Swift Boat Vets Deliver Letter to Kerry
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth delivered the following letter to the Kerry Campaign saying that they will discontinue their media advertisements about John Kerry’s service in Vietnam if the democratic presidential nominee apologizes.
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth
P.O. Box 26184
Alexandria, Virginia 22313
August 31, 2004
Senator John Kerry
901 15th Street NW
Washington, DC 20005
Dear Senator Kerry:
As you prepare for your address before the American Legion in Nashville, Tennessee, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth encourages you to use this opportunity to clarify your actions in Vietnam and your statements about your fellow Veterans and shipmates when you returned home. Since you have made your four-month tour in Vietnam the centerpiece of your campaign, we respectfully insist that you be truthful. The public is owed a full and honest accounting of your actions. Veterans are owed an apology from you and an acknowledgement that there was no basis in fact for the accusations you made against them.
We urge you to:
1. Apologize for your conduct once you returned from Vietnam. Your exaggerated testimony before the US Senate; the blanket indictment of your fellow veterans; throwing away medals and ribbons; all of these actions dishonored America and the armed forces. Your rhetoric and actions were not only wrong, they aided the enemy and brought great pain to POW’s, veterans and their families.
2. Clarify the conflicting accounts involving the Bay Hap River incident of March 13, 1969 (Bronze Star and 3rd Purple Heart). You have now described three different versions of this incident. In the first version of this incident presented during the Democrat National Convention, you stated: “No man left behind,” suggesting to the American people that you alone stayed on the river to rescue Mr. Rassmann. Later, when forced to acknowledge conflicting eyewitness testimony from fellow swift boat veterans, you said that your boat left the scene to return moments later to retrieve Jim Rassmann from the water. Yet, in another version of the same incident discovered in the Congressional Record, you reported that your boat struck a mine and Rassmann fell off the boat. Mr. Kerry, please explain to your fellow veterans and the American people which version is the truth.
3. Affirm that the injuries for which you received your purple hearts never required any medical treatment beyond perhaps a bandage and that, in all instances, these injuries were self-inflicted and came from your own weapon. Further, that if any of these purple hearts were falsely awarded, that you would not have been eligible to leave Vietnam after serving only four months.
4. Acknowledge what your own biographer is now saying, that the Christmas in Cambodia claim is “obviously wrong,” that you were never in Cambodia over Christmas or any other time during your brief, four-month tour in Vietnam and that your statements before the United States Senate in 1986 were false.
If you undertake these steps we will be satisfied that the American public has been sufficiently apprised as to these aspects of your career, and we will discontinue the media advertisements you have sought so fervently to silence.
Please know that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are eager to close our own personal chapters on Vietnam and instead focus on the war we’re currently fighting — the ongoing war on terrorism. In the absence of full public disclosure and a public apology, we will continue efforts to carry our message to an ever-expanding base of grassroots supporters.
Senator Kerry, we want to get Vietnam behind us. But, we can only do so if the truth is told.
We respectfully await your reply.
Sincerely,
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth
Proud Democrat Says: October 12th, 2004 at 6:58 am
Funny, how one of the Smear Boat Vets For Truth is the same guy who “debated” Kerry on TV approx. 30 years ago…the same guy enlisted by Tricky Dicky Nixon to trash Kerry’s character back then. Nixon’s dead, Vietnam is history, yet this bozo is STILL hankering for revenge against John Kerry. Just being associated with a slimeball like Richard Nixon speaks volumes about the “character” of this Smear Boat vet.
Anonymous Says: May 6th, 2005 at 3:33 am
liberal democrats have only one plan in life that is to be in direct opposition of every plan the republicans put forth. The reason democrats never have strategies to improve our country is because the first step to solving a problem is to recognize a problem exists. this is where they really get lost because the liberal problem solving method is to stick their heads in the sand and deny a problem even exists. Bill Clinton (HERO OF THE STUPID)is a prime example. President bush is cleaning up the mess that clinton and the libs made over an 8 year period where our country was like a ship with no captain drifting aimlessly to sea while the world laughed at the Jerry Springer show rerun of Bill and Hill. Terrorist attacked the usa 8 times. North Korea was rewarded for its blackmail demands. Clinton sent a message to terrorists that we were weak and cowardly by pulling our soldiers out of somalia rather than destroying the murdering savages that killed our soldiers. All these actions or lack there of encouraged and fueled every sociopathic and murdering crusader in the world to come after the USA. Thank GOD we have George Bush to put an end to this insanity and stupidity called the liberal democratic dysfunctional and disorganized fiasco. We must never relent to the liberals who loath GOD and seek to destroy our country and all that is descent. Yours truly IVAN.
Ivan is a Moron Says: October 19th, 2007 at 5:04 am
Ivan, hope somehow you read this 2 years later. If there’s any problem with liberals, its that they always NEED to solve a problem, even when everyone else thinks the status quo is just fine, so they invent one. You obviously have no understanding of the difference between liberal and conservative ideologies, which should be no surprise because its clear from your post that you have little education and even less intelligence, and my guess is that you’re likely racist trash who will never amount to anything.
Seriously, Hero of the Stupid? Do you lack even an ounce of wit? Bill Clinton did SO much to embarrass the country and the presidency, and thats the BEST your feeble mind could come up with?
And by the way, you really have no right to spew this trash about what we should and shouldn’t do in war–I’ve served as a Marine, and I can say for a fact that you clearly lack the basic competence needed to serve your country. Assuming you even managed to grow a pair and enlist, I really doubt you could ever man up and go through basic.
Vote McCain in 08.