http://www.wvgazette.com/section/News/2004090152
Rescued Swift-Boat Vet Stumps in W.Va. for Kerry
By Paul J. Nyden
West Virginia Gazette
Thursday 02 September 2004
The man who John Kerry pulled from a river in Vietnam in March 1969 came to West Virginia on Wednesday and denounced ads questioning Kerry’s heroism as lies.
“People are angry at the Bush administration,” Jim Rassmann said. “And a lot of veterans are offended by the swift-boat ad controversy. What is being said in these ads is absolutely not true.”
The group called Swift Board Veterans for Truth, financed by backers of President Bush, has run ads attacking Kerry on television stations in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. They question whether Kerry deserved the medals he received in Vietnam, and say Kerry dishonored his fellow soldiers when he returned to the United States and protested the Vietnam War.
“When I saw the ads, my first reaction was extreme disappointment,” Rassmann said. “They all served this country faithfully. When they first came out with their story, I said, ‘Why?’ They were calling John Kerry a liar, a traitor. They were saying the same about me.
“The longer this dispute goes on, and the more people report it in the press, the more the truth will come out,” he said.
Rassmann says Kerry rescued him, under gunfire, from the Bay Hap River in South Vietnam on March 13, 1969. Kerry received a Bronze Star for valor and a Purple Heart for a wound that day, and a citation signed by U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Elmo Zumwalt.
“If it wasn’t for John Kerry, I’d be dead meat,” Rassmann said, recalling his rescue after a mine exploded under his boat and blew him into the water.
On Wednesday, Rassmann stopped in Mingo, Logan and Boone counties, then met about 50 veterans and friends near the Veterans Memorial at the state Capitol in Charleston. Today, he is to visit Parkersburg, Clarksburg and Wheeling.
“I want people to know John Kerry performed admirably, intelligently and courageously,” he told the group in Charleston. “That is the kind of courage we want in a leader.”
He also criticized delegates at this week’s Republican National Convention who mocked Kerry by wearing “phony bandages with purple hearts. That discredits everyone who served in our military.”
As he walked toward the West Virginia memorial, one of the first people Rassmann met was Bill Boggs, a major in the U.S. Army’s Fifth Special Forces Group who supervised Rassmann and Kerry.
Boggs, who lives in Salem, Harrison County, called himself a “repentant Republican.”
“I voted for Bush in 2000. I thought he would bring something new to our country,” Boggs said. “But he has shown no leadership. His policies have ended up creating more terrorists.”
Rassmann and Boggs, who was wearing a green beret, said they had not seen each other since they served together in Vietnam.
Rassmann’s praise for Kerry included his testimony to Congress after returning from Vietnam. “When you are involved in madness — and war is madness — then terrible things happen. That is what he said in 1971.”
He defended the right to dissent then and today.
“You not only have a right to dissent, but a duty to dissent,” Rassman said. “If you go on a bus and the bus is out of control and is about to go off a cliff, you have a duty to go up and replace the driver.”
After retiring as a lieutenant with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Rassman devoted more time to his lifelong hobby of raising orchids. Today, he and his wife live in Oregon, along the Pacific coast.
Recently, Rassmann was elected executive vice president of the American Orchid Society, which has nearly 27,000 members. After the presidential campaign, he wants to travel to South America again, photographing and studying orchids growing there.
-------
Jump to TO Features for Friday September 3, 2004
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Sockfucker
