His detractors have done the research and ferreted them out for me (I hate research) but his own words contradict themselves. He's been caught, using his own quotes, in numerous, shall we say, confusions about his exploits.
Tubby, if you don't do your own checking, you get lied to a lot. Creative editing can do wonders.
A case in point is the current claim that Kerry said himself that he had not been shot at nine days after his first PH. I already covered the circumstances of his first PH.
Being curious about where that claim came from, I typed the exact quote as cited by one of the detractors into Google and found the whole passage. It turned out to be a part of Kerry's journal that had been included in Brinkley's biography. When you read the whole quote, you find that Kerry is describing the mood of his new crew on setting out on patrol. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether Kerry himself had been shot at previously.
Something else to consider is that some of this is being taken from newpaper stories. If you have ever been the subject of a newspaper story, you will have been struck by how much was dead wrong. An inadvertent change of one or two words in a quote can totally change the meaning of the quote. Things that a person said can get combined to say something that was never intended. Qualifiers get left out.
And this ain't just about Kerry. This kind of attack campaign can be conducted against anyone who has been in the public eye. There are always minor discrepancies and things that need explanation.
And there are always liars who will do anything they can to harm their opponents.
