[lilylangtree]

Right on!

[skr]

It would be interesting to hear from some of these veterans each time Kerry makes a speech.

[SwinneySwitch]

"...Fonda finally appeared on ABC's 20/20 to publicly apologize to all of the veterans she MAY have offended during the war."

Why not apologize to everyone she DID offend?

[Billthedrill]

Kerry's activists hoped to recreate the anti-war atmosphere of the 70's in his campaign. They've succeeded, and all of a sudden it doesn't look so good. For one thing, it gives some of us who have nursed a thirty-year grudge the chance, at last, to shoot back without the hindrance that a uniform constituted to political activity then.

Bring it on, baby. I for one have been waiting for something like this for a long, long time.

[ntnychik]

Re the "authorship" of The New Soldier, refer to Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement, by Gerald Nicosia (Crown, 2001).

p. 115: "As [Al Hubbard] was later to write in The New Soldier, the casebook on Dewey Canyon assembled by VVAW and published by Collier, a black could not help wondering about the many paradoxes of the war: 'hearing a Vietnamese invite you to live in his home, after the war, and an American explain why you can't live in his block, after the war' and 'feeling happy to be leaving a country in which you do not belong and sad to be returning to a country in which you are not allowed to belong.'"

pp. 148-149: "[Bobby Muller] agreed to contribute an autobiographical essay to the book on Dewey Canyon that John Kerry and his friends were assembling, which was published later that year by Collier under the title The New Soldier. Muller's piece ended up being one of the strongest in the book, forever cementing his connection with VVAW--a connection that would cause him a good deal of embarrassment over the years, as he tried to build a broad-based veterans' constituency, and which he would often try to play down."

p. 155 "John Kerry's brother-in-law David Thorne and his friend George Butler had documented (with tape recorder and camera respectively) the entire Dewey Canyon III operation as Thorne's senior project at the Columbia School of Journalism. Because veterans were 'hot' just then, Collier offered them a book contract--but only provided John Kerry's name was on the book jacket--and the book, called The New Soldier, was rushed into print within a few months. The initial print run was 35,000 copies--quite impressive for that day. The advance was also sizable (most of it was donated to VVAW). Thorne was thus puzzled to find the book available in few bookstores. The next thing he knew, the editor who had commissioned the book was fired. On the grapevine, Thorne heard that 'the White House really put the kibosh on it [The New Soldier]." He was told that 'Nixon was freaked out by the book--he was really worried that the veterans' movement was going to make the antiwar movement legit.'"

[nutmeg]

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[JLO]

Good find!