The Army Responds To John Kerry

[tom d. friedman]

he should chug a gallon of heinz vinegar. herman munster aka john kerry is a douche bag, he's got the vinegar to back it up!!!

[Jack Cook]

John Kerry proves that just because you have a college education doesn't mean you have a lick of smarts or common sense. Yesterday he showed the world again what a flaming idiot he actually is. I've known and served with great people who barely made it out of high school or simply choose to go no further. Most had more common sense, most intelligence and more motivation that lots of college grads I've interacted with. Heck I didn't graduated from college until I was 40 and did 2 degree programs at the same time plus supported my family. I didn't magically become smart when they handed me a piece of paper. If I hadn't served in the Navy though (that was my real education) I never would have graduated from college.

[Bill Greenwood]

Jack, I think you missed the point. Kerry did not say troops were not motivated or hard working or worthwhile. As best I can read it, and taking into account that he was speaking to students; what he meant to say was stay in school, study, get the education and then they will have more oportunities. That idea is pretty hard to dispute. Many soldiers have said that the reason they joined the military is to get money for further education. The idea that Kerry, a decorated combat veteran would try to demean our soldiers is pretty far fetched whatever you think of him. It's like saying Bush is anti business if he decried the Enron scandal. Bdk, that is a good pr release from the navy. I'd be more convinced if they offered young people their choice; a free college education or a chance to go to Iraq. Patriotism may be a factor, why is it we don't see to many people with an advanced degree itching to go?

[Jack Cook]

what he meant to say

I was more hearing what he DID say.

Kerry, a decorated combat veteran

Kerry exploits or should I say antics inVN are probably more
than this thread can bare.

[Elroy13]

OH GREAT!!! Do we really need this on this forum??? I can see a debate turning ugly..

[Bill Greenwood]

Jack, if we can't find agreement on ideas, maybe we can on facts. I wrote that Kerry was a decorated combat veteran. So without the dodge about antics' is it true that he was in combat and is it true that he received decorations? And I'm curious did these decorations come from a Dem or Rep administratiion? I also thought that Bush sr. recieved similar honors, perhaps you can correct me on that?

[bdk]

The idea that Kerry, a decorated combat veteran would try to demean our soldiers is pretty far fetched whatever you think of him.

Au contraire mon ami! Kerry is quite consistent with his long history of denigrating the American soldier starting before I was old enough to even study these things. It is interesting how the US, according to Kerry's own words, continues to commit the same atrocities over and over in every war we participate in:

Kerry angered many in the military last December with remarks in an interview with CBS "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer, accusing U.S. soldiers of "terrorizing" Iraqi children.

"And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the – of – the historical customs, religious customs," Kerry said. "Whether you like it or not ... Iraqis should be doing that."

Those remarks reminded many Americans of Kerry's most controversial testimony before the nation in 1970, when he was a returning Vietnam vet calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces in that conflict.

He told senators about hearings he helped organize among disenchanted Vietnam war vets in which accusations of atrocities by U.S. troops were recounted.

"They told stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country," he said.

I believe that Kerry even later admitted that he was "embellishing the truth" (to use a kind phrase) regarding his 1971 testimony. But now he isn't of course.

And then back to the education issue:

Debunking the myth of the underprivileged soldier
by Tim Kane and James Carafano
November 29, 2005

They all volunteered. The U.S. soldiers pitching in with hurricane relief along the Gulf Coast and those fighting and dying in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere decided, on their own, to serve their nation.
Or was the decision made so freely? Could it be that unscrupulous Pentagon recruiters duped them, taking advantage of their poverty, their lack of education and the bleak futures they share as members of the USA's urban underclass?

That's the view of some critics, such as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, who writes that "very few" of the soldiers fighting in Iraq "are coming from the privileged economic classes," and that there would likely be no war if rich kids had to fight. According to Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., social equality demands reinstatement of the draft, which he justifies by asserting that "the most privileged Americans are underrepresented or absent." Herbert concludes that there is "something very, very wrong with this picture."

What's "very, very wrong" with the Rangel-Herbert picture is that it has no factual basis.

According to a comprehensive study of all enlistees for the years 1998-99 and 2003 that The Heritage Foundation just released, the typical recruit in the all-volunteer force is wealthier, more educated and more rural than the average 18- to 24-year-old citizen is. Indeed, for every two recruits coming from the poorest neighborhoods, there are three recruits coming from the richest neighborhoods.

Yes, rural areas and the South produced more soldiers than their percentage of the population would suggest in 2003. Indeed, four rural states - Montana, Alaska, Wyoming and Maine - rank 1-2-3-4 in proportion of their 18-24 populations enlisted in the military. But this isn't news.

Enlistees have always come from rural areas. Yet a new study, reported in The Washington Post earlier this month, suggests that higher enlistment rates in rural counties are new, implying a poorer military. They err by drawing conclusions from a non-random sample of a few counties, a statistically cloaked anecdote. The only accurate way to assess military demographics is to consider all recruits.

If, for example, we consider the education of every recruit, 98% joined with high-school diplomas or better. By comparison, 75% of the general population meets that standard. Among all three-digit ZIP code areas in the USA in 2003 (one can study larger areas by isolating just the first three digits of ZIP codes), not one had a higher graduation rate among civilians than among its recruits.

In fact, since the 9/11 attacks, more volunteers have emerged from the middle and upper classes and fewer from the lowest-income groups. In 1999, both the highest fifth of the nation in income and the lowest fifth were slightly underrepresented among military volunteers. Since 2001, enlistments have increased in the top two-fifths of income levels but have decreased among the lowest fifth.

Allegations that recruiters are disproportionately targeting blacks also don't hold water. First, whites make up 77.4% of the nation's population and 75.8% of its military volunteers, according to our analysis of Department of Defense data.

Second, we explored the 100 three-digit ZIP code areas with the highest concentration of blacks, which range from 24.1% black up to 68.6%. These areas, which account for 14.6% of the adult population, produced 16.6% of recruits in 1999 and only 14.1% in 2003.

Maintaining the strength and size of our all-volunteer military isn't always easy. But Americans step up when their country needs them. To suggest the system is failing or exploiting citizens is wrong. And to make claims about the nature of U.S. troops to discredit their mission ought to be politically out of bounds.

Tim Kane is an Air Force veteran, and James Carafano is an Army veteran. Both are research fellows at The Heritage Foundation.

First appeared in USA Today

I apologize for the quotes, but all I know about this is what I have read since I don't have first-hand information. If you have some factual sources that state otherwise I would appreciate if you could post them.

Respectfully,

Brandon

[Jack Cook]

is it true that he was in combat and is it true that he received decorations?

Yes, but...................
first Purple Heart
The action that led to John Kerry's first Purple Heart occurred on December 2, 1968, during the month that he was undergoing training with Coastal Division 14 at Cam Ranh Bay. While waiting to receive his own Swift boat command, Kerry volunteered for a nighttime patrol mission on a small, foam-filled "skimmer" craft under the command of Lt. William Schachte. The two officers were accompanied by an enlisted man who operated the outboard motor. The purpose of the patrol, which Kerry later described as "a half-assed action that hardly qualified as combat," was to find Vietcong guerillas moving contraband around a peninsula north of the bay on sampans.
At the target location Kerry saw a group of sampans unloading something on the shore, and lit a flare to illuminate the area. The men from the sampans ran, and Kerry and his crew opened fire. At that point, according to Kerry, "My M-16 jammed, and as I bent down in the boat to grab another gun, a stinging piece of heat socked into my arm and just seemed to burn like hell." (page 147, "Tour of Duty") Kerry and his men strafed the beach, shot up the sampans and returned to Cam Ranh Bay.
As an officer in command (OIC) in training, Kerry reported during this mission to William Schachte, who eventually retired as a Rear Admiral. Schachte flatly contradicts Kerry's claim to have been wounded by enemy fire, saying that after his M-16 jammed, Kerry picked up an M-79 grenade launcher and fired a grenade that exploded too close to the boat, causing a small piece of shrapnel to stick in the skin of his arm. Kerry himself did not report receiving hostile fire that night, which would have been required, and there is no record of hostile fire for the mission.
Kerry succeeded in keeping the small piece of shrapnel in his arm until the following day, when he was treated by Dr. Louis Letson, whose version of the event matches William Schachte's account rather than Kerry's:
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.
The following morning, John Kerry arrived at the office of Coastal Division 14 Commander Grant Hibbard to apply for a Purple Heart. Having already been informed by Schachte that Kerry's injury was self-inflicted rather than the result of hostile fire, Commander Hibbard told him to "forget it." Hibbard recently said of Kerry's minor scratch, "I’ve seen worse injuries from a rose thorn."
Nevertheless, John Kerry managed to obtain his coveted Purple Heart for this incident nearly three months later after being transferred to Coastal Division 11. The circumstances remain obscure, as there are no written records of this award on file at the Naval Historical Center. Various other documents that might shed light on this award remain unavailable due to Senator Kerry's refusal to release his complete military records.
Military regulations state that to qualify for a Purple Heart, an injury must come "from an outside force or agent," and treatment for the wound must "have been made a matter of official record." While John Kerry managed to satisfy the second criterion by insisting that an amused Dr. Letson provide an official Band-Aid, nicking himself with a fragment from his own poorly-aimed grenade fails to meet the first qualification.
A little research goes a long way................................
http://www.snopes.com/politics/kerry/service.asp
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=14774
http://www.newswithviews.com/Craig/roberts1.htm

[Bill Greenwood]

BDk, I thought it was kind of accepted fact that US troops commited murders of women and children at My Lai and other places. Perphaps the photos and stories in Time, Life, Newsweek back then were faked. Maybe the commies rented out the same Hollywood set to film all this where the fake landings on the moon were made. The reporter that broke the story, with photos of the bodies, I think Seymour Hersh, did win a Pulitzer Prize, but that's likely a myth also. There is another irony, Lt. Calley was convicted in US court for these murders that you don't want to believe happened. Another strange coincidence, we have just had young soldiers plead guilty to murder and rape of civilians in Iraq. Perhaps another figment of Kerry's imagination! When I get home I have another army study that concluded that Vietnam atrocities were more common than first thought. Did I mention my roomate was at Kent State, probably just another liberal myth.

[DaveM2]

You guys seen this???

http://warbirdinformationexchange.org/p ... um.php?f=8

Its called the "Off Topic' forum

Dave

[ZeamerB17]

i dont hav a calledge dagre an i thik im pritee intelagint.



Dave

[warbirdfinder]

Greenwood seems to believe that very isolated cases of soldier atrocities are indicative of our entire military. What a load of BS!!!
Had we relied upon people like Kerry and his band of idiots, we would be knee deep in terrorists. Kerry has never stood by his ground: He lied at the Sentate hearings after he came home; he voted for the war before he voted against it; he never released his his Navy records even after he said he would, etc.
What ever you say about the present administration, he does "stay the course" in protecting the Ameican people.

[FG1D Pilot]

Bill, I think you found the wrong website to support Kerry. This is a thinking man's site. Go to "Kandy asses for Kerry" where you'll find like minded support. Although I never went to Viet Nam, I was in the USAF at the time, and remember what a jerk I thought he was then.

[Shay]

If I hadn't served in the Navy though (that was my real education) .

I couldn't agree with you more Jack.

Shay
____________
Semper Fortis

[Former Member]

The U.S. Navy is moving towards the position of the more education you have the farther you'll get. If the "E" man wants to get promoted beyond E-6 then they're going to to require them to have a 4 year degree.


With regards to Kerry's comment. Only a image of Forrest Gump saying "Stupid is, as Stupid does" comes to mind.

Shay
_____________
Semper Fortis

If what you said is true it makes me wonder if the Army will eventually be doing the same. I've been out now since 1997 but I'd think that they'd have a tough time implementing this type of requirement. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for education and it will definately help your advancement up the ranks. The problem is that it is extremely difficult for certain soldiers in certain jobs to attend classes while on active duty. I was a mechanized infantryman and rarely did the opportunity come about to attend a college classes which didn't interfere with some type of field training exercise or deployment.

I can't speak for other services but in the Army you get additional promotion points for civilian education. What most of us grunts did was take a couple college classes which then allowed the school to give you credit for all your military training and education. So instead of having 3 or 4 credits of college, many of us would have nearly 2 years worth of credits (nearly all of which was credit from military schools). For someone like me that has no college degree it was sure nice to make the rank of SFC/E-7 in 8 years. Too bad I gave it all up when the Army decided to make me a lousy low-life recruiter a year later.

John