Why Vietnamese-Americans Will Not Vote For Senator Kerry

Senator John F. Kerry has touted his Vietnam experience as a key qualification for being president. Ironically, and precisely because of his Vietnam experience, I will join most Vietnamese Americans in opposing his candidacy.

Ever since Lieutenant Kerry chased and executed a wounded communist guerrilla more than 30 years ago, he has done everything in his power to support the communist regime's efforts to strangle human rights and democracy in Vietnam. Senator Kerry has also become one of the most loyal boosters of Hanoi's interests in America. The victorious communists of Vietnam have publicly and repeatedly over the years thanked John F. Kerry for helping them defeat the "American imperialists."

There is simply no question that the Hanoi regime has systematically abused its own people. Numerous governments entities, including the European Union and the US State Department, have joined human-rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders to condemn Hanoi's persecution of Buddhist monks, Catholic priests, Protestant ministers, journalists, Internet dissidents and even ex-communist soldiers.

Hanoi has put all leaders of Vietnamese independent Buddhist churches either in prison or under house arrest. It also sentenced Catholic priest Nguyen Van Ly to 12 years of hard labor for submitting a testimony to the Congress. A physician, Dr. Pham Hong Son, received an 11-year sentence for translating the article "What is Democracy" from the US Embassy website and circulating it on the Internet. Nguyen Vu Binh, a former editor of the Communist Review, received a seven-year sentence for asking the government to establish a political party.

On Eastern Sunday April 11, 2004, Hanoi’s police violently attacked a peaceful march of Vietnamese Christian mountain people, killing hundreds of them and forcing thousands into hiding in jungles or fleeing to neighboring Cambodia. In May, police surrounded Minister Nguyen Hong Quang’s house, dragged him out, beaten the daylight out of him and then arrested him. In July, Hanoi sentenced the elderly literature professor Tran Khue and Retired Colonel Pham Que Duong to 19 months in prison for "abusing the right to democracy and freedom." Apparently, Vietnam is the only country has such a crime!

Professor Nguyen Dinh Huy, 78 years old, is now the world’s oldest and longest serving political prisoner, almost 30 years.

Senator Kerry has not only kept silent on these naked abuses, but he’s also visibly and vocally defended Hanoi’s record. In 2002, he personally killed the Human Rights for Vietnam Bill—HR2833 in the US Senate. The Bill was passed by the House with 410-1 margin. It proposed linking increased US non-humanitarian aid for Vietnam to that country’s human-rights record.

Kerry's blockage of the Human Right Bill exasperated Vietnamese Americans so much that more than 500 of us from all over the country protested in front of his office for a week in August 2002. The Senator's only response to us since then took place last fall, when his campaign asked for our support.

When Vietnam needed America to bail it out of its disastrous economic policies, Senator Kerry was the most outspoken advocate for normalization with Hanoi. This came despite mounting evidence that for years Hanoi had been warehousing the remains of US MIA/POWs and using them as bargaining chips. Sidney Schandberg, a Pulitzer Prize winner reporter, wrote in the Village Voice of New York that Senator Kerry "covered up voluminous evidence that a significant number of live American prisoners -- perhaps hundreds -- were never acknowledged or returned."

Thanks to Senator Kerry’s efforts, Hanoi now enjoys Most Favored Nation trading status with America, while thousands of America's brave sons and daughters remain missing in Vietnam.

Article 4 of Vietnam’s Constitution illegitimately gives the Vietnamese Communist Party a monopoly over every aspect of everyone's life in Vietnam. Therefore, for many decades, the Vietnamese people have been robbed of their dignity and the basic freedom to pursue their own happiness. As the Democratic nominee for president, how can Senator Kerry claim to have the moral courage to lead the "Free World" when he cannot face up to Vietnam's corrupt dictators?

Many have accused Kerry of flip-flops. I disagree. On the issue of Vietnam, he has been consistently on the wrong side. As a Massachusetts voter, often I wonder whether Senator Kerry is from Massachusetts of USA, or is he actually from Hanoi? As a Massachusetts voter, I must vote my conscience and join most Vietnamese Americans in not supporting our senator.

Kerry's still waiting for his Uncle Ho to bring gifts from the north to Democrats.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41142

MISSION: IMPLAUSIBLE
Another document ties Kerry to Hanoi
3rd Vietnamese communist paper discovered in archive

Posted: October 28, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Art Moore
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

A third, newly discovered Vietnamese war document presents further indication Hanoi orchestrated John Kerry's promotion of the communist regime's 1971 plan calling for virtual U.S. surrender.

As WorldNetDaily reported Tuesday, two documents found in a U.S. archive over the weekend provide the first concrete evidence that Vietnamese communists were directing Kerry's antiwar group Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

New York Times photo of John Kerry's Washington press conference in 1971

One of the two documents, a "circular" captured by the U.S. in 1971 and later translated, indicates the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese delegations to the Paris peace talks that year were used as the communications link to direct the activities of Kerry and other antiwar activists who attended.

Now, a third document [pdf file] provides more context, showing that Kerry's July 22, 1971, press conference calling on President Nixon to accept the seven-point plan presented by Viet Cong leader Madame Nguyen Thi Binh was perfectly aligned with Hanoi's step-by-step agenda.

"If you look at the sequence of events, it would certainly seem Kerry was following a plan and was not just simply acting spontaneously," said Jerome Corsi, a specialist on the Vietnam-era antiwar movement and co-author of "Unfit for Command," the best-seller challenging Kerry's qualification to lead the nation.

Kerry insists he attended the talks only because he happened to be in France on his honeymoon and maintains he met with both sides. But previously revealed records indicate the future senator made two, and possibly three, trips to Paris.

At the subsequent press conference in Washington, Kerry surrounded himself with the families of POWs, a strategy espoused in the recovered communist circular.

The Kerry campaign has not responded to WND's request for a response to the discovery of the two documents.

The third document shows that when Madame Binh came to Paris in 1969 with the North Vietnamese delegation, Hanoi was directing its propaganda efforts toward winning the hearts and minds of South Vietnamese.

But the communist regime began to realize in 1970 and early 1971 that it could not defeat the U.S. militarily, and so the target of propaganda shifted to the antiwar movement in an attempt to erode resolve on the American homefront.

Then Hanoi launched a series of coordinated efforts, leading to Kerry's press conference.

"The series of dates and actions hardly look coincidental," said Corsi.

Vietnamese Communist Party leader Le Duc Tho delivered to Paris a plan promoted by John Kerry.

In the last week of June 1971, Le Duc Tho – the second most powerful communist leader, next to Ho Chi Minh – arrived in Paris as a special counsel to the Vietnamese delegations.

On July 1, closely on the heels of Le's arrival, Madame Binh delivered the seven-point plan to U.S. Ambassador David Bruce in Paris.

A New York Times report at that time specifically noted the plan came after Tho's arrival.

The plan was presented not through the head of the delegation, Xuan Thuy, but through the Viet Cong leader, Madame Binh, who first met with Kerry in the summer of 1970.

Twenty-one days later, Kerry was in Washington advancing Madame Binh's proposal, which would force President Nixon to set a date to end the war and withdraw troops. Hanoi cleverly constructed the plan so that the only barrier to release of American POWs was Nixon's unwillingness to set a withdrawal date, but it amounted to a virtual surrender that included payment of reparations and an admission the U.S. was the aggressor in an immoral war.

"When President Nixon got this peace plan, the White House didn't know what to do," Corsi said. "It was an entirely new initiative."

The White House sent Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Paris July 12, and seven days later, the South Vietnamese submitted a counterproposal to enact a total cease-fire and put the issue of reunification to a nationwide vote.

"In the middle of these intense negotiations and posturing to Madame Binh's proposal, Kerry volunteered to hold a press conference advocating the Viet Cong leader's position," Corsi explained.

"He had no role to insert himself in this process," he asserted. "Nixon and Kissinger were trying to deal with a difficult negotiating situation."

In an article on the press conference, the New York Times noted POW families were upset because it appeared Kerry, who had dropped out of a bid for a seat in Congress, was motivated by his own political aspirations, using the event as a springboard to political office.

When Kerry began to introduce relatives of prisoners who stood beside him behind the microphones, he was met with the fierce objections of four wives of POWs in the audience.

The women shouted to Kerry, "That's a lie," and "What office are you going to run for next?"

The Times said one of the POW wives accused Kerry of "constantly using our own suffering and grief " for his political ambitions.

When asked if he planned to run again for political office, the Times reported Kerry replied only that "he was committed to political change and he would use whatever forum seemed best at the time."

The captured Vietnamese circular stated that previously, the dissent among U.S. military personnel largely existed only in the Army, but had expanded to the Air Force.

Kerry's use of Air Force POW families helped spread the dissent in a concerted way, Corsi maintained, getting the relatives to accept Binh's proposal and say, "Let's put an end to this."

The circular said the peace plan "not only solved problems concerning the release of U.S. prisoners but also motivated the people of all walks of life and even relatives of U.S. pilots detained in [North Vietnam] to participate in the antiwar movement."

"Kerry, by holding the press conference, supports the argument that the antiwar movement is behind this plan," Corsi said.

The media event, consistent with plans developed and delivered in Hanoi, was "designed to have maximum impact emotionally on the antiwar community in the U.S.," he emphasized.

Corsi said the Kerry campaign's silence on the new discovery of the documents mirrors its unwillingness to respond to the charges of "Unfit for Command" until it was obvious the presidential candidate was suffering political damage.

"The charges in the new documents have been out there for a full day," he pointed out. "Had the documents not been authentic, the Kerry camp would have been all over them, to discredit them."

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