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Kerry 'Unfit to be Commander-in-Chief,' Say Former Military Colleagues
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com
May 03, 2004
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialRe...pecialReports%
5Carchive%5C200405%5CSPE20040503a.html

(2nd Add: Includes additional details about Sen. John Kerry's ad
campaign.)

(CNSNews.com) - Hundreds of former commanders and military colleagues
of presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry are set to declare in a
signed letter that he is "unfit to be commander-in-chief." They will do
so at a press conference in Washington on Tuesday.

"What is going to happen on Tuesday is an event that is really
historical in dimension," John O'Neill, a Vietnam veteran who served in
the Navy as a PCF (Patrol Craft Fast) boat commander, told CNSNews.com.
The event, which is expected to draw about 25 of the letter-signers, is
being organized by a newly formed group called Swift Boat Veterans for
Truth.

"We have 19 of 23 officers who served with [Kerry]. We have every
commanding officer he ever had in Vietnam. They all signed a letter
that says he is unfit to be commander-in-chief," O'Neill said.

O'Neill, currently a Houston, Texas, based attorney, is no stranger to
Kerry. O'Neill served in the same naval unit as Kerry and commanded
Kerry's swift boat after Kerry returned to the United States. Kerry's
command of the PCF boat lasted four months and ended shortly after he
received his third Purple Heart. According to naval regulations at the
time, any sailor who received three Purple Hearts could request a
transfer out of the combat zone.

Kerry and O'Neill engaged in a nationally televised debate in 1971 on
The Dick Cavett Show over Kerry's allegations that many Vietnam
soldiers had routinely engaged in atrocities such as raping and cutting
off ears and heads of Vietnamese soldiers and citizens. Kerry was the
then spokesman for the anti-war group Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

"We are going to be presenting a letter that deals with Kerry's
unfitness to be commander and chief that has been signed by hundreds of
swift boat sailors, including most of those who served with Kerry,"
O'Neill explained.

"The ranks of the people signing [the letter] range from admiral down
to seaman, and they run across the entire spectrum of politics,
specialties, and political feelings about the Vietnam War," he added.

Among those scheduled to attend the event at the National Press Club
and declare Kerry unfit for the role of commander-in-chief are retired
Naval Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, who was the commander of the Navy
Coastal Surveillance Force, which included the swift boats on which
Kerry served.

Also scheduled to be present at the event is Kerry's former commanding
officer, Lt. Commander Grant Hibbard. Hibbard recently questioned
whether Kerry deserved the first of his three Purple Hearts that he
received in Vietnam. Hibbard doubted both the severity of the wound and
whether it resulted from enemy fire.

"I've had thorns from a rose that were worse" than Kerry's wound for
which he received a Purple Heart, Hibbard told the Boston Globe in
April.

Organizers are confident that Tuesday's event and the letter with
hundreds of signatures will educate people about Kerry.

"It is one of the largest outpourings of concern about him being
commander-in-chief that anybody could have in a presidential campaign
and it is by the people who know him best," O'Neill said.

'Unfit Commander-in-Chief'

Swift Boat Veterans For Truth maintains that Kerry's fellow Vietnam
veterans are almost uniform in their disdain for his military service
and anti-war protests.

"Not only a majority of the people who served with him feel that way,
but a vast and overwhelming majority," O'Neill said. He added that more
than "ninety percent of the people contacted by Swift Boat Veterans for
Truth responded to the request to sign their name, with only 12
declining to sign.

"Comrades who actually served with him, almost all of them, are opposed
to him, and believe he would be an unfit commander in chief and intend
to bring the truth of his actual record to the attention of the
American people," O'Neill said.

O'Neill hopes the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth can reveal to the
American people what he sees as Kerry's flawed character.

"In the military, loyalty between commanders and the troops serving
them is a two-way street. We have here a guy (Kerry) that with all of
us in the field [in Vietnam] -- actually fighting the North Vietnamese -
- came home and then falsely accused all of us of war crimes at a time
when the people in uniform couldn't even respond," O'Neill said.

"And he did that knowing that was a lie," he added.

'Real John Kerry'

B. G. Burkett, author of the book Stolen Valor and a military
researcher, believes that Tuesday's event will not be dismissed easily
by Kerry's campaign as a "partisan" attack.

"There are probably just as many Democrats amongst sailors who sailed
swift boats as there are Republicans. What Kerry fails to realize is
this has nothing to do with politics -- this has to with Vietnam
Veterans who served, who have a beef with John Kerry's service, both
during and after the war," Burkett told CNSNews.com.

"The American people do not know John Kerry and hopefully the swift
boat crews and other Vietnam veterans will make sure that the American
public knows the real John Kerry," he added.

Jim Loftus of Kerry's press office referred questions about Swift Boat
Veterans for Truth's event on Tuesday to spokesman David Wade. Wade did
not return CNSNews.com's requests for comment.

Kerry has launched an ad campaign touting his service in Vietnam in an
effort to counter the criticism ahead of Tuesday's press conference.

The $25 million ads show photographs of a young Kerry as a Navy
lieutenant on the Swift boat he commanded in Vietnam's Mekong Delta as
well as photos of him in fatigues holding a rifle.

Beginning Tuesday, the ads will run in 17 battleground states, as well
as Colorado and Louisiana, which President Bush won in 2000.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), speaking on Fox News Monday, defended Kerry
and blasted the president for using "$60 million worth of negative
advertising" to try to tear down Kerry. Levin called Kerry's latest
ad, "a very strong, a very positive ad."

"This is a positive statement about strength of service of Senator
Kerry, and I think the public is going to welcome it," said Levin.

The Michigan Democrat called Kerry "very likeable," adding that "he'll
come through as who he is, which is a very thoughtful, very sincere and
a…person with a great deal of integrity and a great deal of sincerity."



Unfit for Office
I was on Mr. Kerry's boat in Vietnam. He doesn't deserve to be
commander in chief.
BY JOHN O'NEILL
Tuesday, May 4, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editor...l?id=110005036

HOUSTON--In 1971, I debated John Kerry, then a national spokesman for
the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, for 90 minutes on "The Dick
Cavett Show." The key issue in that debate was Mr. Kerry's claim that
American troops were committing war crimes in Vietnam "on a day-to-day
basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."
Now, as Sen. Kerry emerges as the presumptive Democratic nominee for
the presidency, I've chosen to re-enter the fray.

Like John Kerry, I served in Vietnam as a Swift Boat commander.
Ironically, John Kerry and I served much of our time, a full 12 months
in my case and a controversial four months in his, commanding the exact
same six-man boat, PCF-94, which I took over after he requested early
departure. Despite our shared experience, I still believe what I
believed 33 years ago--that John Kerry slandered America's military by
inventing or repeating grossly exaggerated claims of atrocities and war
crimes in order to advance his own political career as an antiwar
activist. His misrepresentations played a significant role in creating
the negative and false image of Vietnam vets that has persisted for
over three decades.

Neither I, nor any man I served with, ever committed any atrocity or
war crime in Vietnam. The opposite was the truth. Rather than use
excessive force, we suffered casualty after casualty because we chose
to refrain from firing rather than risk injuring civilians. More than
once, I saw friends die in areas we entered with loudspeakers rather
than guns. John Kerry's accusations then and now were an injustice that
struck at the soul of anyone who served there.

During my 1971 televised debate with John Kerry, I accused him of
lying. I urged him to come forth with affidavits from the soldiers who
had claimed to have committed or witnessed atrocities. To date no such
affidavits have been filed. Recently, Sen. Kerry has attempted to
reframe his comments as youthful or "over the top." Yet always there
has been a calculated coolness to the way he has sought to destroy the
record of our honorable service in the interest of promoting his
political ambitions of the moment.

John Kennedy's book, "Profiles in Courage," and Dwight
Eisenhower's "Crusade in Europe" inspired generations. Not so John
Kerry, who has suppressed his book, "The New Soldier," prohibiting its
reprinting. There is a clear reason for this. The book repeats John
Kerry's insults to the American military, beginning with its front-
cover image of the American flag being carried upside down by a band of
bearded renegades in uniform--a clear slap at the brave Marines in
their combat gear who raised our flag at Iwo Jima. Allow me the reprint
rights to your book, Sen. Kerry, and I will make sure copies of "The
New Soldier" are available in bookstores throughout America.

Vietnam was a long time ago. Why does it matter today? Since the days
of the Roman Empire, the concept of military loyalty up and down the
chain of command has been indispensable. The commander's loyalty to the
troops is the price a commander pays for the loyalty of the troops in
return. How can a man be commander in chief who for over 30 years has
accused his "Band of Brothers," as well as himself, of being war
criminals? On a practical basis, John Kerry's breach of loyalty is a
prescription of disaster for our armed forces.

John Kerry's recent admissions caused me to realize that I was most
likely in Vietnam dodging enemy rockets on the very day he met in Paris
with Madame Binh, the representative of the Viet Cong to the Paris
Peace Conference. John Kerry returned to the U.S. to become a national
spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a radical fringe
of the antiwar movement, an organization set upon propagating the myth
of war crimes through demonstrably false assertions. Who was the last
American POW to die languishing in a North Vietnamese prison forced to
listen to the recorded voice of John Kerry disgracing their service by
his dishonest testimony before the Senate?

Since 1971, I have refused many offers from John Kerry's political
opponents to speak out against him. My reluctance to become involved
once again in politics is outweighed now by my profound conviction that
John Kerry is simply not fit to be America's commander in chief. Nobody
has recruited me to come forward. My decision is the inevitable result
of my own personal beliefs and life experience.

Today, America is engaged in a new war, against the militant Islamist
terrorists who attacked us on our own soil. Reasonable people may
differ about how best to proceed, but I'm sure of one thing--John Kerry
is the wrong man to put in charge.

Mr. O'Neill served in Coastal Division 11 in 1969-70, winning two
Bronze Stars and additional decorations for his service in Vietnam.