Arcording to the not so swift vets Kerry is sooooo rotten that he ran away from enemy fire in an engagement in which there was no enemy fire. I know it is sooo last week to point out swiftvet lies but this is special because it is not based on old documents or past statements of swiftvets from months or years ago.

Their story about what happened on the Bay Hap river on March 13, 1969 make two points very clear.

They say there was no enemy fire here
"But the group says that there was no enemy fire, ... Asked why Mr. Rassmann recalled that he was dodging enemy bullets, a member of the group, Jack Chenoweth, said, "He's lying."
... A damage report to Mr. Thurlow's boat shows that it received three bullet holes, suggesting enemy fire, and later intelligence reports indicate that one Vietcong was killed in action and five others wounded, reaffirming the presence of an enemy. Mr. Thurlow said the boat was hit the day before. "

here
"Van O'Dell, a gunner aboard another swift boat said that as the patrol passed a fishing weir across the Bay Hop River, another boat hit a mine. O'Dell said he fired "a couple of hundred rounds" from a machine gun but did not see return fire. Two others who commanded other swift boats that day, Larry Thurlow and Jack Chenoweth, supported his version.
Thurlow, who also won a Bronze Star that day for coming to the aid of the wounded sailors in the craft that hit the mine, said that what Kerry did was routine. "One of the main criticisms is that there was no hostile fire"

here "Last month, Thurlow ... described Kerry's Bronze Star citation, which says that all units involved came under "small arms and automatic weapons fire," as "totally fabricated."
"I never heard a shot," Thurlow said in his affidavit...A document recommending Thurlow for the Bronze Star noted that all his actions "took place under constant enemy small arms fire which LTJG THURLOW completely ignored"

here (8/20/04 how do I get a permalink to today's daily howler ?)

"Here he was on Hannity & Colmes, a bastion of careful fact-checking:
O’NEILL (8/19/04): Not a single person was wounded after the original mine explosion. There's not a bullet hole in any of those three boats, not one."

here

"There was absolutely no fire coming from any direction," Van Odell, a gunner aboard a boat behind the stricken vessel told UPI. "There were no tracers, there were no bullet holes in the boats,"

notice by the way that Thurlow seems to have falsely characterized the citation for his own bronze star and that O'Neills claim and Odell's claim about bullet holes are definitely false.

The swiftvets also claim that Kerryfled from enemy fire on the Bay Hap river that day

here "from Tuesday’s Hannity & Colmes:
"There was only one boat that fled. That was John Kerry's boat. We never had anybody that would flee, Alan, never. Except John Kerry. The other guy stood to save PCF3. Kerry finally came back when it was apparent there was no fire,""

not objecting here (also via somerby) when admiral Crowe said
"I'd like to speak to the fleeing business. There were other boats there, ...If one of the boats fled, under fire and the other boats didn't bring him into account with a senior officer, that makes no sense whatsoever, that defies reason. Fleeing under fire, of course, is a general court martial offense. The Navy has ways to do that. What were these other skippers are doing? "

next statement from O'Neill
"O'NEILL: More than 22 POWs have backed our efforts. More than 60 people who won the Purple Heart in Vietnam signed our letter. And 254 people in our unit, including 17 of the 23 officers that served with Kerry have signed the letter. There's only one that backs Kerry out of 23. "

No objection to the claim that he says Kerry fled under fire.

here
"They also claim he "fled the scene" of the incident for which he was awarded a Bronze Star and the Purple Heart,"
and
""The truth is, the one who left everybody behind was John Kerry. Everyone else stayed," one of the Swift boat veterans said."

and here

"After the mine exploded, leaving swift boat three dead in the water, John Kerry's boat, which was on the opposite side of the river, fled the scene. US Army Special Forces officer Jim Rassmann, who was on Kerry's boat at the time, fell off the boat and into the water. Kerry's boat returned several minutes later -- under no hail of enemy gunfire -- to retrieve Rassmann from the river only seconds before another boat was going to pick him up. "

come on guys make up your minds.