Posted on 2/17/2004, 5:46:04 PM by truthandlife
These days former Vietnam war POW Sen. John McCain has nothing but praise for his fellow Vietnam veteran, Sen. John Kerry, the Democrats' current presidential front-runner.
But after he was released from the Hanoi Hilton in 1973, Sen. McCain publicly complained that testimony by Kerry and others before J. William Fullbright's Senate Foreign Relations Committee was "the most effective propaganda [my North Vietnamese captors] had to use against us."
"They used Senator Fullbright a great deal," McCain wrote in the May 14, 1973 issue of U.S. News & World Report. While he was languishing in a North Vietnamese prison cell, Kerry was telling the Fullbright Committee that U.S. soldiers were committing war crimes in Vietnam as a matter of course.
Sen. Ted Kennedy, a key Kerry presidential backer, was "quoted again and again" by jailers at the Hanoi Hilton, McCain said.
"Clark Clifford was another [North Vietnamese] favorite," the ex-POW told U.S. News, "right after he had been Secretary of Defense under President Johnson."
"When Ramsey Clark came over [my jailers] thought that was a great coup for their cause," McCain recalled. Months earlier Sen. Kerry had appeared with Clark at the April 1971 Washington, D.C. anti-war protest that showcased his testimony before the Fullbright Committee.
"All through this period," wrote McCain, his captors were "bombarding us with anti-war quotes from people in high places back in Washington. This was the most effective propaganda they had to use against us."
McCain biographer Paul Alexander chronicled the Arizona Republican's anger toward Kerry during their early careers in the Senate together.
"For many years McCain held Kerry's actions against him because, while McCain was a POW in the Hanoi Hilton, Kerry was organizing veterans back home in the U.S. to protest the war."
In his 2002 book, "Man of the People: the Life of John McCain," Alexander says that the two Vietnam vets finally reconciled in the early 1990s after having "a long - and at times emotional - conversation about Vietnam" during a mutual trip to Kuwait.
Later, Kerry sought to minimize the rift, telling Alexander, "Our differences occurred when we were kids, or at least close to being kids. It was a long time ago, and we both came back and realized that there were a lot of difficulties in the prosecution of that war."
NewsMax gratefully acknowledges the help of U.S. Veteran's Dispatch editor Ted Sampley for supplying McCain's revealing 1973 account in U.S. News.
Sorry, Kerry, that dog won't hunt. You weren't a "kid" when you betrayed those soldiers in Vietnam, you were a military officer.
McCain could be Bush's hole card, if Bush plays it right.
He was on the "Daily Show" and ridiculed Bush and joined in on insulting W's intelligence with John Stewart. McCain can kiss my arse... One thing McCain should never do is trust a damn commie.
This is the same code of spineless comraderie that Orrin Hatch follows, such as when he admitted to Sean Hannity that if Jay Rockefeller had politicized the intelligence committee then Jay ought to be "criticized" (as opposed to being asked to resign).
By the way, this code of comraderie is a guide for Republicans only. Democrats can attack with impunity. And the Republicans are aware of this double standard imposed on them; it "troubles" them.
"The experience of war does a great deal more than make men out of boys. All wars, be they just and necessary or not, are epic calamities and their devastation and inhumanity will cause moments of doubt in the mind of the most ardent soldier and trouble all but the meanest conscience. In TOUR OF DUTY, an account of my friend John Kerry's experiences and great courage in Vietnam, and his role in our national debate over the lost cause, Doug Brinkley does a masterful job of showing how war, with its unique mix of sacrifice and malice, courage and trepidation, both burdens and strengthens the heart of the combatant, who learns in equal measure how cruel and how noble human beings can be." - John McCain
"The experience of war does a great deal more than make men out of boys. All wars, be they just and necessary or not, are epic calamities and their devastation and inhumanity will cause moments of doubt in the mind of the most ardent soldier and trouble all but the meanest conscience. In TOUR OF DUTY, an account of my friend John Kerry's experiences and great courage in Vietnam, and his role in our national debate over the lost cause, Doug Brinkley does a masterful job of showing how war, with its unique mix of sacrifice and malice, courage and trepidation, both burdens and strengthens the heart of the combatant, who learns in equal measure how cruel and how noble human beings can be." - John McCain
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