One of the lingering debates on the Swift Boat story is whether the incident in which John Kerry pulled James Rassman out of the water – and won the Bronze Star – occurred under enemy fire or not; the Swifties say that there was no fire and that several boats (the captains of which have lined up against Kerry on this point) were at the scene for some time fishing the crew of PCF 3 (Kerry’s boat was PCF 94) out of the water after it hit a mine and was disabled.
McQ over at QandO explains why the NY Times has (unsurprisingly) misread the Navy documents on Kerry’s website to mistakenly claim that several Viet Cong were killed during the incident; McQ contends that the documents actually show that they were killed on land by soldiers the swift boats had been carrying earlier in their mission.
UPDATE: Don’t forget to follow McQ’s links; this and this present sober, clear-headed assessments of the available evidence regarding the March 13, 1969 engagement, with more supporting links. Frankly, this is getting to be an interesting “whodunit”-type story, even apart from its (tenuous) relevance to the presidential race.