SwiftVets.com

[NavyBrat]

I don't know if these have already been posted but better safe than sorry.

An Open Letter to Senator John McCain from a Vietnam Vet

Senator McCain,

I begin this missive with an embrazo, as we call it here in Texas, for your service to our country, as a warrior, as a prisoner of war and as a United States Senator. You have served far better and endured far more in the service of America than most men will ever do. For that, this old sergeant salutes you.

That said, as a Vietnam ground combat veteran, I must take issue with you on the situation of John Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans. You have labeled these men “dishonest and dishonorable,” and that, Sir, is nothing more than your opinion based on no direct knowledge of the events they dispute. For you to so condemn these men publicly, without any firsthand knowledge of John Kerry’s performance in their midst and under their professional observation, is unfair to them and all veterans who share their view that John Kerry is unfit to command. Who was best qualified to evaluate you as a naval aviator, those senior officers who flew with you or the enlisted men who serviced your aircraft? Who had the experience, training and knowledge to make a professional military judgment of your performance in the air, the trained naval aviators on your wing or the enlisted flight crew back on the carrier? Certainly the enlisted men were vital in performing the mission but observing and rating your performance was not their role.

It is my understanding that you originally shared our animosity towards John Kerry, but during your senatorial service, you came to know John Kerry more personally and chose to forgive him for his labeling you a war criminal. That you are able to forgive a man even though he had denounced you and your fellow aviators as you languished in North Vietnamese prisons, with your captors using his testimony to try to break your will, is truly commendable. I admire you for your ability to turn the other cheek. However, I must point out that your forgiveness of John Kerry is purely personal and imposes not one iota of obligation to forgive him on those of us who still consider him contemptible.

You carry no mandate to speak for us. Your personal feelings are yours and yours alone; but, emphatically, you do not speak for us. You spoke up to defend your friend and your friend has turned your words into talking points. It is truly reprehensible how the Kerry campaign and the mainstream media are hiding so cynically behind your condemnation of the Swiftvets, using your statement as an excuse to dismiss their claims as baseless, smear politics. Honestly, Senator, did you really intend to provide this kind of cover for those who are so desperate to prevent the truth from coming out?

With all due respect, since you weren’t there to observe John Kerry first hand as were these Swiftvets, may I humbly suggest that the honorable thing for you to do, is to stay out of this fight and allow them and us to have our voice. Moreover, there is one thing you could do to level the playing field: acknowledge that you have no true knowledge of events the Swiftvets describe and that your immediate condemnation of these men was premature. Call on the mainstream media to investigate all parties fairly and determine whose version of events is true. I understand John Kerry is your friend, but that places him neither beyond accountability nor above the truth. You have a unique ability at this moment in America’s history to make a difference. You have long been a dutiful warrior and servant of the people.

Please, do your duty now.

Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66

I would request that all who agree with the sentiments expressed here copy this letter and send it to:

http://mccain.senate.gov/
_________________
Laura~

[NavyBrat]

I First Loved the War, Then I Hated It, then I Loved It, and now I Hate It Again


In his war-protesting Senate testimony, John Kerry confessed to committing war crimes and violating the Geneva Conventions of War many times during his rather abbreviated tour of duty in Vietnam. As a presidential candidate, he now surrounds himself with the very boat crew, who, in the discharge of their military duties, carried out his orders, and by necessity were, if not perpetrators of war crimes themselves, then certainly by virtue of their immediate proximity, witnesses to his own.

John Kerry’s actions in combat were not that of a single person but that of the commissioned leader of an enlisted crew. One way or the other, those men are either participants in war crimes as originally admitted to by their commanding officer, or they are witnesses to his war crimes and failed to report them to higher authority. Either position is subject to prosecution under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

So, which is it? Is he asking us to believe that he single-handedly committed atrocities while his crewmates dozed in the midst of all that mayhem? Or did he routinely violate the Geneva Convention while they watched and did nothing to stop him? Or, worst case, were they complicit in his crimes?

Know what I think? I think John Kerry’s crewmate are guilty of nothing more serious than being dupes, that’s right, dupes, nothing more than being malleable foils for his clever campaign staff to manipulate and maneuver into positions of advantage for his election. But then, for John Kerry, that’s really all they’ve ever been, isn’t it, just eight millimeter props for his bravado performances, for his entrée into the world of national politics. So I don’t buy it. I don’t buy into his account of systematic violations endorsed by command authority. No war crimes were committed, not by John Kerry, not by his crew and not by the vast majority of us who served there. And that is just what the Swiftvets have been saying.

The men who were best able to observe and judge John Kerry’s performance in combat were the men who had the same level of training and expertise that he did; and those are the young officers and noncommissioned officers who commanded the boats operating in close proximity to his, young men whose very lives depended on the coordinated action of all units participating in any particular mission. Successful riverine combat maneuvers require inordinate observational skills. So were these officers and NCO’s, all of them skilled observers, asleep at the wheel while some pillaging preppie ravished the countryside unbeknownst to all but himself?

Well, if you will but listen to them, no, they weren’t. These men, these Swiftvets, several dozens of them, who ate, slept and fought with John Kerry will tell you that, no, they were quite aware of what was going on around them, and that their recollection of events is far different from those attested to in Congress by their onetime comrade in arms. They are as befuddled as the rest of us that a man who launched his political career on claims of being duped into committing war crimes in an unjust war wants to now use his service in that war as the foundation of his campaign for the presidency.

Think about this: John Kerry had to know that his fabrications were ultimately unsustainable and that the men he falsely condemned would not remain silent were he to run for the presidency. Yet he has ignored that reality and attempted to build his whole campaign on his wartime service and his questionable awards. It would be interesting to hear what a psychiatrist might conclude from such bifurcated reasoning. Which brings us, unavoidably, to this question:

Does this sound like the kind of judgment we want in a Commander in Chief in this time of terror?

Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66
_________________
Laura~

[NavyBrat]

'Twas the night before Christmas and we were afloat
Somewhere in Cambodia in our little boat.
While the river was lightened by rockets red glare
No one but the President knew we were there.

The crew was all nestled deep down in their bunks,
While the Spook and I watched the sampans and junks.
Our mission was secret, so secret in fact,
No one else would remember it when we got back.

When out on the water there arose such a clatter
I leaped down from the bridge to see what was the matter.
The incoming friendly was starting to flash
And I knew that the ARVN's were having a bash.

The snap of friendly fire on the warm tropic air
Convinced me for sure no one knew we were there,
On a clandestine mission so secret it's true
That I'm still convinced only Tricky Dick knew.

While I huddled for safety in the tub on the bow,
I thought of a title, ''Apocalypse Now.''
To give to the films I was I making each day
To show all the voters when I made my big play.

As I sat there sweating in my lucky flight jacket,
Spook said, ''Merry Christmas!'' and tossed me a packet.
And what to my wondering eyes did appear,
But a new lucky cap, which I still have right here.

I keep it tucked here, in this leather brief case,
Just sharing with the press its secretive place
As I regale them again with my senate refrain,
That Christmas in Cambodia is seared into my brain.

Don't bother to quibble with history my friend,
By pointing out Johnson was President then.
Don't listen to Swiftees who try to explain,
For I tell you that night is seared into my brain.

Down Hibbard, down Lonsdale, and you too O'Neill,
So you don't remember? Well it's something I feel.
I don't need all you Swiftvets to support my campaign,
Cause Christmas in Cambodia is seared into my brain,

Into my brain, into my brain, into my brain...

----------
Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66
_________________
Laura~

[NavyBrat]

Kerry's Salute

Russ Vaughn

2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment,101st Airborne Division Vietnam 65-66

It should come as no surprise that the liberal media has ignored the Kerry incident at the Vietnam Memorial, where the presidential hopeful's immature and disrespectful behavior demonstrates once again that he is unfit to be the commander in chief of a nation at war. To be sure, there are numerous puff pieces by liberal reporters oohing and aahing about the Wall being a "touchstone" for Kerry. A less charitable assessment might be that it served more as a soapbox.

This Memorial Day grandstanding from the man who rebuked the very concept of war memorials:

"We will not quickly join those who march on Veterans' Day waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the greater glory of the United States. We will not accept the rhetoric. We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars-in fact, we will find it hard to join anything at all and when we do we will demand relevancy such as other organizations have recently been unable to provide. We will not take solace from the creation of monuments or the naming of parks after a select few of the thousands of dead Americans and Vietnamese. We will not uphold traditions, which decorously memorialize that which was base and grim."

- John F. Kerry "The New Soldier"

In truth, I trembled with anger when I read the above quote this morning. We can safely assume from his own words that John Kerry was seeking something other than solace at the Wall; perhaps another photo opportunity to remind voters that he served in Vietnam? What crass hypocrisy for the man who did more to tarnish the reputations of those names on that wall than any other to now callously use it as a mere backdrop for his pious pronouncements.

Most of us were able to return and, by words and deeds, refute the criminal claims Kerry and Fonda and their pseudo-soldiers heaped upon us. But those, those whose names are etched in that long black stone, those brave warriors who gave all, they had no way to defend their honor. John Kerry's very presence at that memorial constitutes a desecration, an affront he further compounded with his adolescent behavior when he gave the finger to Ted Sampley, one of the leaders of Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry.

Certainly, Kerry has reason to dislike Sampley; but Sampley merely reacted to Kerry's presence at the Wall as many veterans would: he told him he didn't belong there. Kerry's juvenile response was to give Sampley the finger. For one Vietnam Vet to be giving another the finger on such hallowed ground is disturbing. For the offending veteran to be one who aspires to be Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces is disgraceful beyond belief.

Hear me Brothers: that middle finger conveyed far more meaning than a flash of anger at Ted Sampley. That finger is John Kerry's salute to all of us who served in Vietnam. Combine his words from his book and his behavior at our most sacred site and it speaks volumes as to what this charlatan really thinks of us and our memorial. It also speaks
volumes as to his lack of maturity, his poor judgment and, ultimately, his unfitness to lead.

Mr. Kerry, I return your salute, Sir: FJK!
_________________
Laura~

[SwanLady]

Here's the letter I shot off to McCain (though I sent our real names to him, I am not posting them here)

Dear Sir,

First, I would like to mention that I am the wife of a retired Navy man who, though never in Vietnam proper, served our country during the Vietnam era and did so honorably. My husband is not a member of, nor has he any affiliation with, the Swiftboat vets, since he never served on a swift boat. My husband was a CTT.

This is the reason I am writing to you.

From the beginning, Mr. Kerry made Vietnam a point of interest in his qualifications for the Presidency. In making that brief period of his life the point of interest, he opened the issue up to scrutiny.

The problem is, there is now an implication being spread about that, unless a military person was actually IN Vietnam, they are somehow less honorable, less military, less Navy, than are men like Kerry.

This is what people say when they point out that Bush did not "go to Vietnam".

I, personally, resent this approach.

My husband's 22 years of service to our country are just as important, just as good, as were Kerry's short few months. In fact, it shows (in my mind) more devotion to country than the brief few months Kerry served. And myself, and many other wives of retired military, as well as other retirees themselves, are growing weary of this nonsense that one had to have been IN Vietnam to be an honorable veteran.

Yes sir, I am "griping". I am griping because my husband and many others fought the Cold War at considerable risk, risks never given an award. If you are familiar with the nature of the CT community, then you know precisely what I'm talking about.

I am asking you to help put an end to this fighting between Kerry and the Swiftboat vets by asking Mr. Kerry to simply release his full records via DoD180. My husband has all of his. He would be willing to produce them. I think Mr. Kerry producing all of his could put an end to this debate.

I am also asking you to mention to Mr. Kerry that being "in Vietnam" doesn't make serving elsewhere during that timeframe in history any less honorable.

Sincerely,
_______(my name)
wife of ______, CTTC, USN, ret.