Kerry Did Shoot The Kid In The Back

My source is John Kerry, here in this Boston Globe story.

"This guy could have dispatched us in a second, but for ... I'll never be able to explain, we were literally face to face, he with his B-40 rocket and us in our boat, and he didn't pull the trigger. I would not be here today talking to you if he had," Kerry recalled. "And Tommy clipped him, and he started going [down.] I thought it was over."

Instead, the guerrilla got up and started running. "We've got to get him, make sure he doesn't get behind the hut, and then we're in trouble," Kerry recalled.

So Kerry shot and killed the guerrilla. "I don't have a second's question about that, nor does anybody who was with me," he said. "He was running away with a live B-40, and, I thought, poised to turn around and fire it." Asked whether that meant Kerry shot the guerrilla in the back, Kerry said, "No, absolutely not. He was hurt, other guys were shooting from back, side, back. There is no, there is not a scintilla of question in any person's mind who was there [that] this guy was dangerous, he was a combatant, he had an armed weapon."

Notice how Kerry evades the question, but clearly he did shoot the VC in the back. He only says that the description that the VC was fleeing did not necessarily mean that Kerry shot him in the back.

Interestingly, John O'Neil, author of "Unfit for Duty," has not criticized Kerry for shooting the VC in the back, but does doubt that the event warranted a silver star.

So, the big news of the day is that a Chicago Tribune editor who was also at the fight in question weighs in on Kerry's side, without really adding new details.