The Swift Boat Saga, Part XIII

You know, updating this story is difficult when you take three days off to do regular work. Let's just run through some recent news without too many comments.

First, Kerry's campaign now admits that he may have fudged his story on the incident where he received his first Purple Heart... boy, those dishonorable Swift Boat Vets are sure a bunch of liars, right?

A primary claim against Mr. Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans is that Mr. Kerry's first Purple Heart — awarded for action on Dec. 2, 1968 — did not involve the enemy and that Mr. Kerry's wounds that day were unintentionally self-inflicted. They charge that in the confusion involving unarmed, fleeing Viet Cong, Mr. Kerry fired a grenade, which detonated nearby and splattered his arm with hot metal.

Mr. Kerry has claimed that he faced his "first intense combat" that day, returned fire, and received his "first combat related injury." A journal entry Mr. Kerry wrote Dec. 11, however, raises questions about what really happened nine days earlier.

"A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn't been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven't been shot at are allowed to be cocky," wrote Mr. Kerry, according the book "Tour of Duty" by friendly biographer Douglas Brinkley.

If enemy fire was not involved in that or any other incident, according to the Military Order of the Purple Heart, no medal should be awarded. ...According to regulations set by the Department of Defense, an enemy must be involved to warrant a Purple Heart. Altogether, Mr. Kerry earned three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star.

A Kerry campaign official, speaking on background, told The Washington Times yesterday that the "we" in the passage from Mr. Kerry's journal refers to "the crew on Kerry's first swift boat, operating as a crew" rather than Mr. Kerry himself. "John Kerry didn't yet have his own boat or crew on December 2," according to the aide. "Other members of the crew had been in Vietnam for some time and had been shot at and Kerry knew that at the time. However, the crew had not yet been fired on while they served together on PCF 44 under Lieutenant Kerry." Mr. Kerry's campaign could not say definitively whether he did receive enemy fire that day.

The newly exhumed passages were first reported by Fox News Channel in a televised interview with John Hurley, national leader of Veterans for Kerry. "Is it possible that Kerry's first Purple Heart was the result of an unintentionally self-inflicted wound?" asked reporter Major Garrett.

"Anything is possible," Mr. Hurley replied.

The backpedaling is hysterical. But not nearly as funny as Bob Dole's entry into the fray. Keep in mind, folks on the left questioned Bob Dole's war record in 1996, as pointed out by Jim Geraghty. Personally, this line from Dole on Scarborough Country made my week:

SCARBOROUGH: You ran for president. It’s easy for me to talk about media bias, but did you see media bias in 1996? And if so, how widespread is it?

DOLE: It’s widespread. I mean, you look at the number of stories written about or on the three big networks at night and “The New York Times,” “The L.A. Times,” “The Washington Post,” all the big newspapers. How many dozens of stories they’ve reported about George Bush and the National Guard, and now they had to rush to the defense of John Kerry.

“The New York Times” last Friday had a front-page story, trying to discredit all these other Vietnam veterans, some who’ve been wounded seriously, all of whom served honorably. And many were decorated. And they’re cast as a bunch of liars or paid off by the Bush people. And that’s the kind of coverage you would get from the so-called mainstream media.

President Bush is going to go out and rebut this, for the most part, with paid advertising. He doesn’t have “The New York Times” every day. If you added up the value of all “The New York Times” propaganda, it would probably be $3 or $4 million.

The folks at the left-wing dishrag must have winced when they heard that. All that writing for Kerry is only worth $3-4 million?

Getting back to the point, let's examine how the first statements about Purple Heart impact a story that came out today. Retired Rear Admiral William Schachte (perhaps we Simpsons fans finally have an answer to what the "dreaded Rear Admiral" is) has become a person of interest due to issues related to the December 2, 1968 incident for which Kerry received his first Purple Heart. Bob Novak's column today at the Chicago Sun-Times explains:

Retired Rear Adm. William L. Schachte Jr. said Thursday in his first on-the-record interview about the swift boat veterans dispute that "I was absolutely in the skimmer" in the early morning on Dec. 2, 1968, when Lt. (j.g.) John Kerry was involved in an incident that led to his first Purple Heart.

"Kerry nicked himself with a M-79 [grenade launcher]," Schachte said in a telephone interview from his home in Charleston, S.C. He said, "Kerry requested a Purple Heart."

Schachte, a lieutenant, said he was in command of the small boat called a Boston whaler or skimmer, with Kerry aboard in his first combat mission in the Vietnam War. The third crew member was an enlisted man, whose name Schachte did not remember.

Two enlisted men who appeared at the podium with Kerry at the Democratic National Convention in Boston have asserted that they were alone in the small boat with Kerry, with no other officer present. Schachte said it "was not possible" for Kerry to have gone out alone so soon after joining the swift boat command in late November 1968.

Kerry supporters said no critics of the Democratic presidential nominee ever were aboard a boat with him in combat. Washington lawyer Lanny Davis has contended that Schachte was not aboard the Boston whaler and says the statement that Schachte was aboard in Unfit for Command undermines that critical book's credibility.

Schachte until now has refused to speak out publicly on this question and agreed to give only two interviews. One was a television interview with Lisa Meyers of NBC News, for broadcast Thursday night. The second was a print interview with me, for publication today.

Schachte described the use of the skimmer operating very close to shore as a technique that he personally designed to flush out enemy forces so that the larger swift boats could move in. Around 3 a.m. on Dec. 2, Schachte said, the skimmer -- code-named "Batman" -- fired a hand-held flare. He said that after Kerry's M-16 rifle jammed, the new officer picked up the M-79 and, "I heard a 'thunk.' There was no fire from the enemy," he said.

Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis are the two enlisted men who said they were aboard the skimmer and did not know Schachte. However, two other former officers interviewed Thursday confirmed that Schachte was the originator of the technique and always was aboard the Boston whaler for these missions.

Grant Hibbard, who as a lieutenant commander was Schachte's superior officer, confirmed that Schachte always went on these skimmer missions and said, "I don't think he [Kerry] was alone" on his first assignment. Hibbard said he had told Kerry to "forget it" when he asked for a Purple Heart.

Ted Peck, another swift boat commander, said, "I remember Bill [Schachte] telling me it didn't happen" -- that is, Kerry getting an enemy-inflicted wound. He said it would be "impossible" for Kerry to have been in the skimmer without Schachte.

Schachte's not a member of the Swift Boat Veterans, yet he's now come forward with a very credible explanation of the December 2nd incident -- and is now the second person to have served on one of Kerry's boats to dispute his accounts, joining Steven Gardner.

But it gets even better. The Kerry campaign stated, in response to the issue of Kerry's seemingly contradictory journal entry on December 11th, that "John Kerry didn't yet have his own boat or crew on December 2." As Ed Morrissey pointed out at the Captainsquartersblog, this effectively backs up Schachte:

To claim that Kerry used a rhetorical, reverse-royal "We" that specifically excluded Kerry shows the desperation and the remarkable consistency of the Democrats. They're back to debating two-letter words of plain English.

Taking this explanation a step further, however, the Kerry campaign just undermined its earlier argument that Kerry had been the only officer on board the Boston whaler at the 2 December incident. Earlier, when now-Admiral William Schachte insisted that he had been on the boat with Kerry and that no inbound fire of any kind occured that evening, Kerry produced two witnesses who insisted that they could not recall anyone else but the three of them being on board (Zaldonis and Runyon). However, if you accept Kerry's new explanation for his journal entry, then Kerry asserts (correctly) that he had no command assignment prior to PCF-44.

Then who was the OinC on the Boston Whaler?

People talk about the fog of war, but Kerry's effectively trapped himself by emphasizing his heroic service, thereby aggravating folks who remember his testimony before the Foriegn Relations Committee, not to mention this statement, from a 1971 appearance on Meet the Press:

MR. CROSBY NOYES (Washington Evening Star): Mr. Kerry, you said at one time or another that you think our policies in Vietnam are tantamount to genocide and that the responsibility lies at all chains of command over there. Do you consider that you personally as a Naval officer committed atrocities in Vietnam or crimes punishable by law in this country?

SEN. KERRY: There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50 calibre machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.

Word has it Kerry might appear on a weekend news show to try and stem the bleeding. He might want to avoid Russert, who probably has that clip ready and waiting.