Kerry 'loose cannon' says ex-commander
Vets line up to describe former colleague as 'vain' opportunist unfit
for presidency
WorldNetDaily.com
May 4, 2004
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/articl...TICLE_ID=38337

During his time in the Vietnam war, John Kerry was seen by colleagues
as a self-serving, "loose cannon" who came only to launch a political
career, said the commander over his swift boat division, who spoke at a
press conference in Washington with 17 other veterans.

John Kerry receving medal for Vietnam service.

Retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffman, who headed Coastal Division 11, is one
of more than 200 veterans who have signed a letter asking Kerry to
authorize the Department of the Navy to release all of his military
records, including health documents.

Hoffman said Kerry "arrived in country with a strong anti-Vietnam War
bias and a self-serving determination to build a foundation for his
political future."

"He was aggressive, but vain and prone to impulsive judgment, often
with disregard to specific tactical assignments," Hoffman said. "He was
a loose cannon."

The press conference and letter was organized by the group Swift Boat
Veterans for Truth, which contends the Massachusetts senator and
presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is unfit to be commander in
chief.

The group's spokesman, John O'Neill, who took over as commander of
Kerry's swift boat not long after the senator was given an early
dismissal, told reporters Kerry recently had been on the phone with
Hoffman for 45 minutes, trying to discourage the group from going
forward.

O'Neill wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial today that he could
not remain silent as Kerry sought the nation's highest office.

Kerry served about four months of a 12-month tour of duty in Vietnam,
winning the Silver Star and Bronze Star. After receiving three Purple
Hearts, he requested and received reassignment to the United States,
which is allowed under Navy regulations.

But O'Neill said in an interview on the Tony Snow radio show today, he
and his colleagues were perplexed at the time by Kerry's early
departure.

"No one could actually figure out why he left," O'Neill told Snow. "He
went through swift boat school before me. No one had any idea why he
left."

O'Neill's group said it includes the entire chain of command above
Kerry: Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard, Lt. Cmdr. Elliott, Capt. Charles
Plumly, Ret. Capt. Adrian Lonsdale USCG and Hoffman.

The veterans group said it also includes enlisted men, officers, men
who served with Kerry, men who served in the same group of swift boats
and "men intimately familiar with the operations and conduct of swift
boat operations during the war." Among them are Marine Lt. Col. James
Zumwalt, representing his late father, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, and late
brother, Lt. Elmo Zumwalt III.

Zumwalt who criticized Kerry for concocting "falsehoods" in his
congressional testimony about fellow veterans, said the senator "has a
personality disorder."

O'Neill, now a Houston lawyer, appeared in 1971 on "The Dick Cavett
Show" in a debate with Kerry, who then was national spokesman for the
group Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

The key issue then, as now, O'Neill said, is Kerry's claim 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."

"Despite our shared experience," O'Neill wrote, "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," he said.

O'Neill asserted, "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, he said, "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," O'Neill declared.

'Bugged out of Vietnam'

At the press conference today, Hoffman said Kerry, in his "abbreviated
tour" of four months and 12 days, "and with his specious medals secure
… bugged out of Vietnam and began his infamous betrayal of all United
States forces in the Vietnam War."

Kerry's campaign responded to the allegations with a press conference
of its own, featuring four veterans.

Spokesman, Michael Meehan insisted the U.S. Navy has released Kerry's
entire record, at the senator's request, which now is posted at
JohnKerry.com.

However, retired Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard told reporters today at least
one of the three Purple Hearts awarded to Kerry did not appear
warranted.

"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," Hibbard said. "He later
received a Purple Heart for that scratch, and I have no information as
to how or whom."

Kerry's behavior was sharply criticized by a commanding officer who
supervised him in several naval operations.

"Kerry would be described as devious, self-absorbing, manipulative,
disdain for authority, disruptive," said retired Capt. Charley
Plumly, "but the most common phrase you would hear [was] 'requires
constant supervision.'"

O'Neill noted that during his 1971 televised debate with Kerry, he
accused him of lying and urged him to come forward with affidavits from
the soldiers who claimed to have committed or witnessed atrocities.

"To date no such affidavits have been filed," O'Neill said, noting
Kerry recently "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," O'Neill said.

O'Neill said what happened in Vietnam more than 30 years ago matters
because loyalty in the military is "indispensable."

"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?" he
asked. "On a practical basis, John Kerry's breach of loyalty is a
prescription of disaster for our armed forces."

Pointing out he has refused since 1971 many offers by Kerry's political
opponents to speak out, he claimed his "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," he said. "My decision is the
inevitable result of my own personal beliefs and life experience."



Kerry Purple Heart Doc Speaks Out
The medical description of his first wound.
By Byron York
May 04, 2004
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200405041626.asp

Some critics of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry have
questioned the circumstances surrounding the first of three Purple
Hearts Kerry won in Vietnam. Those critics, among them some of Kerry's
fellow veterans, have suggested that a wound suffered by Kerry in
December 1968 may have made him technically eligible for a Purple Heart
but was not severe enough to warrant serious consideration, even for a
decoration that was handed out by the thousands. Whatever the case,
Kerry was awarded the Purple Heart, and, along with two others he won
later, it allowed him to request to leave Vietnam before his tour of
duty was finished.

Kerry was treated for the wound at a medical facility in Cam Ranh Bay.
The doctor who treated Kerry, Louis Letson, is today a retired general
practitioner in Alabama. Letson says he remembers his brief encounter
with Kerry 35 years ago because "some of his crewmen related that Lt.
Kerry had told them that he would be the next JFK from Massachusetts."
Letson says that last year, as the Democratic campaign began to heat
up, he told friends that he remembered treating one of the candidates
many years ago. In response to their questions, Letson says, he wrote
down his recollections of the time. (Letson says he has had no contacts
with anyone from the Bush campaign or the Republican party.) What
follows is Letson's memory, as he wrote it.

I have a very clear memory of an incident which occurred while I was
the Medical Officer at Naval Support Facility, Cam Ranh Bay.

John Kerry was a (jg), the OinC or skipper of a Swift boat, newly
arrived in Vietnam. On the night of December 2, he was on patrol north
of Cam Ranh, up near Nha Trang area. The next day he came to sick bay,
the medical facility, for treatment of a wound that had occurred that
night.

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,
receiving small arms fire from on shore. He said that his injury
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.

What I saw was a small piece of metal sticking very superficially in
the skin of Kerry's arm. The metal fragment measured about 1 cm. in
length and was about 2 or 3 mm in diameter. It certainly did not look
like a round from a rifle.

I simply removed the piece of metal by lifting it out of the skin with
forceps. I doubt that it penetrated more than 3 or 4 mm. It did not
require probing to find it, did not require any anesthesia to remove
it, and did not require any sutures to close the wound.

The wound was covered with a bandaid.

Not [sic] other injuries were reported and I do not recall that there
was any reported damage to the boat.

loose cannons make great leaders. sheep can't lead. if they do, they do
it baaaadly.


Anonymous Sender wrote in
acolo.com:

Kerry 'loose cannon' says ex-commander
Vets line up to describe former colleague as 'vain' opportunist unfit
for presidency
WorldNetDaily.com
May 4, 2004
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/articl...TICLE_ID=38337

During his time in the Vietnam war, John Kerry was seen by colleagues
as a self-serving, "loose cannon" who came only to launch a political
career, said the commander over his swift boat division, who spoke at

blah blah blah.


Not [sic] other injuries were reported and I do not recall that there
was any reported damage to the boat.