An action by the Navy is virtually without precedent.

Did Kerry's Swift Boat Hatchet Man Fake His Own Silver Star?

 

By Scott Swett


Last August, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus revoked a Silver Star medal formerly held by retired Navy Captain Wade R. Sanders.  In a short, vague memorandum to the Chief of Naval Personnel, Mabus cited "subsequently determined facts and evidence surrounding both the incident for which the award was made and the processing of the award itself" as the reason.  Such an action by the Navy is virtually without precedent.

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Kerry's most virulent supporter

Wade Sanders' name will be familiar to those who recall the political battles between John Kerry and the veterans who opposed him in 2004.  A key member of Kerry's "Band of Brothers," Sanders helped introduce his long-time friend at the Democratic National Convention.  The two men had trained together at Naval Base Coronado nearly 40 years earlier, before deploying to Vietnam to serve as Navy Swift boat officers.   Like Kerry, Sanders found time to do extensive filming in Vietnam, accumulating footage later used in Kerry's campaign film "Going Upriver."   Among Kerry's handful of highly-publicized veteran supporters, Sanders was probably the most visible -- and the most virulent.

Most of Sanders' efforts targeted the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group formed by Navy veterans who had known Kerry in Vietnam and doubted his fitness to serve as Commander-in-Chief.  While the group was being organized, Sanders was already calling and firing off messages to hundreds of former sailors, pressuring them not to sign up. 

In one email, Sanders slandered the anti-Kerry veterans as "bitter drunks."  In another, he ridiculed disabled veteran Joe Ponder as a "whining baby."  Ponder had become emotional at the initial Swift Vet press conference as he recalled his wife and daughters asking if he had participated in the "atrocities" described in Kerry's campaign biography.

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Honor, integrity and sound judgment

In 2009, Wade Sanders was convicted on felony charges of possessing child pornography and sentenced to 37 months in prison, considerably less than the 63-month term Federal prosecutors had requested.  Sanders' military record and a letter of support from John Kerry may have been factors in the reduced sentence.  A San Diego news editor also wrote a letter, but later told the court that the copy Sanders submitted had been modified.

Even before the trial ended, the Navy was looking into Sanders' much ballyhooed Silver Star, which first surfaced in the early 1990's, more than 20 years after he left Vietnam. During the months that followed, Sanders relentlessly denounced Kerry's opponents as liars and Bush shills, while reviling Swift Vet spokesman John O'Neill as a student of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.  [My co-author and I would later receive the Goebbels treatment as well, when Sanders reviewed our book on the 2004 election.]

Sanders' fellow Navy veterans weren't the only targets of his venom.  He repeatedly called President Bush and others "chicken hawks" -- a vicious term used to smear non-military supporters of a war by associating them with child molesters.  He also offered the bizarre suggestion that if Kerry lost, it would mean the end of democracy in America.

After the election, Sanders continued his attacks.  He threatened to sue the non-partisan Swift Boat Sailors Association because several of its leaders had joined the Swift Vets.  In 2007, he called the latter group a "distasteful smear machine," adding, "Those of us who are real swift boaters know something about judgment and responsibility for our decisions."  He also boasted to the Boston Herald, "Yes, I am a member of Kerry's ready reserve of Swift Boat vets and unlike those who served with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and their ilk, I serve with honor, integrity and exercise sound judgment."


Read the whole disgraceful story here:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/did_kerrys_swift_boat_hatchet_man_fake_his_own_silver_star.html