Why Kerry's Belodeau Eulogy deserves more attention

Dear blogosphere and (yeah, right) mainstream media: 

In the Belodeau Eulogy, Kerry said Rassmann fell

overboard in a sharp turn, not due to a second mine!

Now that I have done what I can to ensure that I haven't buried my lede, let me explain:

After studying an article entitled "Editors Grapple With How to Cover Swift Boat Controversy," Sir George of The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler observes that "it's hard to know what to make of this horrifyingly candid crap in Editor & Publisher, so I'll just Fisk it till it stops twitching."  He does so in a stylish and entertaining fashion guaranteed to cause many chuckles even among readers who aren't quite yet sold on all of his ultimate conclusions. 

Along the way, Sir George ably highlights the details and significance of Kerry's Belodeau Eulogy, as reprinted in the Congressional Record, and graciously credits me for finding and pointing it out.  The credit is actually due to two of my readers who found and brought it to my attention, and I'm embarrassed that I didn't snap to its importance more quickly.  Re-reading my original post, I recognize that I also was guilty of burying my lede because of my desire not to seem ghoulish while highlighting a jangling contradiction that, after all, appeared in an extremely sober source.  And I still want to emphasize that nothing in this argument should be deemed to reflect poorly upon — or diminish the justifiable honor paid by Sen. Kerry to — his former crewman, the late Tommy Belodeau.

In the Belodeau Eulogy — an eloquent speech that I credit Kerry with preparing meticulously, and that is available to the public from an unimpeachable and unbiased source, the Congressional Record  (.pdf files: first page, second page) — Kerry describes Rassmann's loss overboard in a manner that is quite at odds with the version contained in the documentation for his Bronze Star and other contemporaneous documents.  Yet to my eyes, it's actually a far more plausible account.  Sir George takes a closer look than I originally did at the version of events described in the Belodeau Eulogy, using the better understanding we all think we have now of the geographical layout around where PCF 3 hit a mine, and Sir George makes some further observations that would make Sir Issac Newton very proud and, perhaps, Sen. Kerry very nervous:  The events described in the Belodeau eulogy couldn't logically have resulted in Kerry's bruised right arm — the most defensible basis for his third Purple Heart — unless Kerry was facing his boat's stern as it raced first away from, then back toward, the stricken PCF 3. 

And as I noted in my original post, there's no "second mine" in the Belodeau Eulogy.  There's only one mine in this rendition; it goes off under Kerry's boat, not PCF 3 (which isn't even mentioned); and it goes off well before Rassmann goes overboard.

One reason the "Christmas in Cambodia" fairy tale became the first break-through in the mainstream media — and hence the first major roll-back in the Kerry camp's position — was its simplicity as compared to the far more complicated questions surrounding the merits, or lack thereof, behind Kerry's Silver and Bronze Stars and two of his three Purple Hearts.  But I also suspect that some considerable portion of the momentum from that story came from Glenn Reynolds' digital camera, whence he produced a widely reprinted image of the yellowed page from the Congressional Record with the now-famous "seared — seared" quotation from Kerry speaking to the United States Senate.

Perhaps general understanding of the Bay Hap River action and the Rassmann rescue, out of which Kerry's Bronze Star and third Purple Heart were awarded, is now widespread enough that the Belodeau Eulogy — and in particular, its vivid contrast from what Kerry and his supporters have consistently said about those events — can now likewise be appreciated.  Physics and geography aside, it's as simple as "one mine" versus "two mines."

Although I have a digital camera, I don't have the ready access to the hard-bound Congressional Record that Prof. Reynolds photographed.  So I'll have to make due with a series of simple .jpg files I've screencapped and snipped from the .pdf file (at 150 percent magnification) that I downloaded and saved from the Congressional Record's website — which is admittedly less impressive on a visceral level than Prof. Reynold's digital photo of an actual time-yellowed page:

* * *

("Lowell-Chelmsford," I gather from a quick Google search my commenter Steven Jens, is a neighborhood in Boston refers to a pair of Massachusetts towns that doubtless was were  recognized by most everyone at the funeral of Boston Massachusetts native Belodeau.)

As I wrote in my original post, I fully credit the news accounts that Sen. Kerry spoke with passion and visible emotion when he delivered the Belodeau Eulogy aloud at Mr. Belodeau's funeral.  One opinion expressed in John O'Neill's Unfit for Command (at page 77) that I thought probably overbroad was the statement that "Kerry never formed the kind of human relationships with his fellow sailors that are essential to effective performance."  The opinion was offered in connection with the revelation that Captain Thomas Wright and other officers weren't sorry to see Kerry leave the Swiftees early, and actually brought to his attention that his third Purple Heart could be his ticket stateside; and perhaps the opinion accurately describes Kerry's relationship with his fellow Swiftee officers. 

But it's hard not to be impressed by the fact that of Kerry's surviving crewmen — as his campaign has emphasized again and again — all but one have rallied to his defense in the current controversy.  And I, for one, am inclined to believe that in writing and delivering the Belodeau Eulogy, Sen. Kerry, at least for once, dropped most of the self-aggrandizement that characterizes so many of his other tales of his wartime experiences.  His insertion of the Belodeau Eulogy into the Congressional Record was a fitting gesture to the man and his surviving family, rather than Sen. Kerry bloviating on the Senate floor as part of a Senate debate or myth-making for the press in one of his own re-election campaigns.  These are admittedly speculative reasons.  But the Belodeau Eulogy version fits better with the boat damage reports and the geography on which all must agree, regardless of the widely varying and inconsistent recollections given in other circumstances by various observers.  So I'm inclined to conclude that — with, perhaps, the exception of the one mine being relocated from under PCF 3 to under Kerry's own boat — the events related in the Belodeau Eulogy are actually Sen. Kerry's best, unguarded, and unspun recollections as to how Rassmann actually came to fall from PCF 94.

In any event, however — whether it's ultimately adjudged to be accurate or not — the version of events given by Sen. Kerry in the Belodeau Eulogy deserves attention if for no other reason than that it's at such variance from the version he (and some others, including Rassmann) have told so many other times.