The third chapter
Unfit for Command is available to
download for free. I've read it - in this commentary, quotations from that text are indicated by red text, quotations from other sources are in blue. Go ahead and use anything I observe below in any way you wish and if you want, reference by blog,
http://fearofclowns.com/. I wrote this a few days ago and didn't think it merited a lengthy post here, but if Robert Novak can say the book is a
"meticulously researched account" in his nationally syndicated column, sharing my observations here is no large sin.
The free chapter is titled "THE PURPLE HEART HUNTER" and asserts that Kerry faked his first Purple Heart. The last sentence of the first paragraph of the chapter is
simply devastating:John Kerry is also the only known Swiftee who received the Purple Heart for a self-inflicted wound.
As we will see later, it's also
simply farcical prattle. But the criticism that Kerry did not earn or deserve his first Purple Heart deserves attention. So let's give it some.
... many Swiftees have now come forth to question Kerry's deception. "I was there the entire time Kerry was and witnessed two of his war 'wounds.' I was also present during the action he received his Bronze Star. I know what a fraud he is. How can I help?" wrote Van Odell, a gunner from Kerry's unit in An Thoi.2 Commander John Kipp, USN (retired), of Coastal Division 13 also volunteered, "If there is anything I can do to unmask this charlatan, please let me know. He brings disgrace to all who served."
We're off to a good start! This has footnotes to back up and further substantiate it's claims - 24 of them in this short chapter alone! Or, wait, no it doesn't. It has references to footnotes, but no footnotes appear anywhere in document. Neither does it number it's pages, but it should be easy to find the passages I cite.
Van O'Dell is not mentioned again in this chapter - despite his contention that he
"was there the entire time Kerry was and witnessed two of his war 'wounds.'"Per John Kipp, maybe he's the Vietnam vet who
died May 23, 2004, or maybe he's the John Kipp who was not allowed help to "unmask this charlatan" in the provided chapter - it's the first and last time he's mentioned. But it adds bulk, and that's the important thing, right? After all, to the authors' credit, the prose does not waste words noting that the Clintons have
murdered 48 people or even that John Kerry
looks French. So we should cut the authors some slack. They turn to Kerry's decision to leave Vietnam,
Indeed, many share the feelings of Admiral Roy Hoffmann, to whom all Swiftees reported: Kerry simply "bugged out" when the heat was on.
Although Kerry puts it differently, he doesn't disagree with the substance of that feeling. He has spoken of the difficult decision to come back home and work against the war. As he put it in his
1971 debate on the Dick Cavett show with John O'Neill,
The fact of the matter remains that after I received my third wound, I was told that I could return to the United States. I deliberated for about two weeks because there was a very difficult decision in whether or not you leave your friends because you have an opportunity to go, but I finally made the decision to go back and did leave of my own volition because I felt that I could do more against he war back here. And when I got back here, I was serving as an aide to an admiral in New York City, and I wrote a letter through him requesting that I be released from the Navy early because of my opposition, and I was granted that release, and I have been working against the war ever since then.
An additional fact of the matter is that once Kerry saw the reality of the war first-hand, he decided it was not a good idea to continue fighting the war and came back home to join Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Compare this to John O'Neill who saw the reality of the war first-hand, decided it was a good thing to continue fighting it and decided to come back home and work
for it. That, my friends, is what we call a "chicken-hawk." Or to borrow a phrase from this chapter,
"unbelievable hypocrisy and the truly bottom rung of human conduct."The authors describe the events around Kerry's wound for which he received his first Purple Heart, as related in
Tour of Duty, by respected historian Douglass Brinkley. It then attempts to juxtapose Brinkley's account with a "somewhat different" account as related in the
Boston Globe's biography of John Kerry:
A somewhat different version is recounted in the Kerry biography written by the Boston Globe reporters. In this account, Kerry had emphasized that he was patrolling with the Boston Whaler in a freefire curfew zone, and that "anyone violating the curfew could be considered an enemy and shot."9
Another reference to a non-existent footnote - a reasonable reader would assume that it's simply a citation to the Boston Globe biography, just as you probably did if you noticed it. Immediately after the footnote reference, it continues,
By the time the Globe biography was written, questions had been raised about whether the incident involved any enemy fire at all. The Globe reporters covered this point as follows:
The Kerry campaign showed the Boston Globe a one-page document listing Kerry's medical treatment during some of his service time. The notation said: "3 DEC 1968 U.S. NAVAL SUPPORT FACILITY CAM RANH BAY RVN FPO Shrapnel in left arm above elbow. Shrapnel removed and apply Bacitracin dressing. Ret to duty."
So that must be something the Boston Globe reporters wrote, right? Well maybe, I haven't read their book. What it is for sure is the same information contained in an April 17, 2004
Salon article written by guess who?
Douglass Brinkley. In it, Brinkley
criticizes an
April 14, 2004 Globe article for printing the statements of Vietnam veteran Grant Hibbard (
"He had a little scratch on his forearm") without mentioning that the actual medical report describes the removal of shrapnel from the flesh of Kerry's (upper) left arm. Says Brinkley,
Not included in either newspaper account, however, is Kerry's medical report from the incident. He shared it with me last year when I was writing "Tour of Duty." It reads: "3 DEC 1968 U.S. NAVAL SUPPORT FACILITY CAM RANH BAY RVN FPO Shrapnel in left arm above elbow ...
The misdirection is astounding. It's not surprising that O'Neill
favors Grant Hibbard's 33 year old second-hand memories over the medical report. But again, to the author's credit, they do note that Kerry's crewmates relate a similar story as Kerry does,
The two men serving alongside Kerry that night had similar memories of the incident that led to Kerry's first wartime injury. William Zaldonis, who was manning an M-60, and Patrick Runyon, operating the engine, said they spotted some people running from a sampan to a nearby shoreline.
Indeed, they had similar memories because they refused to go down the rabbit-hole O'Neill opened up for them. Patrick Runyon is another vet who served alongside Kerry later in the war - the groups that researched this book contacted him during their "investigation". Runyun related his experience with O'Neill's group to
The Dallas Morning News (link is a to reprint, the original article requiring registration is
here).
Pat Runyon said the crew was patrolling north of Cam Ranh Bay the night of Dec. 2, 1968, when Kerry and fellow crewman Bill Zaledonis spotted Viet Cong guerrillas massed on a beach and began firing. He said Kerry was subsequently treated for a wound to the arm, which led to his first Purple Heart. Runyon said he recounted the episode for the private investigator because he gave the impression he was working for an independent or pro-Kerry veterans group. But Runyon said he was distressed when the investigator sent him an inaccurate synopsis of their conversation suggesting that the wound was likely caused by a flare.
So what we have is an investigator interviewing Kerry's old war buddies and faxing them back inaccurate synopsises of the interviews. That was their technique with Runyon. The authors also use the technique of hoping their audience's reading comprehension is quite low. We're still in the section describing Kerry's vesion of events,
The Globe reporters noted that Kerry had declined to be interviewed about the Boston Whaler incident for their book.
Insert a puzzled pause here, then rewind to what we read six paragraphs prior:
A somewhat different version is recounted in the Kerry biography written by the Boston Globe reporters. In this account, Kerry had emphasized that he was patrolling with the Boston Whaler ...
Upon that masterstroke, the section ominously ends,
"Kerry's fabricated story of 'the most frightening night' had begun to unravel."Following is a section titled "What Really Happened." The version it tells simply
cannot be as true as Kerry's version because it only contains
three references to non-existent footnotes, whereas the preceeding section describing Kerry's version contains
twelve! Sorry, but I couldn't resist sarcastically using an argument similar to those presented in the chapter.
The section stakes out a handful of repeated claims over the space of five five pages. Giving it an uncareful reading gives the impression that more than one person with first-hand knowledge dispute the Kerry/Runyon/Zaledonis account, but the bulk of it consists of transcriptions of statements from Grant Hibbard, the Commander of Coastal Division 14 (who wasn't there) and Dr. Louis Letson, who removed the shrapnel from Kerry's arm (and wasn't there either).
For even more bulk, the authors also weave in the names of two other individuals that don't claim first hand knowledge of the incident, one that says he wasn't Kerry didn't tell him he was wounded wounded (who had no reason to know as he just towed the damaged boat) and another thrown in for good measure (who has nothing to do with the story, but says he once made a taunting remark to Kerry - for all we know, it was good natured cajolery). The claims in the "What Really Happened" version are as follows:
- Kerry's M-16 had jammed, and he picked up a grenade launcher, which he fired too close to shore and the shrapnel in his arm came from a grenade he launched, but Kerry claimed it was from enemy fire.
- The piece of shrapnel was one or two centimeters long and two or three millimeters thick; most of the shrapnel was sticking out of Kerry's arm.
- William Schachte, the officer in command of the boat Kerry was on says there was no enemy fire.
- Grant Hibbard says he was told there was no enemy fire.
- Dr. Louis Letson, the doctor who removed the shrapnel from Kerry's arm doesn't think Kerry's wound merited a Purple Heart, characterizing the wound as a "tiny scratch".
- Dr. Louis Letson says he was told there was no enemy fire.
- Kerry somehow "gamed the system" nearly three months later to obtain the Purple Heart that Hibbard had denied. How he obtained the award is unknown, since his refusal to execute Standard Form 180 means that whatever documents exist are known only to Kerry, the Department of Defense, and God.
Here's my take on the claims they present:
- Accepted as fact. Zaldonis and Runyon do not claim with certainty there was enemy fire.
- Accepted as fact. The piece of shrapnel was small and did not fully embed itself in Kerry's flesh.
- Accepted as fact. Dr. Louis Letson didn't think the size of the wound merited a Purple Heart.
- Accepted as fact. Schachte's impression was that there was no enemy fire.
- Accepted as fact. It's reasonable to believe Schante told Hibbard there was no enemy fire.
- Accepted as fact. It's reasonable to believe Schante or Hibbard told Letson there was no enemy fire.
- Accepted as fact. Kerry's Purple Heart could have been awarded by an officer higher up in the chain of command based solely on the medical report filed by Dr. Louis Letson which stated, "Shrapnel in left arm above elbow. Shrapnel removed and apply Bacitracin dressing."
Reviewing the "Kerry story" along side the "Other story", we see that there was an incident where two witnesses are
unsure if they received hostile fire or not, a Lieutenant in his first intense combat experience in the jungles of Vietnam who says there
was hostile fire, a commander of the boat who says there
wasn't hostile fire, and a couple other people who believed the commander of the boat, and a small piece of shrapnel which was removed from Kerry's upper left arm, which could have been no larger than the bottom two-thirds of a small wood screw such as this:
(web graphics appear different sizes on different screens, imagine the screw as about an inch long)
Well and fine, we all agree. Now let's look at
Army Regulation 600-8-22 which defines military awards:
SEC. 571. PURPLE HEART TO BE AWARDED ONLY TO MEMBERS OF
THE ARMED FORCES.
... It is not intended that such a strict interpretation of the requirement for the wound or injury to be caused by direct result of hostile action be taken that it would preclude the award being made to deserving personnel ... Note the following examples:
... Individuals wounded or killed as a result of "friendly fire" in the "heat of battle" will be awarded the Purple Heart as long as the "friendly" projectile or agent was released with the full intent of inflicting damage or destroying enemy troops or equipment.
We can now return to the
simply farcical prattle we started with:
"John Kerry is also the only known Swiftee who received the Purple Heart for a self-inflicted wound." All that means is the authors characterize a wound from "friendly fire" as "self-inflicted" because Kerry launched the grenade himself and they don't know another Swiftee that received a Purple Heart in such a "friendly fire" incident. Perhaps they could have started their research with a
google search instead of an outrageously silly claim that to some may appear to releal Kerry as a fraudulant monster.
Granted, it's abundantly apparant that many people believe Kerry didn't deserve his first Purple Heart. But someone did, and anybody that disagreed is going to have to let the healing process begin, it's three decades later for goodness sake. Er, wait just this April, Hibbard -
told the Boston Globe he just remembered some questions about Kerry's first Purple Heart (this is from the same article Douglas Brinkley addresses in the Salon article linked to above).
Hibbard said he couldn't be certain whether Kerry actually came under fire on Dec. 2, 1968, the date in questionand that is why he said he asked Kerry questions about the matter. But Kerry persisted and, to his own "chagrin," Hibbard said, he dropped the matter. "I do remember some questions, some correspondence about it," Hibbard said. "I finally said, 'OK, if that's what happened ... do whatever you want.'"
Compare to what the book reports Hibbard remembering his sentiments as,
I told Kerry to "forget it." There was no hostile fire ... Kerry wasn't getting any Purple Heart recommendation from me.
Although they fail to note that "friendly fire" injuries can warrant a Purple Heart This John O'Neill's smear is pure pap. FactCheck.org has some
additional commentary on this gutter politics group and their ad. Let's have an election based on important things ... for instance figuring out how we're going to minimize the number incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan which will result in
undeniably meritorious Purple Hearts ...
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