Sound of Crickets Chirping

[billroper]

This column by Larry Simoneaux (who I know nothing about other than what I just read in the linked-to column) does a fine job of encapsulating my feelings about the utter silence from the mainstream press in trying to determine what's the truth of the situation with John Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

I've watched stories on the Internet for the past week since I first heard about Senator Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" on Fox News Channel. That's the only place I can get any information, because none of the mainstream press that should be interested in getting to the truth has reported on it at all that I can find. Just to pick on my hometown papers, the Chicago Tribune hasn't mentioned it at all in their news pages. The Chicago Sun-Times has referenced it twice on the editorial page, here and here. But I'm not really interested in editorializing on the subject. What I want are facts.

I can find blogs like Captain's Quarters which have assembled an impressive recitation of what they say are the facts. But are they telling the truth?

I don't know that. But I'd like to believe that the mainstream press would pursue this story with the same kind of dogged persistence that they've chased after President Bush's National Guard Service Records.

Because I'd like to know the truth.

I really would.

Comments

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

You can probably guess I don't place much stock in the SBVT ad in general - it's vague, full of innuendo as to be inflammatory, and there are serious questions about where the funding is coming from and who these people are, especially since they organized in 2000 to attack John McCain. Same old tactics, new candidate, basically.

We were in the midst of a particulary severe edit war over on Wikipedia on the John Kerry entry over this, and you might want to take a look at the John Kerry and Swift Boats Veterans for Truth entries there.

I'm going to deliberately shy from saying whether Kerry is a good 'un or bad 'un compared to Bush. There are three things which the SBVT controversy seems to be centering around:

1) Whether Kerry deserves his medals.

The main criticism about the Purple Hearts is that (a) the injury(s) were too light to warrant one and (b) Kerry allegedly wounded himself rather than was wounded on one occasion. The response to this is that this is neither here nor there. In Vietnam, Purple Hearts were given out with the rations, since the only real criteria is that you be wounded in a combat zone. I've known this since the 1980s 'Nam Comic, where one of the characters got his Purple Heart because of an accidental wound to his finger while in camp. As far as I know, while Kerry has used the fact that he was wounded in action to his political advantage, has never claimed that the wounds were any more severe than they were.

The only person with first hand knowledge of these wounds is Louis Letson, whose signature, as many have pointed out, is not on the documentation treating Kerry - the name on the paperwork is one J.C. Carreon, now dead, who was an orderly at the time. Letson has claimed that Carreon signed the paperwork but that Letson was the one who treated Kerry. The big question in my mind that Letson has yet to answer directly is why he does not appear anywhere on the paperwork as a if not treating physician, since medical ethics seems to require that proper documentation is necessary in case anything goes wrong and you need to find out what treatment was granted. Until Letson does, me, I'm going with the documentation.

The Bronze Star incident is contradicted by Larry Thurlow, who commanded another swift boat, who claims Kerry does not deserve the Bronze Star because that there was no enemy fire, while John Rassman, who was rescued by Kerry says there was. This may be just a he-said-he-said, if not for the fact that Thurlow was apparently given the Bronze Star for the same engagement. So, if Kerry lied and did not deserve the Bronze Star, Thurlow did the same thing, which doesn't help his credibility.

The Silver Star is the most contentious, since Elliot, Kerry's commander, first recommended him for it and as recently as June 2003 was saying it was richly deserved. But then now he comes up with 2 affidavits, one saying Kerry was dishonest about his record and after a Boston Globe story where he is quoted as saying he signed it in haste, a 2nd affidavit clarifying his opinion, which actually does more to qualify it. The 2nd affidavit notes that what he is saying is that he would not have recommended the SS for Kerry if he had known that all Kerry did was shoot a fleeing VC in the back.

The problem with Elliot's contention is that the SS was not awarded for Kerry for that single reason. The incident that earned Kerry his SS was an engagement which involved him "expertly" coordinating his boat's fire on the enemy. Adding to the confusion is that there are no less than three citations for the Silver Star - all available on Kerry's website. One, very detailed one by Admiral Zumwalt, Commander of the US Naval Forces in Vietnam which mentions the shooting of the VC. The other two, by CINCPAC and the Secretary of the Navy respectively, do not. The latter are stamped "Official Record copy" but the Zumwalt citation is not. Which is the actual citation is still a mystery to me, but in any case, the point is that Kerry was not awarded the SS for "simply" the shooting of the VC as Elliot claims.

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