Well, I'm sure by now you've familiarized yourself with the details of former Sen. Bob Kerrey's ill-fated Feb.,1969 SEAL raid in Vietnam.

If not, try  [url]http://worldnetdaily.com/frame/direct.asp?SITE=www.drudgereport.com[/url]



Would this be better left undisturbed, or is the Republic better served by a thorough exam of this incident?

What say ye?

Eric The Hun

Is kerry a republican or demacrat?

I agree and feel a bit sorry for him.

Politically speaking, i've been opposed to him for a while now as he is very, very anti A.W. and wouldn't hesitate to imposed an all out A.W. ban.

I Didn't mean I would treat him different or hold him to a different standard one way or another,I just could'nt place the nam an figured politican aff.would let me get a bearing.

Maybe I should of asked what state.....

Even though he's a dem. He is a vet. They ought to let him be.And God bless all vets.

I agree with Ed, Kerrey's politcal party affliation is not an issue.  Though I do not agree with his politcal views I respect the man for his past service to his country.

From listening to the radio this morning, I understand that the folks at the Pentagon have more of a problem with the fact that he accepted a Bronze Star for something that didn't happen.  I believe that the citation stated that it was for killing about 21 Viet Cong, when it was really more like 14 civilian women and children.

Regardless of his personal feelings about who was killed (and under what circumstances), if the citation and award were bogus, then it devalues all such awards.

(Edited for spelling)

Sen. Kerry is from Nebraska.

The Sen. lost a foot in 'Nam and was also award the CMOH. I have great respect for the man. Even though he is anti-gun and a liberal in general.

I want to ask who here has ever heard of Joe Hooper?

Joe Hooper died in 1979 in a motel room in Washington state I believe.  relative obsurity, a mention on the obits page was it...

Joe Hooper was also a hero, he surpassed sgt York and Audie Murphy, two of this nations greatest war heros.

Joe Hooper, a quiet, annassuming man, did two tours in Vietnam. recieved the Medal of Honor, two Silver stars, six Bronze stars, eight purple hearts, and the CIB.

He was credited with 115 enemy kills in ground combat, 22 alone on the day he earned the Medal of Honor.

We should never forget all of them.  Whenever the traveling wall comes around, say a prayer for them.

Kerry is a "moderate" democRat and is anti-gun anti-constitution.  Any other time, this would just be a memory, and lets hope he doesn't run for President.

He's one of the few Democrats that I actually respect.  Even though he's on the wrong side of the fence on a lot of issues, he has scruples.  

He was the only Democrat to openly attack Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.  Maybe he's still pissed about the 92 primaries. I don't know.

As far as this story is concerned however, it was not some "need to clear his heart" of the 32 year old incident, but rather he wanted to 'get ahead' of a story that was coming out this weekend in the New York Times Magazine where another member of the SEAL team alleges that these civilians were killed on purpose.

Kerrey has admitted to possibility of running in the 2004 Presidential race.

So what was it, conscience or political gamesmanship?

Kerry did not receive the CMOH, his highest award in Nam was the Silver Star.

Now I have never seen the CMOH hanging around Kerry's neck. But I have read that he received it in several books on VN. I have also read what was reported to be his CMOH citatation on a website that had a list of every CMOH winner in Vn

http://www.mishalov.com/Kerrey.html

Incidents like this are why SEAL team members are not supposed to talk about their wartime actions unless specifically authorized.  Ask Gov. Ventura what he did in the war.  He wont tell you zip and states its because the Navy told him not to and he honors his word to the military and country.  Special action squads or teams frequently will be involved in actions that cause seemingly innocent lives to be taken and destruction to occur.  Its what happens in war, I am sure, even though I have not been in one.

Politicians will say anything to save their political careers and themselves though.  Look at Klinton/Gwhore.  Nothing was off the table for those Communists.

Having served in the 9thdiv mobile riverine force and was right there in same AO operating night ambushes and patroling at the same time Kerrey was, I feel the need to weigh in.. first of all it wasnt a raid...it was a mission to get the team and its new leaders feet wet..personally I never liked moving at night...(get into a night hold and move into your ambush site just before dark...sit tight waiting for targets is the only way to operate imo) SEALS do it differently and were effective...but in a Free Fire Zone the rule was half hour before dark to half hour before sunrise if it moves shoot it...Kerrey having to spin this story 30years late is suspicious imo a team member violating the privacy of the other team members is also suspicious. Kerrey is or was running for president and getting his campaing under way...so why is this  coming out now?? politics and the low lifes who do this for a living?..who has access to this type of info? and what levered the team member to suddenly come forward?...
Imagine living in a small village and having a bunch of GIs stomping all over it Imagine being a GI and wondering which villager is the one going to kill you..the one smiling a little too much?? ...imagine being a 15 year old boy listening to the viet cong rap ...about invaders in your country taking it  back fighting for freedom etc etc...then giving you a brand new ak how hard was it to turn a village kid into a killer (especially after his sister had been raped...or turned to prostitution to feed the family) wouldnt take to much to turn me at that age didnt take to much to get me to go there and "save them from communism"..so now when the GIs come into the kids village would his grandma and mom and sisters and grandpa try to cover for him knowing he will be killed if its discoverd that this is his village and the whole village labeld VC...and legal to waste...so mamasan protects her kid and for that she and all the babysans get killed.....problem is Kerrey should have kept his mouth shut the more he tries to explain to people who will never understand he digs himself in deeper...when he told the navy they could have their medals back and he wishes he would never have gone...that sucked..and betrayed all the rest of us imo...but he has a right to his opinion- trouble the rest of us wont get heard on the issue...I still feel it was right to go fight in vietnam..not just because I did ..but because I dont like communism it is an evil repressive form of government it is a form of govt that hates God and murders the followers of Christ...it steal private property and the goods that a mans labors produce..it steals the souls of people..and leads nations into hell...- I am glad we opposed it there and anywhere we did..too bad its crept into america so deeply now
that most people no longer see it in us or see it as a threat...We were right to fight there but we should have conducted ourselves differently..and we needed, as kerrey said, a mandate from the american people. We never had a committment to win- from the American people...We turned vietnam into a giant whorehouse and the people hated us for it...except for the corrupt of course they loved it....like the corrupt always do...and gave the commies a chance to claim to be the moral force returning viet nam to a decent place for people to raise their kids..pretty sad when the commies are the moral force compared to Americans

I also heard that the writer of the story that will appear in NY Times Magazine had previously had it killed by the newspaper he worked for.  The reason stated was that since Kerry WASN'T going to run for president at the time it was written, they wouldn't use it.

Seems to illustrate the fact that these so-called news reporting agencies don't just report the news, they are instrumental in making it.

I guess that if you can't ruin someone's life, the fun just isn't there.

Can anyone confirm the "Story on the story"?

(edited for usual crappy spelling)

This smells like politics. Now's the time to get past this if you want to run for pres in four years. Kerry was no operator and his gungho bravado and poorly planned op got his leg shot off and nearly greased his whole team. The opertation before the grand medal of honor cluster ****, the one that got him the bronze star should have clued in the outgoing team leader that Kerry was trouble of the John Wayne variety. maybe it's fitting that 30 years later the only people that give a crap about what happened in some secret zone in the delta are his bleeding heart supporters--perfect.

Kerry's own website makes no mention of a Medal of Honor.  Here's a quote from his bio page.

His page is at [url]http://www.senate.gov/~kerry/bio.html[/url]

Norm

I saw Sen. Kerry on Fox News last night, and I think he touched on something that is very relevant to the way people see the Vietnam War. I can't remember the exact quote, but the gist of it was that people have no proble asking a Vietnam Vet what atrocities they saw or if they killed any civilians, but nobody would ever do such a thing to a World War II Vet.

Kyle

Clip from speech at VMI
Full text here:
[url]http://www.mishalov.com/Kerrey.html[/url]

Allow me to tell an unhappy story about myself and a choice I made while serving
    in Vietnam.  In February 1969, I led a squad of 6 other U.S.  Navy SEALs on
    a military operation in an area of Vietnam that was controlled by the Viet
    Cong.  Reliable intelligence told us that a seven-man squad faced
    considerable danger if we chose to enter the area.  I chose to go.  We
    entered two hours after sunset on a dark, moonless night.  It was the most
    risky mission I had led in my short time in country.  My greatest fear was
    that some mistake on my part would end in the death of my men.  Following
    orders I had been given and training I received, we used lethal procedures
    when there was doubt.  When we received fire, we returned fire.  But when
    the firing stopped, we found that we had killed only women, children and
    older men.  It was not a military victory; it was a tragedy and I had
    ordered it.

How, I have anguished ever since, could I have made such a mistake?  Though it
could be justified militarily, I could never make my own peace with what
happened that night.  I have been haunted by it for 32 years.  Knowing that the
people we killed were probably enemy sympathizers and their missing men had
fired upon us, drawing our fire, has not helped.  Knowing that I followed what I
considered to be the standard operating procedure has not helped.

I tell you this story now because I believe a part of your military training
must include how to cope with the horrors of war if you are lucky enough to
survive them.  Your military training must include ethical examination of what
is permissible in war.  Ho Chi Minh once said famously that Americans do not
have the stomach to do what you have to do to win a guerrilla war.  He was
right, but it is not an insult for us to believe so.  It is what makes American
leadership at its best so different and so vital in a world where evil still
controls too many innocent lives.

Sorry, I am not going to be down on him.
I think he is hero just for going. Bill stayed home, and Al hid in Saigon

Well it's nice to see his motives for bringing this out in the open.   That is what I was originally questioning yesterday when I heard this on the radio and television.

I didn't know if it was a stunt designed for attention, personal gain, or what the hell it was.  If he's responding to a story that is soon to come out that possibly paints him in a bad light or he's trying to make it so that there aren't any surprises, I don't have a problem with that.

It sure as hell is a more responsible thing and honorable thing than what Clinton would have done with the situation where if he brought it to the public's attention Clinton would exploit the holy hell out of it if he could.




I sometimes sit back and ask myself how the hell a person like Kerrey could become a democrat and such a raging anti-gunner.  You'd think he'd be able to figure out the true intent of the 2nd Amendment and based upon his experiences in Vietnam he'd be able to conclude for himself what happens when a civlian populace can't threaten to overpower a dictatorship.

I have a question.  

Just where did he think this hostile fire was coming from?  Women, children and old men have no problems firing an AK.  Would he have rather had his own men killed by these "innocents"?  Combatants don't need to be 20 year olds in uniforms.  These women & children would have danced on his dead body, given the chance.

Norm

I think someone's gotten former Sen.Bob Kerrey from Nebraska confused with current Sen. John Kerry from Massachusettes.  Check it out.

Eric The Hun

Eric, You're right.  

I searched for "senator bob kerry" and got John Kerry's website.  Mea culpa.  

There is a Joseph R. Kerrey listed in the Medal of Honor website, [url]http://www.cmohs.org/[/url]  It could be that "Bob Kerrey" uses his middle name.

Norm

Ah, I stand corrected.

in a nutshell:

"Although Kerrey and his political allies have long touted the Medal of Honor he                was awarded for his actions in a different battle, he has rarely, if ever, talked                about what he did to earn a Bronze Star as a 25-year-old Navy lieutenant. In fact,                 nowhere in Kerrey's official biography is the Bronze star even mentioned."

In his Bronze star citation is the following:

"The net result of his patrol was twenty-one                  Viet Cong killed, two hootches destroyed and two enemy weapons captured."

When in reality it was that they had killed about 14 women and children.  Kerry says that they were killed during a fire exchange, but another SEAL team member says that Kerry rounded them up and exocuted them.

All this one day after Kerry dumped all over Bush's statement that we would defend Taiwan.  Hummm.... better clean the closet of skeletons before you shit on the master's shoes :)

The fact is simple he missed led people.  People voted for him on his military record.  There have been many of soldiers brought in front of a court marshal for the same or lesser crimes. I had a good friend in Somalia that used deadly force on a child that was throwing a package in  Humvee.  He believed that it was a bomb, it was not a bomb.  He was court Marshall and found Not Guilty. The story made national news.  My point is he went threw the system, for murder.
Case in point.  Desert Storm  A child wonders in to a Special Forces den. The spec ops guys decide not to kill her, instead they fought it out with over 200 Iraqis, and in an interview one said we are soldiers not murderer.
If Kerry is telling the truth then let them investigate it

9divdoc's message says it all well.  For myself and my opinion...  I'll not rant, because I'd REALLY LIKE TOO!

You have them, (the Kerrys) confused.  Joseph R. Kerry, [Bob Kerry] born in Lincoln, Nebraska,  enlisted in the Navy 1966, completed officer candidate School  and was commissioned on 6/9/67.  He  was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on March 14, 1969 in Nha Trang Bay.  I haven't always agreed with Kerry's politics, being from Nebraska myself.  But, he earned this Nations highest Honor, and deserves the respect due him.  You can agree or disagree with his politics, but he lost his right leg fighting for what he believed was right.  

A few things here:

First, I have a great deal of respect for Kerrey even though I don't agree with his politics.  He is a remarkable man, very talented, very smart, brave and a self-made millionaire.  Read his MoH citation and see what his team went through.  

With this in mind, never forget that this is the way the VC and NVA operated.  They would routinely use a village as a shield.  Col. McDonough who wrote the book "Platoon Leader" writes about this and also notes that when he realized the VC would kill their own friendly civilians to win, that the US had lost the war.  They were that hard, and the guys who killed a lot of their own civilians are still in power in Vietnam, and millions of their prisoners have fled to the US.

As far as only finding 17 civilian bodies, the VC always dragged their dead and wounded out with them so the fact that they only located dead civilians is not surprising.

GunLvr