Swift Boat Liars or Vietnamese Witnesses?

[Jimbo]

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Nightline/...=166434&page=1

ABC's Nightline reports - you decide.
In the controversy over Sen. John Kerry's service in Vietnam, Americans have heard from Kerry, from the crew of the Navy Swift boats he commanded, and from other Swift boat veterans who question the official account of a 1969 incident for which Kerry was awarded a Silver Star. But there is one group they have not heard from: the Vietnamese who were there that day.

(snip)

According to the citation for Kerry's Silver Star, when the boats approached the hamlet, "a B-40 rocket exploded close aboard PCF 94" — Kerry's boat. He "personally led a landing party ashore in pursuit of the enemy," the citation says, before commending Kerry's "extraordinary daring and personal courage" for "attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire."

That account is disputed by Swift boat veteran John O'Neill, author of "Unfit for Command," who maintains in his book that the statement "is simply false. There was little or no fire."

(snip)

Villagers say this is what they saw:

"Firing from over here. Firing from over there. Firing from the boat," Vo Thi Vi told Nightline.

She was only a couple hundred yards away when a Swift boat turned and approached the shore, she said, adding that the boat was unleashing a barrage of gunfire as it approached.

"I ran," she recalled, "Running fast. … And the Americans came from down there, yelling 'Attack, Attack!' And we ran."

Her husband Tam said the man who fired the B-40 rocket was hit in this barrage of gunfire. Then, he said, "he ran about 18 meters before he died, falling dead."

Was the man killed by Kerry or by fire from the Swift boat? It was the heat of battle, Tam said, and he doesn't know exactly how the man with the rocket launcher died. But he knows the man's name — Ba Thang. He was one of the 12 reinforcements sent to the village by provincial headquarters, and after he died, the firefight continued, according to Tam.

"When the firing started, Ba Thanh was killed," Tam said. "And I led Ba Thanh's comrades, the whole unit, to fight back. And we ran around the back and fought the Americans from behind. We worked with the city soldiers to fire on the American boats."

(snip)

None of the villagers seems to be able to say for a fact that they saw an American chase the man who fired the B-40 into the woods and shoot him. Nobody seems to remember that. But they have no problem remembering Ba Thang, the man who has been dismissed by Kerry's detractors as "a lone, wounded, fleeing, young Vietcong in a loincloth." (The description comes from "Unfit for Command," by Swift boat veteran John O'Neill.)

"No, this is not correct," Nguyen Thi Tuoi, 77, told ABC News. "He wore a black pajama. He was strong. He was big and strong. He was about 26 or 27."


Side note - I watched the broadcast of this segment; at the end, Ted Koppel attempted to interview John O'Neill about the findings.

He seemed to be saying "why go all the way to Vietnam to interview a bunch of ignorant peasants when you can just read my book and get the 'truth'"?

Everything the Vietnamese witnesses said confirmed Kerry's citation and after-action report. And made O'Neill and his Swift Boat Liars look like fools.

[DJ Cubano]

Originally Posted by Jimbo

Everything the Vietnamese witnesses said confirmed Kerry's citation and after-action report. And made O'Neill and his Swift Boat Liars look like fools.

good!

[Adam D]

Yeah, don't ask those fucking gooks what happened to them when the white gods decended on their land and started killing them.