This is getting just bizarre. Now a Former Secretary of the Navy says he did not sign Kerry’s Silver Star citation. We’re not talking some gunner on a boat 35 years ago. We’re talking about the former Sec. of the Navy.
Kerry citation a ‘total mystery’ to ex-Navy chief
Former Navy Secretary John Lehman has no idea where a Silver Star citation displayed on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry’s campaign Web site came from, he said Friday. The citation appears over Lehman’s signature.
“It is a total mystery to me. I never saw it. I never signed it. I never approved it. And the additional language it contains was not written by me,” he said
The additional language varied from the two previous citations, signed first by Adm. Elmo Zumwalt and then Adm. John Hyland, which themselves differ. The new material added in the Lehman citation reads in part: “By his brave actions, bold initiative, and unwavering devotion to duty, Lieutenant (jg) Kerry reflected great credit upon himself….”
Again, Kerry would be well served putting out ALL his service records. Until he does, he is inviting stories like this. It is real hard to say this guy is just some partisan hack.
Okay, I’ve stopped laughing.
Let’s get this straight: Three different versions of the citation? The last one signed by someone who say “What? I never signed that.”
And the Swifties are liars ….
Don’t worry, I’m sure Chris Matthews will get to the bottom of this.
Making Kerry
Good Lord. It’s like the Dems got really drunk one night, and when they woke up the next morning, John Kerry was in their bed. He said he had a good job in finance, and had a really cool, exciting past… sort of a local hero. Of course, a couple weeks later, they find out that he’s a bank teller. Later, they learn that everyone from his home town rolls their eyes when he’s mentioned and mutter “bullshitter!” under their breath.
And now, it turns out that his GED is even faked. Wow.
“Again, Kerry would be well served putting out ALL his service records….”
I keep hearing this. Why on Earth would you say such a thing? Don’t you think if those records would help Kerry, they’d have been released by now? The only explanation for them not being released is that they must make Kerry look worse.
Now Spoons- From your comment I could infer that I agreed with you and that I’m being deeply cynical… and we both know that could never be the case. Right? Right?
I can easily believe that, after a hitch in The Naval Services of the USA, understand that the SecNav would have signed a whole bunch of things without the slightest idea what they were.
If, as I saw with my own eyes, a company clerk could bury extra weekend passes and promotions from PFC to LCPL into a pile of papers for the Captain of a Marine Rifle Company to sign, why not on a bigger scale?
We are all familiar with Napoleon’s dictum, an army marches on it’s stomach. The USA has solved that problem, at some cost. Now an army slides along on a sea of paper, a navy floats on that sea and the zoomies fly through a blizzard of paper.
If Lehman had taken the time to read and understand every piece of paper he signed, he would have (a) never left his desk his whole term, not even for potty breaks, and (b) not made proper use of his staff.
Some staff officer, close to retirement, probably and needing the connections for his post retirement career, slid that citation into a pile of paperwork to be signed, Lehman signed it.
I’d bet cash on it, if there was a way to prove it. It’s nothing but a twenty dollar bill to a company clerk writ large.
spoons is right about the non-release of the service records and why they are (non released service records).
There’s apparently a SIX YEAR GAP in the information in those records…some mysterious six year prolongued record of Kerry’s enlisted status before discharge. Unexplained. No (released) records (so far) about those six years. Remarkable and startling to everyone I’ve read make comment about the gap, of so many years, who has any familiarity with the military.
Black out at black rock, I think.
So Lt. Kerry did nt get wounded enough? say like Max Cleland ?