What the media didn’t tell you about John Kerry — part 1

Maybe now that the 2004 presidential election is far behind us, and the next presidential election is over two years away, maybe at last we can talk rationally and calmly about John Kerry.

It matters now because Kerry is running for president again, and I fear as the election draws near the noise will once again dominate.

We couldn’t talk about Kerry’s history rationally in 2004 amidst all the media hyperventilating. Every time the discussion began on TV, the talking heads diverted the conversation to the politics of the Vietnam veterans who were warning that Kerry is not what he seems. The same surfaces were scratched repeatedly without sufficient depth to inform the public.

In 2004 the Swiftboat veterans made a mistake, I believe, in starting their campaign by going after the validity of Kerry’s medals. I think they were right factually, but it was not a winning strategy. Voters and reporters who had not served in a war would never understand, would not be able to deal with one war veteran pointing a finger at the other over the legitimacy of medals. If the military awarded medals, aren’t they deserved?

The truth is sometimes medals tell the real story, and sometimes they do not. Let me give you a few examples.

In 1969 when I was a brand new helicopter pilot in Vietnam attending my first awards ceremony, I asked a buddy why a certain captain had a Purple Heart pinned on his chest since I knew he didn’t fly. How could he have been wounded? It turned out he had been walking across the flight line at night without a flashlight, was hit by a forklift transporting cases of ammo, and had to be bandaged up by medics. The injured captain twisted the arm of the awards officer, who used flowery words to get him a Purple Heart.

A friend who lives in Woodstock named Skip Davis flew helicopters in Vietnam. Skip was grazed by a bullet in a tender spot one day, but refused to accept an offered Purple Heart because he felt the wound was not sufficiently serious.

Another friend who lives right here in Peachtree City named Tony Armstrong flew Cobra helicopters in Vietnam as I did. Tony was badly burned when his aircraft caught fire during a hot refuel – he was pumping fuel while the aircraft was running. Tony spent months in hospitals going through painful and massive skin grafts. While Tony would never let you call him a hero, he earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism two times before he was burned and medevaced home.

In 2004 during the media furor over Swiftboat guys criticizing Kerry’s medals, I asked Tony one day:

“Did you get a Purple Heart?”

Tony looked at me like I was crazy and said “NO! And I would have refused if it had been offered!”

I knew the answer but asked him why anyway because I wanted to hear him say it.

Tony said, “Because the Purple Heart is for wounds inflicted by the enemy in combat! My burns were from an accident.” Tony didn’t call me a dumb-ass for asking, but it was implied.

Grant Hibbard, a retired U.S. Navy Commander who lives in Gulf Breeze, Fla., was Kerry’s commanding officer in Vietnam when Kerry asked the CO to approve his first Purple Heart for a small scratch he had received from an M-79 grenade he had fired himself. Hibbard threw Kerry out of his office after telling him he had worse wounds from a rosebush.

When Hibbard later moved on and was replaced, Kerry petitioned the new CO for a Purple Heart for the very same incident, and the new CO signed off. Kerry went on to score two more Purple Hearts under dubious circumstances and was awarded the Silver Star.

Now, if you mentally group Kerry and the forklift captain on one side, and Skip and Tony on the other, can you see the difference between them? All of them served in the same war, but the difference is an elusive thing called “honor.”

All these things happened long ago, so what do they have to do with current events? Kerry wraps himself in his Vietnam war hero’s mantle to attract votes, and he played the media and the public like a fiddle in 2004.

How? Please recall the short film footage played again and again showing Kerry with helmet and an M-16 rifle tromping through a little jungle. That footage was taken by Kerry’s boat crew, when they returned to the site where Kerry earned his Silver Star by chasing down and shooting an enemy sniper. Kerry took them back the next day with a movie camera to film re-enactments of his adventure, and he posed while they filmed several takes to get it just right.

What kind of man petitions for his own medals, calls himself a hero, films re-enactments of his heroics, and then uses the film in future political campaigns?

A man who has no idea of the meaning of “honor.”

I’ll tell you more next week why I would vote for any Democrat or Republican candidate before I would vote for John Kerry.