On November 13, a U.S. Marine shot and apparently killed a wounded and unarmed Iraqi prisoner in a Fallujah mosque, an incident that embedded NBC News correspondent Kevin Sites captured on film and included in a pool report. On November 16, FOX News Channel host Sean Hannity compared that incident to discredited allegations that Senator John Kerry earned his Silver Star award, while in Vietnam, for shooting a wounded and retreating Viet Cong. The right-wing website NewsMax.com published an article with the headline, “Fallujah Marine in Trouble for Pulling a Kerry.” But there are crucial differences between the recent Fallujah incident and the events leading to Kerry's Silver Star.

Apparently referring to claims by Kerry critics (among them John E. O'Neill, co-founder of the anti-Kerry group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, now called Swift Vets and POWs for Truth), Hannity stated on the November 16 edition of Hannity & Colmes: “It was alleged that John Kerry did something similar [to the Marine involved in the Fallujah shooting incident] when he was serving, and the same people that held him up as a hero ... [t]he same people that are criticizing these guys [the Marines involved in the incident] voted for Kerry. ... It's hypocritical.” Of the action Kerry took against an armed Viet Cong, Hannity asked: “Did he [Kerry] shoot a guy in the back? Did he shoot a guy in the back?”

From a November 16 NewsMax.com article:

The television press was awash Monday night with video of a U.S. Marine entering a Fallujah terrorist nest filled with dead snipers who, moments earlier, had been shooting at his unit.

[...]

Iraq war critics are already salivating at the prospects of another Abu Ghraib-like military fiasco.

Not so fast, say the folks at FreeRepublic.com, who point out that John Kerry got a Silver Star with Combat V [for valor] for committing the same sort of “atrocity.”

In fact, the February 1969 incident was considered by Kerry supporters to be his finest hour.

The NBC pool footage of the Fallujah incident shows a wounded Iraqi man slouched against a wall. He had reportedly been injured in fighting the previous day and left in the mosque by the Marines. The circumstances were not “similar” to those under which Kerry killed a man in Vietnam.

As the Annenberg Political Fact Check has noted, the Naval citation mentioning Kerry's incident notes that he killed a Viet Cong who was armed with “a loaded rocket launcher.” Furthermore, Kerry's fellow swift boat commander William B. Rood was present that day and backs that account. In an August 22, 2004, commentary, Rood -- now an editor on the Chicago Tribune's metropolitan desk -- noted that he remembered “seeing a loaded B-40 launcher pointed at the [swift] boats,” and that when Kerry returned from killing the Viet Cong, he “had picked up a loaded B-40 rocket launcher.” Rood also noted: “Neither I nor Jerry Leeds, our boat's leading petty officer with whom I've checked my recollection of all these events” recalled the fleeing Viet Cong appearing wounded as he ran, although other veterans who were present do recall the man being wounded, and "[r]ecollections of those who go through experiences like that frequently differ."

Media Matters for America has noted that Vietnamese witnesses, whose version of events was documented on the October 14, 2004, edition of ABC's Nightline, described the man Kerry killed as “one of the 12 [Viet Cong] reinforcements sent to the village by provincial headquarters.” The witnesses said the man was armed with a rocket launcher, “wore a black pajama,” and was “big and strong.”

Further, Kerry was not awarded the Silver Star for killing a single Viet Cong. According to his Silver Star citation , Kerry received the medal for “extraordinary daring and personal courage ... in attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire.”