How did Kerry earn that Silver Star?Follow

The more I hear from either makes me hope they are each other's sockpuppets.

Eb

Slow down there with the assumptions.

As far as Kerry's Silver Star goes, I'm not really in the "he didn't deserve it camp". It's really easy to second guess and armchair general those sorts of things.

Sure. He violated the technical SOP he was operating under. However, I think you'll find that most medal awardees do the same when they win their awards. The SOP is usually intended as a general rule to follow, with the intent of reducing casualties as much as possible. It's "playing it safe". A good officer will know when to break that rule and do something different. A good CO will recognize when said conditions occur and grant a medal instead of a reprimand.

I think that if he saw a VC running behind a hooch while reloading his rocket launcher, and he knew that his guns couldn't hit the VC from where he was, he probably made the right choice. Sure. He could have followed SOP and waited for that VC to pop out from behind the hooch and give his gunner a clear shot, but he'd have been putting his whole crew at risk doing so. He made a judgement call that the risk of beaching his boat was less then that of staying in the water and risking a rocket hit. He knew that the only way to elimiate the threat to his boat was to ground it and run around the hooch. He took that risk and it paid off.

The point of medals like the Silver Star is to reward those who take risks and succeed, and those who do things that are unconventional, but work. I can't think of an instance where someone got a major medal for just following orders. If he'd beached his boat and 5 more VC had popped up and unloaded on his boat, killing half his crew, then he certainly would have been Court Marshalled for the violation of SOP. But since it worked, he got a medal. That's just the way it works. You roll the dice in those situations, and he ended up winning.

I certainly am not going to question that at all.


However, the purple hearts does look like he was copping for hearts so he could end his tour as quickly as possible. It's hard to say that for sure, but it does look suspicious. Most people simply did not bother to put in for purple hearts unless their injuries were sufficient to cost them duty time. In Kerry's case, we have three purple hearts recieved, but not a single day of lost time. It is telling that while most soldiers only bothered with the award if they were spending time in a hospital and had nothing better to do then fill out the paperwork, Kerry made a point of applying for one even though he was barely scratched.


Honestly though, I'd have no issue with Kerry's war record except when people sit there and bash Bush in comparison. Look. They both served. Bush served a much longer term then Kerry did. You can't blame either one for what service they chose. Ultimately, it's about what they've done since that matters, not which service they were in and whether they happened to see combat back when they were in their 20s...

Eh? Whatever. I'm reasonably cetain that the Kerry camp brought up the Bush "geting out of combat duty", and "going awol" stuff long before any Reps started questioning Kerry's medals.

It's just that given their relative military records, it's unlikely that the Bush camp would make any issue out of military service unless it was in response to someone from Kerry's side. There's just no percentage in it. Fact is that a guy with combat duty on his record and a Bronze and Silver star will come off better then one who just served in the Air National Guard. No way did Bush's people attack on this issue first. They would have been perfectly happy if the issue of military service was never brought up by either side.

Hmm... I honestly don't know who went first, but I find it unlikely that Bush's side did. I could do more hunting, but I found this on the first site I checked about the issue:

http://www.awolbush.com/

There's a section near the bottom with an excerpt from an article in the Tampa Tribune (unfortunately the link doesn't work):



Obviously, this is hardly substantive evidence, but this article certainly seems to imply that Bush had been under attack for his service record before deciding to go after Kerry about his. In fact, this article seems to imply months of Bush dealing with "answering questions about his own zephyrlike service" well beforehand.


I could just be reading it wrong though...

Heck. Here's hit number two on my google search:

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/3671

Note the date of the publication. That's Sep 27, 2000. Now maybe the Dems just stopped bringing the issue up after Bush won the first election, but I somehow doubt it.

I think it'll be hard to figure out which happened first simply becuase I don't think the Dems have ever stopped hammering the issue. Whether it was Kerry specifically or not is irrelevant. The same people are saying the same things whether Gore is their candidate or Kerry is. You can't blame Bush for responding.

Ok. Hit number 3

Feb 2nd, 2004. Sure. Kerry isn't attacking, but the chairman of the DNC is. And the difference is?...

If I recall some one on Edwards staff actually started the attacks on Bush's AWOL - Turnipspeed of something like that, back in 2003.

No Edwards isn't Kerry thank God. But Edwards team is the one that brought it up first, it has bled over into Bush vs Kerry, obviously.



So who shot first? Kerry or the Bush? Kind of like the battle of Bunker Hill or was that Concord Bridge? Have you ever been to either one? Goodness how I miss the beauty of New England and the bearable summers as the sweltering heat of Kansas begins to settle in.

From August '03

http://www.gop.com/News/Read.aspx?ID=3470