SwiftVets.com

[Me#1You#10]

Kerry's Vietnam ghosts won't go away
By Robert J. Caldwell
The San Diego Union-Tribune
October 24, 2004

In a race appropriately dominated by questions of presidential leadership, the war on terror, Iraq and the economy, Vietnam nonetheless continues to haunt Democrat John Kerry. For this, Kerry has only himself to blame.

It is Kerry who quite deliberately made his brief four months on Navy Swift Boats in Vietnam in 1968-69 his signature credential to be commander in chief 35 years later. It is Kerry and his surrogates who repeat constantly the mantra that he "defended this country as a young man." It was Kerry who presented his "band of brothers" – the seven (out of eight) members of his Swift Boat crew who support him for president – as a backdrop at the Democratic National Convention.

Yet, the echoes of Vietnam also have grievously wounded Kerry's presidential aspirations, and rightly so.

A month of largely unanswered attacks by other Navy Swift Boat veterans on Kerry's war record and his subsequent anti-war, if not anti-American, radicalism helped President Bush build a lead in September. The Swiftees' anti-Kerry critique, detailed in their best-selling book "Unfit for Command" and publicized in television ads, raised profound questions about Kerry's fitness for the presidency. Against the seven supportive members of Kerry's Swift Boat crew, more than 250 Swift Boat combat veterans who served alongside Kerry in the same units denounce him as unfit to be commander in chief. Among them are 17 of the 20 officers in Kerry's chain of command in Vietnam.

Now, the anti-Kerry Swiftees are being joined by a second aggrieved group, former American prisoners of war. In North Vietnam's fetid prisons, they were subjected to years of torture and tormented by their interrogators with propaganda from America's anti-war movement. These highly decorated ex-POWs denounce Kerry for giving aid and comfort to a vicious communist enemy. In some cases, they recall being threatened with trial and execution by interrogators quoting Kerry's outrageous accusations.

In 1971, Kerry testified under oath before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that U.S. forces in Vietnam were guilty of systematic war crimes, including rape, murder, mutilation and pillage with the full knowledge and complicity of their entire chain of command.

Virtually all of America's former Vietnam prisoners of war also believe – with good reason, as North Vietnam's army commander has since said publicly – that the anti-war movement Kerry helped lead in the early 1970s encouraged Hanoi to fight on despite the odds. That prolonged the imprisonment of American POWs.

Ralph Gaither, a Navy pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam and spent, as he notes, "seven years, three months and 23 days" as a prisoner of war, is unsparing about the radical protest movement Kerry helped lead in the early 1970s.

"My imprisonment was extended by the anti-war movement. The war would have ended sooner if the (North) Vietnamese had not believed that the anti-war movement would win in the United States. It prolonged the war. I had friends die during this time. One was beaten to death, one died on a hunger strike and a third of malaria," Gaither says.

George 'Bud' Day, an Air Force pilot who won the Medal of Honor for his heroic resistance in North Vietnamese captivity, says this of Kerry:

"This man committed an act of treason. He lied, he besmirched our name and he did it for self-interest. And now he wants us to forget. What he stands for is wrong."

Leo Thorsness, another former POW and Medal of Honor winner, says the North Vietnamese threatened to execute him if he did not confess to war crimes.

"John Kerry and that whole movement made our lives more difficult. The things he said were just devastating because he was using words like 'war criminal.' He (was) saying the same things we were being tortured to say. I was told by them the penalty for this was death," Thorsness says.

James Warner, a Marine pilot who spent years in North Vietnamese captivity, recalls that John Kerry's 1971 accusations against the U.S. military were quoted and thrown in his face by a table-pounding interrogator at a punishment camp for resistant POWs.

"'This naval officer admits you are all war criminals. These words prove you all deserve punishment,'" Warner remembers his interrogator shouting. "He (Kerry) abandoned his comrades. His allegations were utterly absurd. To be charitable, at a minimum, he showed abominable bad judgment."

Mike McGrath, now a retired Navy captain, was a POW in North Vietnam for six years. Torture broke his back, dislocated both shoulders and broke an arm and a leg. "I nearly died," McGrath says. "They wanted us to make statements against the war."

Of John Kerry's lurid litany of accusations in 1971, McGrath says, "I agree with the Swiftees. I was ashamed that a Navy lieutenant would give such testimony. I'm disappointed this guy did the wrong thing. He shouldn't be commander in chief."

The testimony of these and other American POWs from the Vietnam War is the basis for a documentary entitled "Stolen Honor" that the Kerry campaign is trying, shamefully, to suppress.

Politics aside, no one can question the right of these men to be heard. No one can doubt the authenticity of their words.

How could this not be a legitimate issue as John Kerry, the unrepentant anti-war activist whose slanderous testimony did so much damage, seeks the presidency, and with it, the command of America's armed forces?

The San Diego Union-Tribune

[kate]

[neverforget]

Nice article. One of the few journalists I've seen who does not try to insert pro-Kerry propaganda in.
_________________
US Army Security Agency
1965-1971

[Anker-Klanker]

Anybody from that area who can get through to the author? The support letter from the Special Forces guys just posted yesterday would be a great addendum to that article. And NOW would seem to be a perfect time to introduce it.

[1991932]

It would be fortuitous for the Swifties (and the nation) if Roger Hedgecock filled in for Rush one day between now and the election. I'm certain he will be all over this on his own show, and it would help to get national exposure thru a guest-host gig.

San Diego is a Navy town. Perhaps they have a tinge of guilt because sKerry went to school in Coronado before entering the Hero's Express Lane (4½ Months or Less, Please).

I know that everybody in Boston winces when somebody reminds us that 2 of the 4 planes on 9/11 were hijacked out of Logan Airport. It's irrational, but it's there.

Either way, that's a great article by Robert Caldwell. It almost qualifies as a mini-surprise.
_________________
Former "War Criminal"

[truthserum]

The Weekly Standard is also running an article concerning Kerry's anti war activities. I am wondering if some of the more ethical news media outlets are going to start jumping on this bandwagon. It's getting close to the end now before Kerry is stopped somehow. And, some of these rags might be getting fearful (rightfully so), that freedom of speech will be limited under Kerry. Or maybe some of them are starting to get really worried about a Kerry CIC and what that actually means for this country.
whatever, I hope this trend continues.
_________________
Sister to a Marine vet who served in Vietnam and proud of it.

PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!

[rhv5862]

"the testimony of these and other American POWs from the Vietnam War is the basis for a documentary entitled "Stolen Honor" that the Kerry Campaign is trying, shamefully, to suppress". Sadly Stolen Honor was suppressed as Sinclair aired only 4 minutes of it. So much for free speech.

RHV

[BuffaloJack]

Can't the MSM see past their noses?
The only one who brought up Viet Nam was Kerry.
Kerry chose to make his service record the focus of his campaign.
Once he opened the Viet Nam Pandora's Box he was fair game.