well, since russia has not been communist since 1993, does it matter if a russian ambassador gives a state dept. guest a warm russian hat with a hammer and sickle emblem? what do you think it means if she puts it on, that she is a communist because of the emblem? are you this stupid? why do you let fox and the NY Post and rush tell you what you should be upset about or not. how does wearing that hat mean anything at all, except it was a gift, and it was cold as hell in Russia when she got it?
as far as Kerry goes, he won the Silver Star, the country's second highest combat medal, the Bronze Star, the third, and volunteered, even as a rich kid, to serve in Vietnam, but then volunteered to captain a Swift Boat, whose job was to go up and down the Mekong River as bait, and when the viet cong or north vietnamese attacked, to attack them at great risk to themselves. all this while Trump paid a doctor to claim he had bone spurs, and took 4 student deferments and later said soldiers who went to vietnam were suckers and losers. and you fucking try to say Kerry was not a true patriot, you piece of shit bitch?
Kerry earned his Silver Star later in February when he jumped onto the beach from his boat to chase and shoot a guerrilla who had a rocket launcher and who, Kerry thought, was about to fire a rocket at Kerry’s boat. According to the Boston Globe, another member of the crew on Kerry’s boat - Frederic Short, with whom Kerry had not talked for 34 years until being contacted by the Globe reporter - confirmed the account and said there was no doubt Kerry’s action saved the boat and crew.
Republican Sen. John Warner, who was Under Secretary of the Navy at the time, said there was careful checking for the Silver Star award and “I think we best acknowledge that his heroism did gain that recognition.”
A third Purple Heart and Bronze Star was awarded in March 1969 when Kerry’s boat took fire, sending a man overboard. Kerry, who said his injuries came from an underwater mine, returned to pull the man to safety and to assist another damaged boat. Jim Rassmann, the man who fell overboard, confirmed the account in a detailed article in the Wall Street Journal.
FLORENCE, Ore. — The eyes still get watery 35 years later, and Jim Rassmann -- former Green Beret, retired California cop -- doesn’t want anybody to see. He turns away or uses his beefy hands to cover up.
But he gets through it, recalling in vivid detail the day, March 13, 1969, when John F. Kerry snatched him out of a muddy brown river in Vietnam and saved him from a watery end.
The story has been told often since January, when the two men reunited in Des Moines, just two days before the Iowa primary. Their emotional reunion has been described as a turning point in Kerry’s quest for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Rassmann, a registered Republican, held the audience rapt that night with the dramatic tale of his rescue.
The group had already lost one soldier that day. As they sped down the river, one boat was blown out of the water, and then another. An explosion wounded Kerry in the arm and threw Rassmann into the river. Rassmann dove to the bottom to avoid being run over by the other boats. When he surfaced, he saw the convoy had gone ahead.
Viet Cong snipers fired at him, and Rassmann submerged over and over to avoid being hit. The bullets came from both banks, and Rassmann had nowhere to go. He began thinking his time had come, but the fifth time he came up, he saw the convoy had turned around. Kerry had ordered the boats back to pick up the man overboard.
Kerry’s boat, under heavy fire, sidled up to the struggling soldier. Rassmann tried to scramble up a cargo net at the bow but was too exhausted to make it all the way. He clung to the net as bullets whizzed past.
“Next thing I knew, John came out in the middle of all this,” Rassmann says. “I couldn’t believe it. He was going to get killed. He ran to the edge, reached over with his good arm [Kerry had been wounded in his right arm] and pulled me over the lip.”
Rassmann later recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and was upset when the Army instead awarded Kerry a lesser Bronze Star with a “V” for valor. The medal citation described Kerry’s actions on the river that day.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-mar-13-na-vietnamvet13-story.html