SwiftVets.com

[USAFBratToo]

Great resources! I agree nothing can be made of a summer job in 1964 even if it were for the "real" Colliers (though iroinically it was this conncention, picked up by a Swiftie checking Kerry's background docs, that illuminated the 1993 Colliers/Kerry link.) The Center for Public Integrity's website has a complete list of Kerry's stated assets and income sources. The guy can't be all bad - he has between $50 - 100,000 invested in Harley Davidson. And he has dozens of investments totalling millions of dollars in petrolum exploration and refining companies all over the world.

[frankzzz]

This whole issue of POWs and MIAs being left behind can be truly damning to a man whose entire campaign is built around the slogan “Leave No Man Behind”.

Towards that end, does anyone know if ex New Hampshire Senator Bob Smith has been contacted for his input?

Bob Smith was the Vice-Chairman of John Kerry’s Committee to determine if there were any Americans “left behind” in Vietnam and an extremely vocal dissenter against Kerry’s findings.

After he lost his New Hampshire senate seat for running against Bush in the 2000 primary, I’ve kind of lost track of Smith but I believe he may be running for the open Senate Seat in Florida today.

Either way, I would think he would be a good source for building a case against Kerry on this issue.

[USAFBratToo]

Bob Smith is an excellent resource. In addition to him, there were several people mentioned in the Schranberg articles who were disgusted and outraged at Kerry's handling of the committee and if you go back to the full seies of articles

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0408/schanberg.php
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0408/schanberg2.php
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0408/schanberg3.php
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0431/schanberg.php

which should be required reading for anyone who thinks they know all about John Kerry, you will find all the names. I'll try to make a list and get contact info and anyone else please help in this. At the time many of them became discouraged and dispirited because no one would listen. Now is the time for them to express themselves on talk shows and blogs etc about what really went on.

Frankzzz you make a great point "a man whose entire campaign is built around the slogan “Leave No Man Behind”." That 15 second ad should start with Kerry intoning those words at the Dem convention. It should end with images of POWs in Nam and "1993: LEFT BEHIND BY JOHN KERRY" and somewhere along the line in the dialogue someone has to mention "these are not things that happened 30 years ago. This is present day, and the pattern is the same."

[tiptie]

Geano.............Thank you for the clarification.

Nothing slips by the bloggers!

Unlike the MSM, we have a check & balance of amazing proportions.

[Geano]

Yer welcome!
_________________
MSM Lead Nov 3 2004 "Kerry Oval Office Hopes killed by 10,000 Mice..."
Candidate had declared mice "only a nuisance".
States they "moved too Swiftly"....

[2ndamendsis]

Hopefully good news...

Just received a reply back from a POW family member. She's working on a long reply and will send tomorrow. I've asked her to share her research/info so that time might not be wasted. She sounds like a sweetie and was gracious to respond immediately.

Here's crossing fingers
_________________
PROUD wife of Army ASA Vet - 66-70
mom of Sailor - Gulf 1
daughter of WW11 Army Vet

[USAFBratToo]

I have re-read all four Schranberg articles to compile a list of names of people who protested Kerry's handling of the POW/MIA matter. Schranberg got most of his information about what went on and who to contact from "staffers" of the committee (bet they all hated that arrogant prig John Kerry) who are not named but whose names are probably a matter of public record from the early '90s. Many of the people who are named appear to have given Schranberg extensive information. I wonder how many of them would be willing, in a few weeks, to appear on the dozens of news/talk shows which will be jumping on this issue if there is a Swift ad bringing it into the light of day. If an ad goes, having some of these folks lined up and ready to speak publicly could be strategically very important.

I'm sure the Kerry camp knows all about these conversations we're having. I'm always struck by the thousand or more "visitors" on the forums when I visit them. Wonder how many are Kerry spies. Yooo-hooo, you guys - he's road kill. Save yourselves!

Here grouped by the article in which they appeared are the names and a line or two snipped from the article about their significance. Please post any info on where they are now, how to contact.

First Article: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0408/schanberg.php

Colonel Millard Peck in 1991, the first year of the Kerry committee's tenure, was one of many vivid landmarks in this saga's history. Peck had been the head of the Pentagon's P.O.W./M.I.A. office for only eight months when he resigned in disgust.

President Reagan's national security adviser, Richard Allen—about a credible proposal from Hanoi in 1981 to return more than 50 prisoners for a $4 billion ransom

A Secret Service agent then working at the White House, John Syphrit, told committee staffers he had overheard part of a conversation about the Hanoi proposal for ransom.

three secretaries of defense from the Vietnam era—James Schlesinger, Melvin Laird, and Elliot Richardson—testified that numbers of unacknowledged prisoners were being held by the Communists,

The Vietnamese were returning only nine men from Laos. American records showed that more than 300 were probably being held. A story about this stunning gap, by New York Times Pentagon reporter John W. Finney, appeared on the paper's front page on February 2, 1973.

He [Kerry] gave orders to his committee staff to shred crucial intelligence documents. The shredding stopped only when some intelligence staffers staged a protest. Some wrote internal memos calling for a criminal investigation. One such memo—from John F. McCreary, a lawyer and staff intelligence analyst—reported that the committee's chief counsel, J. William Codinha, a longtime Kerry friend, "ridiculed the staff members" and said, "Who's the injured party?" When staffers cited "the 2,494 families of the unaccounted-for U.S. servicemen, among others," the McCreary memo continued, Codinha said: "Who's going to tell them? It's classified."

2Nd: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0408/schanberg2.php

After hearing this refrain for months, one Senate investigator, Bob Taylor, a highly regarded intelligence analyst who had examined the photo evidence, finally commented in sardonic dissent, "If grass can spell out people's names and a secret digit code then I have a newfound respect for grass."

Two senators, Bob Smith and Charles Grassley, refused to go along with the majority finding in the final report

2Nd: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0408/schanberg3.php

a top-secret Soviet intelligence document that emerged two years ago from Moscow's military archives. It was a Russian translation of what was described as a senior North Vietnamese general's report to the Hanoi politburo. Brought to light by a Harvard researcher, Stephen Morris, the report said: "1,205 American prisoners of war [are] located in the prisons of North Vietnam — this is a big number. Officially, until now, we published a list of only 368 prisoners of war [the number Hanoi was then admitting at the Paris talks]. The rest we have not revealed."

These defectors were regarded as reliable by their American interrogators. One of them, Le Dinh, had worked in Hanoi's military-intelligence apparatus for four years, and had seen and met with U.S. POWs.

one researcher, Roger Hall, described the situation in a letter to The Washington Times

One of those reports was done in 1986 by Eugene Tighe, who was assigned to review the work of the D.I.A. A retired Air Force Lieutenant General, Tighe had been a director of the D.I.A. after the Vietnam War. His report said, "D.I.A. holds information that establishes the strong possibility of American prisoners being held in Laos and Vietnam." Tighe cited "a large volume of evidence." The Pentagon and its allies immediately launched a smear campaign against this highly regarded intelligence officer (who died earlier this year at 72). Officials began whispering to reporters that Tighe was "not too bright," suggesting senility.

April 1993, the wife and two daughters of Henry "Mick" Serex, an Air Force major whose radar-jamming communications plane was downed over the Demilitarized Zone in 1972, learned that a satellite photo taken less than a year earlier — on June 5, 1992 — showed what appeared to be the letters SEREX drawn into a field next to a prison in North Vietnam, not far from Haiphong. One of the daughters, Jennifer Serex-Helwig, a Sacramento, California, mother of three

[Dane]

"How can you ask a man to be the last man to be shunted aside?"

Yes, I agree that this is hugely promising. But it has nothing to do with Swiftboat Vets. If SBVT gets involved in this, many people will believe that it is willing to use anything to bring Kerry down. This, in my opinion, is a bad play. Stick with Kerry´s Swiftboat and subsequent service and hammer away. Feed any other information to other groups or the RNC and let them front the attack. Purity of purpose and image is the key.

Dane

[USAFBratToo]

[quote="Dane"]I agree that this is hugely promising. But it has nothing to do with Swiftboat Vets ... Stick with Kerry´s Swiftboat and subsequent service and hammer away. Feed any other information to other groups or the RNC and let them front the attack. Purity of purpose and image is the key."

I am not a Swift Boat Vet and so of course cannot say what the group should be doing. But in talking to many many people the one consistent put down of the points you guys are making is that they happened so long ago they are no longer relevant. The POW/MIA-Colliers question may be in itself tangential to the mission the Swifts have identified but it has the beauty of showing that Kerry's pattern of duplicity and of betraying his fellow soldiers is still his modus operandi; it makes all your arguments relevant. Other groups, such as the gut-ripped families of POW/MIAs, do not have the resources to get the story out. When you add up all the folks with connections to troops in Iraq today that may be a few million Americans, and millions more are worried about what will happen to them. If the Swifts show that Kerry shat on his fellows back in 70, and then again 25 years later, how many of those millions could vote for him to be CIC of our troops today? Well, the Swifts have done a terrific job and while I sure hope they do go with this message no matter what they have my unqualified support.

[2ndamendsis]

[2ndamendsis]

KERRY - MCCAIN - CLINTON - LIPPO
http://ojc.org/powforum/editor/lippo2.htm {hope this works}

He also kept business cards for several Chinese businessmen at companies operating in mainland China.

``We just don't have any idea why'' Huang kept those telephone numbers on hand, DNC spokeswoman Amy Weiss Tobe said. She would not comment further, except to say the committee was ``cooperating with any and all investigations.''

Then, of course, there is the Senate connection to Riady/Lippo Group.
An indication of just how deep and subtle Red Chinese roots run in U.S. business and government affairs deals with Sen. John Sidney McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. John Forbes Kerry (D-MA). Both McCain and Kerry fought long and hard to provide the political cover Clinton needed when he made the controversial decision to normalize trade and diplomatic relations with Vietnam.

McCain's current wife, Cindy, is the daughter of James Hensley, who is the second largest Anheuser-Busch distributor in the United States. Sen. McCain is an officer in Hensley & Co. and Cindy is a vice president. The McCain family owns several million dollars in Anheuser-Busch stock.

As a part of an aggressive campaign to enhance its international standing in the beer market, Anheuser-Busch has been signing contracts and investing hundreds of millions building brewery operations in China and Vietnam. It remains unclear whether any of those contracts involve Lippo.

Documents retrieved from the Internet reveal that Riady's Lippo is the holder of a license for Sea World in Indonesia and that Anheuser-Busch owns all the Sea World themeparks in the United States as well as some overseas. Again, this begs the question, is there a connection between Anheuser-Busch and Lippo?

McCain has requested the Justice Department appoint an independent council to investigate Huang and the Lippo group for the contributions violations. Rep. Gerald Solomon (R-NY) has asked for investigators to focus on assertions made by James Riady, that Huang was "my man in the American government."

A member of Sen. Kerry's family, specifically his cousin, C. Stewart Forbes, is Chief Executive Officer of the Boston, Massachusetts-based Colliers International, one of the largest real estate federations in the world.

In Dec. 1992, Vietnam granted Colliers a contract designating Colliers the "exclusive real estate agent representing Vietnam." Colliers has since written contracts in Vietnam worth billions, upgrading Vietnam's ports, railroads, highways and government buildings.

Colliers is involved with Lippo in multimillion contracts in Indonesia. Kerry, who has a blind trust run by members of his family, claims he knows nothing about his cousin's business deals or affiliations.

Perhaps tied into all of this, but it could be coincidental, Vietnam has sent its first official military delegation to the United States:

First Vietnamese Military team arrives in U.S
By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON, Feb 19 (Reuter) - Vietnam has sent its first official military delegation to the United States in a step toward possible future strategic cooperation between old enemies, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

Six senior Vietnamese colonels arrived in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Monday on the first leg of a 12-day visit which will also bring them to Washington for talks at the Pentagon and the State Department, defence officials said.

``Vietnam retains a large military that is in the midst of a modernisation effort,'' the Defence Department said in announcing the visit, the first of its kind at U.S. government invitation. ``There's a natural basis for exploratory discussions regarding strategic issues of mutual interest.''

Vietnamese diplomats said the delegation was led by Col. Vu Tan, head of the defence ministry's external relations department.

Previous Vietnamese military visits have dealt almost exclusively with the more than 2,100 U.S. servicemen still listed as missing in action or otherwise unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, 1,594 of them in Vietnam.

Unanswered questions about the fate of some of those men have cast a pall over ties since Communist-led forces overran the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government in April 1975.

The current visit's agenda, while still featuring the missing in action (MIA) issue, was broadened as part of a process of developing military-to-military relations.

``The visit is part of a modest effort to begin discussions with the Vietnamese regarding the shape (of) contacts between our defence establishments,'' Army Lt. Col. Donna Boltz, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said.

Lt. Cmdr. Karen Jeffries of the Navy, another Pentagon spokeswoman, described the delegation as a ``working group'' aimed at developing personal ties and fostering an understanding of how each military establishment operates. She said she expected discussion of the possible first port calls since U.S. warships operated from the giant Cam Ranh Bay naval base during the Vietnam War.

In Hawaii, the delegation was being hosted by the commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Joseph Prueher, and was visiting the facilities of the U.S. Joint Task Force for Full Accounting which is in charge of efforts to trace MIAs.

In Washington, the host will be Kurt Campbell, a deputy assistant secretary of defence who led a U.S. inter-agency team to Vietnam last October to begin military-to-military talks, the Pentagon said.

It said getting the fullest possible accounting for missing Americans ``remains the U.S. government's top priority in regard to Vietnam.'' On the Washington leg, which begins on Saturday, the Vietnamese team will visit the Pentagon, Coast Guard headquarters and the Pentagon's National Defence University and meet military historians, defence officials said.

President Bill Clinton normalised diplomatic relations with Vietnam in July 1995. Douglas ``Pete'' Peterson, a former prisoner of war nominated to be the first U.S. ambassador to Hanoi, is expected to arrive there next month if confirmed, as expected, by the U.S. Senate.

With the normalisation of ties, the Navy has been interested in paying port calls to Vietnam to show the flag, partly as a counterweight to China's growing military might in the region.

U.S. access to Vietnam's ports has become potentially more important as an operational matter since Washington lost access to Subic Bay Naval Station in the Philippines in 1992.
16:10 02-19-97

You have to wonder about the logistics involved. This had to be planned well in advance of the confirmation hearing on an ambassador to Vietnam. During the 104th Congress, a well known senate staff found that appointing a sitting congressman as Ambassador violated the constitution, thus temporarily procrastinating the appointment of Pete Peterson the first US Ambassador to Vietnam in 50 years.

The planning of this delegational visit had to have taken up a lot of bureaucratic time--or did they, too, make a Riady/Lippo-type contribution?

Former Congressman Peterson's confirmation hearing took all of An hour and 15 minutes, from 8:00 AM to 9:15 AM; less time than it takes to extract a tooth but a lot more painful for family members, veteran groups and the PoW/MIA community.

Now a former enemy, who brutalized American PoWs, who has warehoused remains and actively has aided in the coverup of their keeping Americans behind as PoWs, now they have a military delegation on American soil.

An enemy whose Prime Minister is personally responsible for the execution of captured American PoWs; did they too use the Riady/Lippo Group to buy their way into normalization? What's next, MO$T FAVORED NATION $TATU$?

Key money. Perefectly legal. Morally bankrupt.