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| Home Front: Politix |
| Jack Kelly: Kerry's free pass |
| 2004-05-09 |
| The hypocrisy, double standards and political bias of most in the major news media was evident in the meager coverage given a remarkable press conference held in Washington, D.C., on May 4. A group calling themselves "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" declared John Kerry to be "unfit to be commander in chief." The group includes 19 of the 23 officers who served in Kerry's swift boat squadron during the time he was in Vietnam, and every officer in his chain of command, up to Rear Adm. Roy Hoffman, who oversaw all swift boats in Vietnam at the time Kerry was there. Most of their ire was directed at Kerry's false accusation that servicemen routinely committed war crimes. But Kerry's shipmates also accused him of having "withheld and/or distorted material facts as to your own conduct in this war." Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard, Kerry's immediate superior, said he doubted Kerry deserved the first of the three Purple Hearts he was awarded during his four months in Vietnam: "The briefing of some members of the crew the morning after revealed that they had not received enemy fire," Hibbard said. "And yet Lt. j.g. Kerry informed me of a wound, he showed me a scratch on his arm and a piece of shrapnel in his hand that appeared to be from one of our own M-79s [grenade launcher]. It was later reported to me that Lt. Kerry had fired an M-79 and it had exploded off the adjacent shoreline." Hibbard's doubts are shared by Louis Letson, the physician who treated Kerry for his wound at the Cam Ranh Bay medical facility: "The story he told was different from what his crewmen had to say about that night. According to Kerry, they had been engaged in a fire fight. He said that his injury had resulted from this enemy action. Some of his crew confided that they did not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a mortar round at close range to some rocks on shore. The crewman thought that the injury was caused by a fragment ricocheting from that mortar round when it struck the rocks. That seemed to fit the injury which I treated." Customarily, service members are recommended for decorations by their immediate superior. But Hibbard said he didn't recommend Kerry for that Purple Heart, and doesn't know how he got it. |
| Posted by:Frank G |
| #2 If Canidate Bush had a letter signed by the people he served with saying about the same as the Kerry deal. It's pretty obvious what the drumbeat would have been. Instead of a WoT we'd be hell bent on a war on glogal warming. Let the FBI worry about those pesky terroist attacks. Throw the book at them they'd say. |
| Posted by: Lucky 2004-05-09 3:00:01 PM |
| #1 If a Republican had tried to run this kind of bulls**t war record past the public, the press would have had him out of the race by now. How can these clowns claim they're not biased? |
| Posted by: Infidel Bob 2004-05-09 11:48:58 AM |