Posted on 11/15/2007 7:06:55 PM PST by Doctor Raoul
I really appreciate it, LucyJo. God bless you.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Y2M2MjliN2ExYmViYzI2M2MwNDRjNjE0YWQ1ZDc2ZDA
Slandering the American Soldier
An American media tradition
By Mackubin Thomas Owens
Troop Rally, Am I to assume they are doing this on the “anniversary” of US entering Iraq? The website just says March 08. These surrender monkeys need a good kick in the a$$ and I for one hope to be on the leg end of the boot.
Trooprally, Am I to assume they are doing this Winter Moron thing on the “anniversary” during GOE? These surrender monkeys need a good swift kick in the a$$ and I for one hope to be on the leg end of the boot.
[Mr] T
Personally I'd like to return the favor to those who spit on vets and other patriots. But I'd prefer to use a different bodily fluid, and apply it to their graves. They tend to be "rode hard and put up wet" types, the drugs will do that you know, so I, as a Vietnam *era* veteran, might even live long enough to do that. Expect for the head beech perhaps, Hanoi Jane appears disgustingly healthy, but hope springs eternal.
They should also be told that it'll take a lot of Viagra and/or Cialas to even approximate those "glory days", if the blue haired old hippie chicks are even still interested that is.
As I've said, these aren't anti-war marches. They are reenactments by the Hate America Left. They are using the 60s as a script and it's not working.
We should not be surprised, traitor Kerry and those like him paved the way for these jokers.
I hope we all learned a lesson from the last Winter Soldier- and will thoroughly check out anyone that is a part of this. Last time around most of the so-called soldiers that testified about Vietnam had never been there, many had not even served in the military.
I second that! Stolen Valor is a great book to read to understand how things happened the way they did & who was behind some of the shennanigans. Excellent book, should be read by all.
You are so right! My now deceased father-in-law served under Patton and surely had stories galore- very seldom did he ever mention the war, and he never made himself out to be a hero. My cousin, brother, and husband served in Vietnam, and will tell you very little, again when they do they are not the hero of the stories. Most of their stories are about the people they met there, funny things that happened- not war stories.
Thanks Doc
FLIB - Doc clarified when the actual Pentagon levitation was.
And it is all of our efforts going up against these idiots that has helped keep the anti-American leftist at bay, in addition to the all volunteer military.
[Mr] t
i SALUTE your father's FAITHFUL & NOBLE SERVICE to the nation.
free dixie,sw
‘REDACTED’
Bob McMahon
How many American soldiers will lose their lives because of this anti-war movie? That is the first question anyone who sees the recently released anti-American film should ask. I was one of only four people at the Ritz Bourse Theater for the first showing in Philadelphia last Friday. I hope this suggests that it will fail to find an audience in the United States. I have no doubt it will be a hit with those who seek to destroy America.
While the pattern of Hollywood’s anti-American commitment is the same as it was in Vietnam, one of the major differences between Vietnam and Iraq is the timing of the Hollywood movies. At least Hollywood generally waited until the troops were out of Vietnam before their movies were released vilifying American soldiers. Today, the studios are competing to get the movies out NOW while our troops are still in the line of fire.
In my view and in the view of my fellow veterans, Redacted will cause untold numbers of American casualties. The movie goes to extreme efforts to cast the American troops in the worst possible light. In the film, a group of psychopathic, demented American soldiers rape and kill an innocent Iraqi girl and her family. If that sounds familiar, twenty years ago De Palma’s Casualties of War featured another group of psychopathic, demented American soldiers who rape and kill an innocent Vietnamese girl. Redacted implies that American troops commit war crimes, are out of control and have total disregard for the Iraqi people especially women and children. This is the same harsh rhetoric that echoed through the halls of Congress and the streets of San Francisco and New York during the Vietnam War. Our Congress, Hollywood and academics became convinced that we, the American troops serving in Vietnam, were war criminals.
Remembering all the movies in which the leading role was a Vietnam Veteran either committing or permanently damaged by the war crimes he had witnessed, I have to ask this question about Redacted: Are Writer/Producer Brian DePalma and Financier Mark Cuban useful dupes for the Islamic terrorists in the same way that Jane Fonda and John Kerry were for the Communists during Vietnam or do these guys really believe that American troops are war criminals?
Today there are war crime claims against American troop s similar to those three decades ago against Vietnam Veterans. The most vocal critic today has been Jesse MacBeth, a former Army ranger who claimed his fellow troops hung and burned hundreds of Iraqi civilians. He talked about his many medals including his Purple Heart and he quickly became the poster child of the anti-war, anti-American, and anti-military organizations.
The problem was MacBeth never served in combat or even left the U.S. In fact, he was a boot camp “washout,” tossed out of the Army after only 44 days. When he was indicted for filing false disability claims with the Veterans Administration, MacBeth was tried, convicted and sent to Federal prison.
When Rush Limbaugh condemned him as a phony soldier, it was Rush Limbaugh who encountered the wrath of many in congress attacking him but not MacBeth. MacBeth’s own admission that he lied, mattered little to those who stampeded to this phony’s defense accusing Limbaugh of falsely attacking a U.S. soldier. To his credit, Limbaugh didn’t blink.
American troops are not perfect but they are the best and most humane that the world has to offer. How can we stop these unfounded and vicious attacks on our troops?
Those who accused us, the Vietnam veterans, of war crimes thirty years ago must be exposed for their false accusations. For the past three years, the Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation (”VVLF”) has worked diligently to prove that the troops were maligned. We believe that our last call to duty is to stop the lies about the Vietnam soldiers in order to stop the same treatment of the American troops today.
We believe we must send the message to Congress and especially to those individuals in our government who are doing again today what was done to us during and after the Vietnam War.
Col Bud Day, America’s highest decorated veteran, is the Chairman of the VVLF Board and the majority of the board members are former POWs held in the Hanoi Hilton. For them, this is personal. Every Vietnam Veteran has been forced to fight the stain of war crimes allegations since the war ended more than thirty years ago. POWs were threatened with their lives to “confess” to being war criminals, only to return to an American public that was soon to be brainwashed by Hollywood into believing that the “war criminal” charges were true.
Who are the culprits responsible for this maligning of America’s Vietnam soldiers? The worst offenders were approximately 116 anti-war activists who claimed to have witnessed or committed war crimes at the co-called “Winter Soldier” hearings in1971. They made their accusations to Jane Fonda, John Kerry and other sat this high profile media event. The claims were then read into the Congressional Record on April 5 1971 by Senator Mark Hatfield. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee in turn held hearings on the so-called’testimony’, and heaped praise on John Kerry for bringing these claims to the Senate committee. The Senate called for an investigation that never really happened until VVLF took responsibility 34 years later.
Over the past three years the VVLF has obtained sworn statements, documents and evidence that addresses these accusations. Upon close scrutiny, very few, if any, witnessed or committed war crimes. Many of the accusations are flatly contradicted by other veterans who were there, or by military records showing what really happened. Some of these accusers have recanted. Here are some examples:
* One claimed that U.S. troops killed a Vietnamese civilian woman (right after he bought drugs from her), yet that same veteran wrote an article for Stars & Stripes about the very same day that stated that the enemy killed the woman.
* Another “testified” to countless atrocities yet when forced to explain under oath, he repeatedly conceded it was an “assumption” on his part that innocent civilians and POWs were killed, and his allegations have been categorically repudiated by the many men who served with him.
* Years later, many of these accusers have explicitly disavowed what they said. One signed an affidavit that stated he was coerced into giving his atrocity allegations.
* Indeed, most of those who made these allegations were simply passing along hearsay, apocryphal tales that arose in Vietnam like the alligator-in-the-sewers urban myths that occasionally pop up today.
I am personally familiar with several of these alleged war crimes having served with the First Infantry Division in 1968. Several claims were made against troops with the 1st Infantry Division regarding specific times and places where I served. These allegations were included in the Congressional Record and included charges that soldiers fired artillery from our base camp into Vietnamese villages killing civilians and children. Another claim is that forty-six rounds were fired into Ben San Leper Colony killing many of the occupants.
I recently relayed the allegations against my own Infantry Division to our platoon medic. His response took an emotional tone. He was one of many medics in our company who volunteered their time to go on med-cap (medical pacification) missions. We had very few days off but when we did, the medics went into the needy villages (including Ben San Leper Colony) to treat the sick, the elderly and children. He and many others did not take lives in this village. They saved lives! He is not a war criminal.
And neither am I. And neither are the hundreds of thousands of other Vietnam veterans falsely accused by Hollywood, the media, and Congress. The lies are forever recorded in the Congressional Record. VVLF plans to submit for inclusion to the Congressional Record the true facts repudiating the lies that have persisted in the Congressional Record for almost forty years.
As a final indignity, DePalma closes the movie with a montage of picture of dead Iraqis. Before the montage begins, the screen goes black and then the title “Collateral Damage” comes up with the claim”Actual photographs from the Iraq War” printed beneath it, and then the slide show begins. One problem though ...among the emotionally draining pictures of real dead bodies, I began to notice that the actors from the film resemble those seen dead. Did they really pose their actors in mortal positions to pull at the audience’s heartstrings?
In the beginning, DePalma states that the film is fictionalized. Exactly how are we supposed to know what is fiction and what isn’t? Few would realize the cost in Americans lives and blood Redacted and similar films might exact when they are shown in foreign theaters.
DePalma talked about collateral damage in the film. Is he prepared to explain to the all the American POWS and their families that the torture they suffered while Jane Fonda and John Kerry were accusing American Soldiers of war crimes was “only collateral damage”?
VVLF is doing its best to correct the record... and to redact from the American memory the false picture of the American soldier as war criminal.
Bob McMahon was a Platoon Leader with the 1st Infantry Division beginning in February 1968 and later became a senior advisor with Advisory Team 44 living in three different villages with more than 100Vietnamese Forces. He now serves as Treasurer and Co-Executive Director of the Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation.
Phony war heroes are nothing new. They sprout after every war, claiming heroism they never displayed and wearing medals they never earned. – B.G. Burkett, Stolen Valor, 1998.
"Everybody" knew most soldiers who fought in Vietnam were reluctant draftees, poor minorities, or dumb cannon fodder not smart enough to avoid military service. When I told them that I—a financial adviser with undergraduate and graduate degrees from major universities—had voluntarily served in Vietnam, they looked at me in disbelief. – B.G. Burkett, Stolen Valor, 1998.
In 10 years of research in the National Archives, in filing hundreds of requests for military documents under the federal Freedom of Information Act, I discovered a massive distortion of history, a poisonous myth created by... an entertainment industry so enamored of sensationalism that it had no qualms about presenting a false stereotype to generate profits... by a Department of Veterans Affairs as concerned with its own power base as America's war-wounded... by a legal system manipulated by unscrupulous attorneys motivated not by justice but a need to win at all costs... by social welfare advocates and mental health professionals willing to support a lie to further their own agendas... and by print and television journalists unwilling to examine their own politics and preconceptions. – B.G. Burkett, Stolen Valor, 1998.
They [U.S. soldiers] had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam... we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free-fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search-and-destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. - John F'n Kerry, testimony before the Senate, 1969.
We were sent to Vietnam to kill Communism. But we found instead that we were killing women and children. – John F'n Kerry, in The New Soldier. 1971.
There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used .50 caliber machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals. – John F'n Kerry, on NBC's "Meet the Press" April 18, 1971.
They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country. We call this investigation the Winter Soldier Investigation. – John Kerry, VVAW member, testifying before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, April 23, 1971.
I personally didn't see personal atrocities in the sense that I saw somebody cut a head off or something like that. However, I did take part in free fire zones and I did take part in harassment interdiction fire. I did take part in search-and-destroy missions in which the houses of noncombatants were burned to the ground. And all of these, I find out later on, these acts are contrary to the Hague and Geneva Conventions and to the laws of warfare. So in that sense, anybody who took part in those, if you carry out the applications of the Nuremberg principles, is in fact guilty. - Lt. John Kerry, “O’Niell / Kerry Debate,” The Dick Cavett Show, June 30, 1971.
Mr. Kerry is the type of person who lives and survives only on the war weariness and fears of the American people. This is the same little man who on nationwide television in April spoke of, quote, "crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command," who was quoted in a prominent news magazine in May as saying, quote, "war crimes in Vietnam are the rule and not the exception," unquote. Who brought 50 veterans down to Washington to testify about alleged atrocities in April, the same 50 who after they had appeared on every major news network refused to provide any depositions or provide any details of any kind. - Lt. John O'Neill, “O’Niell / Kerry Debate,” The Dick Cavett Show, June 30, 1971.
This man [Kerry] has attempted the murder of the reputations of two and a half million of us, including the 55,000 dead in Vietnam, and he will never be brought to justice. We can only seek justice and equity from the American people. Every man kills the thing he loves. By each let this be told: The brave man does it with the sword; the coward with the word. - Lt. John O'Neill, “O’Niell / Kerry Debate,” The Dick Cavett Show, June 30, 1971.
I think there's something particularly pathetic about me having to appear on nationwide television and trade polished little phrases with you to defend the honor of the 55,000 people that died there, the two and a half million of us that served there. I think further that the justification that Hanoi uses for keeping our POWs is that they were engaged in criminal acts there, and I think that someone who comes out and says exactly the same thing could be doing nothing but serving those purposes, although I'm not—obviously those are not your intentions. There's no question about that. - Lt. John O’Niell, “O’Niell / Kerry Debate,” The Dick Cavett Show, June 30, 1971.
“don’t let the Vietnam Veterans Against The War call TWO generations of vets babykillers...”
too late. they succeeded with Viet Nam and they’re well on their way to doing it to the young men and women in Iraq and other places in the world.
they are also on the verge of an electoral win in 2008. The “american electorate” has been radicalized without knowing it and they are going to swallow the hook, the line and the sinker and elect radicals this election.
the vvaw is not made up of mean or nasty individuals. It is made up of revolutionaries and revolutionaries are not mean or nasty...they are just revolutionaries who do what revolutionaries do; they lie, they smear, they destroy, drop by drop. As long as they accomplish their mission they can do no wrong only because they don’t view it as wrong. that is what is going to be elected by the american electorate which has been “intellectualized” to the point of silliness. IMHO
As reported on Rush Limbaugh yesterday and posted here at Free Republic.
Iraq: We Must Remain Committed (Viet Nam truth told by Gen. Giap)
NewsMax ^ | 10-3-07 | Geoff Metcalf
Posted on 12/03/2007 6:23:05 PM EST by STARWISE
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1934170/posts
General Võ Nguyên Giáp, who was the commander of the North Vietnamese army, has published his memoirs. He has confirmed what most Americans either knew or suspected. The war in southeast Asia was not lost in Vietnam.
It was lost here at home.
The American media, enabling and functioning as symbiots for the John Kerry anti-war gaggle accomplished in a few short years what Giap could not do in three decades of fighting.
Giap was an immensely accomplished general, highly respected (some say brilliant). Before, during and after his martial career, he was a scholar, journalist, historian, and philosopher.
The following quote is from his memoirs currently found in the Vietnam War memorial in Hanoi:
“What we still don’t understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. You had us on the ropes.
If you had pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender! It was the same at the battles of TET. You defeated us! We knew it, and we thought you knew it.
But we were elated to notice your media was definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields. We were ready to surrender. You had won!”
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