Many sources have already discredited the Swift Boat group. How plain does it have to get?
I think the "sources" who served with Kerry who are speaking against him are running about 10 to 1 with the sources who are defending him. Actually its more, here read it yourself from http://swift1.he.net/~swiftvet/index.php?topic=FAQ
""""""""""1. If most of Kerry's fellow Swift veterans don't support him, then who were all those guys with him at the Democratic Convention? They made it appear that Kerry has the complete support of his "Band of Brothers" from Vietnam.
John Kerry has been able to convince about 13 men who served on Swift boats in the Mekong Delta to support him, 7 or 8 of whom were at various times crew members on his own 6-man boat. Those are the men the Kerry campaign so prominently featured at the Democratic Convention. The photograph we have posted at SwiftVets.com shows Kerry with 19 of his fellow Swift boat OICs (Officers In Charge) in Coastal Division 11. Four OICs were not present for the photograph. Only three of his 23 fellow OICs from Coastal Division 11 support John Kerry.
Overall, more than 250 Swift boat veterans are on the record questioning Kerry's fitness to serve as Commander-in-Chief. That list includes his entire chain of command -- every single officer Kerry served under in Vietnam. The Kerry game plan is to ignore all this and pretend that the 13 veterans his campaign jets around the country and puts up in 5-star hotels really represent the truth about his short, controversial combat tour.
The Swift boats fought in groups, so the other OICs who fought alongside Kerry know him well and can accurately describe what he did and did not do. In many cases Kerry's fellow OICs had a better perspective than his own crew members, since the latter had no way to determine whether he was following orders and how well he worked with his peers."""""""""""
Some of these people were simply not there. The Navy made their reports, and Kerry got out. End of story. I don't buy all these third person storys and people saying, "well I remember it differently now" accounts.
Oh thats one way of saying it. Heres another from http://swift1.he.net/~swiftvet/index.php?topic=KerryinVietnam
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John Kerry's service in Vietnam lasted 4 months and 12 days, beginning in November 1968 when he reported to Cam Ranh Bay for a month of training. His abbreviated combat tour ended shortly after he requested a transfer out of Vietnam on March 17, 1969, citing Navy instruction 1300.39 permitting personnel with three Purple Hearts to request reassignment. So far as we are able to determine, Kerry was the only Swift sailor ever to leave Vietnam without completing the standard one-year tour of duty, other than those who were seriously wounded or killed.
It is clear that at least one of Kerry's Purple Heart awards was the result of his own negligence, not enemy fire, and that Kerry went to unusual lengths to obtain the award after being turned down by his own commanding officer.
John Kerry has long insisted that using the three-injury loophole to leave combat early was his own idea, but Kerry's fellow Swift officer Thomas Wright, who served on occasion as the OIC (Officer in Charge) of Kerry's boat group, contradicts that claim. Wright reports that he "had a lot of trouble getting Kerry to follow orders," and that those who worked with Kerry found him "oriented towards his personal, rather than unit goals and objectives." He therefore requested that Kerry be removed from his boat group. After John Kerry qualified for his third Purple Heart, Thomas Wright and two fellow officers informed him of the obscure regulation, and told him to go home. Wright concluded, "We knew how the system worked and we didn???t want him in Coastal Division 11."
Constructing a complete picture of Kerry's service is difficult due to gaps in the Naval records provided by the Kerry campaign. These gaps include missing and incomplete fitness reports, missing medical records and missing records related to his medal awards.
For this reason we call upon Senator Kerry to authorize complete access to all his military records by filing a standard Form 180, a simple two-page release form.
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is in the process of researching John Kerry's time in Vietnam by conducting interviews with eyewitnesses to his activities, and we plan to add material to this section over the next several weeks as it becomes available. We will report the true circumstances of Kerry's medal awards and injuries, describe other controversial missions, and provide in-depth analysis of his fitness reports.""""""""""
Third, Who wouldn't protest something as awful as what was going on there?
Well thats true, but do you believe theres a difference between "protesting" and this?, especially with our POWs in the torture dens of the heathen commies http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/index.php?topic=Keys
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o In his April 1971 speech to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, John Kerry claimed that war crimes committed by the American military against Vietnamese civilians were "not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis..." War crimes in Vietnam were actually quite rare.
o Kerry claimed that war crimes were being committed "with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." In fact, military personnel were warned that "if you disobey the rules of engagement, you can be tried and punished." War crimes were never a matter of policy, and were prosecuted when discovered.
o Kerry charged that the war in Vietnam was a racist war, that "blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties." Research published in B.G. Burkett's book "Stolen Valor" and other sources shows that casualty rates for black and white soldiers during Vietnam closely matched the proportion of America's overall population represented by each race.
o Kerry claimed that Vietnam was "ravaged equally by American bombs and search-and-destroy missions as well as by Viet Cong terrorism..." Later in his remarks, Kerry responded to a question about what might happen to the South Vietnamese after our withdrawal with "So what I am saying is that yes, there will be some recrimination but far, far less than the 200,000 a year who are murdered by the United States of America..." Yet according to historian Guenter Lewy in "America in Vietnam," "...the number of civilians killed deliberately by the VC is appallingly high. No counterpart to this death toll caused by communist terror tactics exists on the allied side."
o Asked for a recommendation about possible courses of action for Congress to pursue, Kerry stated that he had talked with representatives from Hanoi and from the PRG (Viet Cong) at the Paris peace talks, and mentioned his support for "Madam Binh's points." Madam Nguyen Thi Binh was at that time the Foreign Minister for the PRG. These meetings took place in the spring of 1970, before Kerry ever joined the VVAW.
o Kerry was a leader, fund-raiser, and spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), an organization that staged mock mass murders of civilians to dramatize American atrocities, and handed out flyers that read "if you had been Vietnamese" American infantrymen might have "burned your house" or "raped your wife and daughter" and "American soldiers do these things every day to the Vietnamese simply because they are 'Gooks.'"
o Kerry's used "testimony" from the VVAW's "Winter Soldier Investigation" as the basis for his war crimes charges, although none of the witnesses there were willing to sign depositions affirming their claims. Later investigators were unable to confirm any of the reported atrocities, and in fact discovered that a number of the witnesses had never been in Vietnam, had never been in combat, or were imposters who had assumed the identity of real veterans.
o The deception extended to the VVAW leadership. Executive secretary Al Hubbard claimed to have been an Air Force captain wounded piloting a transport over Da Nang in 1966. Hubbard was actually a staff sergeant who was never assigned to Vietnam.
o The Winter Soldier Investigation was financed by pro-Hanoi radicals such as Jane Fonda and Mark Lane, who hoped to undermine American support for the war by framing American soldiers as mass murderers. At the same time, the North Vietnamese military was torturing American prisoners of war to make them confess to identical crimes. At least one former POW has stated that Kerry's testimony was used by North Vietnam to demoralize American prisoners during interrogations.
o John Kerry has denied any association with Jane Fonda, but he attended the 1970 VVAW leadership meeting that chose Fonda and Executive Secretary Al Hubbard to do a national speaking tour to raise money for the VVAW and launch new chapters. Fonda was also the primary source of funds for the Winter Soldier Investigation, where Kerry was a moderator.
o The VVAW signed the People's Peace Treaty during Kerry's tenure -- the VVAW even sent a delegation to Hanoi. The document was a laundry list of North Vietnamese bargaining points, including the key concession that the United States must agree to withdraw all troops before any negotiations could take place for the return of American prisoners.
o The VVAW was at the heart of the propaganda effort that so effectively smeared American servicemen in Vietnam as murderous, drug-addled psychotics that returning veterans were cursed and spat upon in the streets. In fact, as shown in B.G. Burkett's book "Stolen Valor," Vietnam veterans are more psychologically stable and successful than their civilian counterparts.
o The VVAW was a radical and potentially violent organization that formally considered assassinating prominent supporters of the war. As reported in the New York Sun by Thomas Lipscomb, during a November 1971 meeting in Kansas City the VVAW leadership and chapter coordinators voted down a plan to murder several U.S. Senators, including John Tower, John Stennis, and Strom Thurmond. Two VVAW members who were present, Randy Barnes and Terry Du-Bose, place John Kerry at that meeting, as do the meeting minutes and FBI records. Kerry claims to have resigned from the VVAW at the meeting or shortly thereafter, but there is no evidence that he ever informed authorities about the conspiracy. Kerry continued to publicly represent the VVAW until at least April of 1972.""""""""
What people should be outraged about is the fact that our government made misleading ties to 9-11 and Saddam Hussein, which turned out to be false, as a pretext to invading Iraq. What we should work on since we're there is, to make the best of it and hope and pray that people in that part of the world will some day thank us for ridding them of a brutal dictator.
What I find shocking is how this administration managed to justify this war to the public. With all the tools and technology at our disposal, with all the manpower and resources, our leaders have managed to justify this war to the people, and there is no outrage? Even after the 9-11 commission came out and refuted the Bush administrations claims of WMD???
I just don't get it.
Last time I checked John Kerry had voted FOR this attack, he had voted AGAINST Gulf-l. Now he has said he would have voted to authorized war against Saddam even if he had known Iraq had no WMDs. Then he votes for the Patriot act, votes against the reconstruction bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. He has actually supported Bush's policys and legislation almost 100% http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4356093
As a further example of hypocrisy, neither Bush or Cheney went overseas, and no one is talking about them.
Your right, Kerry has them beat by 4 mo.'s overseas. Now who do you think it is that made his "Kerry's" military service an issue? Whos the one who has wheeled boatmates on stage at every campaign stop ? Who accepted his nomination by saluting and saying "reporting for duty"? Here listen to a clip about they guy your going to elect to lead the fight against Al Qaeda http://www.streamload.com/jmstein77/Kerry2.mp3 The economy is in shambles, and wages have not kept up with inflation.
The tax cuts Bush gave only benefitted the top 2%. If you made less than 200k, you probably did not benefit. And how about that record deficit? Where's Ross Perot when you need him to bring attention to the out of control deficit spending?
............Rich
Oh thats a good one 
