Posted on 09/06/2004 10:08:48 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Vast attention has been given to the ads in which Swift Boat Veterans For Truth allege that John Kerry lied about his Vietnam service, but we’ve been looking at the wrong question. The question is not whether Kerry is a hero or the liberal version of Major Frank “Ferret Face” Burns from “M*A*S*H.” The question is whether Kerry is a traitor or a war criminal, or both.
If that seems like strong language, you haven’t read Kerry’s book, The New Soldier, which you can find at www.wintersoldier.com. It details some of Kerry’s activities with Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April, 1971. Under oath, Kerry alleged that American troops were committing war crimes every day, including rape, torture, cutting off limbs and ears, and random shooting of civilians. He said officers at every level approved of and insisted on it. Kerry would later claim on “Meet The Press” that he’d also committed atrocities. One wonders if his “Band of Brothers” campaign entourage helped him slaughter innocent villagers, as he claimed in a 1971 newspaper interview. He can’t have it both ways.
Kerry’s testimony was prompted by the “Winter Soldier Investigation.” At these VVAW hearings, veterans testified about the atrocities they’d committed or witnessed. They were lying. Later investigations found that few had served at all; almost none served in Vietnam. Some even used identities stolen from real combat vets. The real purpose was to get “confessions” for propaganda purposes, and they were used to great effect.
Just ask Leo Thorsness. He won the Congressional Medal of Honor over Vietnam when he put his relatively clumsy F-105 between several MiGs and some rescue helicopters. Shot down eleven days later, he languished in the “Hanoi Hilton” prison system for nearly 6 years. He says, “Without question, we were held captive longer because of the anti-war people, the Kerrys, the Fondas and Haydens, the names we knew over there - they encouraged the enemy to hang on.” Most prisoners had been tortured because they refused to confess to war crimes. Kerry and the Winter Soldier “witnesses” did it for them. North Vietnam’s supreme commander, Vo Nguyen Giap, confirmed this in 1985: “[I]f it were not for the disunity created by...stateside protests, Hanoi would have ultimately surrendered.”
Odds are you have a Vietnam vet in your family or circle of friends and acquaintances. Would he push prisoners out a helicopter door to fall to their deaths? Call in artillery fire on a village just for fun? Intentionally kill women and children and count them as Viet Cong soldiers? Keep an ear collection? Skin another human being alive? Would he just stand by while a group of allied soldiers raped North Vietnamese nurses, cut parts of their bodies off and even found a way to violate them to death? These are some of the charges that are listed in The New Soldier. After serving with the Swift Boat crews of the U.S. Navy, John Kerry either believed these things, or he knew he was falsely accusing millions of Vietnam vets.
Sadly, it’s not old news: Kerry repeated the war crime allegations as recently as this April on “Meet The Press. That’s why some tough questions should be asked when Kerry crewman Jim Wasser comes to Freeport to speak this Wednesday. Did Wasser personally commit war crimes? Were war crimes the order of the day in Vietnam? If not, why is he supporting a perjurer who gave aid and comfort to the enemy? If so, why should we all line up to vote for John Kerry, highly decorated war criminal? Because he has nice hair? If Kerry wins, should we introduce our troops to their new commander by giving them each a copy of The New Soldier?
In my first column for the Ink I noted that Kerry’s defense speeches reminded me of a naval officer named John Waldron who lost his life at the Battle of Midway. Kerry’s post-service activities remind me of another officer, a man who left wealth to fight for our country. He was wounded on foreign soil while defending American liberty, and wounded again in a death-defying action that saved the lives of American fighting men.
His name? Benedict Arnold.
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> I have more respect for John Kerry's actions in Viet Nam ...
I did until he made it a campaign issue, and I studied
the record.
> ... than Bush's ...
Both signed up for Reserve (ANG, USNR), and as I read the
record, Bush signed up for an assignment that could easily
have resulted in an RVN deployment, but was just
plain dangerous even in TX.
Kerry signed up for deep-water navy, and how he ended
up on PCFs is so far, not an impressive story.
>. ... or Cheney's.
What, no mention of Edwards, and why he chose
deferment over serving?
> Maybe it is just me, but this is one presidential
> argument I do not like.
And I frankly didn't expect it to be raised, until
Kerry did. I would have given him the benefit of
the doubt on the service and medals until the DNC.
I'm with you on that...sKerry picked this fight, either because he got bad advice or he knows he has no other leg to stand on.
Despite their efforts to disparage the SwiftVets for Truth (even consistently calling them SwiftVets for Bush), they have not discredited a single assertion, as far as I can tell. John O'Neil did not just come out of the woodwork. He has taken strong offense at being called a Jenjis Con (whatever that is) by sKerry since he returned from serving a FULL tour commanding the same Swhiftboat sKerry had. He debated him on Dick Cavett in 1971 and challenged him to debate him in more public forums.
The SwiftVets claim, and I for one believe them, that they do not have a political horse in this race...they just know for certain that one of the horses does should not be in the race for very good reasons. They feel they have a patriotic duty to try and make the American public aware of what they know about sKerry and how strongly they believe he is "unfit for command".
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