocity trials in Detroit,
finally
testifying in April 1971 before the Senate as an authority on the war
crimes
his
fellow American servicemen had committed in Vietnam.
Outside of his own "accidents of war," there is no evidence that Mr. Kerry
had
then or has now the least idea what may or may not have been the realities
of
ground combat. However, he had no problem reeling off for the Senate a
serie
s of
unproven, secondhand allegations that would have been perfectly at home at
the
Nuremberg trials indicting his fellow veterans.
Mr. Kerry stated there were "war crimes committed in Southeast Asia...not
isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-today basis with the full
awareness of officers at all levels of command. They relived the absolute
horror
of what this country, in a sense, made them do." Then Mr. Kerry got
specific:
"They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from
****table telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off
limbs,
blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fa****on
reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food
stocks,
and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam...we are more
guilty
than
any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of
free-fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search-and-destroy
missions,
the
bombings, the torture of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in
South
Vietnam."
In other words, My Lai was just another day in the life of the Vietnam
War.
This wasn't a one-time occasion. The VVAW had been peddling this line from
the
day Mr. Kerry joined them and had been publi****ng charges like this for
the
previous two years. Mr. Kerry repeated them on "Meet the Press" with Al
Hubbard,
who was found to be a total fraud and who never served in Vietnam, much
less
was
wounded. However, Mr. Kerry has never renounced the charges he made.
Recently, his fellow VVAW sup****ter, Jane Fonda, has tried to minimize a
potentially damaging picture of him a few rows behind her at the three-day
VVAW
Valley Forge rally in September 1970. And many members of the press fell
for
the
line that it was accidental or coincidental, including Fox's Chris Wallace
and
ABC's Tim Russert.
However, there were only eight or nine speakers that day, including Donald
Sutherland, Mark Lane, Bella Abzug, and Ms. Fonda. And far from being a
casual
audience member, Mr. Kerry, an executive committee member, not Ms. Fonda,
was
the lead speaker.
Ms. Fonda had been funding VVAW events since before Mr. Kerry joined its
executive committee. At Valley Forge, Ms. Fonda said: "My Lai was not an
isolated incident but rather a way of life for many of our military."
Their appearance together in that picture may be a lot of things, but it
was
not
a coincidence.
Mr. Kerry has already confessed his complicity in killing civilians as
"accidents of war." However, he has offered a classic Nuremberg defense
that
this was not only a commonplace occurrence throughout the Vietnam War, but
he
was carrying out a policy "with the full awareness of officers at all
levels
of
command."
His commander of naval operations in Vietnam, who specifically designed
the
mission that Mr. Kerry and the other Swiftboat commanders executed,
Admiral
Zumwalt, clearly disagreed. An examination of the truth behind this
disagreement
is not an attack on Mr. Kerry. It is a matter of vital historical
interest.
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