ANTI-KERRY AD A HIT

[UltraQuiet]

No, I think the current polls of vets reflects only enough time to have reacted to two weeks of the NOT SO SWIFT boat liars lies. We'll see if the polls move after they've had time to digest the responses.

I doubt the swift boat ads have much to do with that number. Vets typically vote Republican. I can count on one hand the number of people I knew in the military that voted for any Democrat. Quite frankly I'm surprised it's only 18 points.

 

[Harvey]

Here's the opinion of a real Veteran, William B. Rood, who was there with Kerry. From the Boston Globe:

COMMENTARY

?On Feb. 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of PCF-23?

August 22, 2004

Excerpts from an account by William B. Rood of the Chicago Tribune of his service with John F. Kerry in Vietnam in 1969.

There were three swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago -- three officers and 15 crew members. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened Feb. 28, 1969.

One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I am the other.

For years, no one asked about those events. But now they are the focus of skirmishing in a presidential election with a group of swift-boat veterans and others contending that Kerry didn't deserve the Silver Star for what he did on that day, or the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for other actions.

Ever since that time, I have refused all requests for interviews about Kerry's service, even those from reporters at the Chicago Tribune, where I work. But Kerry's critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown.

Even though Kerry's own crew members have backed him, the attacks have continued, and in recent days Kerry has called me and others who were with him in those days, asking that we go public with our accounts.

I can't pretend those calls had no effect on me, but that is not why I am writing this. What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did. My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it.

I was part of the operation that led to Kerry's Silver Star. On Feb. 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of PCF-23, one of three swift boats -- including Kerry's PCF-94 and Lieutenant Junior Grade Donald Droz's PCF-43 -- that carried Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and a Navy demolition team up the Dong Cung, a narrow tributary of the Bay Hap River, to conduct a sweep in the area.

The approach of the noisy 50-foot aluminum boats -- each driven by two huge 12-cylinder diesels and loaded down with six crew members, troops, and gear -- was no secret. Ambushes were a virtual certainty, and that day was no exception.

The difference was that Kerry, who had tactical command of that particular operation, had talked to Droz and me beforehand about not responding the way the boats usually did to an ambush.

We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial volley and had a clear fix on the location of the ambush, we would turn directly into it, focusing the boats' twin .50-caliber machine guns on the attackers and beaching the boats. We told our crews about the plan.

The first time we took fire, the usual rockets and automatic weapons, Kerry ordered a "turn 90," and the three boats roared in on the ambush. It worked. We routed the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The troops, led by an Army adviser, jumped off the boats and began a sweep, which killed another half dozen VC.

Meanwhile, Kerry ordered our boat to head upstream with his, leaving Droz's boat at the first site.

It happened again, another ambush. Again, Kerry ordered the turn maneuver, and again it worked. As we headed for the riverbank, I remember seeing a loaded B-40 launcher pointed at the boats.

We called Droz's boat up to assist us, and Kerry, followed by one member of his crew, jumped ashore and chased a VC behind a hooch, a thatched hut, maybe 15 yards inland from the ambush site. Some who were there that day recall the man being wounded as he ran. Neither I nor Jerry Leeds, our boat's leading petty officer, with whom I've checked my recollection of all these events, recalls that.

With our troops involved in the sweep of the first ambush site, Richard Lamberson, a member of my crew, and I also went ashore to search the area. I was checking out the inside of the hooch when I heard gunfire nearby.

Not long after, Kerry returned, reporting that he had killed the man he chased behind the hooch. He also had picked up a loaded B-40 rocket launcher, which we took back to our base in An Thoi after the operation.

John O'Neill, author of a highly critical account of Kerry's Vietnam service, describes the man Kerry chased as a "teenager" in a "loincloth." Both Leeds and I recall that he was a grown man, in the kind of garb the VC usually wore.

The man Kerry chased was not the "lone" attacker at that site, as O'Neill suggests. There were others who fled. There was also firing from the tree line well behind the spider holes and at one point, from the opposite riverbank.

Our initial reports of the day's action caused an immediate response from our task force headquarters in Cam Ranh Bay.

Known over radio circuits by the call sign "Latch," then-captain and now retired Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, the task force commander, fired off a message congratulating the three swift boats, saying that the tactic of charging the ambushes was a "shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy."

Hoffmann has become a leading critic of Kerry and now says that what the boats did on that day demonstrated Kerry's inclination to be impulsive to a fault. Our decision to use that tactic under the right circumstances was not impulsive but was the result of discussions beforehand and an agreement of all three boat officers.

It was also well within the aggressive tradition that was embraced by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, then commander of US Naval Forces, Vietnam. Months before that day in February, a fellow boat officer, Michael Bernique, was summoned to Saigon to explain to top Navy commanders why he had made an unauthorized run up the Giang Thanh River, which runs along the Vietnam-Cambodia border. Bernique had been told by a source in Ha Tien at the mouth of the river that a Viet Cong tax collector was operating upstream.

Ignoring the prohibition, Bernique and his crew went upstream and routed the Viet Cong. Instead of facing disciplinary action, Bernique was given the Silver Star, and Zumwalt ordered other swifts, which had largely patrolled coastal waters, into the rivers.

The decision sent a clear message, underscored repeatedly by Hoffmann's congratulatory messages, that tactics like Bernique's were encouraged.

What we did Feb. 28, 1969, was well in line with the tone set by our top commanders.

Zumwalt made that clear when he flew down to our base to pin the Silver Star on Kerry and assorted Bronze stars and commendation medals on the rest of us.

My Bronze Star citation, signed by Zumwalt, praised the charge tactic we used that day, saying the Viet Cong were "caught completely off guard."

I know that what some people are saying now is wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they're saying impugns others who are not in the public eye.

Men like Larry Lee, who was on our bow with an M-60 machine gun as we charged the riverbank; Kenneth Martin, who was in the .50-caliber gun tub atop our boat; and Benjamin Cueva, our engineman, who was at our aft gun mount suppressing the fire from the opposite bank.

Wayne Langhoffer and the other crewmen on Droz's boat went through even worse on April 12, 1969, when they saw Droz killed in a brutal ambush that left PCF-43 an abandoned pile of wreckage on the banks of the Duong Keo River. That was just a few months after the birth of his only child, Tracy.

The survivors of all these events are scattered across the country now.

Jerry Leeds lives in a tiny Kansas town, where he built and sold a successful printing business. He owns a beautiful home with a lawn that sweeps to the edge of a small lake, which he also owns.

Cueva, recently retired, has raised three daughters and is beloved by his neighbors for all the years he spent keeping their cars running. Lee is a senior computer programmer in Kentucky, and Lamberson finished a second military career in the Army.

With the debate over that long-ago day in February, they're all living that war another time.

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

Thanks to umbrella39 for his post of the above in this thread.

 

[Riprorin]

A photograph of John Kerry with 19 other Coastal Division 11 Swift boat officers is featured in a new Kerry campaign ad called Lifetime. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth contacted surviving members of this group to find out how many actually support Kerry. Only 1 did!!!!!

Link

 

[Riprorin]

Here's a good editorial:

The Nazi tactics used by the Kerry Campaign to trample the rights of the Swift Boat Vets; from pandering to left leaning book store managers to either not order the Swift Boat Vets? book, ?Unfit for Command?, or display it in a low traffic area, to trying to harass Regnery Publishing to discontinue printing the book, to threatening lawsuits to any media outlet that runs their ads, goes below the nadir of even the worse political mudslinging. This is America for God?s sake, not 1938 Berlin! Even more startling is the apparent personal arrogance of John Kerry who evidently sees no ethical issue with stifling political dissent so long as it might further his megalomaniacal dreams of power. And some of you want this man defending your freedom?

John Kerry is Definitely ?Unfit for Command?

 

[umbrella39]

Originally posted by: Riprorin

A photograph of John Kerry with 19 other Coastal Division 11 Swift boat officers is featured in a new Kerry campaign ad called Lifetime. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth contacted surviving members of this group to find out how many actually support Kerry. Only 1 did!!!!!

Link

So gee Rip, when faced with believing the story of another swift boat captain who WAS ACTUALLY THERE and actually rode alongside and can verify Kerry's accounting of what transpired, we should still believe ones who weren't. You partisainship is sickening Rip. Hell awaits... People like you make me sick. You are now calling Rood and the men who served on both boats liars who are not deserving of their medals. I wish you were over in Iraq right now. For real.

Read this part very carefully RIP before you make another ass-of-yourself post:

But I know that what some people are saying now is wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they're saying impugns others who are not in the public eye.


Got that!

Rood was there and was in concert with Kerry on how they would react whould they be ambushed. Keep calling these war heros liars Rip. There are few daft enough on this board to keep running with this SwiftBoat charade. You are their leader.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Originally posted by: Riprorin
Here's a good editorial:

The Nazi tactics used by the Kerry Campaign to trample the rights of the Swift Boat Vets; from pandering to left leaning book store managers to either not order the Swift Boat Vets? book, ?Unfit for Command?, or display it in a low traffic area, to trying to harass Regnery Publishing to discontinue printing the book, to threatening lawsuits to any media outlet that runs their ads, goes below the nadir of even the worse political mudslinging. This is America for God?s sake, not 1938 Berlin! Even more startling is the apparent personal arrogance of John Kerry who evidently sees no ethical issue with stifling political dissent so long as it might further his megalomaniacal dreams of power. And some of you want this man defending your freedom?

John Kerry is Definitely ?Unfit for Command?

:roll:

Yeah, that really is a great editorial, from a fantastically credible source. What's the matter, couldn't find one here that supported your position?

 

[Harvey]

Rip -- Good to see your into your usual pathetic disregard of credibility in your choice of links. Your "good editorial" is almost a cliche of bad hack political writing and bad taste.

The Nazi tactics used by the Kerry Campaign to trample the rights of the Swift Boat Vets...

Great! Right out of the box, he uses big bad scare words, like "Nazi tatics" to describe the Kerry campagn's responses to "trample the rights" of the swifties. Let's get that one straight. With right of free speech comes the responsiblity for that speech. That's why there are laws against libel and slander. As many news sources have now documented, NONE of the swifties has yet been able to produce ONE piece of documentation to back their lies.

This is America for God?s sake, not 1938 Berlin!

With American citizens being held in jail incomunicado, without access even to legal cousel and without being charged with any crime, based only on a Presidential order, with people like John Ashcroft pushing for secret warrants for searches based on suspicions, but NO evidence, with an administration that labels every citizen with the slightest dissent as anti-American and subversive, with an arrogant "You're either with us or against us" mentality not only with respect to other countries, but toward American citizens, what scares me most if Bush is re-elected is that we're already way too far down the road in that direction.

I noticed you removed the Michael Reagan quote from your sig. Did you finally figure out how embarrassing that was to any sentient human being? :disgust:

 

[Riprorin]

Originally posted by: umbrella39

Originally posted by: Riprorin

A photograph of John Kerry with 19 other Coastal Division 11 Swift boat officers is featured in a new Kerry campaign ad called Lifetime. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth contacted surviving members of this group to find out how many actually support Kerry. Only 1 did!!!!!

Link

So gee Rip, when faced with believing the story of another swift boat captain who WAS ACTUALLY THERE and actually rode alongside and can verify Kerry's accounting of what transpired, we should still believe ones who weren't. You partisainship is sickening Rip. Hell awaits... People like you make me sick. You are now calling Rood and the men who served on both boats liars who are not deserving of their medals. I wish you were over in Iraq right now. For real.

Read this part very carefully RIP before you make another ass-of-yourself post:

But I know that what some people are saying now is wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they're saying impugns others who are not in the public eye.


Got that!

Rood was there and was in concert with Kerry on how they would react whould they be ambushed. Keep calling these war heros liars Rip. There are few daft enough on this board to keep running with this SwiftBoat charade. You are their leader.

For your reading pleasure:

Link

 

[Harvey]

Rip -- Every credible news source on the air and online has proven Oneill's a liar. He's had a hardon for Kerry for 33 years, ever since Kerry wiped the floor with him on Dick Cavett's show in 1971.

O'Neill was a loser, then, and he's a loser, now. This is old news, and nothing he claims, now, can change the fact that he's still spewing bullsh8.

Earlier, I posted that I preferred the the thought that you are a fool. I'm becoming more convinced that, like the swifties, your just a malicious liar. :|

 

[Riprorin]

Harvey, just like they were lying about "Christmas" in Cambodia?

Who's the proved liar here?

 

[umbrella39]

Originally posted by: Harvey
Rip -- Every credible news source on the air and online have proven Oneill's a liar. He's had a hardon for Kerry for 33 years, ever since Kerry wiped the floor with him on Dick Cavett's show in 1971.

O'Neill was a loser, then, and he's a loser, now. This is old news, and nothing he claims, now, can change the fact that he's still spewing bullsh8.

Earlier, I posted that I preferred the the thought that you are a fool. I'm becoming more convinced that, like the swifties, your just a malicious liar. :|

He is certainly no fool. He is no better than the scrum who came up with this Swift Boat plan in the first place. Keep posting lies Rip. You are pathological.

 

[heartsurgeon]

for the historically challenged amongst you..

before Kennedy became President..our troop levels in Vietnam were generally below 1000...only really advisory staff, no real "combat troops"

Kennedy was President only three years, and in that time he raised the troop levels 20-fold, to nearly 20,000.

Kennedy had already begun the war in Vietnam...the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 was the formality to "legitimize" what was already underway.

Kennedy started the war....Johnson formalized it, and then rocketed the troop numbers up to 550,000 within another 4 years.

Johnson desperately wanted to negotiate a peace settlement with the North Vietnamize, but they would not even agree to negotiate with him.

Nixon drove the North Vietnamize to the negotiating table in Paris, with "Linebacker I" and "Linebacker II", the systematic bombing by b-52's of the supply trails the vietcong used that ran through Cambodia...this "encourage" the negotiations to take place, something Johnson never figured out how to do. So it turns out the "illegal war" that Sen. Kerry so bitterly recalls, is the actual reason the U.S. was able to negotiate a peace settlement with the North Vietnamize, and ultimately withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam!!! You bleaters never knew that did you.

Well, the South Vietnamize Army was taking over combat functions in Vietnam, and may have prevailed ultimately..however we will never know, because inspite of assurances to the contrary..the Democrats blocked any further mlitary funding of the South Vietnamize armed forces, once the U.S troops began to leave, and the Dems/Libs sealed the fate of the South Vietnamize, and guaranteed the success of the North Vietnamize.

Years later, we are paying the price for Vietnam. Our enemies feel that we can be defeated politically at home (the Dems are trying to make sure history repeats itself), and our allies are never sure now if we will up and leave them high and dry, as we did at the end of the vietnam war, when the Dems cut off all support of the South Vietnamize Military.

read more..post less.....my suggestion to you...

 

[chuckyH]

go Bush!

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: Riprorin
Harvey, just like they were lying about "Christmas" in Cambodia?

Who's the proved liar here?

Again, how's that a lie? Did Kerry say Christmas Day? No.

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: Riprorin
Harvey, just like they were lying about "Christmas" in Cambodia?

Who's the proved liar here?

Considering the bulk of your posts on AT, I would say YOU are. :|

 

[Ringthane]

Originally posted by: heartsurgeon

Thanks, now I know to never listen to you what you have to say ever again. You and Rip are both incompetent, thick-headed, trolls. /end rant

proof of what i said about liberals..no facts...just personal attacks.

thanks!

You're citing Anne Coulter as a credible reference; this fact alone opens you to ridicule and undermines everything you have to say. Next you'll be saying Fox News is "fair and balanced"...