An interview with John O'Neill
David Limbaugh:
David Limbaugh:
A lengthy three part interview that is definitely worth the read.David: Before I get into the questions I had prepared, I noticed in your interview with Jim Lehrer that there was almost conclusive evidence that both Kerry’s first and third Purple Hearts were fraudulent. Are you saying, then, that his Second Purple Heart was not fraudulent?
John O’Neill: No, not at all. If we are using our standard of, you know, burden of preponderance of the evidence, the second Purple Heart would fall as fraudulent. It’s just that we couldn’t conclusively prove it was fraudulent, so we took the position that we have no position on the second Purple Heart. But we do have a great deal of evidence that it was fraudulent as well.
...Read it all and check out David's new blog it is excellent.
The third lie is whether or not there was fire. This is the only one as far as I know that the Kerry camp still contends. The Kerry camp claims that when Rassmann was picked up there was still fire. They rely on Kerry and at least one or more of his crew and they rely on Rassmann, the man in the water, and they rely on a citation of Lieutenant Larry Thurlow, which is his Bronze Star citation, which refers to fire. I would like to address first that you need to understand what we rely on. We now have the written statements at the time of the book of five and now ten of the sailors on the water that day. We have the written statements of all four of the officers who survived from that day and of six other sailors -- the only ones that can be located and they are clear that there was no fire beyond the original mine except for the fire put out by the PCFs for about 40 seconds and after that no fire at all and no fire by the time Kerry came back. The second thing we have is the physical evidence that there was no damage or bullet holes in any of the PCFs. The article in the New York Times which refers to three bullet holes in the Thurlow boat is extremely dishonest. It is dishonest because we spoke to the reporter before the article came out. The three bullet holes in the Thurlow boat in the gun top came the day before on March 12th. How do we know that? We know that first because Thurlow and the members of the boat say that. Second, we know it because the gunner sitting in that turret was wounded the day before and there is a casualty report on him. So, we know that those bullet holes occurred on March 12th not on March 13th. With the exception of those three bullet holes, there is not a single bullet hole on any boat and there is not a single person wounded by a bullet. These boats sat there for an hour and a half saving the 3 boat in a creek that was about 75 yards wide. It is just inconceivable there could have been a high volume of firepower and nobody hit.
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John O’Neill: The next one would be the Silver Star, David. With respect to John Kerry’s Silver Star, we accepted the statement of facts contained in the Kranish account. We also accepted the statement of facts contained in the Douglas Brinkley Tour of Duty account. In essence, what occurred is Kerry made an arrangement in advance with a crewman, Medeiros, and others and possibly the other two boats to turn in if they were fired at and simply beach the boats. They were fired at and another boat with Doug Reese and troops aboard turned into a large ambush. Kerry remained out in the river while this occurred. The troops routed a large number of Viet Cong. While Kerry was milling about, a kid, teenager, described sometimes in a loincloth and sometimes in pajamas, stood up and fired a rocket at Kerry’s boat. Kerry turned towards the lone kid. He was shot in the legs with a machinegun by the front gunner. He then tried to escape. Kerry’s boat beached. Kerry and a crewman and possibly followed by troops pursued the kid and shot him in the back. We have taken the position that that was not a war crime, although people have claimed that it was. We have taken that position because there was no indication the kid surrendered. He was actually trying to run away. We have also taken the position that this involves some degree of courage by Kerry. Our problem comes with the Silver Star. Shooting a wounded fleeing foe in the back is not Silver Star material.
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The report going to the superior officers misstated what Kerry actually did. He represented himself to have routed an entire bunker full of Viet Congand it was on this basis that they awarded the Silver Star and reflected it in the citation. For example, the end of the citation says that he faced numerically superior enemy and intense fire and charged into them. One kid standing there in a loincloth is not a numerically superior enemy to a Swift Boat with 50 caliber machine guns, a crew of six and troops on board. So, our position is that he overstated what he did. He, therefore, got an award that he normally would not have been entitled to, although it would be reasonable to give me a lesser award. All normal documentation is missing. Two sworn statements required with every Silver Star are not there. The review process that normally occurs did not occur and Kerry has lived off the Silver Star for the last 35 years. It is not an accomplishment. Shooting a kid in the back is not an accomplishment that should occupy anybody’s life or be their principal achievement.
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John O’Neill: In addition, in his book Tour written for the Democratic primaries, if you study it, we’re all war criminals except him in that book, he even invents, you know, items that never occurred in Vietnam. So the basic position is that he can slander us; he can lie about us, but we have no right to reply and clear our names, and we have no right to examine his record even though he’s made an issue out of it.
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John O’Neill: The thing about this guy is he has a very, very dark view of things, both in Vietnam and after that, he paints stories that are not true and they’re always the same story and the story is Kerry the hero surrounded by any number of villains. Everybody else basically is a villain, his superiors are villains. The country is a villain, and that’s a very sad type of person to elect as president of the United States.
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...Let’s consider his Christmas in Cambodia story. It’s a typical, crazy story that, you know, really is, well, a typical Kerry story. In Christmas in Cambodia, Kerry, beginning in the early 1970s, claimed that he had been ordered into a secret mission into Cambodia on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and he sat in his gunboat pitying himself on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day knowing the country would disavow him. Sometimes he has CIA agents with him on this mission. Sometimes he has his Seals. They’re a variety of different people that were with him on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve in Cambodia, according to his stories, but he’s always there and it’s always Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. He wrote an article about it in 1979 in the Boston Herald. He testified about it on the floor of the United States Senate in 1986 when he said it was seared forever in his memory. He said that the thing that was so unbelievable about it is that he heard Richard Nixon at the time saying that there were no Americans in Cambodia and there he was, knowing he was engaged in illegal activity. The story paints the United States as engaged in a war crime and all of his superiors engaged in a war crime. He described this as the turning point of his entire life. As recently as July 7 on the Hannity and Combs Show, Michael Kranish, his principal biographer, retold the story with no knowledge that it was false and described it as the turning point of Kerry’s life. The story is a total and complete fabrication and I think even Kerry has admitted now that he fabricated the story.
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