Kerry's first Purple Heart is looking increasingly bogus, and part of a plan for an early ticket home, having gotten his tickets punched and establishing his JFK creds. According to the attending physician:

Some of his crew confided that they did not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a mortar round at close range to some rocks on shore. The crewman thought that the injury was caused by a fragment ricocheting from that mortar round when it struck the rocks.

That seemed to fit the injury which I treated.

What I saw was a small piece of metal sticking very superficially in the skin of Kerry's arm. The metal fragment measured about 1 cm. in length and was about 2 or 3 mm in diameter. It certainly did not look like a round from a rifle.

I simply removed the piece of metal by lifting it out of the skin with forceps. I doubt that it penetrated more than 3 or 4 mm. It did not require probing to find it, did not require any anesthesia to remove it, and did not require any sutures to close the wound.

The wound was covered with a bandaid.

Emphasis mine. Even ignoring the unsubstantialness of the wound, if it occurred as his boatmates claimed, it wasn't the result of enemy fire, which would make him ineligible for the medal. In fact, if he really did that, it should have resulted in discipline.

That may be just a tip of an iceberg of self-aggrandizement that resulted in this morning's press conference (click on the "Media" link), in which many of his band of former brothers declared him unfit to be Commander-in-Chief. A press conference which, by the way, the media seems to be studiously ignoring. The only mention of it that I can find with a quick Google is in the Boston Herald.

And no, before anyone asks, I'm not saying that he fired the mortar round deliberately to injure himself. I rarely attribute an act to conspiracy that is as easily explained by incompetence. I'm just saying that it strongly appears that he was looking for every wound he could to get to his magic three.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here's the letter that the other Swift Boat vets sent to Kerry.

[Wednesday morning update]

The Globe has covered it now. Interestingly, the supposedly right-wing Fox News doesn't seem to have any web coverage of it, at least not on their politics page.

I expect Dr. Letson will now come under attack.

Silly JFK, rocket-jumping only works in Quake!

Bush is the most honorable candidate here. He did not stoop to these levels to get home from the war early.

It occurs to me that perhaps this purple heart is technically valid, since JF'nK really is the enemy.

possible clarification on weapon used by Kerry

Instead of the mortar most frequently reported, I think Kerry fired a simple hand weapon. Here's why.

I caught some of the anti-Kerry group on CSPAN and saw Kerry's former C.O. say Kerry had fired an M-79.

I believe that means Kerry's first purple heart wound was a fragment from the exploding shell of an M-79 grenade launcher that Kerry had fired himself at some rocks.

The M-79 is a breech loaded single shot 40mm grenade launcher. It weighs about 6 pounds and has a wooden stock and aluminum barrel. The M-79 fires a fixed round of ammunition of 40mm diameter. The M-79 HE round launches a spin stabilized shell at 250 feet per second muzzle velocity to a maximum range of 400 meters. The blast effect of the HE shell is somewhat smaller than that of a standard hand grenade.

"Silly JFK, rocket-jumping only works in Quake!"

ROTFLOL

Question - How does it apply to Kerry's ability to be a President, any more than the silliness about Bush's military record?

VR - this, plus many other examples over the last 30 years, prove Kerry to be a serial liar and a self-aggrandizing sneak.

And we've already had one of those as president.

What Barbara said, but also, this wouldn't be a big deal if Kerry himself hadn't made it a big deal by making his Vietnam service the centerpiece of his campaign, to the point that it's become nightly fodder for Leno and Letterman.

Live by the Vietnam heroism, die by it.

Seems an odd plan for a coward.

Suppose the exploding shrapnel from firing at rocks amounted to more than a "fingernail scrape"? How would you fire at a bunch of rocks and be sure you're going to be wounded, but only wounded slightly?

Or was he goofing off and decided to seize on an opportunity that unexpectedly presented itself? Or was he firing at phantoms in a panic and decided to seize on an opportunity that unexpectedly presented itself?

The more I hear of Kerry's Vietnam experiences, the less sense it makes.

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