The Ming Report

THE MAN IN THE WATER

August 6, 2004 - I want to introduce you to a liar. His name is Jim Rassman. He lives in Florence, Oregon. He recently retired as a Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff. He is 57 years old, a year younger than President Bush. In March 1969 he was Army Lt. Rassman, a Green Beret assign to joint Army-Navy operations in the Mekong Delta. On March 19th they sailed into an ambush. Two mines exploded, one close aboard the Swift Boat to which he had been assigned and the concussion blew Rassman overboard. “I though my number was punched”, he says. According to Russman every time he broke the surface he could see and hear bullets hitting the water near him. The boat he had been on and the other two were speeding away and fire was coming at him from both sides of the river. Then, in the water, weighed down by his equipment, surrounded and with nowhere to go, an easy target for the enemy fire coming at him from both sides, he saw the lead Swift Boat turn and come toward him laying down suppressing fire. It slowed and came to a stop with him just off its bow and he looked up into the eyes of a lantern-jawed Navy Lt. (J.G), The arm that reached down to grab him was bloody. The face he saw was distorted in pain. He was hauled aboard the Swift Boat. He credits that wounded Navy Lt. with saving his life.

I say that Jim Rassman is a liar because a group of so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth say that he is. They claim that it did not happen. There was no ambush they say. The mine explosion was not an enemy action but resulted from John Kerry’s clumsy handling of a US mine. There was no fire from the banks of the river and no emergency. That is what they say in a political polemic they published and in a television ad that the Bush Campaign says they have no control over. John Kerry fabricated the whole thing, they say, just so he could harvest a Bronze Star for Valor. It that is true then the man in the water is a liar too.

Jim Rassman is a life-long Republican. He says he voted for President Bush in 2000. The Kerry Campaign did not seek him out, he volunteered. When he did, when he called the local Kerry campaign back home in Florence, Oregon, he expected to be put to work stuffing envelopes or ringing doorbells. He never expected to tell his story on the national stage. He, like John Kerry, had been a volunteer in Vietnam and had gone where he was assigned. That is how he came to stand on the same stage with John Kerry at a Des Moines, Iowa. He was the man in the water and he volunteered.

Given the choice between believing the 200 or so cyphers who were not on John Kerry’s boat and who were rounded up in the continuation of the character assassination that began under Richard Nixon’s direction and believing 10 or the 11 men who served with Lt. Kerry and under his command I’ll listen to the 10. The eleventh man does not support Bush. The eleventh man is dead.

I don’t need to believe John Kerry to recognize what Swift Boats for Truth really is. I don’t need even to accept the citations written by some of the same officers who now say were fabrications. All I need to do is to listen to Jim Rassman.

He was the man in the water.