KERRY'S PAST IS DISTURBING ON MANY LEVELS... -- Is He A Fake War Hero & Patriot?

Vietnam Veterans are not "flocking" to John Kerry's campaign, as his camp would all have us believe. In the South Carolina primary, Kerry's campaign made a big deal out of the monumental support they received from Vietnam Veterans. But when all was said and done, the Kerry campaign received only 33% of the veteran vote. In other words, the veteran's of South Carolina didn't vote for him by a ratio of 2:1. That's a far cry from monumental support.

Kerry has been doing quite a bit of walking on both sides of the fence when it comes to his military career and his anti-war activities. While he should be commended for his service to our country -- service that many others gave their lives performing -- his anti-war activities after his service are what many critics are finding disturbing.

In testimony before Congress, Vietnam veteran Kerry alleged that atrocities were being committed by American troops in the Southeast Asian country. He told of rapes and mutilations, torture and murder. He spoke of these allegations -- most of which never were and never have been proven (with the exception of the massacre at My Lai and a few very isolated instances) -- at the same time that U.S. service men and women were still fighting and dying in the Vietnam rice fields, cities and jungles (and many captured U.S. soldiers were been starved and tortured by their North Vietnam captors in ramshackle prisons). While today, he spotlights the deeds that garnered him a chest full of medals, he omits to mention that he broke the code of leaving no-one behind when he turned his back on those who were still fighting in Vietnam after his return (or worse were captives there).

Those may sound like harsh words, but one real "expert" who would know has said Kerry's efforts after his time in Vietnam actually helped the enemy, the North Vietnamese. General Vo Nguyen Giap, the general in charge of the North Vietnamese military campaign that finally drove the U.S. out of South Vietnam in 1975, credited Kerry's 'Vietnam Veterans Against the War' with helping North Vietnam achieve victory. Giap has said that he believes groups such as Kerry's and the American media played an important part in Hanoi finally winning the war.

Couple all of this with a few little known facts and we can begin to see how Kerry has manipulated the actualities of his past in order to tailor them for his future.

In fact, Kerry's tenure on his first swift boat, No. 44, left him with no honors but rather some skeletons. While in command of Swift Boat No. 44, Kerry and crew functioned without forethought in a 'Free Fire Zone,' injudiciously firing at targets of opportunity and achieving a number of enemy kills along with some civilian deaths as well. His body count included a woman, her baby, a 12 year-old boy, an elderly man and several South Vietnamese soldiers. He freely admits participating in this type of activity and the casualties they caused - even the civilian casualties.

Between December of 1968 and February of 1969, Kerry received two of his three purple hearts -- one for a minor injury to his arm and another for a minor injury to his thigh.

He then took command of a second swift boat, No. 94, which operated in the Mekong Delta. Under his command they totaled 18 missions over a period of 48 days, a far cry from the many who completed full tours of duty there. It was for this assignment that he was awarded his Silver Star for killing a Viet Cong soldier who was already pinned down and wounded in a "Hooch" courtesy of Kerry's .50 caliber gunner. It was also on swift boat No. 94 where he received his third Purple Heart for once again receiving a minor wound from a mine that went off adjacent to his swift boat. Later, when asked about the severity of the combat injuries, Kerry himself said that one of them cost him about two days of service, and that the other two did not interrupt his duty. He classified himself as "walking wounded."

Keep in mind that John Forbes Kerry was the commander of his swift boats and that as commander he was the one charged with citing people in his command for commendations, an interesting fact to say the least....

A combination of a couple of things going on about John Kerry. The upper brass in the Navy WANTED him away of any further engagement with the enemy, as he was about to turn into a Rambo-type robo-warrior, and a repeat of the fiasco that occurred at My Lai, with Lt. William Calley. The swift issuance of the three Purple Heart awards provided a cover story that made a plausible explanation, and the Silver Star was to ward off future questions.

This strategy by the US Navy would only work if John Kerry would keep his mouth shut about a lot of the events that led up to his transfer. But being a vain child of relative privilege, and with an opportunity to turn his experiences to political advantage, Kerry staked out several positions, which would seem to contradict all that the military engagement in Viet Nam was originally about, when the US first went in there. Admittedly, whatever objectives the US President in 1968 was pursuing, had changed considerably from the original objective in 1961, which was to assist the Vietnamese of the South in their civil war they had with Communist insurgents from the North, from Laos, and from Cambodia.

Keep in mind that Nixon INHERITED a war in 1969, he did not initiate it. And he had to change the rules of engagement to encompass daring new direction, to compensate for some badly considered strategies that had made the US forces hostage to the least whim of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. The US military, and support from the covert operatives, were making huge strides in recovering the intiative on the combat operations, driving the VC and NVA back at almost every opportunity.

The Gentlemen of the Left were INSULTED that this upstart, this retread, this Red-baiter, Richard Nixon, was so cheeky as to make a military move against the simple agrarian reformers of Viet Nam, WHEN ALL THE OTHER SIDE WANTED WAS PEACE! Did Nixon want to drag Red China into the war? What was he thinking? The real anti-war rhetoric was cranked up as a countermeasure to the relative success the US was enjoying militarily. It was one thing to contain the worst behavior of some peasants, it was another thing entirely to try to deliberately destroy the "progressive" regime of Ho Chi Minh. That had to be stopped, even if it meant taking Nixon down by impeachment. There may have been serious consideration of even possibly assassinating Nixon, but then, Spiro Agnew would become President. And the Left was even more frightened of that possibility, than they were with keeping Nixon.

You know the history. Spiro became the first target, and he was replaced, in one of the strangest and most bizarre tales of government intrigue since the days of Prince Machiavelli, replaced by a person the Left considered to be an amiable dupe, Gerald Ford. Nixon was practically frog-marched out of office, not by the Democrats, but by the Republicans.

Of course, the Viet Nam war was over, the US having been driven out, not so much by the VC or NVA, as by a total collapse in the will to prosecute the war. Part of the collapse of will may be ascribed directly to the agitation that John Kerry engaged in, for personal political gain, here in the US.

Nothing has changed in over thirty years.

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