suggested response to current GOP smear email on Kerry's war service

[papau]

I suggest the following response to any smear email about Kerry's war service:


If I Recall Correctly (iirc), Kerry did two tours of duty under fire- he was brave & lucky.

After graduating from Yale in 66, Kerry attended Navy Officer Candidate School and was assigned to "safe" duty aboard a destroyer, where after a time he decided he wanted to do “more” for his country and applied for assignment aboard "swift boats," the 50-foot aluminum gunboats used by the Navy to patrol the labyrinth of jungle-cloaked channels and canals in the Mekong Delta. Joe Klein's 2002 New Yorker profile stated that the small boats were easy targets for ambush from enemy soldiers on the banks of the river, and often took fire as they sped through hostile territory. So Ensign Kerry after five months of service in the Pacific on the guided-missile frigate USS Gridley, with a brief stop in Vietnam, returned to the United States and underwent training to command a Swift boat. By June of 1968 Kerry was promoted to the rank of lieutenant (junior grade), and by the end of that year he was back in Vietnam, where he commanded, over time, two Swift boats. Tiring of the attacks on the swift boat without an aggressive response, Kerry proposed to his men that they launch a counterattack against ambushers by quickly turning the boats directly toward the point of gunfire and rushing the enemy position. On Feb. 28, 1969, Kerry and his crew successfully executed his counterattack plan, capturing and killing enemy soldiers. Kerry himself chased down and killed a soldier carrying a rocket launcher. "When the firing began I gave the order to turn and -- phoom! -- we just went in and beached and took them by complete surprise, and we routed them and we didn't take a wound." He received the Purple Heart three times for wounds suffered in action, and was awarded the Bronze Star with Combat V (for valor) and the Navy's Silver Star for gallantry in action. Kerry was discharged from the Navy in January of 1970, early - as allowed for 3 purple heart heros - from his 2nd (SECOND!) tour of duty.

[metisnation]

1. Anyone who says anything

I ask them have you seen Apocolypse Now...that usually stuns them cold.

[TX VN Viet]

2. Apocolypse Now

Just wondering what is in that movie that "stuns them cold". As a Vietnam vet I thought the movie was totally BS