OK, glad you started commenting on this.

But what's a blackshoe? A bit of naval slang of which we were not previously aware?

Black Shoe, Brown Shoe, no Shoe. I'd serve with this man anytime.

The opposition labels him a 'flip-floper' I prefer to see him as a man who changes his direction as the situations demands rather than adhere to a ridgid 'plan of attack'. The book was written a a guide, not the be all, end all.

A blackshoe is surface navy.
A brownshoe is naval aviation.

In enlisted parlance, it would be snipe versus airdale respectively.

In my Navy career, I worked with pilots who I would have flown into combat with no hesitation and pilots I wouldn't trust to drive a bus, much less an F-14. The navy required a "C" average in college to qualify for aviation. Apparently the Texas Air National Guard had lower standards back in the 70s.

You wrote "a Navy Fitrep is written by the officers CO, none of the "rater/indorser" silliness".
Answer: In fact, Navy CO's never write fitreps for anyone, officer or enlisted. The fitreps are invariably "written" by the service member and then "endorsed" by the rater, senior rater and finally by the CO. Crimeneez, why expect anything different when the hierarchy of the Navy is even more feudal than this current Administration. However, there is also no denying, Kerry's service record glows in comparison to our current CINC, all grade inflation aside. Finally, today as well as during Kerry's active duty days, ranking against peers is as much a measure of good ol' boy networking as the flowery prose that infects all fitreps (fitness reports).

You wrote "a Navy Fitrep is written by the officers CO, none of the "rater/indorser" silliness".
Answer: In fact, Navy CO's never write fitreps for anyone, officer or enlisted. The fitreps are invariably "written" by the service member and then "endorsed" by the rater, senior rater and finally by the CO. Crimeneez, why expect anything different when the hierarchy of the Navy is even more feudal than this current Administration. However, there is also no denying, Kerry's service record glows in comparison to our current CINC, all grade inflation aside. Finally, today as well as during Kerry's active duty days, ranking against peers is as much a measure of good ol' boy networking as the flowery prose that infects all fitreps (fitness reports).

Snipe?

When I was in the USMC in the early 60's a "snipe" was an engine room sailor on board a ship.

"Airdale" was used for both Marine air and Naval air of which there was a closer marriage than between marine grunts and surface navy.

I did over 120 days at sea during my 4 years, more than many sailors did.

In the Army, the rater was the service member's imjediate commander, and the indorser was the commander of the rater.

Things may have changed now that we have established the New World Order in the Pentagram. It seems the NWO mentality is especially flourishing in the Army.

Maybe the rater now is the unit Evangelical chaplain, and the indorser Pat Robertson.

Sorta like being a tincan sailor really makes one a blackshoe!

Greetings from the Goat Locker! You're still a shipmate, and I believe that you would have been a good officer to have served under... Like your style Lt.

As someone who has written plenty of fitreps and enlisted evals, only the poorest of COs would allow any eval/fitrep "written by the service member" go forward without working it over him/herself. It is that CO's professional DUTY to write an articulate, accurate, and complete fitrep. And merely forwarding what has already been "written by the service member" would do more harm to that service member's record than any good - unless, of course, that service member deserved it. Don't buy into the line that Kerry wrote those reports himself and some foolish CO just forwarded them blindly.

Snipe? Well maybe. Okay supported by this site:
Navy Slang.com

But in the late seventies surface sailors were known as "squids". (Which interestingly enough is not referenced in the above site.) Whereas ballistic submariners were known as "boomers". There was a generic term for submariners but I am not coming up with it right now. But 'airedale' is right.

As for 'brownshoe' 'blackshoe' my dad was on flying duty for a while in his early career and he loved his leather flight jacket (my oldest brother still has it) and his brown shoes, the return to the surface fleet was kind of a blow.

The 'generic' submariner term is 'Bubblehead'. The SSBNs themselves were the 'Boomers' not the crews.

By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff | April 23, 2004
Michael Kranish can be reached by e-mail at kranish@globe.com

WASHINGTON -- Vietnam combat records posted on John F. Kerry's campaign website for the month of January 1969 as evidence of his service aboard swift boat No. 94 describe action that occurred before Kerry was skipper of that craft, according to the officer who said he commanded the boat at the time....

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2004/04/23/discrepancies_noted_in_kerrys_record/

If you would like to find out a lot more about how Vietnam veterans were unfairly demonized by mischaracterizations and outright fabrications of "atrocities" that never happened, visit http://www.wintersoldier.com and spend some time reading. Check out the various links.

I personally don't care whether John Kerry puffed his fitreps or borrowed someone else's adventures to post on his website; I do care that he and the "Vietnam Veterans Against the War" slandered thousands of honorable sailors, soldiers, marines, and airmen while many were still on the battlefield and others were being held in Communist POW dungeons. Benedict Arnold was also a wounded, decorated veteran before he turned coat and gave aid and comfort to the enemy.

So, were those just paperwork mistakes?

Read all the way to the end and you get:

Kerry's commanding officer, George Elliott, said in a telephone interview that he vividly recalls Peck's injury and hospitalization and Kerry's replacement of Peck. "I think somebody made a mistake who doesn't know" the timing of Kerry's service, Elliott said. Kerry was skipper of boat No. 44 in December and January before taking over command of the 94, he said.

As for the winter soldier project, we recall reading somewhere else that the organizers asked for documentation and service records, recalling previous efforts in that area where people had gotten burned.

All the debunkings say, mainly, is that many of these veterans refused to work with the military and didn't trust them (Vietnam veterans not trusting the government ... well! imagine that!)

No, atrocities against the enemy was certainly not overt U.S policy. But the Army's own investigation into Tiger Force, the story that won the Toledo Blade its Pulitzer, found at least a few war crimes it could substantiate and a dozen more possible ones. No one was ever prosecuted because not enough soldiers in the unit were willing to talk.

The honor and valor of the many men and women who served and suffered in Vietnam is not diminished by the admission that there were a few more war crimes than we want to admit, but rather by pretending none of it ever happened.

SW, Link to Elloitts comments?

Whether a clerical mistake or an overt attempt to claim credit for actions properly attributable to another, the Kerry folks should post the records accurately.

From my own personal experience in Vietnam, I saw a much different situation from the one John Kerry and the VVAW described. Many of us spent our free time helping the "God Squad" (our Base Chaplains) work with local and foreign missionaries. My undergraduate degree is in physics, and we shared our expertise and taught skills to adults and children alike. We often worked with orphans and tried to share some semblance of family with them, being "Big Brothers" or substitute dads and telling them about our families waiting for us back home. We often entertained them with music and by reading stories to them. We even provided housing, food, clothing, and school money out of our own pockets for as many of the children as we could, and one boy even lived right in our hooch while he attended school downtown. We called him "Joey". Ordinary airmen, marines, sailors, and soldiers, not "monsters created to kill wantonly" as the "Vietnam Veterans Against the War" tried to label us, were the driving force behind that effort.

Many of the locals with whom we worked thanked us for our "sacrifice" and for spending time with them that we could have spent relaxing. We were humbled to be allowed to be able to minister to them, and it was great therapy for us as well as them. The thought of mistreating them in any way never crossed our minds. If anything, it buttressed our resolve to protect them and free them from the oppression of the Communists. Where were the correspondents to record this aspect of the history? The most common observation or concern we shared with each other was "those could be our own kids, and these could be our own towns someday". Our maids would even warn us not to go out on nights when rocket attacks were planned for our base. Some days they would simply leave early and tell us we ought to stay inside that night. They knew because some of their family members had been impressed into the forces launching the attacks with the demand either to launch mortars and rockets, or the Communists would kill their family members. Why didn't the historians report on that? One of my favorite missionaries, his wife, and his four year old son were the only survivors of a mission group slaughtered in Laos by the Pathet Lao. Why didn't historians and news correspondents report the atrocities committed by the Communists?

Although a few rare incidents are documented, and they were quickly dealt with, I never witnessed a single atrocity committed by an American, but I saw the results of the atrocities committed by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge and the Pathet Lao. War hero Navy Lt. John F. Kerry had already returned to the safety and security of the USA to perjure himself before the U.S. Senate and slander us by the time I was flying missions over Cambodia. It sickened us to watch Communist gunners zero in on the huge Red Crosses painted on the Theater in downtown Phnom Penh, Cambodia, that was used as a hospital and orphanage. We felt helpless watching as they would let the supply convoys come within sight of the city and then sink them and blow them away as added sadistic torture to the starving and wounded expecting relief. I didn't have to see any movies about "The Killing Fields", I saw them firsthand from the air. Maybe Lt. Kerry left too soon to learn the truth about atrocities. Instead of speeding past and leveling innocent villages as he claimed he did, maybe he would have better served his country and the people of Southeast Asia by providing escort for these convoys.

With respect to the Winter Soldier "investigations", you might want to revisit the www.wintersoldier.com site and read some more. You might also pick up a copy of "Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History" by B.G. Burkett and "America in Vietnam" by Guenter Lewy.

Here are a few facts to consider:

o In his April 1971 speech to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, John Kerry claimed that war crimes committed by the American military against Vietnamese civilians were "not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis..." War crimes in Vietnam were actually quite rare.

o Kerry claimed that war crimes were being committed "with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." In fact, military personnel were warned that "if you disobey the rules of engagement, you can be tried and punished." War crimes were never a matter of policy, and were prosecuted when discovered.

o Kerry charged that the war in Vietnam was a racist war, that "blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties." Research published in B.G. Burkett's book "Stolen Valor" and other sources shows that casualty rates for black and white soldiers during Vietnam closely matched the proportion of America's overall population represented by each race.

o Kerry claimed that Vietnam was "ravaged equally by American bombs and search-and-destroy missions as well as by Viet Cong terrorism..." Later in his remarks, Kerry responded to a question about what might happen to the South Vietnamese after our withdrawal with "So what I am saying is that yes, there will be some recrimination but far, far less than the 200,000 a year who are murdered by the United States of America..." Yet according to historian Guenter Lewy in "America in Vietnam," "...the number of civilians killed deliberately by the VC is appallingly high. No counterpart to this death toll caused by communist terror tactics exists on the allied side."

o Asked for a recommendation about possible courses of action for Congress to pursue, Kerry stated that he had talked with representatives from Hanoi and from the PRG (Viet Cong) at the Paris peace talks, and mentioned his support for "Madam Binh's points." Madam Win Thi Binh was at that time the Foreign Minister for the PRG. These meetings took place in the spring of 1970, before Kerry ever joined the VVAW.

o Kerry was a leader, fund-raiser, and spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), an organization that staged mock mass murders of civilians to dramatize American atrocities, and handed out flyers that read "if you had been Vietnamese" American infantrymen might have "burned your house" or "raped your wife and daughter" and "American soldiers do these things every day to the Vietnamese simply because they are 'Gooks.'"

o Kerry used "testimony" from the VVAW's "Winter Soldier Investigation" as the basis for his war crimes charges, although none of the witnesses there were willing to sign depositions affirming their claims even thought they were assured in writing of imunity from prosecution. Later investigators were unable to confirm any of the reported atrocities, and in fact discovered that a number of the witnesses had never been in Vietnam, had never been in combat, or were imposters who had assumed the identity of real veterans.

o The deception extended to the VVAW leadership. Executive secretary Al Hubbard claimed to have been an Air Force captain wounded piloting a transport over Da Nang in 1966. Hubbard was actually a staff sergeant who was never assigned to Vietnam.

o The Winter Soldier Investigation was financed by pro-Hanoi radicals such as Jane Fonda and Mark Lane, who hoped to undermine American support for the war by framing American soldiers as mass murderers. At the same time, the North Vietnamese military was torturing American prisoners of war to make them confess to identical crimes. At least one former POW has stated that Kerry's testimony was used by North Vietnam to demoralize American prisoners during interrogations.

o John Kerry has denied any association with Jane Fonda, but he attended the 1970 VVAW leadership meeting that chose Fonda and Executive Secretary Al Hubbard to do a national speaking tour to raise money for the VVAW and launch new chapters. Fonda was also the primary source of funds for the Winter Soldier Investigation, where Kerry was a moderator. In fact, Fonda had been a key supporter of the VVAW as early as 1969, when she did a fund-raising tour for AWOL GI's, the VVAW and the Black Panther Party.

o The VVAW signed the People's Peace Treaty during Kerry's tenure -- the VVAW even sent a delegation to Hanoi. The document was a laundry list of North Vietnamese bargaining points, including the key concession that the United States must agree to withdraw all troops before any negotiations could take place for the return of American prisoners.

o The VVAW was at the heart of the propaganda effort that so effectively smeared American servicemen in Vietnam as murderous, drug-addled psychotics that returning veterans were cursed and spat upon in the streets. In fact, as shown in B.G. Burkett's book "Stolen Valor," Vietnam veterans are more psychologically stable and successful than their civilian counterparts.

o The VVAW was a radical and potentially violent organization that formally considered assassinating prominent supporters of the war. As reported in the New York Sun by Thomas Lipscomb, during a November 1971 meeting in Kansas City the VVAW leadership and chapter coordinators voted down a plan to murder several U.S. Senators, including John Tower, John Stennis, and Strom Thurmond. Two VVAW members who were present, Randy Barnes and Terry Du-Bose, place John Kerry at that meeting, as do the meeting minutes and FBI records. Kerry claims to have resigned from the VVAW at the meeting or shortly thereafter, but there is no evidence that he ever informed authorities about the conspiracy. Kerry continued to publicly represent the VVAW until at least April of 1972. Scott Camil, the individual who proposed the assassination plot and who was later arrested and tried for plotting to use violence to disrupt the 1972 Republican Convention, was recently hired by the Florida Kerry presidential campaign.

And Camil was fired just recently when this all surfaced. You owe us that, Mr. Freeper-Googler-blogroacher.

Jo, the Elliott graf we cited is at the end of the Globe story this guy links to.

We would just respond by referring Freeper here to Phillip Caputo’s A Rumor of War, one of the best first-person Vietnam accounts we know, which turns on his court-martialing and eventual acquittal for an atrocity he ordered, and recounts plenty of instances of suspected VC prisoners “shot while attempting to escape” (he never saw this happen personally, to be sure, but gives you the impression that his whole unit knew this was simply the official story). He also recalls seeing an Australian officer hold up a chain of ears one night.

Mark Baker’s ‘Nam, an excellent series of oral histories, has more than a few instances where soldiers recount this sort of thing (usually in circumstances where there was a great deal of emotional provocation, to be sure). The most chilling is a nurse talking about how she was frequently shown pictures of atrocities by soldiers recovering in her ward.

Now, we're aware that J.G. Burkett scoffs at many of these things in his book. And Stolen Valor is not without merit in that there are a hell of a lot of people going around exaggerating what they did in Vietnam and sometimes getting somewhere they shouldn't be through it.

But it has an agenda, which sometimes leads Burkett into factually questionable terrritory. Go to the Amazon page for the book and sift through all the reviews. You'll find voluminous praise, yes, but also a great deal of nitpicking which Burkett has never bothered to address in subsequent editions.

It seems that your time in Vietnam was not in the field all that much, from what you post. We don't doubt your recollections and salute what you did to win hearts and minds ... around you, it seems to have worked.

But outside the REMF ranks there are different stories, not all so good.

We sent many good men to Vietnam. A lot of them did great things. Some of them did horrible things. To cling to a belief that every one of them was a saintly hero is as obscene and unfair as painting each and every one of them as some drug-crazed baby-killer. We send men to war and they act like ... men. No better, no worse than most other armies (there are, after all, plenty of stories of little kindnesses extended to the local populations by occupying German troops. Does that make their cause just?)

The truest atrocity was that all these men and women and all the virtues they took with them were sent over in the service of a war that we know now LBJ realized was unwinnable long before war protests heated up, yet kept pouring bodies by the thousands into because he didn't want Republicans saying "Who lost Vietnam?" As Cal Thomas, hardly a bleeding-heart liberal, admitted in a column we don't have the time to Google for, opponents of the Vietnam War were, for the most part, deeply patriotic individuals whom we all owe a debt of gratitude to today.

Very good points, but really, there is no need for insults, and I apologize for my "Democrat Kool Aid drinker" crack -- it was only meant to be humorous. What's a "Freeper-Googler-blogroacher"? I'm a physicist, an MBA, and a licensed Airline Pilot. There is certainly room for a difference of opinion, and if someone chooses to let hate for George Bush be the driving force in his life, fine with me. I'm not concerned with George Bush -- he didn't slander Vietnam vets and help destroy support for a war that we were winning when I came home in 1973. The reports our squadron gathered on specific units, troop strength, and location in early 1972 showed the Viet Cong had been virtually destroyed as a fighting force, and the North was about to collapse. According to General Giap, they held out because of the successes being won -- not on the battlefield -- but in America due to the efforts of the anti-war movement, led by John Kerry. He specifically named Kerry and the VVAW as helping them turn the war around from defeat to victory. Kerry, not Bush, accepted medals for what he told the Senate were atrocities he had committed himself -- that seems pretty hypocritical. Kerry, not Bush, threw someone else's medals back only to now display them proudly in his Senate office and trumpet his service every time he gives a speech -- did you know John Kerry served in Vietnam? FLASH -- In an interview published Friday in the LOS ANGELES TIMES, Democratic Presidential hopeful John Kerry claimed he "never ever implied" that he threw his own medals during a Hill protest in 1971 to appear as an antiwar hero. But a new shock video shows John Kerry -- in his own voice -- saying he did! ABC's GOOD MORNING AMERICA is set to rock the political world Monday morning with an airing of Kerry's specific 1971 boast. The video was made by a local news station in 1971. What was that someone said about "a man of honor and ...", oops, looks like that post got deleted. But I digress.

Sorry, I missed the news stories about Camil being fired -- good riddance. It showed pretty poor judgment to hire him in the first place. I'll call my sister in Florida and have her send me the newspaper with the report -- or you might save us some time and post the link. Last story I saw on it was an interview with him a couple of weeks ago in a Florida paper telling about all the duties he is assuming with the campaign. You don't suppose he had anything to do with that ad calling for putting Rumsfeld up against a wall and pulling the trigger.... Naw.

Like so many other "experts" and "confessors", Caputo cites atrocities he never actually witnessed. Why was he acquitted if he admitted he ordered his men to commit war crimes? Not only does Mr. Burkett "scoff" at Baker's stories, he debunks them, as does Mr. Lewy. The only documented account of "cutting off ears" was two soldiers who cut off the ears of a dead VC on a dare from a CBS cameraman who even gave them the knife and then filmed it. The soldiers were reprimanded. Nothing happened to the cameraman. Millions of honorable American servicemen were slandered by that outrageous setup, and the story has grown over the years. There is a difference between exagerating your "war stories" down at the VFW hall and participating in a fraud before the world -- as in the Winter Soldier "investigations" in Detroit and the rest of the faked "traveling show" put on by John Kerry and the "VVAW" that included false testimony before the United States Senate. Like the lies told to the U.S. Senate by John Kerry and the VVAW, none of the accounts in Baker's book were sworn testimony -- just anecdotes -- not very credible and certainly not a scientific study. Turns out the nurse you mention was lying, if that's the same one who recently died claiming she had been exposed to "Agent Orange". She was nowhere near any areas where Agent Orange was used, either. For anyone interested, read this article -- "The Myth of Agent Orange and Clinical Neuropsychology" -- http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/staticpages/index.php?page=20040322202417459

or just contact

C. Alan Hopewell, Ph.D., M. S. Psy.Pharm, ABPP
Diplomate, American Board of Professional Psychology
American Board of Clinical Neuropsychology
Master's Degree in Clinical Psychopharmacology

My roommate in college was a C-123 "Ranch Hander" with nearly 200 missions. He is as healthy as I am today. The spray equipment was calibrated to spray the equivalent of 0.009 oz of liquid per square foot on the jungle canopy, the equivalent of 9/1000 of a whiskey glass. This, added with the fact that studies showed that 70% of the herbicide never made it past the upper canopy, that dioxin degrades within 72 hours, and that troops would not operate in sprayed areas for at least 4-6 weeks after spraying meant that no one would ever SEE the stuff or "be drenched in it" unless one were doing the spraying. You probably got more exposure ridding your yard of weeds this year.

As for my time "in the field", does sleeping in villages with the locals count? How about working with LRRP units and forward observers to gain a better understanding of their missions so our squadron could provide better and more specific intel? I flew over all of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and that included Special Forces camps and other outposts. Does it really matter? I'm not the topic, John Kerry is.

I grant that the vast majority of those who served in Vietnam acted honorably and only a handful did not. My concern is that John Kerry used a technicality known to very few, left his own command early while they were still fighting the enemy and while his comrades were still being held in Communist POW camps, joined with the VVAW and the rest of the anti-war movement, and lied about us, trying to convince the American people that the majority of soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen were committing "atrocities" as "normal operatons" and under orders from the government. That destroyed the support for a war we could have and should have won. Even after we left, it took the Communists quite a while to defeat a totally unsupported South Vietnam.

LBJ and Vietnam only proved you can't trust a liberal Democrat to wage war properly. John Kerry proved you can't trust a liberal Democrat to stay the course. Cal Thomas is also wrong. Liars, posers, deserters, cowards, Communist sympathizers, and Communists who infiltrated and took over the VVAW by 1971 led the charge against the war, and sadly, the media carried their water until the majority of honest Americans were convinced. Tell a lie long enough, and it is believed. We don't owe them a debt of gratitude, we owe them our eternal disgust. Ask those who still think the majority of Americans in Vietnam were "baby killers". Ask the 3 million Cambodians murdered and the millions of Vietnamese who have suffered for the past 30 years. You might want to take a trip back and see the wonderful world Jane Fonda, John Kerry, and the VVAW left them in.

In contrast, I have a memorial site honoring Vietnam vets. You're always welcome to visit it. The poem is actually how I spent my year in Southeast Asia. Yes, our son was only two weeks old, and our daughter was three years old when I left to start my year. The ending is my tribute to eight of my comrades who were shot down over Laos. Three were confirmed dead, but the other five were listed as MIA until John Kerry chaired the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA affairs and simply "wrote them off".

http://www.opaobie.com/promisekept.html

DaNanger: did I accidentally delete your post here in comments? If so I apologize, I thought that you had double-posted above, and removed one. I read them both, and they looked the same. Was there a point you made in the second that I missed?

If I was wrong, please accept my apologies. And welcome to the community...you're about the best-spoken r we have had here in ages, even if we don't agree (hey, would life be fun if we were all clones?) No. But that would give Tom Delay heartburn and that would be big fun.

Jo,

Thanks for checking, and no, the error was mine ("old timer's disease"). I accidently double clicked on the "post" button, and the same post uploaded twice. Thanks for deleting the second one, which was identical to the first.

Also, I realized after posting this evening that at least one of my comments referred to a post in another thread (the one where you had mentioned you had computer problems). I'm new at this, and probably will get the hang of it at some point, but I don't have the time to be as active as I have been this weekend. I posted in two different topics, and lost track of that fact when I commented above and thought at least some of what I was commenting on from another poster had been deleted. I checked the other topic, and it is still there.

I enjoy spirited debate, you and the others engaged in conversation here seem to be fine folks, and I have enjoyed the exchange. It brings back both good and bad memories, but that's as life should be.

Just as an aside, I probably vote more Republican than Democrat these days because I don't like the direction the leadership of the Party has taken it, but my son's appointment to the Air Force Academy was made by our then friend and Democrat Congressman, and during the time my son was in High School, he would always ask my son to play taps at the VFW cemetary on Veterans Day.

I found a reference to Scott Camil leaving the Florida Kerry campaign -- New York Times article reprinted in the Ocala Star Banner.

http://www.starbanner.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040424/ZNYT02/404240311/1009/BUSINESS

...like I said, good riddance. From the rest of the article, looks like a lot more "damage control" is in order.

For some reason the comment system won't take the long detailed comment we had written. Maybe it's better.

We just want to refer people to the Toledo Blade’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Tiger Force series. You'll find plenty of on-the-record first-person accounts of Vietnam atrocities, including ear-taking, and the Army's own investigation that substantiated 20 war crimes but failed to bring charges against anyone because of investigative malfeasance.

SullyWatch, Sorry your entire post didn't survive, but I have visited the Toledo Blade site and have asked a number of experts to lend them a hand in running this story to ground and even helping apprehend the criminals if charges can still be filed.... of course winning a Pulitzer doesn't make the story true -- just ask Janet Cook and the Washington Post...and then there's that fellow at USA Today, and then....

I have also done some research on the books mentioned above, and I wanted to offer a bit more to try to substantiate my point about them. I chose an expert to say it for me since he has researched the topic and documented it.

"Writers who do not have direct military experience often see themselves as being conduits for history, talking to those who participated, writing down their stories to preserve and document the history for future generations. But in many cases, they have a political agenda that makes them susceptible to using false information when it suits their purposes. Often these individuals show authors falsified documents, doctored photographs, self-awarded medals, and altered discharge papers to prove their authenticity. Rarely do these authors independently check military records at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. They want to believe; checking records might raise too many red flags.

Many authors, like the previously mentioned Jonathan Shay, avoid those nagging questions by using pseudonyms, first names only, or composite characters. That sets them free to tell the most outrageous tales. Because they don't identify anyone by name, it's hard to check out their claims.

A prime example is 'Nam, a 1981 book by Mark Baker that sold more than one million copies. A powerful, dramatic telling of the "hell" that was Vietnam, 'Nam was marketed as a factual oral history, compiled from interviews with more than 150 Vietnam veterans. Although Baker contended that his book was nonfiction, he hedged his bets.

"It must be assumed that included here are generalizations, exaggerations, braggadocio, and -- very likely --outright lies," Baker wrote in the introduction. "But if these stories were told within a religious framework, the telling would be called bearing witness. The human imperfections simply authenticate the sincerity of the whole. The apocryphal aspects have more to do with metaphor than with deceit."

Huh? Is that a way of saying, "I was too damn lazy to check whether my sources were telling the truth or not? Besides, does it really matter"?

Yes, the truth does matter! Readers form opinions about reality based on what authors claim is factual. And the reality in Baker's book was dubious. To read Baker's version, drug use, rape of women, throwing prisoners out of helicopters, murdering officers, and wanton butchering of civilians were everyday occurrences in Vietnam. Because the sources are not named, it's impossible to verify most of his information.

Baker quoted a nurse saying she denied civilians medication. "I saw patients being poisoned because we had no beds, and we needed beds for the GIs," the nurse said. An Army veteran claimed that his unit threw so many bodies of the enemy in the Saigon River that they clogged boat traffic. A grunt told Baker he was attacked by NVA wearing UCLA sweatshirts. When? Where? How? Ludicrous on their face, these are stories that cannot be disproved because they are anonymous and ambiguous.

But telling details flag many of the stories as untrue. Baker described the death of 'Johnny Kane" who goes into the Marine Corps only to be killed in action. No one named Lt. Johnny Kane died in Vietnam, nor did a Lt. Carver or a Marine enlisted man named Browne, as Baker's sources contended. Were these real names? Baker didn't say.

One man said he was transferred to the 2nd Marine Division in Vietnam. (The Marine Corps 2nd Division did not serve in Vietnam.) Another veteran contended that he and his fellow pilots were twice recommended for Distinguished Flying Crosses for running through a mortar barrage to their helicopters. (DFCs are given only for action occurring in the air, not stumbling across an airfield on foot.) These historical inaccuracies are easy to check.

The most hilarious report in Baker's 'Nam was that of a soldier who claimed he had been within 150 yards of a B-52 strike, so close the concussion "blew all the tubes in the radio and knocked all the buildings down." Well, the radios in use at that time did not have tubes, and anyone that close to a B-52 strike would have been killed or severely wounded. The same veteran described watching shells that sounded like "a subway train pulling into Times Square" fired from the battleship USS Arizona. Obviously, neither he nor author Baker gave a second thought to the fact that the Arizona had been sunk December 7, 1941, and is now at the bottom of Pearl Harbor."

-- Stolen Valor, B.G. Burkett, pp. 388-389

1. Timely
   
2. Strategery
   
3. Webb wins
   
4. Huh?
   
5. Bunnypants in Bagdad
   
6. Outage
   
7. Filthy Lucre Watch
   
8. Playing the numbers
   
9. My letter to Countdown
   
10. Jefferson's Nigerian Scams