Stick a Fork in Them
This piece from Newsweek should definitively put this issue on ice (and expose these f****ers for what they are - sorry for the language, but this just gets to me):

Kerry�s was one of three Bronze Stars awarded for actions during this incident. Another went to the commander of a second Swift Boat, Larry Thurlow. Thurlow is now one of the core members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. He has sworn an affidavit saying the Swift Boats were not under hostile fire during the rescue. Thurlow�s own Bronze Star citation contradicts this, but Thurlow insists the citation is false and has suggested that Kerry wrote it.

The third Bronze Star was won by one of Thurlow�s own launch crew, Robert Eugene Lambert, who was radarman and the senior noncom on Thurlow�s boat. NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the citation for Lambert�s Bronze Star from the National Personnel Records Center in St Louis under a Freedom of Information Act filing. This citation, like the others, says that following a mine explosion that wrecked one of the Swift Boats, the flotilla of five boats �came under small-arms and automatic weapons fire from the river banks.� Lambert won his Bronze Star for an action precisely paralleling Kerry�s: Lambert picked someone out of the river. In Lambert�s case, that someone was his skipper, Thurlow.

[...]

Lambert�s surviving military records do not include the initial recommendation for this medal, so there is no way to know who filled the required role of witness to vouch for Lambert�s actions. But the citation contains such detail about the actions of both Thurlow and Lambert�actions that Kerry cannot have known since his launch was on the far side of the river�that it seems implausible Kerry could have written the recommendation.