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By Thomas Lang
How many ways can the press distort the picture painted by John Kerry’s military service records? Yesterday, we hoped we had nipped this one in the bud with our report on the press’s consistent failure to track down just what the U.S. Navy’s policy was for awarding Purple Hearts and for reassigning troopers in Vietnam who received three Purple Hearts.
Alas, today, the Washington Times‘ fatally-wounded coverage of Kerry’s newly-released service records makes yesterday’s various media bloopers look like journalism at its finest.
In the fourth paragraph of Charles Hurt’s Times report, we get our first hint of who Hurt is going to rely on to build a case that Kerry’s military record is somehow flawed. Hurt quotes one Mel Howell, a retired Navy officer who flew helicopters in Vietnam, but who apparently never served with Kerry, as saying, “Most of us came away with all kinds of scratches like the ones Kerry got but never accepted Purple Hearts for them.”
As Lt. Mike Kafka, a U.S. Navy spokesman, told us yesterday, in line with official U.S. Navy documentation, wounded combatants neither nominate nor award themselves Purple Hearts. The Purple Heart is awarded only after a commander determines that a soldier or sailor has incurred a wound inflicted by the enemy and forwards a recommendation to his superiors.
One paragraph later, Hurt errs more explicitly, writing that it was the award of his third Purple Heart on March 13, 1969, “that let Mr. Kerry request a transfer out of Vietnam and into a desk job eight months before his tour expired.” Again, as we noted yesterday, Navy regulations at the time specified that any trooper wounded three times be reassigned outside of Vietnam (soldiers, including Kerry, did get to request specific new assignments). Such a reassignment could be stopped only by a soldier’s request.
Next, Hurt turns to one Charles Kaufman, who Hurt describes as a retired Air Force captain now living in Germany “whose job once was to submit military award requests” to analyze a discrepancy in Kerry’s war records. (The Personnel Casualty Report (PDF) on Kerry from March 13, 1969 does not correspond in every particular with the injuries described in a Bronze Star citation (PDF) that Kerry was awarded for action that day.) Nowhere does Hurt note that Kaufman served in the Air Force, while Kerry served in the U.S. Navy. Nor did they ever serve together. He does note, however, that Kaufman declares of Kerry’s wounds, “I don’t want to say it’s a lie, but it isn’t true,” and “his Bronze Star medal citation appears to be based on an injury he did not receive.”
According to Lt. Kafka, the U.S. Navy spokesman, the Bronze Star is awarded for bravery, independent of any wounds a soldier may or may not suffer in battle.
Hurt then moves on to veterans who “say [Kerry’s] record is too good to be true.” One veteran, Ray Waller, is identified as “a combat medic in the Marines” who “was responsible for determining whether injuries warranted Purple Hearts.” Waller tells Hurt he doesn’t “remember anybody getting three Purple Hearts and leaving [Vietnam], even within six or eight months” of service. He adds, “if they did, it was very, very rare.”
However, as noted above, Navy medics neither award Purple Hearts nor recommend others for a Purple Heart. Commanders do that based on, as US Navy guidelines put it, confirmation of medical treatment by “the doctor that provides medical care.”
The expansive Waller goes on to tell Hurt that he had “never heard of” a shrapnel injury so minor that it did not require a tetanus shot and time off which had led to a Purple Heart. As Lt. Kafka notes, however, the written “Purple Heart Criteria for the U.S. Navy” does not list either a tetanus shot or time off due to injury as a requirement for receiving a Purple Heart.
Finally — having apparently run out of sources who weren’t there, or were there at a different time, or were in another branch of service — Hurt winds up his piece by launching a trial balloon of speculation attributed to no one at all:
One possible reason why Mr. Kerry racked up so many battle awards in such a short period of time might be the command structure. Because awards are generally recommended by superiors, Mr. Kerry’s bosses would have relied on accounts of the action from Mr. Kerry and his underling crew mates.
And because injuries warranting Purple Hearts are verified by medics — or corpsmen — it would have been a soldier inferior to Mr. Kerry who was in charge of determining the seriousness of his injuries.
Got that? It was up to corpsmen reporting to Kerry to determine if the boss deserved a medal. In a way, that’s true, in that a wounded officer is going to be treated by a medic. But no one thinks that calls into question every Purple Heart ever awarded to such officers.
In short, little in Hurt’s rambling, accusatory article is remotely on the mark, other than his description of the discrepancy between Kerry’s Personnel Casualty Report from March 13, 1969 and the Bronze Star citation issued for Kerry’s actions that day. Even for a reporter in a hurry, it almost takes an extra effort to get this many things wrong— but Hurt seems to have pulled it off.
If Campaign Desk ever gets around to awarding its own commendations, Hurt is a prime candidate for our tinfoil star.
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