SwiftVets.com

[KeithNolan]

A LITTLE BACKGROUND
The thread I started under the heading "this website is fueled by lies and innuendo" has gotten so off-topic and otherwise out of control that I thought it best to make a clean break and start over.

Here's my original post on that original thread:

Before offering my two cents on the subject at hand, I should note that I am not a veteran. I do have an interest, however, in the Vietnam War, and have had the good fortune to publish ten books on the subject. All were based on archival research and interviews with combat veterans. I have over the course of the last two decades interviewed thousands of former grunts, armored cavalrymen, helicopter crewmen, and Marines. My latest title is RIPCORD. It tells the story of a battle fought by the 101st Airborne Division in the mountains west of Hue in the Summer of '70. Check out RIPCORD by Keith Nolan at amazon.com for reviews of my work, including one from Stephen Ambrose.

With that out of the way, let me say that I am appalled by the viciousness and unfairness of the attacks being directed at John Kerry on this website. There is no meat to any of these attacks. Most seem to be based on innuendo, ignorance, and half-truths. It is hard to discern through all the mud being thrown that Kerry could have easily avoided the war but volunteered to serve, or that he is remembered by those who served on his Swift boat as a brave and honorable man who rightly earned his Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Hearts.

The favorable commentary about Kerry from those who were in combat with him is available to anyone who watches the news, reads political magazines, or checks out salon.com or other polical websites. This testimony is compiled in great detail in TOUR OF DUTY; JOHN KERRY AND THE VIETNAM WAR by Douglas Brinkley.

Instead of turning to the facts from those who were there, to include the former lieutenant whose life Kerry saved during a firefight in 1969, those posting on this website seem content to make unsubstantiated allegations about Kerry being an incompetent, a coward, a medal-hungry phony, and a war criminal who supposedly murdered a wounded Viet Cong who was trying to surrender. These are all blatant lies. According to those veterans who were actually there, the guerrilla whom Kerry dispatched with his M16 in the midst of a firefight was armed with an RPG.

When not spreading lies about Kerry's conduct under fire, those posting at this website describe Kerry as a "traitor" because this former combat officer felt compelled to join the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and speak out against the conduct of the war. Like it or not, history happens to be on Kerry's side. Whatever one might say about the cruelty of those fighting under the banner of the National Liberation Front, those cruelties were matched in kind by the ARVN and in a depressing number of cases by units of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.

It was not a black and white war with the good guys on one side and the bad guys on the other. There were a lot of gray areas. The enemy assassinated government officials and conducted mass murder at Hue during the Tet Offensive. At the same time, the U.S. military burned villages, employed its massive firepower with little regard for the civilians caught in the middle, and put such an emphasis on body counts that outrages like My Lai, Son Thang, the Tiger Force rampage, and a host of other atrocities were inevitable.

I'm unclear as to why Kerry was a "traitor" for trying to expose this brutal way of war to the American people. No less an authority than LtCol Gary Solis, USMC, Ret, who fought as a Marine captain in Vietnam and later became a military lawyer, has written that atrocities by U.S. troops in Vietnam were "not unusual. Generals will deny it, colonels and majors may doubt it, but any captain or lieutenant and any enlisted infantryman who was there will confirm it. That's just the way it was."

Keith W. Nolan
Washington County, Missouri
KWNolan@aol.com
http://members.aol.com/KWNolan/Viet.html


THE RESULT
The response to that message has been eighteen pages of madness, screaming, name-calling, hair-splitting, and much shrill debate about why we lost the war, the military efficiency of the NVA vs. the ARVN, the issue of war crimes in Vietnam (My Lai, Son Thang, the Tiger Force rampage, ad nauseam), the supposedly treasonous activity of John Kerry when he belonged to the supposedly treasonous Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the highly-charged political climate of 1971, etc., etc., etc.

I did my share of screaming in there, too, making it clear that I think Bush II is a man bereft of intelligence, character, and decency---a classic empty suit---who should be embarrassed about having hid out in the Air Guard during a war he supposedly supported, and utterly ashamed that his minions have smeared in his behalf the honorable combat service of men like John Kerry, John McCain, and Max Cleland.

If you've actually got the energy to slog through all eighteen pages of the original thread, you're made of stern stuff. Like I said, it's time to make a clean break from all the screaming and start over.


SOME UNFINISHED BUSINESS
My original point, and the only reason I started a thread at this dirty-trickster website, was to make the point that John Kerry did nothing in Vietnam that warrants the barrage of mud-slinging that has been thrown at his combat service by the yahoos, haters, and ideologues at this website. Don't like a guy's politics, attack the politics, not his wounds and his valor awards.

Before continuing on to the final business at hand---my attempt to defend the VVAW---I want to make sure that I and those I've been fighting with are finally all playing off the same sheet of music. So let me ask a few questions:

1.) Can we agree that the war-crime charges about Kerry that are being bandied about so casually at this website are utterly false? In other words, do we agree that Lieutenant (j.g.) John F. Kerry, US Navy, did not merrily machine-gun civilians from his Swift boat in the Mekong Delta and did not sadistically shoot a poor, helpless, wounded VC in the back with his M16? (No one who was actually on the scene remembers any such incidents.)

2.) Can we agree that Kerry displayed a certain amount of personal courage by a.) charging ashore during an enemy ambush to personally eliminate a guerrilla fighter armed with a loaded RPG, and b.) ignoring his own injuries and exposing himself to enemy fire to rescue 1LT Jim Rassman, US Army? (We can argue all day about what medals Kerry would have received for these actions had he been a junior officer in the Army or Marine Corps as opposed to the US Navy. Under such circumstances, he probably would have received lesser decorations. Had he been an enlisted man, his courage under fire might very well have gone unrecognized. On the other hand, had Kerry been a field-grade officer and done the same things, he might have collected the DSC or Navy Cross. This is a useless argument, and beside the point.)

3.) Can we agree, based on Kerry's top-notch efficiency reports, that he was regarded highly by his superiors in Vietnam? We all know that efficiency reports are inflated; but can we agree that had Kerry really been the incompetent, cowardly, murdering swine many of your charge him with being, his superiors would have damned him with faint praise in his efficiency reports to ensure that he could not make a career in the U.S. Navy?

4.) Can we agree that there is no justification to smearing an individual's honorable combat service because you disagree with his subsequent anti-war activism and his current political stances?

5.) Can we agree that maybe---just maybe---there is some election-year motivation behind this website, and that the same kind of dirty tricks being employed here (like allowing threads that harp without a shred of evidence about war crimes that John Kerry supposedly committed) were also used to smear the military service of John McCain and Max Cleland?

6.) Can we agree that maybe---again, just maybe---there is something a little slimy about political operatives spreading innuendoes about the honorable combat service of men like Kerry, McCain, and Cleland on the behalf of a rich-kid like Bush II who used his father's influence to secure a favored and safe spot in the Air Guard? (I know all you guys hate Kerry. But what's happening to Kerry also happened to McCain and Cleland. Doesn't that bug you even a little?)

7.) Can we agree that maybe---once again, just maybe---the genuine, heartfelt anger of those combat veterans (Mr. Boyle, Mr. Fagan, Mr. Jones) who damned Kerry's post-war activism on the previous thread is being used for political purposes at this website by dirty-tricksters who don't really give a hoot in hell about what those combat veterans went through in Vietnam and are only interested in making sure Bush II stays in the White House? (I'll say it again, and please tell me why I'm wrong, but if Bush II's people had an ounce of respect for Vietnam veterans, they never would have used lies to go after the combat service of McCain and Cleland. Forget Kerry. These party hacks were willing to smear a guy who spent years being tortured in Hanoi, and a guy who was decorated for valor while the communications officer of a line battalion during Tet and Operation Pegasus and lost three limbs in a combat accident. If they don't respect the service of a former POW and a triple-amputee, do you think they've ever worried their little heads about what a door gunner like Mr. Jones, a combat engineer like Mr. Boyle, and a Marine recon trooper like Mr. Fagan endured in Vietnam?)

Are we all in agreement at this point? Or can we at least agreed to disagree with a sense of civility and the realization that other viewpoints might contain at least a germ of truth?

If so, let's proceed. It's time to defend the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.


REBUTTING THE CHARGE THAT JOHN KERRY AND THE VVAW WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BABY-KILLER SLUR THAT DOGGED VIETNAM VETERANS DURING THE 1970s
Most of the attacks against the VVAW have been directed at the Winter Soldier Investigation in Detroit, the Operation Dewey Canyon III protest in Washington, and John Kerry's testimony before the Senate. All of these events took place during the early months of 1971. The charge has been made that by speaking of war crimes as "policy" during those mad days (the military was trying to brush the war crimes off as "isolated incidents"), Kerry enshrined and legitimized the baby-killer slur and made life a living hell for his fellow Vietnam veterans during the 1970s.

To explain why I disagree with this attack on Kerry, let's start with some timelines. The more radical elements of the anti-war movement had originally begun using the baby-killer slur during the 1965-68 period when General Westmoreland was aggressively prosecuting his search-and-destroy strategy in South Vietnam. During this period, thousands of little hamlets and hundreds of larger villages were burned down (or otherwise destroyed) by U.S. troops who were either acting on orders from above, out of revenge for lost comrades, or as a way of giving vent to their frustration at not being able to come to grips with the guerrillas operating within those villages. This was the period when entire communities were forcibly removed to resettlement camps and their ancestral homes put to the torch. This was also the period in which U.S. forces---so as to minimize friendly casualties and maximize enemy casualties---employed heavy firepower when contact was made without much regard for the civilians caught in the middle. More care was taken to protect civilian lives and property after General Abrams replaced Westmoreland in mid-1968, but the fact remains that tens of thousands of civilians, many babies included, were accidentally killed by U.S. units between 1965-68 as those units tried to pound the VC and NVA into oblivion. This was not a matter of American troops behaving dishonorably, and it does not excuse the deliberate communist atrocities that were being carried out at the same time (assassination of government officials, etc.), but this high level of civilian casualties does speak to the war in Vietnam being a nasty, gray-shaded mess in which even the good guys ended up with much blood on their hands.

Martha Gellhorn addressed this issue when reporting from Vietnam in 1966-67: "[W]e, unintentionally, are killing and wounding three or four times more people than the Vietcong do, so we are told, on purpose. We are not maniacs and monsters, but our planes range the sky all day and all night, and our artillery is lavish and we have much more deadly stuff to kill with. The people are there on the ground, sometimes destroyed by accident, sometimes destroyed because Vietcong are reported to be among them. This is indeed a new kind of war, as the indoctrination lectures stated, and we had better find a new way to fight it. Hearts and minds, after all, live in bodies."

The baby-killer slur was most often directed toward President Johnson during this period because of the tactics the U.S. employed in Vietnam. The troops were generally seen as pawns being forced to do the dirty work of murderous, callous, or uninformed politicians. That a number of GIs and Marines were court-martialled between 1966-68 for some of those famous isolated incidents in which Vietnamese civilians---including babies---were intentionally killed fanned the flames of the more vicious anti-war elements which wanted to latch onto anything they could find to discredit the U.S. war effort in Vietnam.

By and large, at this early point in the war, the American public either hated or distrusted the anti-war movement, and was disgusted by the radicals screaming that the troops in Vietnam were nothing but a bunch of baby-killers.

The baby-killer slur did not really take hold with the public until late-1969 when LIFE Magazine published a spread of gruesome, full-color photographs of Vietnamese civilians being gunned down by American GIs in the hamlet of My Lai 4. This was not a matter of accidentally killing civilians in the course of fighting a war. This was a mass slaughter of more than 500 unarmed peasants by troops from two infantry companies responding to a chain of command that included numerous platoon leaders, two company commanders, and a task-force commander. I doubt the brigade commander had anything to do with the planning the crimes unfolding beneath his command-and-control helicopter (he had only taken assumed command of the brigade the day before), although it should be noted that this colonel did his best to cover up the massacre when a minority of outraged junior officer reported it to him. No one will ever know what involvement, if any, the division commander had in planning and executing an operation more in keeping with the traditions of the Nazis, Soviets, and the army of Imperial Japan than those of the United States Army.

The anti-war movement seized upon My Lai, of course, and the baby-killer slur became set in stone for those on the Left. They didn't need Kerry and the VVAW. They already had Captain Medina and Lieutenant Calley. It was these activists who were most likely to spit on a vet (literally or figuratively) and throw My Lai in his face.

Funny thing about My Lai, though: there wasn't much outrage out there in the Heartland. There was actually a groundswell of support for poor ol' Rusty Calley that was so strong that he only did a token spell of house arrest after being convicted by a jury of combat veterans of personally killing over a hundred unarmed Vietnamese.

If most Americans sided with Calley when he was convicted in 1971, why would these same citizens go around harassing Vietnam veterans as baby-killers? Seems to me that they didn't care that much about dead Vietnamese babies, one way or the other.

Is it possible that the baby-killer slur was bandied about mostly by rabid anti-war activists? Them and the great mass of half-educated, half-informed citizens who boil everything down to a sound bite? Is Kerry supposed to be blamed for the fact that a lot of Americans love to run their mouths off about things they hardly understand?

Anyway, when John Kerry and the VVAW started talking about war-crimes-as-policy in 1971, they were trashed as frauds by the Nixon administration and harassed by the FBI. The only people who paid them much attention were a handful of media types and writers, plus a smattering of politicians.

The general public picked up the baby-killer slur from the events at My Lai 4, not from Kerry. If those combat veterans among you feel the need to place blame for the insults you endured, please place that blame on the inability of many Americans to grapple with complex issues. We like our ideas neat and simple. No nuances, please. You might also want to blame General Westmoreland for unleashing the awesome firepower of the U.S. military upon the rural villages of South Vietnam in his pursuit of the VC and NVA, as well as the officers and men of Task Force Barker who---all arguments about the need for firepower in war aside---sadistically butchered hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese in My Lai.

It's a bit unfair to lay all this at the feet of a guy named John Kerry. Most Americans couldn't have told you who John Kerry was in 1971. They sure knew who Rusty Calley was, however.

Now it is true that Kerry's testimony in the Senate resonated with the media and academics, and will forever be a part of the literature of the Vietnam War. But now we're talking about the legacy of Vietnam and how it will be remembered by future generations, and not about idiots using the baby-killer slur to attack Vietnam veterans.

The slurs that veterans endured in the 1970s can be more properly blamed on the public's perception of search-and-destroy tactics (all the news footage of wailing peasants and burning hootches certainly left a mark on people's minds), as well as the public's perception of individuals like General Westmoreland, Captain Medina, and Lieutenant Calley.

As I understand it, the name-calling began to peter out in the 1980s, what with the rise of the Republican Party in Washington, the building of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, etc. That's when it suddenly became hip to be a Vietnam veteran, and fakers began appearing in such numbers that a book named STOLEN VALOR was written about them.


REBUTTING THE CHARGE THAT JOHN KERRY AND THE VVAW WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR DAMAGING TROOP MORALE BY PUBLICLY TALKING ABOUT WAR CRIMES IN 1971
In addition to blaming John Kerry for spreading the baby-killer slur, the ideologues at the original thread have also charged him with treason and undermining the morale of U.S. troops in Vietnam while a spokesman for the VVAW. As such, he has been accused of helping to lose the war, and, by extension, of being complicit in the Cambodian genocide, the suffering of the Boat People, etc., etc.

Problem with that argument is that there wasn't much morale left to undermine by the time Kerry began speaking out against the war in 1971.

Soldiers aren't stupid, you know. Once the Americans sat down with the communists in Paris in May 1968 to negotiate and end to the war, it became fairly obvious that the U.S. was not going to win a military victory in Vietnam. Once President Nixon began withdrawing U.S. combat units from the war zone during the Summer of '69, it became completely obvious to the troops that the war was a lost cause altogether. There were never any mass combat refusals among the troops fighting the war until 1969. After 1969, they became epidemic, as the aggressive, professional army that had fought in Vietnam between 1965-68 began decaying at a shocking rate. The army that marched into Vietnam in 1965 was not the same one that finally staggered out in 1972.

By the time Kerry began speaking out against the war in 1971, about the only units still prosecuting the war with the professionalism and aggressiveness of the old days were the aviation and special-operations units. The average grunt was just going through the motions out there in the field, willing to put it all on the line to save a wounded buddy or push an attacking enemy back---there was still a lot of individual heroism even in those last dog days---but completely unwilling to charge up any hills for the sake of glory and body counts. These were the days of faked patrols and apathy. The whole army was suffering from short-timer's fever, and the catchphrase of the grunts was Who Wants To Be The Last Man Killed In Vietnam?

Morale was even worse in the rear where the troops of some units were literally at war with each other, lifers against draftees, boozers against potheads, blacks against whites, etc., etc. Anarchy ruled the rear areas of Vietnam in 1971. There were fraggings, rampant drug use, race riots, slack discipline, ad nauseam.

This was the army that Kerry supposedly demoralized. Interestingly enough, journalists in 1971-72 reported seeing grunts wearing VVAW buttons on their web gear during operations. Apparently these grunts hadn't gotten the word that they were supposed to hate Kerry for abandoning and betraying them. I doubt they would have seen it that way. They would probably have thanked Kerry for trying to get them out of the screwed-up hellhole that was Vietnam before they lost their lives for nothing. (They might also have thanked him for the VVAW's efforts to improve conditions for wounded combat veterans sharing their beds with garbage and rats in run-down VA hospitals.)

To find veterans who will speak on the record of Kerry betraying and abandoning them, the right-wing usually has to trot out former POWs. There is a sad twist to the bitterness of these ex-POWs: because the communists could not understand the give-and-take of ideas in a free society, and shoved a lot of anti-war stuff---including Kerry's---down the throats of these captives, these ex-POWs now seem to be saying that we're supposed to shut down any wartime dissent in the United States of America on the grounds that it might encourage the enemy.

Didn't Kerry earn his right to dissent as a citizen of America?


REBUTTING THE CHARGE THAT JOHN KERRY AND THE VVAW WERE PERFORMING AS COMMUNIST DUPES WHEN THEY DECLARED THAT WAR CRIMES WERE A MATTER OF U.S. POLICY IN VIETNAM
Even when granting that Kerry had every right to express his thoughts on the war, those who hate him charge him with overstating the case when he testified before the Senate in 1971 that war crimes were a matter of U.S. policy in Vietnam.

I agree that he cast too wide a net in talking about war crimes. Certainly, most troops remained true to their moral compass and most officers did their best to protect the non-combatants in their areas of operation. I tend to subscribe to the military's isolated-incident explanation, and not the VVAW's war-crimes-as-policy theory.

However, the subject is so murky that Kerry can be excused for coming to believe that war crimes were indeed policy. One could have easily come to the at conclusion without being branded a traitor.

I went into this in more depth in the original thread, but to argue in behalf of Kerry's war-crimes-as-policy statement one can point to the sheer number of "isolated incidents" that took place in Vietnam and the very few court-martials that resulted from these crimes. One can also point to the organized butchery that went on at places like My Lai, My Khe, Son Thang, etc., etc., as well as those areas where the Tiger Force of the 1/327th Airborne Infantry operated in late-1967, where Task Force Barker operated in early 1968, and where certain elements of Task Force Oregon and certain elements of the 198th Light Infantry Brigade operated in late-1967 and early-1968. The list could go on and on.

In addition, certain units (especially during the early years of the war) burned villages as policy, and some dark things went on in the free-fire zones controlled by certain units. See the original thread for an explanation of why some of General Ewell's own officers called him the Butcher of the Delta when he was commanding the 9th Infantry Division. Interestingly enough, one of those associated with this website, Admiral Hoffman, is described as a Ewell-like character in TOUR OF DUTY by Douglas Brinkley and THE EDUCATION OF LIEUTENANT KERREY (Bob Kerrey, that is) by Gregory L. Vistica.

Add all these factors together and you could honestly conclude, as did the VVAW, that war crimes were a matter of policy in Vietnam.

I don't happen to agree. I tend to agree with the isolated-incidents theory, and am able to point to many units that were involved in relatively few abuses, as well as to acts of great compassion towards the Vietnamese by Americans GIs.

That I disagree with Kerry's conclusions does not give me the right to brand him a traitor as do many at this overheated website.


REBUTTING THE CHARGE THAT JOHN KERRY's VVAW WAS FILLED WITH FAKE VETERANS AND PAID LIARS
John Kerry was involved in the Winter Soldier Investigation conducted by the VVAW in Detroit in early 1971. At what was essentially a press conference, numerous combat veterans spoke of the war crimes they had seen in Vietnam. In response, the Nixon administration charged that many of those veterans were fakes, or had been paid to give fraudulent testimony, or were otherwise disciples of the left-wing conspiracy nut Mark Lane.

The counterattack worked, and Kerry finds himself charged now with associating with men he knew to be liars and frauds in his treasonous efforts to demean the U.S. military and give aid and comfort to Hanoi.

Only problem is that no one ever names names when discussing the supposed frauds who testified in Detroit. I'm sure there might have been a few---every organization attracts a certain fringe element---but it's obvious from watching the documentary WINTER SOLDIER about the press conference in Detroit that young combat veterans giving testimony were speaking from the heart and with obvious sincerity.

There was one veteran who seemed to be telling a sea story with a little hair on it. I won't mention his name because I have no proof one way or the other. That one exception aside, the pain, anger, and sense of stained innocence coming from the rest of the veterans in WINTER SOLDIER is palpable and undeniable. The truth of their testimony is also undeniable. I've heard the same kinds of stories hundreds of times over from veterans who were never associated with VVAW. For people in this conservative, super-patriotic era to curse as traitors, frauds, liars, and dupes those young men who testified in Detroit back when America seemed to have lost its way because of Vietnam is as sickening as the lies presently being told at this website about John Kerry.

Have any of you---especially you shrieking military wives from the original thread---actually seen WINTER SOLDIER. It's heartbreaking. Watch it. If you can afterwards keep screaming about traitors, frauds, liars, and dupes, I don't know what to think except that you have hardened your hearts in some ideological fire and have blinders welded to the sides of your heads when it comes to anything negative about the United States of America.

Listen to the pain in the voice of ex-Lieutenant Mark Lenix of the 2/39th Infantry as he describes how a bored gunship pilot fired up a hootch for sport and ended up killing two children, then tell me that he's lying.

Watch the hurt and confusion in the eyes of ex-SP4 Steve Pitkin, also of the 2/39th Infantry, as he describes becoming an "animal" to survive in Vietnam, then tell me that's lying.

Former SGT Ed Murphy and ex-SP4 Joe Galbally, who served in the same squad of the same platoon of the same company of the same battalion in the 198th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division, testified about the routine rape of Vietnamese village girls by certain GIs during 1967-68. There, is of course, no way to prove such a charge. It is interesting to note, however, that several GIs from a platoon in the 198th Light Infantry Brigade were brought to trial for gang-raping and murdering two female prisoners in June 1968. Testimony was given during the trial that the platoon leader and company commander were both on the scene when these crimes took place and chose to turn a blind eye. (Details can be found in VIETNAM STORIES by COL Jack Crouchet, USA-Ret, who served as a military judge in Vietnam.)

The testimony of ex-SGT Scott Camil, who served in combat with the 1st Marine Division, 1966-67, has always been dismissed on the grounds that he had mental problems and a drug problem. At least, those are the allegations about Camil. I can tell you all, however, that I've spoken to plenty Marine veterans who tell the same stories as did Camil of prisoners being abused and executed and villages being put to the torch. There's no way to prove that Camil wasn't lying. There's no way to prove that those I spoke with weren't lying, either. Absent sworn testimony of witnesses and news footage of crimes actually being committed, one can just dismiss all of these accounts of murder and mayhem as sea stories told by unbalanced young men.

I think, however, that I've found an unimpeachable source to back up the testimony of former Marines like Scott Camil. I am speaking of Corporal Eddie P. Austin, USMC, who was Killed In Action in April 1967, and whose letters and diary notes are reproduced in A LIFE IN A YEAR by James R. Ebert. "There are more civilians killed here per day than VC[,] either by accident or on purpose and that's just plain murder," Ebert wrote home to his parents. "I'm not surprised that there are more VC. We make more VC than we kill by the way these people are treated. I won't go into detail but some of the things that take place would make you ashamed of good old America."

Describing the sweep of a village, Corporal Ebert wrote in his diary that "The guys killed two men---murdered them---and two water buffalo calves, all just for kicks. They also made a girl undress and stood there laughing at her standing there nude."

There is no denying the brutality of the communists in Vietnam, or the many acts of bravery and compassion performed by American soldiers who fought there.

There is also no denying the abuses that went on in many units. Maybe we should all re-read A RUMOR OF WAR by Phil Caputo to understand how good soldiers and good Marines can do things in the stress of a brutal guerrilla war that they would spend the rest of their lives regretting.

To acknowledge that many abuses did take place is to make sense of why John Kerry joined the VVAW, and to demolish the charge that he surrounded himself with liars, frauds, and traitors.

Can we finally all admit that the Vietnam War was a gray-shaded mess about which good men can disagree, and that John Kerry came to his anti-war position honestly?

AND THAT'S ENOUGH VERBIAGE FOR NOW. ANY OF YOU KERRY-BASHERS STILL THERE? Keith W. Nolan, Washington County, Missouri

[Big Kahuna]

[KeithNolan]

The post has only been up for a couple minutes, and already the juvenile name-calling begins. It's interesting that John Kerry enjoys the friendship of John McCain and Max Cleland, whom you acknowledge as honorable---and who, let us never forget, were also smeared by the minions of Bush II.

Keith Nolan

[sparky]

Scary, isn't it? Keith, honestly, you're just not going to obtain intelligent conversation here except with people who already agree with you. I'm beginning to think it's a law of nature.

[KeithNolan]

Sparky, please stick with this thread. Yours has been a voice of balance and reason in this howling wilderness of idealogues, haters, and know-nothings. Thanks, Keith

[LewWaters]

Keith, what are you trying to prove? We were there. Many of you here defending Kerry weren't. We have felt the scorn brought on us by the likes of Kerry for over 30 years now. Do you really think you can convince us now that he was actually doing things for our own good?

If you were truly an objective author or historian, instead of insinuating how out of touch we all are, you would be listening to why so many veterans want nothing to do with Kerry.

Do you really think so many vets are that misled?

[jb]

Why do you even bother Lew? It should be obvious after all these years that it isn''t worth the effort.

jb

[Craig]

[mikest]

I'm sure you'll hate the source, but this is from the WaPo/ABC poll released today. Veterans are now split down the middle for Kerry. Again, I don't discount what you feel about Kerry, but there are plenty of vets who don't feel the same no matter what some people say here.

[Greenhat]

[hist/student]

unabashed comprehensive retraction

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