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Military Documents Contradict Kerry Critic


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quote:

Originally posted by street:

quote:

Are you sure? Didn't I just see someone post 'Bring it on.'" in another thread.


I must of missed it....Maybe, if you post it?

If he IS posting, in this forum, I'm gonna have to

call his wife, and tell her. She will put a stop to THAT!!


Your original statement was:

uh....I really doubt, Kerry reads the threads within this forum There was nothing about posting and my response was about him reading not posting.

If he is this where he got it:

Jaguar: LOL, "bring it on" Takvah, let's dance.... It's the third from the last post in that thread.

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I'm still trying to piece this story together. Here's what I've been able to decipher so far:

1. This is the story of how Jim Rassmann was blown into the water and saved by John Kerry.

2. In the above linked article, all it says about how Rassmann ended up in the water was "Recalling when his boat came under attack more than 30 years ago, Jim Rassmann says, "It blew me off the boat. All those Viet Cong were shooting at me. I expected I'd be shot. When he pulled me out of the river, he risked his life to save mine."

3. In an essay by Rassmann in the Wall Street Journal, Rassmann says: "While returning from a SEA LORDS operation along the Bay Hap River, a mine detonated under another swift boat. Machine-gun fire erupted from both banks of the river, and a second explosion followed moments later. The second blast blew me off John's swift boat, PCF-94, throwing me into the river." The rest of the essay is Rassmann's recount of what happened that day. Fearing that the other boats would run me over, I swam to the bottom of the river and stayed there as long as I could hold my breath."

4. Rassmann refers to "another swift boat" and "other boats" and being on "John's swift boat." According to the first article, there were "five boats in the flotilla that day."

5. What we have now is one boat dead in the water from a mine. Here is where the individual stories begin to deviate. Rassmann says:

quote:

When I surfaced, all the swift boats had left, and I was alone taking fire from both banks. To avoid the incoming fire, I repeatedly swam under water as long as I could hold my breath, attempting to make it to the north bank of the river. I thought I would die right there. The odds were against me avoiding the incoming fire and, even if I made it out of the river, I thought I'd be captured and executed. Kerry must have seen me in the water and directed his driver, Del Sandusky, to turn the boat around. Kerry's boat ran up to me in the water, bow on, and I was able to climb up a cargo net to the lip of the deck. But, because I was nearly upside down, I couldn't make it over the edge of the deck. This left me hanging out in the open, a perfect target. John, already wounded by the explosion that threw me off his boat, came out onto the bow, exposing himself to the fire directed at us from the jungle, and pulled me aboard.

6. I don't have cites, and this is from my recollection of the news over the past week. The Swift Boat Veterans say that when the one boat hit the mine, the gunners on the other boats had started firing at both shorelines. They say that what Rassmann heard was outgoing fire from the swift boats, not incoming fire from the riversides. They point to the fact that none of the boats had bullet holes and no one had been hit by any fire.

7. The Swift Boat Veterans say that what threw Rassmann into the water was Kerry gunning the engine on his boat to flee. The sudden force of acceleration threw Rassmann off the side of Kerry's boat.

8. The Swift Boat Veterans say that only Kerry's boat fled the scene. The other boats began pulling out crewmen from the boat that hit the mine. It was only when Kerry realized that Rassmann had fallen off of his his boat that he turned and headed back. The Swift Boat Veterans say that another boat was a few feet away from Rassmann when Kerry got to him first and picked him up out of the river.

9. Kerry supporters are using the wording on the Bronze Star citation of Larry Thurlow as proof that the Swift Boat Veterans are lying. The citation refers to "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire." Thurlow says that Kerry wrote the after-action report that was the basis for both his own and Thurlow's medals.

10. Related to this story, but not included in the article is what the Swift Boat Veterans call "the Sampan incident." In this incident, they say that Kerry also falsified his after-action report. They say that in the Rassmann incident, Kerry indicated incoming fire when there was none, and in the Sampan incident, where Kerry's boat shot up a small boat and killed a man and a small boy, Kerry indicated in his report that there were four Viet Cong on the boat.

11. The Swift Boat Veterans are saying that Kerry embellished his reports, indicating fire when there was none, indicating enemy presence when there was none, etc, which is why Thurlow's citation refers to enemy fire.

This is the story that will play out over the next few weeks.

[ 08-21-2004, 02:24 PM: Message edited by: Steve Schacher ]

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All this effort to reconstruct an obscure event that happened over thirty years ago for what? To prove that a guy who voluntarily enlisted during the Viet Nam war is unfit to lead our country? Does one event like this really make the man?

As for Kerry's boat being so far downriver in the above illustration. I guess it's position depends on who's drawing it since the only description of the distance Kerry travelled after losing Rassmann is "further downstream", which could be 10 yards, 50 yards or 100 yards. Who knows.

I'm just amazed that so much emphasis is placed on such an irrelevant piece of information.

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quote:

All this effort to reconstruct an obscure event that happened over thirty years ago for what?

Because Kerry chose to focus on only his four months in Vietnam instead of his six years as Lt. Governor of Massachusetts or his two decades as a US Senator. Since Kerry made his medals a key point of his service, the conditions of his medal award become important. Also, because Kerry's post-service anti-war activities are being cast aside in favor of his actions during service, people are naturally studying his service. Was it his service that he is proud of, or his anti-war activism? When Kerry changes the subject, others will too.

Dick Morris made an interesting comment the other day. Morris said that when stories of Bill Clinton's avoiding the draft surfaced in 1992, the media avoided it, even though it was a window into his character. Morris was trying to equate it to stories of Kerry embellishing after-action reports during his service as a window into his character. He seemed to be asking if we wanted to make that "mistake" again.

The Swift Boat Veterans will say that their motivations are personal. They will say that they resented Kerry's anti-war statements against them back then, and that since he's now trying to brush that aside and claim that he was actually a war hero, they are going to dispute his embellishments.

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It's so OBVIOUS that the right wingers are DESPERATE for bad press. The FACT of the matter is that while they try to tear apart Kerry's war record, they are blindly ignoring the fact that Bush skated out of Vietnam thanks to DADDY WARBUCKS.

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Bush has his his eight years as governor of Texas, and now his four years as President to run on.

Kerry has two years as Lt. Governor of Massachusetts and twenty years as a United States Senator to run on.

Bush is not making his actions as a twenty-something the basis of his credentials -- Kerry is.

Can you imagine what would happen if a 60-year-old man who was applying for a new job were to only list on his resume a job that he held for less than a year at the age of 21, and his references were only a few people that he hadn't seen nor heard from in 35 years?

I do agree that the discussion should not be who did what in 1968. The discussion should be a compare/contrast of Bush's record as President vs. Kerry's record during his last job, that is, as a United States Senator. After all, if you were going to hire a 60-year-old man, would you be more interested in how he performed in his last job or in his first job?

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quote:

As for Kerry's boat being so far downriver in the above illustration. I guess it's position depends on who's drawing it since the only description of the distance Kerry travelled after losing Rassmann is "further downstream", which could be 10 yards, 50 yards or 100 yards. Who knows.

The accompanying Washington Post article says "At first, nobody noticed what had happened to Rassmann. But then Medeiros, who was standing at the stern, saw him bobbing up and down in the water and shouted, "Man overboard." Around this time, crew members said, Kerry decided to go back to help the crippled 3 boat. It is unclear how far down the river Kerry's boat was when he turned around. It could have been anywhere from a few hundred yards to a mile."

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<ahttp://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/graphics/swiftboat_082104_2.gif>

Notice how the Washington Post has changed their story since I first posted the original graphic. Pay attention to the timeline box labeled "6. Pees' boat detonates an underwater mine as it passes through the weir."

It now reads "6. Vietcong in foxhole detonates underwater mine as Pees' boat passes through the weir." They have now placed VC at the scene to be consistent with Kerry's version that they were under fire. On the other hand, other sources I've read indicate that North Vietnam didn't have magnetic detonation mines, and radio detonation mines didn't work under water back then, so an underwater mine probably had to be manually detonated unless it was a direct-contact mine (which this could very well have been). If so, then this shows sloppy early reporting, probably rushed out the door to help Kerry. And besides, they are probably guessing about the foxhole part.

Also, notice how Rassmann is now onboard Kerry's boat. In a Kerry press release dated January 17, 2004, the Kerry-Edwards campaign says:

quote:

Former Lieutenant John Kerry was reunited today with fellow Vietnam veteran Jim Rassmann, who says Kerry saved his life during combat.

On March 13, 1969, Rassmann, a Green Beret, was traveling down the Bay Hap river
in a boat behind KerryÔÇÖs
when both were ambushed by exploding land mines and enemy fire coming from the shore. Kerry was hit in the arm, while a mine blew RassmannÔÇÖs boat out of the water. With enemy fire coming from both sides of the river and swift boats evacuating from the area, KerryÔÇÖs crew chose to turn their boat toward the ambush to save Rassmann.

Who's story keeps changing? Who's story remains the same?

[ 08-22-2004, 04:49 AM: Message edited by: Steve Schacher ]

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quote:

Distance alone doesn't tell you much. How fast where they going?

I don't understand nautical terms, but the specifications for the boat say the designed maximum speed is 32 knots. From the map, they were originally heading down-river towards the delta. If Kerry turned around, he'd be going against the flow.

One other point: Kerry's after-action report says that "fire continued for about 5,000 meters." That's almost three miles AFTER the mine hit the #3 boat. Then Kerry says he returned to pick up Rassmann and then tow the #3 boat.

Does that help?

[ 08-22-2004, 05:04 AM: Message edited by: Steve Schacher ]

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quote:

Originally posted by Steve Schacher:

I don't understand nautical terms, but the specifications for the boat say the designed maximum speed is 32 knots.

32 knots would be about 36.8 MPH

quote:

One other point: Kerry's
says that "fire continued for about 5,000 meters." That's almost three miles AFTER the mine hit the #3 boat.


ok, going to ignore that fact that the river is flowing and I'm going to assume that the boat can do a perfect 180 and it is running at 32 knots it would take the boat 4.9 minutes to travel 3 miles and 4.9 minutes to return. So it took them at least 9.8 minutes ballpark figure to pickup Rassmann

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quote:

So it took them at least 9.8 minutes ballpark figure to pickup Rassmann

Good. So that gives us a theoretical minimum to start with. (BTW: the turning radius is 75 yards when cruising at 20 knots)

Now, the last page of Kerry's after-action report lists the damage he reported to his boat: "Two starboard and one port main cabin windows blown out. Radio and all remote units pilot house inoperable. AC wiring shorted out. Generator inoperable. Steerage control after helm inoperable. Starboard bilge pump broken. Screws curled and chipped. Radar gear box frozen. Main engines experienced RPM drop."

How fast would his boat be traveling with that amount of damage? With two other undamaged swift boats in the flotilla, why was Kerry's boat the one used to tow the #3 boat that hit the mine (page 3: "94 towed PCF 3 as bucket brigade controlled flooding")?

[ 08-22-2004, 05:52 PM: Message edited by: Steve Schacher ]

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I'd love to see the actual maintenance records after he got back to home port.

If the maintenance reports match the after action, then we would have some proof that he was telling the truth, but if it got signed off as fine, then we know that he lied.

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I don't know, but Kerry's site contains this highlight of his division's activities. The event in question occurred on March 13, 1969. The division highlights show his boat in action again on March 18. That means that whatever damage there was was repaired in four days. I don't know if that is reasonable or not. I assume that their mechanics were pretty good at what they do.

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I'd love to see an official report about the WMDs in the Euphrates and Tigris too but I haven't seen those either. Get the Weekly Standard to subpoena the records for the swift boat I mean are Republican journalists so dumb that they can't deliver you guys the facts? So far I see a lot of talking out of anal orifices with no real proof of anything.

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Takvah,

If you're referring to me, I've quoted from the Washington Post and John Kerry's own website with his own documents.

I'd love to see an official report about the Euphrates too (I believe I posted that in another topic), but that isn't what this topic is about, so either address the issue at hand or start another topic, but deflecting the argument won't work with me.

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