LewWaters
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Location: Washington State
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 Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 8:19 am Post subject: John Kerry Speaks at the Vietnam Wall in Washington |
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I don't recall seeing this before and couldn't find it posted here. I do recall references to it, but had never read it fully before.
The audacity of Kerry to state such words after his "testimony" in 1971 goes well beyond just "appalling."
Given on November 11, 2002
| Quote: | John Kerry Speaks at the Vietnam Wall in Washington
By: John Kerry
Washington, D.C.: Statement of Senator Kerry
November 11, 2002
For all of us this is a moment of special pride and remembering. For those who served in Vietnam it is that and much more.
Seven letters that's all it takes to make the word Vietnam.
But we know it is much more than a word. More than the name of a country. Vietnam. It is a period in time -- it is a one word encapsulation of history -- a one word summary of a war gone wrong, of families divided, generations divided, a nation divided. It carries in its seven letters all the confusion, bitterness, love, sacrifice and nobility of America's longest war. It is a one word all encompassing answer to questions: What happened to him? Where was he injured? When did he change?
Say the word Vietnam to a veteran and you can smell the wood burning fires, hear the AK-47's and B-52's, see pajama clad Viet Cong skirting a tree line and the helicopters darting across the sky -- you can feel all the emotions of young men and women who in the end were fighting as much for their love of each other as for the love of country that brought them there in the first place.
Today we come here to remember and to memorialize forever all that was Vietnam. In doing so we do not just read the names and remember those who gave their lives. We remember and celebrate what they were and remain part of -- a great nation committed to peace, individual liberty, freedom for all -- a nation which outlined in the writing of a constitution fundamental rights which belong to every one of its citizens and which we remember today are worth dying for. Today -- because of those engraved forever on these black panels - we celebrate rights and aspirations that are bigger than any individual and which each of us as individuals are willing to defend with life itself.
We celebrate the nobility of young Americans willing to go thousands of miles from home to fight for the notion that in the final measurement someone else's freedom was connected to our own.
It doesn't matter that politics got in the way. It doesn't matter that leaders remained wedded to their own confusion. Nothing -- not politics, not time, not outcome -- nothing will ever diminish one iota the contributions of these brothers and sisters, nothing can ever lessen the courage with which they waged war. Nothing reduces the magnitude of their sacrifice, nothing can take away the quality of their gift to their nation.
We mark 20 years of this memorial with the determination to set the record straight. Politicians may have lost the larger objectives, our allies may have lost the ability to hold on by themselves, we may have suffered losses in ambush, but in 10 years American soldiers never lost a battle.
The Vietnam soldiers, airmen and sailors fought with as much conviction, as much commitment, as much courage and as much selfless sacrifice as soldiers in any war. And we did so with love of country and love of fellow soldiers as great as any despite our nations political divisions at home and the difficult circumstances we were required to confront. This memorial will forever remind the generations to come of that special spirit the special bond of soldier to country and soldier to soldier.
And we remember today also with pride at the outcome -- that for our generation of Veterans the war did not end when we came home. For us the fight continued -- the recognition honoring our deeds came when Veterans pushed for it -- Agent Orange, outreach centers, extension of the GI Bill -- increased funding for Veterans Affairs , these all happened because Veterans remembered their brothers and sisters and never stopped fighting to keep faith with the promise to veterans.
We also remember those soldiers captured by the enemy who did not return and those we've yet to account for. One of the things we are most proud of is that we initiated the most extensive, exhaustive accounting for the missing or captured in all the history of human warfare. No nation has ever gone to such lengths to remember and to account their missing. Today -- because of the veterans of Vietnam -- when we send our young men and women into harms way, never again will we allow anyone to be left behind never will it take so long to find and bring every one home.
The truth is that every advance we've made on behalf of our Veterans has been the result of the commitment of Veterans and to each other and their vows never to give up the fight. This Wall itself grew out of that spirit.
That spirit bonded men and women together -- making us more than we were when we left for Vietnam, and didn't diminish once we had returned. Each panel, each name, tells the story of that journey. And one of those soldiers tells us about all of them.
Panel 31W, Row 42. On February 24, 1969, 19 year-old Marine Lance Corporal Wolfendale, just 17 days from coming home, was at the tail end of a three day firefight. Only one bunker of Viet Cong remained when a group of Marines suddenly got trapped in a depression in front of it.
Ed Wolfendale was safely away from the bunker and could have easily stayed there and kept his head down. Instead, like so many of our comrades, Ed thought little for his own safety and acted -- he grabbed a Light Anti-Tank Assault Weapon and charged into the line of fire. On his way, Ed took a direct hit and bled to death in the field. When the men in his platoon saw what Wolfie had done, they immediately followed his lead and soon overtook the bunker.
This could have been where the story ended -- but the spirit that brings us here today had a hand in this story. A member of Ed Wolfendale's platoon, Tom Smith, saw Ed go over that hill and was in the wave of men who followed him.
Though he didn't really know Ed Wolfendale, Tom never forgot what he did. After he returned home, Tom spent the next thirty years searching for Ed's family to ensure they knew how he died.
He didn't know his real name, he just knew Wolfie, so it wasn't until recently that he was able to track down his family. To his shock, Tom learned that not only did Ed's family not know how he died, he discovered that Wolfie had only received a Purple Heart. A few years back, because Tom Smith never forgot his comrade, Ed Wolfendale's 82-year-old mother Stella and five of his six brothers accepted the Silver Star on his behalf.
Tom Smith remembered a man he barely knew, and like so many of the Veterans who returned from the war, he remembered his brother.
That is why we come here today. To keep faith. To celebrate Ed Wolfendale and the 58,226 brave men and women who didn't return from Vietnam, who knew the Lord's words that "There is no greater love than sacrificing yourself for a friend." And so, it is in that spirit that we remember all who fought with our brothers and sisters -- for our families -- for our nation.
God bless them all and may God bless the United States of America. |
http://www.vvmf.org/index.cfm?SectionID=272
Contrast that too, | Quote: | "we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."
"They told the stories 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 Genghis 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."
"The country doesn't know it yet, but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in history; men who have returned With a sense of anger and a sense of betrayal which no one has yet grasped."
"And we cannot consider ourselves America's best men when we are ashamed of and hated what we were called on to do in Southeast Asia."
"to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart."
"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
"It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country, the question of racism, which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions also, the use of weapons, the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage in the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war, when 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, the killing of prisoners, accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam."
"so when, in 30 years from now, our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory but mean instead the place where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning." |
http://www.nationalreview.com/document/kerry200404231047.asp
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