Expert Casts Doubts On Kerry's Touted War Heroism
by Chad Groening
July 28, 2004
(AgapePress) - A former U.S. Air Force pilot and one-time military attaché to President Bill Clinton says he wants to set the record straight about Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War activities.During this week's Democratic National Convention, several speakers have touted John Kerry's character and distinguished military service during the Vietnam War. In the keynote address, Illinois State Senator Barack Obama remarked on Kerry's record, describing him as a Vietnam War hero and a leader who has consistently made "tough choices when easier ones were available."
Other Democrat speakers took advantage of the forum to attack President Bush for his perceived mishandling of the war in Iraq, but heaped lavish praise on their presidential candidate, characterizing him as a heroic, decorated war veteran. And when her turn came, the Massachusetts senator's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, told the convention crowd her husband "earned his medals the old-fashioned way, by putting his life on the line."
But retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Buzz Patterson has a different perspective to offer on John Kerry's military record. For one thing, he points out that the young Naval officer was only in Vietnam four months before he returned to the U.S. and joined the anti-war movement.
"[John Kerry] came home and immediately started protesting the war while still on active duty in the Navy," Patterson says. "He then went to Paris and met with Communist officials in May of 1970 -- having just gotten out of the Navy a couple of months prior to that -- and did his own personal negotiation for peace, which, of course, is also against the law."
Then there is the issue of the Massachusetts senator's military decorations, which the former attaché also questions. "He was only in Vietnam for four months, and he came home with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts," Patterson says. However, he notes that Kerry put himself in for the Purple Hearts, "without really receiving any kind of war wound or injury -- most of what he received were cuts and scratches -- and then, when he got his third Purple Heart, that allowed him to petition the Navy to come home early."
The retired Air Force pilot says Kerry was the only member of his Navy unit to come home early. By doing so he cut what would have been a year-long tour in Vietnam by eight months. Then, Patterson says, "he immediately started protesting the war while still on active duty in the Navy."
Patterson contends that if an American naval officer did that today, he would be thrown in jail and subjected to a court martial. But in those days, the military expert says, when officers acted as Kerry did, people often just looked the other way.
