So, does anyone know how Sen. Kerry got his 3 purple hearts?

[Sparrowhawk]

And other military awards?


With Kerry winning the Iowa caucuses, I just thought I'll take a look at this character, not that I would ever vote for a democrat at this stage of the game, but I thought I'll take a look at who's running, why and what they are made of.

If he takes New Hampshire, I might even request a copy of his military records... LOL






JOHN FORBES KERRY

Military Service:
Entered Navy - 1966
Released as Lieutenant after serving in Vietnam from 1966-69
Received the Silver Star, Bronze Star, three Purple Hearts, Navy Unit Commendation, Presidential Citation.

[thedrifter]

A graduate of Yale University, John Kerry entered the Navy after graduation, becoming a Swift Boat officer, serving on a gunboat in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. He received a Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, and three awards of the Purple Heart for his service in combat.

By the time Senator Kerry returned home from Vietnam, he felt compelled to question decisions he believed were being made to protect those in positions of authority in Washington at the expense of the soldiers carrying on the fighting in Vietnam. Kerry was a co-founder of the Vietnam Veterans of America and became a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War -- Morley Safer would describe him as "a veteran whose articulate call to reason rather than anarchy seemed to bridge the gap between the Abbie Hoffman's of the world and Mr. Agnew's so-called 'Silent Majority.'" In April 1971, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he asked the question of his fellow citizens, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Sen. Claiborne Pell, (D-R.I.) thanked Kerry, then 27, for testifying before the committee, expressing his hope that Kerry "might one day be a colleague of ours in this body."
http://www.johnkerry.com/about/
Another site
http://www.votewithavengeance.com/kerry.html

Sempers,

Roger

[greensideout]

Is he another "Silver-Spoon" like Dean? Do any of them know what it's like to work and pay the bills? Sorry, can't relate to these folks.

[ivalis]

I'd like to see our commander in chief's military record.

[greensideout]

I'd like to see the servive records of his crew that were with him when he earned his awards. On a boat it sounds like a tight crew, top to bottom. All are in it together. He must have done something very outstanding!

[ivalis]

green, just what i've heard on the tube, there's a guy that's campaining (sp?) w/ him who says that Kerry saved his life.

sounds like he was the real deal. the Navy, like the suck, doesn't give those awards away like candy.

[MillRatUSMC]

Senator John F. Kerry
Biography

John Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943 at a military hospital in Denver, Colo., while his father Richard Kerry, a pilot in the Army Air Corps, was being treated for tuberculosis. Soon after his birth, the Kerry family returned to Massachusetts. This, however, was only a temporary residence for young Kerry, who was destined for an unusually privileged upbringing. Kerry's father, a diplomat in the Foreign Service, and his mother, Rosemary, was a member of the Boston Brahmin Forbes family, whose wealth is drawn primarily from its land holdings on Cape Cod, made certain that Kerry received the best education that their positions could afford him. Kerry was educated at Swiss boarding schools and attended an elite private school in New Hampshire, before enrolling in Yale University.

At Yale Kerry was actively involved in sports and the student social life. He was a member of the exclusive club Skull and Bones, to which George W. Bush, two years younger than Kerry, also belonged. After graduating in 1966, Kerry heeded the call of what his brother, Cameron Kerry, would later call duty, and volunteered to fight in the rapidly escalating Vietnam conflict.

Kerry served as an officer on a "swift boat" in the Mekong Delta. On February 28, 1969, his swift boat came under a rocket attack. A subsequent military report about the engagement, quoted by a 1996 article in the New Yorker, stated: "Kerry's craft received a B-40 rocket close aboard. Lieutenant (j.g.) Kerry ordered his units to charge the enemy positions . . . (his craft) then beached in the center of the enemy positions and an enemy soldier sprang up from his position not ten feet from (Kerry's craft) and fled. Without hesitation Lieutenant (j.g.) Kerry leaped ashore, pursued the man behind a hootch and killed him, capturing a B-40 rocket launcher with a round in the chamber." About the incident Kerry recalled, "It was either going to be him or me. It was that simple."
continued...

[MillRatUSMC]

For his actions that day, Kerry was awarded the Silver Star. Some controversy would arise with concern to the incident years later though when during a close election with William Weld in 1996, the Boston Globe's David Warsh questioned the circumstances of Kerry's heroism that day. Evidence emerged that the Viet Cong who had fired the rocket was alone and had already been wounded by the gunner on the ship.

After completing his tour returning home in 1969, Kerry made an about face in his position on Vietnam. Disillusioned, angered, and feeling an onerous sense of betrayal by Washington's handling of the conflict, he became a prominent anti-war protestor. Referring to the involvement in Vietnam as the "biggest nothing in history," Kerry became a co-founder of the Vietnam Veterans of America and the spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

It was in this capacity Kerry achieved national renown and laid the nascent groundwork for a career in politics. In April 1971 while testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Vietnam, he asked a question that echoed throughout the country: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" A day after delivering this simple question, he led a group of veterans that hurled their war medals onto the Capitol steps to protest the war. Though it later became clear that Kerry had only thrown his ribbons on the steps (to this day his medals are proudly displayed in his office), the events cemented Kerry's position as a leading critic of the Vietnam War. Morley Safer praised him as "a veteran whose call to reason . . . seemed to bridge Abbie Hoffman's of the world and [then-Vice President Spiro] Agnew's so called ‘silent-majority.'"

Kerry entered law school, graduating from Boston University in 1976. In the following years he served in Middlesex County and earned a reputation as a "top prosecutor" for leading the prosecution against a prominent New England organized crime boss and for modernizing the district attorney's office.
continued...

[MillRatUSMC]

In 1982, Kerry was elected lieutenant governor of Massachusetts (he served under then-Gov. Michael Dukakis) and in 1984 he ran for Paul Tsongas's vacant Senate seat. He was supported by the nuclear freeze movement and feminists, and won election while refusing to accept contributions from political action committees. During his first term, he became a critic of government waste.

Today Kerry is serving his third consecutive term on Capitol Hill. Throughout he has broached contentious issues that many others, even from his own party, avoided.

He was am integral player in the Oliver North Hearings, having launched an investigation in 1987, know as the "Kerry Committee," that exposed the diversion of drug money from counternarcotic operations to the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contras. In 1992, Kerry coauthored a report for the Committee on Foreign Relations on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), "an elaborate corporate spider-web" that defrauded depositors of billions of dollars, engaged in money laundering, arms trafficking, and allegedly facilitated the development of Pakistan's nuclear arms program. Kerry pursued the charges against the "Bank of Crooks and Criminals International," as it became known, despite the involvement of the late Clark Clifford, an advisor to four Democratic presidents. Clifford was the president of First American Bank, a Washington, D.C.-based, federally regulated bank that was secretly and illegally bought by BCCI with Clifford's aid in the mid-1980s.

In 1991 the Senate created the Select Senate Committee on POW/MIA Affairs to investigate the possibility that U.S. prisoners of war and soldiers designated missing in action were still alive in Vietnam. Acting as chairman, Kerry helped persuade the group to vote unanimously that no American servicemen still remained in Vietnam. In doing so, he helped begin the process of normalizing U.S.-Vietnamese relations.

But Kerry's participation in the Committee became controversial in December 1992 when Hanoi announced that it had awarded Colliers International, a Boston-based real estate company, an exclusive deal to develop its commercial real estate potentially worth billions. Stuart Forbes, the CEO of Colliers, is Kerry's cousin.
continued...
Kerry was a delegate to the Earth Summit in 1992 (where he met his future wife, Teresa Heinz, the widow of Pennsylvania Senator John Heinz), the Kyoto climate talks in 1997 and the Hague Conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2000.

Kerry has continuously criticized the Bush administration for its abandonment of the Kyoto protocol and encouraged the United States to promote what he views as sound and sustainable environmental policies. In an August 2002 Time article Kerry asserted, "American's deserve better choices than this Administration is offering. The United States must stop being an environmental isolationist and once again work with our global allies…First and foremost, we must lead at home, where American's unrivaled ability to drive economic growth through innovation can protect the environment and create jobs.

All this and there's no mentioned how he came by those three Purple Hearts...

Semper Fidelis
Ricardo

[kentmitchell]

Thanks, MillRatUSMC

The first section sure answered the question about the silver spoon. Another "leader" who doesn't have a clue.
Anyone who saw him ask for lo-cal dressing on a cheese steak, in Philly, probably guessed that, anyway.
Kerry looked like he was handling a dead rat instead of a sandwich.
If I was to vote Dem, it would probably be for the guy from South Carolina if he continues to campaign.
Dean looks risky and I sure don't want to vote for a doggie.

[TracGunny]

He's not a member of the Military Order of the Purple Heart (MOPH), so no help there...

http://www.purpleheart.org/

[Sparrowhawk]

Originally posted by TracGunny
He's not a member of the Military Order of the Purple Heart (MOPH), so no help there...

http://www.purpleheart.org/

years ago, they send me an application and I never filled it out. Maybe it's about time I did.

SF
Cook

[LONEEAGLE]

I ain't gonna knock, ain't sayin' nobody here has either, I'm using the word "KNOCK" as a mere expression......Not as a demeaning term towards other's opinion.....Here's how I see it. When I was in the land Of "OZ", I did my job. I got scratches, scrapes, had some close calls with some bullets, grenades, mortar's, and when my Doc wanted to put me in for a heart? I said, "Hell no." "I have to have more than this..." Every man/woman who served in the "Army" (I hope it's okay to say "ARMY" on this site.heeheheee), it seemed when I got back from the land of "OZ", had a "BRONZE STAR." But I seldom seen any Combat "V's" pinned to them. I also know a retired first Sgt, who was in the land of "OZ" who had a dog team. He had every medal except the MOH, and said in open discussion, "I GAVE MYSELF, MY MEN THESE MEDALS, SO, AND FOR, THEY DESERVED IT." I also know of a Man, who lives in Wyoming. I willnot devulge his name. But I do know what he did. His Recon Team, my Team flew out together, his team landing in one RZ, and my team to the great "ROCK OF PILE." I listened as one by one, they were being killed. "HELP, HELP, HELP,!!!" Then Silence. To far for me to go to in time to help them. This young man, wounded several times, the Pilot/co-pilot wounded, remembered, "We don't leave anyone behind", asked the crew chief of a CH-46, "DAMN IT MAN, HELP ME!!" HE WAS A CHICKEN ****. One man took a direct hit with a mortar, nothin' was found of him. The remaining survivor got every body, and the radio, onto the chopper which was threatening to leave, as it was comin' under attack, and brought them back to the rear....The pilot, co-pilot got silver stars, bronze stars, purple hearts, what did this man deserve? THE MOH. What did he get? "BRONZE STAR W/COMBAT 'V'." Maybe a purple heart.
So, I'm always leary of any "OFFICER" who receives any medal's for being a hero? IN MY BOOK, THERE ISN'T NARY A ONE, WHO SERVED, IN WHATEVER COMPACITY, MARINE,ARMY, NAVY, AIRFORCE, NAT'L GUARD, COAST GUARD, IN THE LAND OF OZ THAT WASN'T A 'HERO'. It took a lot of guts, just to keep from blowin' yer friggin' brains out.....that's a hero to me.....this L/Cpl was a sho nuff "HERO" and the crew chief told the story, and said he acted in a cowardly way.....was relieved...But why should "officer's get the gravy, grease, when the real warrior's like this L/cpl, get's the big green one without any grease? Are officer's such better people than you/I? This is what I hate about politics.....It sucks. And as far as his "HEROISM" of this man bein' taken out of the water, and some 30yrs later brought to meet carry, you think that wasn't staged?" HAH!!!
I have no politics. And it's because we are lied to. And people, even myself get caught up in this idealogy of one, two people, and are treated like some kind of god, and promises made, in speeches, are mostly you know what.....you can throw 'em in a contest now. It's the Congress that run's this country. The likes of Kennedy, dumber than a pot of rocks. These are the people we need to watch.....The President, he can only have hopes of doin' this 'n that because, of Congress. Look at the friggin' mess we are in in IRAG? It's time to get our people out of there, we got the rat in the trap.......Now let's go home. Why should we push our ways, "DEMOCRACY?" Bull******." "Only if you watch your p's and q's. Sound like some nut? Maybe...But I've been thru the ringer, and believe you me, I know what it's like to be watched, on a list, and not allowed freedoms. So we try and push our crap onto the Iragi people. The people will keep killing our troops until we get the hell out of there. And even if a constitution, some election process is made by Next yr., when we finally leave, the tribes are going to have an army, possible police force, but won't need it, because the ruling tribe of many, have, the power to put down any opposing party/tribe. "AFLAC!!!" "BRING 'EM HOME NOW." Remember my brother's and sister's, "YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID."

[TracGunny]

...now if that doesn't break the copy/paste mold, what does? Thanks for sharing BigEagle6; point taken and will be considered...

[USMC-FO]

"If I was to vote Dem, it would probably be for the guy from South Carolina if he continues to campaign......"

And who would this SC candidate be ???