I saw Stolen Honor yesterday. It is devastating in its simplicity. None of the information surprised me.
My review is short and simple, as well. Veterans including POW survivors are interviewed. They tell how their situation was made worse in the camps and at home by a press that believed John Kerry's outright lies. Each of them in his own way denies that the My Lai or Apocalypse Now Vietnams portrayed in the MSM were typical or tolerated by the rank and file. Each of them in his own way points out that their country asked them to make the ultimate sacrifice and John Kerry tried to destroy their honor. Due to quips by prison guards and the sightings of people like Jane Fonda in their camps, the POWs came to realize that John Kerry (by name) was having a serious impact on their safety and pushing back their release dates.
Only once does an interviewee (George Day) suggest that Kerry was treasonous. A transcript of unknown quality is here: dailykos.com.
The restrained and disciplined approach to the topic made me realize that the average *BS treatment of Kerry's past is far more propagandistic.
After I finished watching it I had questions that probably can't be answered except by time. I think the massive push to disarm America has one deep root in this story. Rather than fear the men who would have given it all for America, shouldn't we fear the ones who distorted and denied their gift of honor to us?
Producer Carlton Sherwood says:
They don't want a belated apology. They want John Kerry to be finally accountable for his disgrace [?], the harm he inflicted on an entire generation of good soldiers. Simply put, they want the truth, not parades or a hero worship. Just the plain truth, and their dignity and honour restored.
According to Disinfopedia, Sherwood has compromised his credibility with a report on the Moonies called Inquisition: The Persecution and Prosecution of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. But we can still take Stolen Honor at face value. Kerry called our POWs war criminals and their captors beat them, starved them, and held them longer while hurling quotes from the Winter Soldier campaign at them. We're free to draw our own conclusions, no matter what Sherwood thinks about a ripoff religious cult from Korea.
By the way, a quick survey of blog commentary on Stolen Honor reveals a curious urge to deny its veracity. However, the film focusses on factual commentary Kerry and the VVA offered with the Winter Soldier tour and their "limited incursion into the territory of Congress."
Regardless of what one thinks about the Vietnam war, Kerry's actions were what they were. No amount of blogspin can change that.
The urge to put Stolen Honor on a level with Michael Moore's Farenheit 911 is just another attempt to spin Vietnam veterans out of listening range of the American people. Hasn't that been the domestic communist agenda since 1966? Dishonoring the troops was the only way the communists could get the American people to withdraw their support for the war.
And it worked. It also partnered the MSM with our worst enemies, a role they have relished ever since Walter Cronkite declared that the Tet offensive was a success for the VC. Today if Michael Moore's F911 is on par with Stolen Honor as he would have us believe, and the MSM continues to suggest, the American people must simply give up on the press and popular media as a source for truth.