--- In [email protected], [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > In a message dated 7/3/05 4:08:33 P.M. Central Daylight Time, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > Anti Kerry people like to argue that the wounds were minor therefore > Kerry is a granstanding wannabe-hero phony. Perhaps a reason for him > to "try" and get awarded a purple heart was because after three, you > could request a transfer away from combat. > > > > Bingo! This has been part of what the swift boat veterans have been saying > all along.
To reiterate: You didn't "request a transfer away from combat" after three Purple Hearts; you *were transferred* away from combat unless you explicitly requested in writing to stay. But it goes a little deeper than that. As I recall they also said > he volunteered to be a Swift boat commander and used to tell everybody that he > was going to be the next JFK from Massachusetts (PT 109 et al) and everybody > should stick by him. Obviously he was building his political career on this > move, movie cameras, reenacting battle scenes etc. Not true about the reenacting of battle scenes. >From Media Matters: On September 7, 2002, The New York Times' current executive editor and then-columnist Bill Keller took up the issue of Kerry's wartime films and debunked the reenactment charge, which he wrote that he believed at first: "[R]elying on a report in the usually dependable Boston Globe, I mocked him for pulling out a movie camera after a shootout in the Mekong Delta and re-enacting the exploit, as if preening for campaign commercials to come." Simply not true, Keller found after sitting through 40 minutes of footage in Kerry's office. Contrary to Drudge's assertion -- which apparently quoted O'Neill's upcoming book -- that Kerry would "reenact combat scenes where he would portray the hero," Keller wrote: "The first thing to be said is that the senator's movies are not self- aggrandizing. Mr. Kerry is hardly in the film, and never strikes so much as a heroic pose. These are the souvenirs of a 25-year-old guy sent to an exotic place on an otherworldly mission, who bought an 8- millimeter camera in the PX and shot a few hours of travelogue, most of it pretty boring if you didn't live through it." Keller also wrote that, according to the Swift Boat Sailors Association, "a group of veterans who manned" the kind of riverboat that Kerry commanded, "lots of enlisted men did the same." Former Senator Max Cleland (D-GA), a strong Kerry supporter who lost three limbs in Vietnam, told Keller that he has hours of film from his service in Vietnam, which, Keller wrote, "he has had edited into a three minute meet-the-senator video." Two quickie Purple Hearts > would insure that if a more serious one came later he could get out quickly > and it would also look good on a political resume. As soon as the third came, > he got his ticket home. I don't believe you can *turn down* a Purple Heart. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
