Kerry 'Unfit to be Commander-in-Chief,' Say Former Military Colleagues
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
May 03, 2004

(CNSNews.com) - Hundreds of former commanders and military colleagues of presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry are set to declare in a signed letter that he is "unfit to be commander-in-chief." They will do so at a press conference in Washington on Tuesday.

"What is going to happen on Tuesday is an event that is really historical in dimension," John O'Neill, a Vietnam veteran who served in the Navy as a PCF (Patrol Craft Fast) boat commander, told CNSNews.com. The event, which is expected to draw about 25 of the letter-signers, is being organized by a newly formed group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

"We have 19 of 23 officers who served with [Kerry]. We have every commanding officer he ever had in Vietnam. They all signed a letter that says he is unfit to be commander-in-chief," O'Neill said.

O'Neill, currently a Houston, Texas, based attorney, is no stranger to Kerry. O'Neill served in the same naval unit as Kerry and commanded Kerry's swift boat after Kerry returned to the United States. Kerry's command of the PCF boat lasted four months and ended shortly after he received his third Purple Heart. According to naval regulations at the time, any sailor who received three Purple Hearts could request a transfer out of the combat zone.

Kerry and O'Neill engaged in a nationally televised debate in 1971 on The Dick Cavett Show over Kerry's allegations that many Vietnam soldiers had routinely engaged in atrocities such as raping and cutting off ears and heads of Vietnamese soldiers and citizens. Kerry was the then spokesman for the anti-war group Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

"We are going to be presenting a letter that deals with Kerry's unfitness to be commander and chief that has been signed by hundreds of swift boat sailors, including most of those who served with Kerry," O'Neill explained.

"The ranks of the people signing [the letter] range from admiral down to seaman, and they run across the entire spectrum of politics, specialties, and political feelings about the Vietnam War," he added.

Among those scheduled to attend the event at the National Press Club and declare Kerry unfit for the role of commander-in-chief are retired Naval Rear Admiral Roy Hoffman, who was the commander of the Navy Coastal Surveillance Force, which included the swift boats on which Kerry served.

Also scheduled to be present at the event is Kerry's former commanding officer, Lt. Commander Grant Hibbard. Hibbard recently questioned whether Kerry deserved the first of his three Purple Hearts that he received in Vietnam. Hibbard doubted both the severity of the wound and whether it resulted from enemy fire.

"I've had thorns from a rose that were worse" than Kerry's wound for which he received a Purple Heart, Hibbard told the Boston Globe in April.

Organizers are confident that Tuesday's event and the letter with hundreds of signatures will educate people about Kerry.

"It is one of the largest outpourings of concern about him being commander-in-chief that anybody could have in a presidential campaign and it is by the people who know him best," O'Neill said.

'Unfit Commander-in-Chief'

Swift Boat Veterans For Truth maintains that Kerry's fellow Vietnam veterans are almost uniform in their disdain for his military service and anti-war protests.

"Not only a majority of the people who served with him feel that way, but a vast and overwhelming majority," O'Neill said. He added that more than "ninety percent of the people contacted by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth responded to the request to sign their name, with only 12 declining to sign.

"Comrades who actually served with him, almost all of them, are opposed to him, and believe he would be an unfit commander in chief and intend to bring the truth of his actual record to the attention of the American people," O'Neill said.

O'Neill hopes the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth can reveal to the American people what he sees as Kerry's flawed character.

"In the military, loyalty between commanders and the troops serving them is a two-way street. We have here a guy (Kerry) that with all of us in the field [in Vietnam] -- actually fighting the North Vietnamese -- came home and then falsely accused all of us of war crimes at a time when the people in uniform couldn't even respond," O'Neill said.

"And he did that knowing that was a lie," he added.

'Real John Kerry'

B. G. Burkett, author of the book Stolen Valor and a military researcher, believes that Tuesday's event will not be dismissed easily by Kerry's campaign as a "partisan" attack.

"There are probably just as many Democrats amongst sailors who sailed swift boats as there are Republicans. What Kerry fails to realize is this has nothing to do with politics -- this has to with Vietnam Veterans who served, who have a beef with John Kerry's service, both during and after the war," Burkett told CNSNews.com.

"The American people do not know John Kerry and hopefully the swift boat crews and other Vietnam veterans will make sure that the American public knows the real John Kerry," he added.

Jim Loftus of Kerry's press office referred questions about Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's event on Tuesday to spokesman David Wade. Wade did not return CNSNews.com's requests for comment.

Even if Kerry was spawned from the Devil himself he could do a better job then Bush.

there is a small village in Texas missing its idiot

There's still time to find a decent candidate to run against Bush. I have trouble voting for Bush - but there is no-way I'll vote for Kerry. Then again, I may vote for Kerry, ... before I vote against him. LOL.

Bush was arrested for drunk driving. that makes him unfit to be commander in chief..

some may choose to use the defence that it was a long time ago and therefore Bush has changed. well that defence can be used with equal sincerity by Kerry.

Either the past is the past for both candidates or it is rellevant for both parties choose your poison.

besides in America select groups of millitary officials don't select the commander in chief and are in no way qualified more than anyone else to determine capasity for that position.
It is up to the American people any no one else to determine who is fit to be the leader of this nations armed forces.
They have a name for countries where the millitary selects the leader of the country.. Millitary dictatorships.

Like it or not the millitary is not supposed to have any say in the politics of the nation. their job is to defend it regardless of who the commander in chief is and to uphold the constitution PERIOD!

Now i have gread respect and adoration for out vetrens and thoes who sacrifice their time and lives for this great country but other than as voting individual citizens their estimation of who'd be a good commander in chief is no better than anyone elses.

Can you really compare drunk driving with playing a leading role in the biggest anti-american movement we've ever seen? It's one thing to be against the war, but to fabricate and spread the lies of war atrocities and participating in propaganda efforts for our enemy at a time of war is treason.

I would be willing to look beyond Kerry's past mistakes if he would just admit it, but he is insisting he has been a great 'heroic patriot' for our country who is proud of his 'service'. Oh, did you hear, Kerry is a Vietnam War hero? So was Jane Fonda (maybe she can run as vice president??). Just depends on your perspective I guess...

I wouldn't consider protesting against the Vietnam War as anti-American. Quite the opposite, actually. The message was to quit sending Americans to Vietnam to die in an unjust war. Wanting your fellow Americans to come home alive sounds pretty pro-American to me.

Does anyone here, in retrospect, really believe the Vietnam War was the right thing to do?

I'd say the biggest anti-American movement would be the Civil War when the Southern Conservatives wanted to secede from the Union.

By the way, did you hear Bush invaded a country because he feared for his safety? So did Hitler.

Guess it depends on your perspective.

PhishPhreak,

I think you need to pay attention to the news and that your comment is backwards, if anything. For example, when asked on Meet the Press, "Do you have any regrets about how your presidency has gone or would you do anything different, Bush basically said that he couldn't think of anything and that he didn't make any mistakes."

On the same program at a different date when asked about his comments after the Viet Nam War, Kerry said that he has thought a lot about what he said and did after the war and wishes he had said or done things differently.

You might see it differently if one of your close family members had been splattered by a drunk driver. IMO drunk drivers fit right in with wife beaters and child abusers.

That being said, I agree with your observations about Kerry and his seeming inability to admit his past actions and get on with life.

The voting public would get the truth more often if they weren't so apt to let mistakes from 30 years ago rule their votes. You know, I'm sure not one voter has made any of their own mistakes in the last 30 years.

Face it folks, we get Bush and Kerry because that's what we demand.......... & it's what we deserve when only half the eligible people vote.

"Does anyone here, in retrospect, really believe the Vietnam War was the right thing to do?"

With out a doubt it was the right thing to do.

You and others take the war out of context and treat it as though it was a stand alone action. Lets give it a little of that context.

JFK in his intial meetings with Kruschev came across weak and inept to the Soviet ruler( later it was documented that JFk used alot of drugs to fight a bad back and was doped up during the meetings). This gave the Soviets the motivation and will to expand their influence around the globe. If one understands communism and socialism he would know that they only work in an expansionist mode that somewhat masks their economic deficincies. The Vietnam conflict directly grew from this. The Soviets were trying to expand and we were trying to stop them. The cold war dictated that we could only fight to a certain capacity as we tried not to escalte nuclear tension. Yet we had to show the Soviets that we would not stand by and allow their expansion. We had to put pressure on them at every front they tried to expand. It would force them to over extend themselves economically and they did not have the economic infrastructre to last for very long. Had we not put this pressure on them and allowed them to expand at some point we would have faced direct conflict with them and lost millions of lives. So like all wars a few sacrificed for the many. Contrary to liberal politicians and American socilists of today we did not lose the Vietnam war. We never lost more than a minor battle in the conflict. The war was never about taking ground it was about stopping the soviet expansion. This ultimately happened during Reagans admin. but Vietnam played a bigger role in taking down the wall. The Soviets went Banko because of it and other smaller actions. The collapse of their economy and the will of the people at the same time ended their system.

There are 100 or so books on this topic I encourge reading them to understand the truth of the war.

King,

You and I must have read different historical accounts of the prelude to the Vietnam war.

Here's a brief overview that mentions nothing of the Soviet Union's direct involvement. (though they were to a modest extent) Communist China was North Vietnam's most visible ally. (and a sworn enemy of the U.S.S.R.)

Kruschev's supposed opinion of JFK was at most a tiny footnote in the story of the REAL reason the war escalated to what it did.


The Vietnam War was the longest and most unpopular war in which Americans ever fought. And there is no reckoning the cost. The toll in suffering, sorrow, in rancorous national turmoil can never be tabulated. No one wants ever to see America so divided again. And for many of the more than two million American veterans of the war, the wounds of Vietnam will never heal.

Fifty-eight thousand Americans lost their lives.

The losses to the Vietnamese people were appalling.

The financial cost to the United States comes to something over $150 billion dollars.

Direct American involvement began in 1955 with the arrival of the first advisors. The first combat troops arrived in 1965 and we fought the war until the cease-fire of January 1973. To a whole new generation of young Americans today, it seems a story from the olden times.


The end of World War II opened the way for the return of French rule to Indochina. Despite the ties he had forged within the American Intelligence community, and his professed respect for democratic ideals, Ho Chi Minh was unable to convince Washington to recognize the legitimacy of his independence movement against the French. French generals and their American advisors expected Ho's rag-tag Vietminh guerrillas to be defeated easily. But after eight years of fighting and $2.5 billion in U.S. aid, the French lost a crucial battle at Dienbienphu - and with it, their Asian empire.

With a goal of stopping the spread of communism in Southeast Asia, America replaced France in South Vietnam - supporting autocratic President Ngo Dinh Diem until his own generals turned against him in a coup that brought political chaos to Saigon.

With Ho Chi Minh determined to reunite Vietnam, Lyndon Baines Johnson determined to prevent it, and South Vietnam on the verge of collapse, the stage was set for massive escalation of the undeclared Vietnam War.

In two years, the Johnson Administration's troop build-up dispatched 1.5 million Americans to Vietnam to fight a war they found baffling, tedious, exciting, deadly and unforgettable.

The Vietnam War as seen from different perspectives by Vietcong guerrillas and sympathizers, by North Vietnamese leaders and rank and file, and by Americans held prisoner in Hanoi.

Tet, 1968
The massive enemy offensive at the lunar new year decimated the Vietcong and failed to topple the Saigon government but led to the beginning of America's military withdrawal from Vietnam.

Vietnamizing the War
Richard Nixon's program of troop pull-outs, stepped-up bombing and huge arms shipments to Saigon changed the war and left GIs wondering which of them would be the last to die in Vietnam.

Cambodia and Laos
Despite technical neutrality, both of Vietnam's smaller neighbors were drawn into the war, suffered massive bombings, and, in the case of Cambodia, endured a post-war holocaust of nightmarish proportions.


Peace Is at Hand
While American and Vietnamese soldiers continued to clash in battle, diplomats in Paris argued about making peace. After more than four years, they reached an accord that proved to be a preface to further bloodshed.

Homefront USA.
Through troubled years of controversy and violence, US casualties mounted, victory remained elusive, and American opinion moved from general approval to general dissatisfaction with the Vietnam War.

The End of the Tunnel
South Vietnamese leaders believed that America would never let them go down to defeat - a belief that died as North Vietnamese tanks smashed into Saigon on April 30, 1975, and the long war ended with South Vietnam's surrender.

Wow - are you being serious with the 'hitler' comparison? The credibilty index drops drastically if you really think there is a comparison between Bush\USA and Hitler's Nazi Germany.

Related to that, do you think the US should have stayed out of the war with Germany?

War is always ugly and losing lives of your family, friends, and countrymen\women is never a good thing. But there are times it is a nessecity of life. I can appreciate that many many people don't like the war in Iraq, just as many many didn't like the Veitnam war. Being against the war is not the same as being 'anti-american'. Kerry, Fonda, and the like crossed a serious line of being against a war they did not believe in to taking a stand FOR our enemy during a time of war. Just like the socialist lesbian group that posted "Victory to the Iraqi Resistance" on their highly visible window in Seattle - there is a line that was crossed...

" Kerry said that he has thought a lot about what he said and did after the war and wishes he had said or done things differently."

I did hear that and was amazed at poor attempt to 'appologize'. What exactly did he wish he did differently? Was protesting the war wrong? Throwing away his medals? Lieing about the american service men still dying in combat? Or perhaps he wishes he would have been a more effective war protestor and could have found more ways to damage and politicize the war effort? Maybe he wishes he could have actually slept with Jane Fonda when he had the chance? I just can tell what it is he feels bad about....
But what gets me is that he supposedly feels 'bad' about what he did, but at the same time he is 'proud' of his service to this country and keeps pushing that down our throats. Which is it? Proud of his 4 month tour, but feeling 'bad' about his years of anti-american activism?

Of course not. I was trying to make the point that my comparison to Bush and Hitler is about as relevant as Kerry and Fonda.

Fonda definately crossed the line - even worse than McDermott. But Kerry's protest was of a different sort. He was advocating ending the war to bring his fellow soldiers home alive; Fonda's point of view was truly aiding and abetting the enemy.

Fair enough FF, but I find it hard to believe Mr. Bush has no regrets or doesn't see any opportunities to improve. That tells me a lot about his expectations for himself!

If you are referring to the grilling GW got recently where every reporter was asking a loaded question and he snubbed them and didn't give them the sound-byte they were looking for, then I would have a hard time drawing conclusions as to how self critical the man is.


If it was you in his shoes (I know, you wouldn't be there to begin with, but play along) - what would you have said. Keep in mind that you currenlty have troops on the ground and under fire in Iraq and a group of people looking for sound bites they can spin and use against him (the Dem campaigners have to be steaming still about the "I voted for the 87billion BEFORE I voted against it!").

"I was trying to make the point that my comparison to Bush and Hitler is about as relevant as Kerry and Fonda. "

Are you saying the 2 did not organize and lead rallies\protests together? Fonda definately went farther down the road to 'treason', but they were fighting for the same cause and particpating (and leading) in the same events.

I don't think GW ever met Hitler. And I know that rather than join Hitler in a Nazi war rally - GW would have skipped the event, but sent in a few lazer sighted missles to let him know how he really felt...

My comment above was in reference to a "Meet the Press" dialogue that Tim Russert had with Bush in which he asked the question 3 different way, Mr Presient, if you could do something differently or change something, what would it be?" Bush had no answer. If it were just that program or the press conference that you were referring to or some other oppotunity where he provided some thoughtful commentary, either self reflective or something that inspires people, I would withdraw my comment. But the fact is that he is not the most thoughtful president that we have had and leads me to the conclusion that his decisions are made by others in his cabinet or by him in haste with the proper due dillegence.

I know there is a photo showing they both attended the same anti-war rally. But I haven't seen any documentation that they collaborated on anti-war events. They may have given speeches at the same rallys, but that doesn't mean they were in league with one another.

Matter of fact, I believe that photo was taken a couple of years before Fonda made that ill-conceived journey to Vietnam.

Just doing a quck google search and found this clip among many similar:

"The Massachusetts Democrat's speech also cemented his alliance with Fonda, and the two traveled to Detroit to organize a January 1971 event they called the "Winter Soldier Investigation."

At a Detroit motel, Kerry and Fonda assembled a myriad of disgruntled witnesses claiming to be Vietnam vets, each with his own story of American atrocities.

According to Jug Burkett, whose landmark Vietnam war history "Stolen Valor" chronicles some of Kerry's anti-war misadventures, Fonda played a key role at the Detroit event.

"There's no doubt that Jane Fonda financed the Winter Soldier hearings," Burkett told NewsMax on Monday.

He said that several of the witnesses who testified at the protest's "hearings" later turned out to be complete impostors.

The event prompted "Hanoi Jane" to "adopt" Kerry's group "as her leading cause," writes Brinkley. It was at Kerry's Winter Soldier protest that the anti-American actress met her future husband, Students for a Democratic Society radical Tom Hayden.

The next year Fonda was off to Hanoi, where she mounted an anti-aircraft battery and pretended to shoot down American pilots. "