Weekend News Today -Feb 20,2004 -- A former Vietnam POW is alleging that his Hanoi captors specifically cited Sen. John Kerry's 1971 anti-war testimony to Congress as they brutally tortured him to get him to turn on his fellow GIs. One-time Navy pilot Paul Galanti was shot down over North Vietnam in 1966 and spent seven years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton. He told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday that he learned of Kerry's April 1971 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee while being tortured by his Hanoi Hilton guards.
According to the Times, "during torture sessions, [Galanti] said, his captors cited the antiwar speeches as 'an example of why we should cross over to [their] side.'"
In his account to the Senate, Kerry accused U.S. soldiers of routinely committing rapes, beheadings, mutilations and all manner of atrocities against the Vietnamese people.
Galanti told the Times that Kerry's decision to publicly allege that U.S. soldiers were war criminals "jeopardize[d] those still in battle or in the hands of the enemy." Because he did, Galanti said, "John Kerry was a traitor to the men he served with." "The Viet Cong didn't think they had to win the war on the battlefield," the ex-POW said, "because thanks to these protesters they were going to win it on the streets of San Francisco and Washington."
Although Galanti's fellow POW, Sen. John McCain, has been silent in recent years about the damage Sen. Kerry caused as a leader of the radical group Vietnam Veterans Against the War, in 1973 McCain told U.S. News & World Report that throughout his imprisonment, his North Vietnamese 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," the Arizona Republican explained.
But Galanti is the first POW to say that his Hanoi Hilton guards expressly invoked Sen. Kerry's words during their brutal torture sessions. In his comments to the Times, he accused the Democratic presidential front-runner of having blood on his hands, contending, "The Vietnam memorial has thousands of additional names due to John Kerry and others like him."
In a follow-up interview with Fox News Channel's John Gibson, Galanti said he'll take his story directly to the American people if the press fails to expose the truth about candidate Kerry.
"Let me tell you one thing. It looks like John Kerry is going to get the nomination," he told Gibson. "If he does, I'm going to come out of the woodwork, and there's a whole bunch of us [who feel] the same way."
McCain, unlike Kerry, earned respect for the price he paid for his honorable service to our nation. But the man is frankly unstable (perhaps because of his service) and getting worse. I can honor his military service and sacrifice, while acknowledging that it doesn't entitle him to a permanent spotlight on history's stage. I understand the political reasons he was chosen for prominence at the upcoming RNC convention, but he doesn't deserve it.
John tries to appear "statesman" like
as though he is above the fray, and has
let by-gones be by-gones.
Well, when the by-gone is traitorism involving
the dork who will say and do anything to get
elected POTUS, it is truly the time for McCain
to stand alongside his former POWS and the Swifties,
because in his heart, he knows the Swifties are
telling the truth.
Forget the scourge of dirty politics --- Kerry, Soros
and the DNC revile in it and this time our side is
fightig back.
The media go to McCain everytime, knowing he wants
to be seen as a statesman.