Unfit for Publication: swift boat ‘veterans’ lie about John Kerry
This book is really shameful. I’ll start off with the most-read portion of the book-the back.
“How ALL THREE (their emphasis) of John Kerry’s Purple Hearts were for minor injuries, easily treated with band-aids, not requiring a single hour of hospitilazation”. You probably don’t know this, but the Pritchett side of my family is pretty involved with the military. The Green Beret medal exists because of my grandfather. Furthermore, my politics teacher served in the Vietnam war.
So when I say that no one, not even a Kerry or a Bush, gets a medal they apply for themselves, you can rest assured that I’m right. The fastest way not to get a medal in the military is to ask for one, or even display interest in one. So saying, as many people (including the authors of this book) have, that John Kerry got one or more of his medals because he was a child of fortune or because he asked for them displays an ignorance of the way the military works. Or a complete lack of ethics and honesty.
The claim has also been made that John Kerry’s assignment in Vietnam was “not the most dangerous one”. Good point, it was only the second most dangerous. Well, for the first two weeks. After his second week of service, John Kerry was assigned to be part of operation SEALORD. His boat’s specific duty was to go ahead, drawing enemy attention and fire. The entire point of his boat was to get shot at. This is at, at the very least, slightly more dangerous than being in the Texas Air National Guard.
Kerry’s First Purple Heart-in the book, how severe his injuries were and how they were treated was glossed over by the statement “treated with a band-aid”. Now, this by itself is probably much worse than the word band-aid implies. When I was four and a rusted nail sliced straight through my foot, it was treated with a band-aid. The band-aid encircled the majority of my foot, but it was a band-aid. It was also treated with several disinfectants, just like John Kerry’s wounds : “The shrapnel was removed and the wound was treated with bacitracin antibiotic and bandaged.”-Wikipedia. It’s hard to decide what source to believe since everyone’s partisan, so I went with wikipedia. The bandage was a product made by the Band-Aid corporation, allowing this book to lie up the wazoo and conveniently forget his other treatment. Kerry gets some grenade in him-injuring him-and gets a medal for injury while serving.
Kerry’s Silver Star-A man wielding a rocket launcher was advancing on one of the boats under Kerry’s command. The man was shot in the leg with a machine gun, but the machine gun jammed. The man next to the machine gunner also attempted to fire but failed due to weapons malfunction. Kerry, in a last-ditch attempt to not get blown up, jumped ashore and killed the combatant. A sweep of the area was then conducted. “Kerry’s commanding officer, Lieutenant George Elliott, joked that he didn’t know whether to court-martial him for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew.” He took out a guy that had a rocket launcher!
Second Purple Heart-Also glossed over and supposedly treated ‘with a band-aid’. To quote wikipedia “Kerry still has shrapnel in his left thigh because the doctors tending to him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel. Kerry received his second Purple Heart for this injury, but he did not take any time off from duty.”. These sutures were not made by the Band-Aid corporation, meaning they outright lied on the friggin’ back of the book. This does not bode well for the inside, where the phrase “John Kerry’s wounds only needed band-aids, not even meriting a full hour of treatment” is repeated, rephrased, fifty-seven times. This was shrapnel from a GRENADE. Not even just one piece of shrapnel, even. That is what grenades do-explode into shrapnel which then flies into people/weapons, injuring, killing, and disabling, and this is what this grenade did to John Kerry. Kerry was in a situation where he and several helicopters were going down the river, when the copters were blown out of the sky and he was by himself. Not knowing if anyone even knew he was by himself, Kerry made a wise decision by getting the hell out of dodge. In case you don’t follow, Kerry was trying to avoid having metal come in brisk contact with his and his men’s brains. Apparently this is evidence of cowardice on Kerry’s part.
Third Purple Heart-”Rassmann dived to the bottom of the river. Coming back up for air, the enemy repeatedly fired at him. Rassmann was heading to the north bank, expecting to be taken prisoner, when Kerry realized he was gone and came back for him.” Kerry personally lifted Rassmann back into the boat. This was after Kerry had taken shrapnel in his butt and had an injured arm from a mine exploding under his boat, lifting it above the surface of the water. Kerry took the boat back, and, under enemy fire, saved a comrade from almost certain death. The man is a hero, people. For his incredible act of bravery and heroism, John Kerry was awarded a bronze star and for getting blazing hot metal in his butt and having a mine exploding under his boat, John Kerry won a purple heart. Once again, this entire thing isn’t even described in the book. His injuries were supposedly treated with ‘band-aids’-once again, an outright lie.
Overall, this book is basically a 185-page lie. I haven’t found a single piece of research or fact that wasn’t completely misrepresented or just plain made up. I don’t agree with quite a few of the things Bill O’Reilly says, but to his credit, he came out swinging against Unfit for Command. Books like this one are the reason the word ‘idealogue’ exists.
