Posted on 07/03/2004 7:29:13 PM PDT by Spackidagoosh
Gen. Giap: Kerry's Group Helped Hanoi Defeat U.S.
The North Vietnamese general in charge of the military campaign that finally drove the U.S. out of South Vietnam in 1975 credited a group led by Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry with helping him achieve victory.
In his 1985 memoir about the war, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap wrote that if it weren't for organizations like Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S. - according to Fox News Channel war historian Oliver North.
That's why, he predicted on Tuesday, the Vietnam War issue "is going to blow up in Kerry's face."
"People are going to remember Gen. Giap saying if it weren't for these guys [Kerry's group], we would have lost," North told radio host Sean Hannity.
"The Vietnam Veterans Against the War encouraged people to desert, encouraged people to mutiny - some used what they wrote to justify fragging officers," noted the former Marine lieutenant colonel, who earned two purple hearts in Vietnam.
"John Kerry has blood of American soldiers on his hands," North said.
It's very important to check sources
NewsMax.com ran a story on Feb. 10 titled, "Gen. Giap: Kerry's group helped Hanoi defeat U.S."
The story claimed, "In his 1985 memoir about the war, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap wrote if it weren't for organizations like Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S. — according to Fox News Channel war historian Oliver North."
North's claim has been repeated as gospel in numerous articles, blogs, commentaries and pseudo-news reports, despite the fact the Giap memoir is bogus. According to WashingtonDispatch.com columnist Greg Lewis, who researched the alleged quotation, "No such volume exists."
Lewis wrote, "A few weeks ago in a column about Kerry, I referred to what has turned out to be an `urban legend.' Specifically, based on a `news' item that appeared on NewsMax.com, I repeated a reference to a volume of memoirs supposedly published by North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap in 1985 as the source of an assertion by Colonel Oliver North. After a reader requested a reference to Giap's 1985 `Memoirs,' I did research that convinced me no such volume exists. For that matter, I haven't been able to verify through Fox News that Colonel North actually made the comments he is said to have made and which I repeated."
In the past, Gen. Giap is alleged to have made similar statements about Jane Fonda and Walter Cronkite, though there is no verifiable evidence that he ever did. Revisionist historians take note. Check your sources, no matter how much you want to believe the lie.
Walter F. Wouk, Cobleskill
http://www.thedailystar.com/opinion/letters/2004/04/lt0416.html
I don't know, myself. Off a-googling I will go.
The suggestion that VVAW lengthened the war comes from convicted arms dealer, perjurer, and media personality Oliver North. In a cited quote from North (Greg Lewis, "Fellow Travelers, Useful Idiots, and Other Innocents", Washington Dispatch, 2/19/2004), North alleges that Giap in a 1985 book stated that John Kerry and VVAW lengthened the war and insured the ultimate Vietnamese victory. Giap published no 1985 book. THERE IS NO SUCH QUOTE in either of General Giap's two post-war publications (Vo Nguyen Giap, Unforgettable Months And Years, Southeast Asia Program, Dept. of Asian Studies, Cornell University, 1975 or How We Won the War (coauthored by Van Tien Dung) RECON Publications, 1976).
This particular slander on VVAW and Kerry was disseminated on the Internet from a column in the Washington Dispatch by Greg Lewis, February 19, 2004. (Complete article: http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_8129.shtml) In reaction to responses to his original column, on March 2, 2004, Greg Lewis retracted his initial accusation against Kerry with: "A few weeks ago in a column about Kerry, I referred to what has turned out to be an 'urban legend.'
Specifically, based on a 'news' item that appeared on NewsMax.com, I repeated a reference to a volume of memoirs supposedly published by North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap in 1985 as the source of an assertion by Colonel Oliver North. After a reader requested a reference to Giap's 1985 "Memoirs," I did research that convinced me no such volume exists. For that matter, I haven't been able to verify through Fox News that Colonel North actually made the comments he is said to have made and which I repeated. My apologies to Colonel North and to WashingtonDispatch.com readers for including inadequately verified material in my piece on Kerry."
Complete article: http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_8268.shtml
If the VVAW has this one right, lets not dig the pit deeper.
Newsmax does it again?
And Giap apparently didn't have any 1985 memoirs.
But that does not change the reality that Kerry and his ilk were a huge asset for Ho and Giap.
Agreed. And reposting urban legends doesn't help to spread that message.
Okay, I havent actually read the book but here are two intriguing reviews on amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0916894010/qid=1088912262/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl14/102-3812331-7790528?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
"Nor is this the book in which Gen. Giap supposedly stated that groups such at the Vietnam Veterans Against the War gave the North the resolve to carry on."
And Conflicting with that is...
"Especially, enlightening is where Giap said that organizations such as "Viet Nam Vets Against the War" (started by John Kerry) gave the North courage and resolve."
It might be worth a couple of bucks to pick it up used and give it a read.
i read an article many years ago in the NY Times by an author who interviewed Giap. i remember giap as saying that they knew they would win because the north vietnamese were willing to take numbers of casualties that americans would never be willing to accept.
even if we had obliterated north viet nam or occupied it, they would have just hid out in cambodia or china, and continued a guerilla war from there.
the cost of winning the war in terms of american lives was probably not something americans would have been willing to pay, and the war might just never have ended.
i think it is was Gen. McArthur who cautioned against fighting wars on the mainland of asia. i think he was probably right.
Gen. Giap, in a series of postbellum interviews, confessed that the North Vietnamese were ready to cease aggression under the weight of the 1972 and 1973 bombing campaigns. He then directly associated the reprieve with the welcome efforts of the radical antiwar movement. Indeed he told French television that his most important guerrilla ally during the war was the American press. The Vietnam News Agency as early as 1966 wrote "We praise the American peace champions. The movement of the American people to protest the war of aggression has really become the second front against the U.S. imperialists." Another communist official, Bui Tinh, claimed that Fonda's Hanoi visits, press releases and much publicized photo-ops in enemy batteries had helped the communists "to hold on in the face of battlefield reverses."
Now of course Kerry isn't mentioned by name, but he for sure was part of the "radical antiwar movement" and could be counted among those our enemies in Vietnam saw as the "American peace champions".......
Former American POWs have stated that Kerry's 1971 Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony got used by their captors to break the Americans' will.
No need to hand the VVAW a victory by reposting an urban legend, with live ammunition at hand.
Giap may well have praised the VVAW, but not Kerry, and not in 1985.
More Interesting historical news about kerry's notoriety:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1091943/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1160580/posts
Some of Hillary's and John Effin's friends listed below:
http://www.cpusa.org/
http://www.dsausa.org/
DSA's "Progressive Caucas" Links below:
http://bernie.house.gov/pc/
http://bernie.house.gov/pc/members.asp
The Enemy Within!!!!
I don't understand why those that posted responses to you seem not to get that fact clear.
Maybe this thread should be deleted so as not to give Kerry any ammunition against us when we do post the true stuff??
We need auditors and salesmen both.:)
I disagree. This thread shows FR as a truth detecting enterprise.
I don't understand why those that posted responses to you seem not to get that fact clear.
Has anyone denied the urban legend charge, in the specific details discussed?
Even better! I am fearful that these faked stories are put out there by the Kerry camp to "get us". But your point is valid - It may serve good to shopw that we can tell the BS from the truth even if we want to believe the BS. But I still think the Admin moderator should get a heads up regardless.
- scopes.com may have the skinny/
"Sorry, no matches were found containing 'kerry giap'."
So sayeth snopes.
"Aid and Comfort": Jane Fonda in North Vietnam, Henry Mark Holzer and Erika Holzer, McFarland & Co., 2002, page 80:
Fonda's trip to Hanoi sent a message not only to the American public, but to the North Vietnamese as well. Here is an exchange between The Wall Street Journal and Col. Bui Tin, a dedicated Communist cadre for most of this life, and one of the first officers of the North Vietnamese army to enter Saigon on the day it fell.
Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's Victory?
A: It was essential to our strategy. Support for the war from our rear [from China] was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda. . .gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vienamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.
Q: Did the politburo pay attention to these visits?
A: Keenly.
Q: Why?
A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.14
14. "How North Vietnam Won the War," The Wall Street Journal, August 3, 1995; emphasis added.
What does the above have to do with this article's specifics?
 The book that Kerry wishes would just go away. |
HanoiJohnKerry.com is a blog with a primary purpose. That purpose is to counter the preposterous claims of Sen. John Forbes Kerry (D-MA) that he has any legitimate claim to any sort of "brotherhood" among combat veterans of the War in Vietnam. While it is generally supposed that his service as a Naval officer on a "Swift Boat" in that theater was adequate and honorable, there is much to question regarding his readiness to allow the accolade "war hero" to be applied to him. Likewise, it is not at all uncommon for more senior Naval officers to raise an eyebrow at the swiftness and relative comfort by which Lt. JG Kerry attained those medals, and who is available to vouch for the efficacy of his being awarded them (since, as boat commander, it would be his own task to make recommendation for awards for all personnel, including himself, on the Swift Boat). But most egregious was his conduct, words and associations upon his early-out (from SEA) return to the USA and discharge from the US Navy. His leadership role with the radical pro-Communist (inaccurate to deem this group "anti-war") group called "Vietnam Veterans Against the [Vietnam] War" (hereafter VVAW). |
|
It was while climbing the social and political ladder of the pro-Soviet Left as a principle of VVAW that John Kerry found his political soul-mate in Hanoi Jane Fonda. Granted, these politically formative years for Kerry were prior to the more outlandish acts of Fonda that earned her that name, but it is easily documentable that Fonda did not under go any radical transformation in belief or character from the time she and Kerry were working the same side of the street to the time she traveled to Hanoi, NVN and entered US history as the most overt traitor to ever NOT be charged, tried and executed. John Kerry went to his own overt extremes to demonstrate that, politically, socially and in lowness of character, there wasn't a nickel's worth of difference between he and Fonda. Thus, in the spirit of fairness and accuracy, we are reasonably certain that he will be agreeably flattered by calling him Hanoi John Kerry. |
 Here, testifying before the Fulbright Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is where John Kerry, spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, cemented his position and moniker as "Hanoi John" Kerry. This was the occasion where US troops still in the field in Vietnam learned from one of their FORMER brothers-in-arms that they were heinous murderers and war criminals. HJK would now like to call on them for support in his bid to be the new Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Perhaps the most preposterous hypocrisy of all. |
#23. Thanks for the Post and PING, PhilDragoo!!!!:-)
Best FReegards, D2
So far the Kerry camp has weathered 3 rumors - the affairs rumor - the faked Jane and Kerry photo and this story - so my question is who is putting these things out there? Methinks the Kerry camp is putting out disinfo in order to blunt any true stories about Kerry's "messy" past?
kerry's admissions before a U.S. Congressional Commitee are on record:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1091943/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1160580/posts
They may not need to, with Newsmax charging forward
No need to be afraid that I converted and need to bombard me with facts about another sort of - somewhat related topic to this article. Your links had nothing to do with this article's specific assertions.
I am curious - why did you suddenly feel a need to post those links to me? Did you assume I was unaware of them?
This is what you just did to me - Now we all agree Hitler was evil, right? Now let's say an urban legend pops up that says Hitler had sex with his mother. It sounds true - because Hitler had an intense attachment to his mother - but no truth exists between that idea.
So I would post back - I don't think Hitler had sex with his mother - and the response by you would be to post links to Hitler's sexual problems and possible homosexual leanings - as if my questioning a false legend about Hitler banging his mother somehow was a defense of that monster.
Ease up.
Mango ping...
But those that post all those links act as if we just did something positive for Kerry and need to be corrected in our actions with alternate posts - which do not relate to this topic.
That is the behavior I don't get.
A lot of your post to me was unnecessary. All I was trying to point out to you was that kerry, not belonging to an Official U.S. delegation, went to Paris in 1971 and negotiated with NVA and Viet Cong Officials on his behalf and NOT of the U.S. Governments behalf, it was not sanctioned by the U.S. Government. kerry was still part of the inactive reserve at this time.
I know Kerry went to Paris - an act he should have gone to jail for. But why did you post it? It did not prove this specific Newsmax article correct.
So were you posting those links to me to imply that this disputed Newsmax article was indeed correct? That is what I am confused about. What your links have to do with proving the specifics in this disputed article.
I did not mean to have it sound like a flame - was not.
I posted those links to you in case you were unaware of them, that is all. and enough of the hitler analogies in your post to me. They are unnecessary. And No I did not think you were flaming me just as I am not flaming you, Destro. I have seen your posts before and know you have been around here a long time now.
But Sorry, Gen. Giap did claim in his writings, the VVAW(which includes kerry) and other protesters'(including ms. ACK ACK Fonda were by and large part of their success in Viet Nam, exactly what is being done today by the left against our War on Terror.
P.S. Some of the poeple who do not want to fight the terrorists, their friends are listed below:
http://www.cpusa.org/
http://www.dsausa.org/
DSA's "Progressive Caucas" Links below:
http://bernie.house.gov/pc/
http://bernie.house.gov/pc/members.asp
They are the Enemy Within!!!!
So it seems Newsmax got the jist of the story correct but confused where the facts came from or confused the facts a little? Hmmmmm..........
Which leads me to think - Is the Kerry camp spinning these so called urban legends - making them more juicy so that they can be spread and then bebunked - and once debunked no one in the medias will look into the true facts of the story? I know that sound paranoid but it also sounds true.
That possibly could be the case, Destro.
Check out my post #28 and #33.
I can see that you might suspect that, but I don't. No one has denied the flaws in Newsmax' story, and some have acknowledged them.
Later - time to hit the hay.
Thanks for the post and ping, PhilDragoo. kerry should never have been elected to office, never mind running for President. kerry should be finishing a sentence at Leavonworth.
His public statements and actions were slanderous of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who served honorably.
He gave aid and comfort to an enemy which subsequently executed tens of thousands of innocent civilians.
#42. Yes, kerry indeed should be in the middle of serving a long sentence in Leavonworth!!!!
BTTT!!!!
Time for a BUMP!!!!
#46. Chirac must absolutely love Madam Binh, just like kerry does(probably kofi as well)!!!!
Best FReegards to you, Phildrago,
Happy 4th of July,
Defender2
D2
:-)
#48. Appropriate!!!!
:-)
D2
Time for a BUMP!!!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.