- One member of the [Swift Boat Veterans for Truth] recalled how each of them had been issued a 90-pound sea bag, and Kerry sacrificed 10 pounds of socks and clean underwear to pack a typewriter. At the end of a long day of patrols, Kerry would sit hunched over his typewriter plugging away at who-knows-what, the fellow said, so secretive it seemed subversive. They never understood this aloof figure, and the day that he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—April 22, 1971—is as powerful a date to these veterans as the Kennedy assassination. They can tell you exactly where they were when they heard Kerry say he had witnessed war crimes sanctioned by commanders in Vietnam.
The fact that Kerry attributed the breakdown in military discipline to the policymakers in Washington is lost on these men, who take Kerry’s words personally. This is not about Kerry’s performance in Vietnam; it’s what he said when he came home. Kerry has never made extravagant claims about his heroism in Vietnam. He never said his wounds were serious, and he never said he didn’t want to get out of Vietnam. After three wounds, under military rules, he was entitled to ship out, which he did after a combat tour of four months and 12 days. Nothing these so-called Veterans for Truth have come up with contradicts what Kerry has said, but that’s not the point.
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