Vietnam Vets Against John Kerry and Vietnamese-American Organizations Plan A Protest In NYC

Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry ^ | 2/20/04

[areafiftyone]

Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry and Vietnamese-American Organizations Coalition Announce Plans For A Protest Demonstration Against John Kerry
Where: New York City, 373 Park Avenue South (between 26the and 27the Streets) across from Kerry's campaign headquarters
Date: February 28, 2004
Time: 12:00 noon
Coalition spokesman:

Jerry Kiley, New York spokesman and demonstration coordinator can be reached at 845-947-3058.
Mike Benge, a US POW in Vietnam for 5 years is available for interviews at 703- 698-8256
Peter Nguyen, General Council of the Vietnamese Community of NY, will be available for interviews at 718-892-9500

Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry (V.V.A.J.K) has formed a national coalition with Vietnamese Americans for Human Rights in Vietnam. V

"We represent hundreds of thousand of American veterans who do not want to see John Kerry any where near the Oval Office," said Ted Sampley, founder of V.V.A.J.K, and a U.S. Army Green Beret and veteran of two combat tours in Vietnam.

Said Sampley, "I have personally dealt with John Kerry on the issue of US POWs left behind in Vietnam. Kerry is not truthful and is not worthy of the support of US veterans. Many Vietnam vets have been duped into thinking Kerry is their friend. He is not. To us, he is 'Hanoi John'"

Dan Tran, a NASA engineer and president of the Vietnam Human Rights Project, said, "John Kerry aided and abetted the communist government in Hanoi and has hindered any human rights progress in Vietnam."

Mike Benge, former civilian Viet Nam POW says, "John Kerry has fought harder for the Vietnamese communists than he fought against them in Vietnam.

"In the Senate, Kerry almost single handedly prevented a Vietnam Human Rights (and religious freedom) Bill from coming to a vote. Mean while the Vietnamese communists continue to wage a war of repression against our former South Vietnamese allies and a war of genocide against the Montagnard ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands of Vietnam."

Chau Nguyen, President of the Vietnamese Community in NY said, Pastors, Priests, and Buddhist Monks are being held against their will and many are beaten close to death on a regular basis"

When Kerry returned from military service in Vietnam he became a national leader and spokesperson of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In this role, Hanoi John campaigned against the efforts of the United States to contain the spread of communism throughout Southeast Asia. Under Kerry's leadership, VVAW members marched in demonstrations under the flags of the Viet Cong enemy and displayed pictures of Ho Chi Minh. They mocked the uniform of
United States soldiers by wearing tattered fatigues, many marked with pro-communist graffiti.

In congressional testimony Hanoi John called the U.S. involvement in Vietnam "a genocide against the Vietnamese people" and referred to his former comrades as "war criminals." The false image and social stigma portraying Vietnam vets as "drug-addicted baby killers and mindless drones" can be traced directly to John Kerry and his VVAW.

"It's one thing," said New York Vietnam veteran Jerry Kiley, "to oppose a war for moral reasons, but it's dishonorable to take that extra step and support the enemy. That's what John Kerry did."

Dan Tran, speaking as a member of Vietnamese Americans Against John Kerry said, "On behalf of tens of thousands of Vietnamese-Americans, we are determined to demonstrate against Senator Kerry all across this nation"

The Coalition plans nationwide demonstrations against Kerry beginning with
the New York primary.

www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnkerry.org

[SAMWolf]

Bump

[kellynla]

Thanks for the post. God Bless Them All! Semper Fi, Kelly

[areafiftyone]

I posted an announcement like this a week or so ago but there was no set date, time or place. I am glad this is finally coming together. I wish them lots of luck and am rooting for them 100%!

[kellynla]

Well if you are getting a ping list together please put me on it. I am not online much these days but I would certainly like to give my support and be informed. I've had a stomach full of the lefties for the past 40 years. Semper Fi, Kelly

[areafiftyone]

I was on their website and they don't have a e-mail list yet which I would love to get on. But I am going to buy some of their tee-shirts. Actually I saw one of those same tee-shirts when I was in Washington D.C. on Veterans Day one year. Great shirts. They have some kewl stuff to buy on their site.

[steve50]

That's what free speech zones are for, just as well use them.

[Lexington Green]

--
Walt Plaue
----- Original Message -----
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Sent: Saturday, February 14, 2004 6:17 PM
Subject: John Kerry...You decide


Sent to me by an old shipmate....

I was in the Delta shortly after he left. I know that area well. I
know the operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and the
doctrine used. I know the equipment. Although I was attached to
CTF-116 (PBRs) I spent a fair amount of time with CTF-115 (swift
boats), Kerry's command.

Here are my problems and suspicions:

(1) Kerry was in-country less than four months and collected, a Bronze
Star, a Silver Star and three purple hearts. I never heard of anybody
with any outfit I worked with (including SEAL One, the Sea Wolves,
Riverines and the River Patrol Force) collecting that much hardware so
fast, and for such pedestrian actions. The Swifts did a commendable job.
But that duty wasn't the worst you could draw. They operated only
along the coast and in the major rivers (Bassac and Mekong). The rough
stuff in the hot areas was mainly handled by the smaller, faster PBRs.

(2) Three Purple Hearts but no limp. All injuries so minor that no
time lost from duty. Amazing luck. Or he was putting himself in for
medals every time he bumped his head on the wheel house hatch? Combat
on the boats was almost always at close range. You didn't have minor
wounds. At least not often. Not three times in a row. Then he used
the three purple hearts to request a trip home eight months before the
end of his tour. Fishy.

(3) The details of the event for which he was given the Silver Star
make no sense at all. Supposedly, a B-40 was fired at the boat and
missed. Charlie jumps up with the launcher in his hand, the bow gunner
knocks him down with the twin .50, Kerry beaches the boat, jumps off,
shoots Charlie, and retreives the launcher. If true, he did everything
wrong.
(a) Standard procedure when you took rocket fire was to put your
stern to the action and go balls to the wall. A B-40 has the ballistic
integrity of a frisbie after about 25 yards, so you put 50 yards or so
between you and the beach and begin raking it with your .50's.
(b) Did you ever see anybody get knocked down with a .50 caliber
round and get up? The guy was dead or dying. The rocket launcher was
empty. There was no reason to go after him (except if you knew he was
no danger to you just flopping around in the dust during his last few
seconds on earth, and you wanted some derring do in your after-action
report). And we didn't shoot wounded people. We had rules against that,
too.
(c) Kerry got off the boat. This was a major breach of standing
procedures. Nobody on a boat crew ever got off a boat in a hot area.
EVER! The reason was simple. If you had somebody on the beach your
boat was defenseless. It coudn't run and it couldn' t return fire. It
was stupid and it put his crew in danger. He should have been relieved
and reprimanded. I never heard of any boat crewman ever leaving a boat
during or after a firefight.

Something is fishy.

Here we have a JFK wannabe (the guy Halsey wanted to court martial for
carelessly losing his boat and getting a couple people killed by running
across the bow of a Jap destroyer) who is hardly in Vietnam long enough
to get good tan, collects medals faster than Audie Murphy in a job where
lots of medals weren't common, gets sent home eight months early,
requests separation from active duty a few months after that so he can
run for Congress, finds out war heros don't sell well in Massachsetts in
1970 so reinvents himself as Jane Fonda, throws his ribbons in the dirt
with the cameras running to jump start his political career, gets
Stillborn Pell to invite him to address Congress and Bobby Kennedy's
speechwriter to do the heavy lifting, winds up in the Senate himself a
few years later, votes against every major defense bill, says the CIA is
irrelevant after the Wall came down, votes against the Gulf War, a big
mistake since that turned out well, decides not to make the same mistake
twice so votes for invading Iraq, but oops, that didn't turn out so well
so he now says he really didn't mean for Bush to go to war when he voted
to allow him to go to war.

I'm real glad you or I never had this guy covering out flanks in
Vietnam. I sure don't want him as Commander in Chief. I hope that
somebody from CTF-115 shows up with some facts challenging Kerry's
Vietnam record. I know in my gut it's wildy inflated. And fishy.

Keep smiling,

Mike

[areafiftyone]

Wow - God bless you both!

[KQQL]

Paul Galanti learned of Kerry's speech while held captive inside North Vietnam's infamous "Hanoi Hilton" internment camp. The Navy pilot had been shot down in June 1966 and spent nearly seven years as a prisoner of war.
During torture sessions, he said, his captors cited the antiwar speeches as "an example of why we should cross over to (their) side."
LA Times 02/17/04

[Coop]

Flag

[GailA]

http://lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Winter_Soldier/WS_45_1Infantry.html

http://avoc.info/info/article.php?article=858

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/elections/sns-2004election-kerryprofile,0,53345.story?coll=bal-election-storyutil

Some 150 sweat-soaked members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War ended their three-day trek at Valley Forge, Pa., on Sept. 7, 1970. Huddled around a flatbed truck, they listened to remarks by Jane Fonda and a reading from Donald Sutherland.

Between the main acts came a floppy-haired former Navy lieutenant who had won a fistful of medals on the bloody canals of the Mekong Delta. Tall and self-assured, 27-year-old Yale graduate John Kerry read from a rumpled sheaf of papers in the ringing voice that had commanded men on gunships.

Condemning the tactics and morality of the war, Kerry was "brilliant," Fonda says today. He looked like Abe Lincoln and sounded like John F. Kennedy. "He was our ragtag commander at Valley Forge," says veterans organizer Joe Bangert.

Over the next 14 months, Kerry became the VVAW's spokesman and a key leader. With a knack for raising money and organizing people, able to straddle the divide between angry protesters and the nation's uncertain majority, he helped transform the motley band of anti-war veterans into a potent political force. In soaring, eloquent speeches, Kerry channeled the rage of returning soldiers, pled their case before Congress and captured the attention of a war-torn nation.

http://www.tms.tribune.com/htmlmail/consumer/profiles/payne.htm

Kerry and his veterans did not desert but returned home to tell America what they had committed in the false name of national security. "We could be quiet," Kerry testified. "We could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not redcoats, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out." The prime indictment of the Winter Soldiers was that Vietnam was indeed a war waged under false pretenses. "There is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America," Kerry said. "And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart."

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-2004election-kerryprofile,0,4048777.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

Some 150 sweat-soaked members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War ended their three-day trek at Valley Forge, Pa., on Sept. 7, 1970. Huddled around a flatbed truck, they listened to remarks by Jane Fonda and a reading from Donald Sutherland.

Between the main acts came a floppy-haired former Navy lieutenant who had won a fistful of medals on the bloody canals of the Mekong Delta. Tall and self-assured, 27-year-old Yale graduate John Kerry read from a rumpled sheaf of papers in the ringing voice that had commanded men on gunships.

Condemning the tactics and morality of the war, Kerry was "brilliant," Fonda says today. He looked like Abe Lincoln and sounded like John F. Kennedy. "He was our ragtag commander at Valley Forge," says veterans organizer Joe Bangert.

Some 150 sweat-soaked members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War ended their three-day trek at Valley Forge, Pa., on Sept. 7, 1970. Huddled around a flatbed truck, they listened to remarks by Jane Fonda and a reading from Donald Sutherland.

Between the main acts came a floppy-haired former Navy lieutenant who had won a fistful of medals on the bloody canals of the Mekong Delta. Tall and self-assured, 27-year-old Yale graduate John Kerry read from a rumpled sheaf of papers in the ringing voice that had commanded men on gunships.

...........

Condemning the tactics and morality of the war, Kerry was "brilliant," Fonda says today. He looked like Abe Lincoln and sounded like John F. Kennedy. "He was our ragtag commander at Valley Forge," says veterans organizer Joe Bangert.

[GailA]

Looks like the mods beat me to the punch. The other photo was better because it had been lightened and hanoi john could be seen better.

[ellen_rometsch]

Not my analysis but:
G-man, Three caveats to remember before examining Lieutenant John F. Kerry's war record:

1.) Medal inflation. The Viet Nam War (VNW) was unpopular; in unpopular wars medals are generously awarded to try (usually unsuccessfully) to boost the morale of personnel and/or alter public opinion [the Wehrmacht on the Russian Front comes to mind -- Iron crosses were awarded in the 1000's]. The Navy was especially troublesome in this area because the majority of Naval personnel (aviators being the most prominent exception) in the VN theater were almost never exposed to enemy fire -- there were virtually no naval battles in the VNW (probably not even Tonkin Gulf as it turns out). River patrol craft personnel were thus the Navy's entree into the medal sweepstakes -- they got lots of them.

2.) Three and out. It was a naval tradition -- NOT AN OFFICIAL POLICY OR REGULATION -- that allowed personnel with three Purple Hearts to transfer to non-combat duty. JFK was well aware of this tradition.

3.) JFK's Rank. Although JFK was not a high ranking officer he was always the highest ranking officer ON THE SCENE -- these were small craft and small operations. Enlisted men would be unlikely to risk contradicting JFK's account of what happened -- and "boot lickers" would be encouraged to corroborate him. As ranking officer he was the one writing the eye-witness reports. In a sense his medals -- though approved by higher-ups -- were "self awarded."

With these three caveats firmly in mind let's look at JFK's record:

JFK experienced his first intense combat action on 2 December 1968. He was slightly wounded on his arm, he was awarded his first Purple Heart.

JFK was awarded his second Purple Heart after sustaining a minor shrapnel wound in his left thigh on 20 February 1969.

JFK was given a Silver Star for an action on 28 February 1969: JFK's Patrol Craft received a B-40 rocket shot from shore, he beached his craft in the center of the enemy positions and an enemy soldier sprang up from a nearby (10-15 ft.) hole and fled. The boat's forward machine gunner hit and wounded the fleeing VC as he darted behind a hooch. The twin .50s gunner also fired at the VC. The gunner said he "laid 50 rounds" into the hooch before JFK leaped from the boat and dashed in to administer a "coup de grace" to the soldier. JFK returned with a B-40 rocket and launcher. [In contrast, Army and Marine personnel were -- and are still -- routinely trained to engage and close with the enemy. Had JFK been commanding a platoon or rifle company this action -- going towards and not running away from enemy fire -- would have been routine.]

On March 13, 1969, a mine [this is dubious; marine mines were hardly used by NV forces; it was probably a propelled grenade of some type] detonated near JFK's boat, slighting wounding Kerry in the right arm. He was awarded his third Purple Heart. On the basis of these awards JFK then petitioned to be removed from combat operations. Interestingly JFK also made sure to have the men who served in his craft transferred to safer positions (easy to due in the VNW Navy) -- perhaps to ensure their endorsement of his actions.

CONCLUSION: JFK's brief term as a combat Naval officer smacks of "ticket punching" and not real valor.

JarHead Jake, (and I was there!)

[John Lenin]

We have to keep these protests alive and multiply them. The lib media will be hard pressed to ignore them if they are big enough.

[areafiftyone]

I have been checking their website nothing scheduled yet but they are bulding up their website and their Members Action Center. Hopefully they will be doing another one soon. I remember reading on the site about a month ago that they were going to do one in Dallas but it has been taken down from their site so maybe they decided against it for some reason.

[John Lenin]

keeping it bumped bump