THE SKIPPER TOO:

Legal Terrorism: How the Kerry team ambushed the Swift Boat Truth Squad -- and why it won't wash.( Henry Mark Holzer and Erika Holzer, 8/10/04, FrontPage)

As to Navy physician Louis Letson (whom Elias and Sandler attempt to demean by putting Dr. Letson’s title in quotation marks), Kerry’s lawyers descend to a level that is truly shocking. They assert that Dr. Letson was “pretending to be the doctor who treated Kerry for one of his injuries,” and “not the doctor who actually signed Senator Kerry’s sick call sheet.” They assert that it was someone else who “actually signed” the sheet. They assert that “Letson is not listed on any document” as having treated Kerry after December 2, 1968.

Fact (based on a notarized statement of Louis Letson): The injury Dr. Letson treated Kerry for occurred when Kerry and two others (a fellow lieutenant and a crewman), seeing movement from an unknown source, opened fire. Kerry’s rifle jammed, and in the absence of return fire, he resumed firing with a grenade launcher, spraying his own boat and causing a tiny piece of shrapnel to be embedded in his arm. The lieutenant and crewman, parties to the incident, accompanied Kerry to sick call, where they disputed Kerry’s claim that he’d been wounded by hostile fire and provided an account of the actual episode to Dr. Letson—after which Letson removed the tiny fragment with tweezers and covered Kerry’s scratch with a band aid. The lieutenant-witness is alive and available to testify, in detail, as to what happened. As for the maligned Dr. Louis Letson, he is entitled to say, as he did in the Swift Boat TV ad: “I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury.”

Fact (based on a sworn affidavit by Grant Hibbard): Next morning Kerry showed up at Division Commander Grant Hibbard’s office. Hibbard had already investigated the incident and spoken to the lieutenant-witness. Characterizing Kerry’s purported injury as a “rose thorn” scratch insufficient to justify a Purple Heart—awarded for hostile-fire wounds requiring medical attention, and excluding wounds that are accidental and self-inflicted [except non-negligent ones sustained in battle]—Commander Hibbard summarily turned down Kerry’s request for a Purple Heart and dismissed him. Commander Hibbard, who participated in the Swift Boat TV ad, is willing to testify, in detail, as to what happened.

Fact (based on rotation records and Kerry’s website): Some three months after everyone who was personally familiar with Kerry’s bogus claim to a Purple Heart had left Vietnam, Kerry persisted in the claim for his “rose-thorn” injury, managing to convince an officer that he had earned the Purple Heart. Yet that officer had no personal information about the incident, no connection to Kerry’s small naval unit, and no knowledge that Hibbard had rejected Kerry’s earlier request for the medal. Whenever Kerry has been pressed to produce evidence justifying this first Purple Heart, he cites Dr. Letson’s tweezers treatment—on the basis of which Commander Hibbard denied the medal. As to the Purple Heart that was awarded, there is not a shred of documentary evidence to justify it.

Here's Mr. Kerry on his Cambodia sneak attack:

I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared--seared--in me.

Here's his unusually inane acceptance speech:

I learned a lot about these values on that gunboat patrolling the Mekong Delta with young Americans who came from places as different as Iowa and Oregon, Arkansas, Florida and California. No one cared where we went to school. No one cared about our race or our backgrounds. We were literally all in the same boat. We looked out, one for the other – and we still do.

That is the kind of America I will lead as President – an America where we are all in the same boat.

Maybe it's just me but, based on his own accounts, I don't really want him driving the boat.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 10, 2004 11:17 AM