JOHN KERRY, AMERICAN'S NIGHTMARE !
JOHN KERRY SUPPORTS POL POT's REGIME WHO TURNS CAMBODIA INTO THE KILLING FIELDS.
1) By January 1980, JOHN KERRY was secretly funding Pol Pot's exiled forces on the Thai border. The extent of this support -- $85 million from 1980-86 -- was revealed 6 years later in correspondence between congressional lawyer Jonathan Winer, then counsel to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation
JOHN KERRY BY THE SIDE OF SADDAM HUSSEIN .
2) Criticized the administration's past performance on ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.
***JOHN KERRY DOUBLE STANDARD***
Write-in candidate an alternative to Kerry
This should come as great news for all those who felt betrayed by Sen. John Kerry's vote for the War Powers Resolution, which gives President Bush free rein to invade Iraq unilaterally and pre-emptively.
Now, we can support U.N. weapons inspections and multi-lateral, non-violent containment of Iraq by a write-in vote on Nov. 5 for Randall Forsberg. She is a life-long Democrat and an internationally known expert on arms control, disarmament and peace building, registered with state officials to oppose Kerry.
Randall Forsberg founded and directs the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies in Cambridge. She has a Ph. D. from MIT on Defense Policy and has advised several administrations on these matters. She has received the MacArthur Fellowship, the "genius award" for her work on defense studies and arms control. In the 1980s, while in her 30s, she was a founder and leader of the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign.
In a letter to John Kerry announcing her write-in candidacy, Forsberg said "For the President to launch a unilateral war, when such a war is not warranted by the degree of threat nor sanctioned by the international community, undermines the entire body of international law that has been developed since World War II. ... It also undermines U.S. security and will bring down the wrath of the world on us in many different ways, including increased terrorism."
On Nov. 5, in the designated write-in space under "Kerry (Democrat) and Cloud (Libertarian)," write: Randall Forsberg, 950 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. Then fill in the oval to the right.
ANN F. ENO
Westford
***JOHN KERRY SUPPORTS COMMUNISTS, BLOCKING VIETNAM HUMAN RIGHTS ACT .
The following is posted at the request of former POW Mike Benge
Please forward this to all on your email lists, especially to anyone in the Boston area. Please get out and support this demonstration against Senator Kerry's blocking of the Vietnam Human Rights Act. Senator Kerry has the audacity to say that he and Senator John McCain speak on behalf of all veterans.
I can assure you that neither speak for me, and I doubt if you have conceded this right to them.
We all went to Vietnam for a noble cause-fighting for the freedom of the Vietnamese people. History has proven that we were right for tens of thousands of Vietnamese have been murdered, and the hundreds of thousands incarcerated in concentration camps by the brutal communist fascist regime in Hanoi. The Vietnamese communists' brutality has not ceased. Hundreds of notable Vietnamese have been incarcerated, and more recently Hanoi's wave of terrorism against the Montagnards with thousands killed, tortured, imprisoned or simply "disappeared."
There will be no honest accounting for our MIA/POWs until there is a change toward democracy in Vietnam. The passage of the Vietnam Human Rights act is the first step on that long path. Ironically, Senator Kerry has aspirations of being President -- God save us all from this charade, yet he is violating a very principal of democracy by not allowing the Vietnam Human Rights act to come to the floor of the Senate for a vote by your senators and mine.
Please turn in droves to stand alongside the Vietnamese in Boston this Sunday (see below) to show to Kerry that he doesn't speak for us in this sacred matter.
Sincerely, Mike Benge, former VN POW '68-73, and advisor to the Montagnard Human Rights Organization. (see more below please)
Kerry stand upsets some Vietnamese
By Quynh-Giang Tran, Globe Correspondent, 8/14/2002
Organizers say that more than 200 Vietnamese expatriates and their supporters from around the country will gather at Senator John Kerry's office starting Sunday to protest his efforts to prevent US aid from being tied to Vietnam's human rights record.
The Vietnam Human Rights Act, a bill passed in the House of Representatives last September by a vote of 410 to 1, would restrict non-humanitarian aid such as economic and agricultural development unless President Bush and the US Department of State certifies that Vietnam is making progress on human rights.
Kerry and Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, have used parliamentary maneuvers to prevent the full Senate from considering the measure. The pair, veterans of the Vietnam War and visitors since then, say the bill undermines the US government's ability to promote economic reforms. Kerry said that ongoing relations with Vietnam will promote greater political freedom.
''John McCain and I ... fear it may hinder rather than advance the cause of human rights in Vietnam,'' Kerry said in a letter. ''We are concerned that denying aid to Vietnam would actually slow human-rights improvements.''
But Vietnamese expatriates, including several elderly Boston-area protesters vowing to fast up to 48 hours, as well as some US veterans groups, say they are baffled by Kerry's refusal to allow a vote in the Senate. The weeklong protest starting in Dorchester, an area with a large Vietnamese population, will feature leaders of Vietnamese Buddhist, Catholic, and Cao Dao religious groups and Vietnamese-Americans from California, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, as well as local political leaders and veterans.
'' The weight that Kerry has on this makes other senators defer to him,'' said John Petersen, assistant director of the American Legion's national security and foreign relations division. Petersen said he believes that Kerry supports reestablishing ties with Vietnam. The bill's strongest supporter - Senator Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican who also has visited Vietnam - says that Vietnam should not get any of the $1.3 billion in US aid it received last year.
Critics say Vietnam's human rights violations include its block on transmission of Radio Free Asia, a private journalistic organization with US government funding. ''We should expect Vietnam to improve its record on human rights if we are trying to trade with them,'' Smith said. ''Why doesn't the Senate do what the House did and pass the Vietnam Human Rights Act?''
In addition, Smith, who chaired the Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs with Kerry, staunchly believes that the issue of American POWs in Vietnam must be resolved before relations change. Discussion of the bill has dominated Vietnamese-language radio and newspapers around the country over the past year, prompting almost 30 demonstrations, including ones in California, Tampa, Washington, D.C., Austin, Texas, Seattle, and Lincoln, Nebraska.
''Senator Kerry has good connection with the Hanoi government,'' said Hien thi Ngo, chairwoman of the Committee for Religious Freedom in Vietnam, based in Washington, D.C., who will attend the protest. ''He wants their trust and they don't want this bill.''
One criticism of the bill is that it hurts the people of Vietnam, a population of 80 million that ranks their nation as the world's 13th-most populous, though it is still among the poorest in the world. But the protesters disagree. ''We have many friends and family in Vietnam,'' said Nam Pham, a vice president at Citizens Bank in Boston. ''Non-humanitarian aid doesn't affect the local population.'' The bill would also establish an intergovernmental monitoring commission similar to one in China to report human rights violations and release political and religious prisoners.
For expatriates such as Ngo, a 55-year-old real estate agent in Bethesda, Md., the bill represents recognition that the government controls religious and political freedoms in Vietnam. ''As I sat in the House [during the vote], I cried with joy. Every vote was `Yes, yes','' Ngo said. ''But Kerry refuses to let it pass to vote.''
This story ran on page A4 of the Boston Globe on 8/14/2002.
... AND MORE ...
Boston Herald (Wednesday, August 14 2002)
Allies no more: Vietnamese war veterans protest Sen. John Kerry's aid policy
by Christopher Cox Wednesday, August 14, 2002
As he contemplates a presidential run, Sen. John F. Kerry has been reaching out to American veterans. But Kerry, a highly decorated combat veteran who commanded a Navy river-patrol boat in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War, hasn't impressed local Vietnamese veterans of that conflict.
Several of these vets plan to take part in an upcoming two-day hunger strike to protest Kerry's pro-engagement policy with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, particularly his non-support of a congressional bill that would link further foreign aid to Hanoi's human-rights performance.
The fast is part of a weeklong series of demonstrations, set to begin on Sunday, organized by members of Boston's large Vietnamese immigrant community.
``I'm very surprised he has not approached us,'' said Tai Le, 60, of Brockton, a former captain in the South Vietnamese army who spent a decade in re-education camps following the 1975 Communist victory. ``We were his former allies. He has totally ignored our concerns, our life here.''
What chafes the veterans, as well as Vietnamese refugees who have settled here, is the legislative limbo of the Viet Nam Human Rights Act. Submitted by Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), H.R. 2833 passed in the House last Sept. 6 by an overwhelming 410-1 vote. The bill would support efforts to promote democracy in the one-party state and push for progress in religious and human rights.
``We feel the bill will increase pressure on the Vietnamese government to improve its human-rights record,'' said Nam Van Pham, 46, a protest organizer and the former executive director of the Massachusetts Office for Refugees and Immigrants, who estimates about 40,000 ethnic Vietnamese live in Massachusetts. In a 2001 survey by Transparency International of corruption in 91 countries, Vietnam ranked a woeful 75th.
Activists such as Pham accuse Kerry, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, of delaying Senate action on the bill.
A Kerry aide said the bill was never referred to the Foreign Relations Committee, but added that the Senator opposes the legislation because he fears it may hinder human-rights reforms.
In a statement to the Herald, Kerry said `` We're very concerned that denying aid to Vietnam would actually slow human-rights improvements while cutting off humanitarian relief already going to some of the neediest people on the planet.''
The bill, which also authorizes funding for dissident groups, is ``designed to provoke'' Hanoi, said the Kerry aide, and could jeopardize the current work of humanitarian groups in country.
But Tien Tran, 60, of Dorchester, who spent 10 years in labor camps for serving as a South Vietnamese police officer, wants a more aggressive policy. ``In Vietnam now, there are no human rights,'' said Tran. ``We just really want him to move it along.''
The 2002 State Department report on human rights paints a bleak picture of Vietnam. ``The Government's poor human rights record worsened in some respects and it continued to commit numerous, serious abuses,'' the report stated.
Nowhere was abuse of power more pronounced than in the Central Highlands, the home of fiercely independent hill tribes collectively known as Montagnards. During the Vietnam War, U.S. Special Forces commanded Montagnards for a decade in successful guerrilla-warfare operations against the Viet Cong.
``I came away from Vietnam probably owing my life to them,'' said James MacIntyre III, 61, of Essex Junction, Vt., who spent 1964 in the Central Highlands as a Green Beret medic.
With the defeat of South Vietnam, however, the Montagnards paid dearly for their opposition to the Viet Cong. Thousands spent long years in re-education camps. Many others have been persecuted for practicing Christianity. The government policy of settling ethnic Vietnamese in the Highlands, often on the most productive land, has rendered the hill people a malnourished minority in their homeland.
``It's a slow genocide,'' said Carl Regan, 62, of Key Biscayne, Fla., a former Green Beret now active in a humanitarian group, Save the Montagnard People. ``They don't take them out and shoot them every day. They marginalize them - they don't give them enough land. They're starving.''
In early 2001, Montagnard discontent finally erupted in widespread public protests. The government responded with a massive military crackdown, prompting more than 1,000 Montagnards to flee to neighboring Cambodia.
Four months ago, Human Rights Watch issued a scathing, 194-page report documenting Vietnamese repression of the Montagnards, including police torture, destruction of churches and forcible repatriation of refugees. In a June interview in Phnom Penh, a 16-year-old Montagnard girl described to the Herald how she and several family members walked for 15 days to escape Vietnam, where their land had been confiscated and they were punished for being evangelical Protestants. ``Now it's very difficult for my people,'' said the girl, who spoke anonymously because of fear of reprisal against relatives still living in Vietnam. ``A lot of people are in prison and many people are missing. My family life is very dangerous.''
After a diplomatic dustup, the girl and 900 other Montagnard refugees were resettled in North Carolina in June with the help of the State Department, the United Nations, STMP and other humanitarian groups. And in a remarkable mea culpa, the Vietnamese government admitted that same month that its social, religious and economic policies were largely to blame for the unrest in the Central Highlands.
Tai Le expressed disappointment that Kerry had not spoken out against the harsh Vietnamese treatment of the Montagnards. ``I've been very surprised and very disappointed. We hope that John Kerry would stick up for another former ally on behalf of reason and conscience,'' he said. Pham said the upcoming protests, which he expects will draw hundreds of demonstrators, are not designed to embarrass Kerry. ``We hope he won't lose any face,'' said Pham. ``We are not protesting John Kerry; we are not anti-John Kerry. We just try to urge him to let the bill be debated in September, when Congress is back in session. Let democracy work. That's what this country is all about.''