John Kerry and his supporters have made a lot of noise of his 4 months in Vietnam on a Swift boat. But what do the men who actually served with him think? http://www.swiftvets.com/
Overwhelmingly, they reject him. Described variously as a glory hound, he apparently took a home movie camera with him in which he reinacted various events in front of the camera in an effort to glorify what he did.
I don't know enough on this to know how much of it is usual political propaganda or not. However, I think it is very telling that so few people who served with him have any respect for him. That is very counter to the normal way of things between men who served together in combat.
Even his Purple Hearts have some dispute about them:
(USA Today)
Criticism Of Kerry’s Purple Heart Is Just
…”I was the commanding officer to whom Kerry reported his injury on December 3, 1968. I had confirmed that there was no hostile fire that night – and that Kerry had simply wounded himself with an M-79 grenade round that he’d fired too close.
He wanted a Purple Heart – and I refused**. Louis Letson, the base physician, saw Kerry – and used tweezers to remove the tiny piece of shrapnel, about 1 centimeter in length and 2 millimeters in diameter. Letson also confirmed that the scratch was inflicted with our M-79.” …
“Kerry orchestrated his way out of Vietnam – and then testified under oath before Congress that we, his comrades, had committed horrible war crimes.
This testimony was a lie – and slandered honorable men. We who were actually there believe he is unfit to command our sons and daughters. “
Grant Hibbard, retired commander U.S. Navy, Gulf Breeze, Fla.
Which wouldn't matter one bit to me except that Kerry has made such a stink about his Vietnam service. For all the sewage they've poured onto Bush for "only" flying aircraft in the states for the guard and unsubstantiated postfacto claims of "desertion", Kerry seem to have been living in a glass house all this time.
And that is what is so odd about this. Kerry has made his Vietnam service such a center point of his campaign. And yet, at the end of the day, what actually was that service? 4 months in Vietnam with a crew that almost universally despises him as a liar and show boat. He takes advantage of the fact that most people think of Purple Hearts as being medals for serious wounds when, in his case, 1 of them may have been self-inflicted and the other 2 were for minor injuries.
That isn't to say that he has anything to be ashamed of. But given the war records of Bush Sr. and Bob Dole, neither of whom made anywhere near as much noise about their military career, it is rather stunning that all the valor noise coming from Kerry and his supporters is based on so little.