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John Kerry. "I was in the [S. Vietnam] Delta shortly after John Kerry left. I know that area well. I know the operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and the doctrine used, and I know the equipment .. Kerry was in-country less than four months and collected a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. I never heard of anybody with any outfit I worked with .. collecting that much hardware that fast, and for such pedestrian actions .. Something is fishy .. " MORE from retired Marine Master Sergeant X.

UPDATE: Here is an account of Kerry's more famous heroic action saving an overboard shipmate, for which he was given a Purple Heart:

It was in the second of these that he rescued Jim Rassmann, a member of his crew, when his P.C.F.-94 came under a hail of small-arms fire at the same moment that another P.C.F. traveling alongside Kerry's boat struck a mine.

From a NY Times review of Douglas Brinkley's Tour of Duty : John Kerry and the Vietnam War which the NY Times calls "a campaign book" and " less as a work of history and more as a brief for President Kerry" with "odor of salesmanship that lingers around". Brinkley, of course, is a tenured university professor. And you thought university professors weren't political hacks .. What did you think they were, objective scholars? (It's a joke, people. Of course there are non-partisan scholars in academia. I even know some.)