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Aug 22, 2004 Is it just me, or does anyone else find it curious how the national media have chosen to give credence to those veterans who've come out to defend Senator John Kerry's Vietnam service while calling those who've criticized it "Liars," and worse? Shouldn't this be a strong clue as to where the so-called "mainstream media's" sympathies lie? Given that tendancy on the part of the national media, shouldn't they be calling the Bush Campaign "believable" and "truthful?" After all, the Bush Campaign has been consistent in its acknowledgement that Kerry's service was "honorable" and even "heroic." As I've already said in other articles, I don't know whether or not Kerry behaved honorably or "heroically" in Vietnam. I wasn't in the Navy and I certainly wasn't on a Swiftboat at the same time he was. I do find it curious that 254 Swiftboat veterans who WERE with Lt. Kerry at the time on those Swiftboats or in his chain of command--as opposed to one Green Beret and now 8 others who were his contemporaries--have chosen to make those claims that Kerry's accounts of his service are NEITHER honest nor honorable. I have consistently said that my objections to Mr. Kerry stem from what he did AFTER he returned to the States. He testified under oath to atrocities that were pure hearsay, the veracity of which he couldn't POSSIBLY have been able to know. In fact, much of what he testified about was based on that infamous, Jane Fonda-sponsored event known as the "Winter Soldier Project" which had taken place earlier in Detroit. In that "conference," dozens of men claiming to be vets of Vietnam told harrowing stories of simply awful atrocities, including beheadings, mutilations, deliberate targeting of civilians, rapes and other, similar war crimes. It later became apparent that most, if not all, of those tales were simply made up--often by men who'd not only never served in Vietnam when they claimed, but even a few who'd never even been in the military at all in ANY capacity. The President of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, of which Kerry was a prominent member, claimed to have been an ex-Lieutenant Colonel and claimed to have served two tours in Vietnam during which he'd issued ORDERS (passed on from higher-ups, of course) to commit such atrocities. As it turned out, he'd been a Sergeant who'd served a single tour in a maintenance unit near Saigon and had never seen a shot fired in anger during his entire tour. When it became public and this guy resigned, Kerry's response was on the order of, "Oh well! At least his heart was in the right place." I understand that it's not all that uncommon for some men to exaggerate their service records. Most generally, those sorts are secretly ashamed of the mundane nature of their activities in what's supposed to be a combat zone. We've had numerous examples of that sort of behavior over the years. There used to be a guy from Dallas who always showed up wearing an Army field jacket covered with patches and decorations and who claimed to have won the Medal of Honor in Vietnam. He was a media darling who always was critical of U.S. military policies--especially those policies coming from a Republican administration--so he was called upon frequently by the major broadcast news organizations. Then, someone decided to research his military records in depth and it turns out that, not only did he NOT win the Medal of Honor, but he'd never been closer to Vietnam than Southern California--that in fact, he'd served his entire tour of duty in the Army in Germany! Did the media make the slightest effort to correct the record with respect to this guy? Not at all. What they did was to quietly drop him from their list of commentators and never mentioned him again. Now, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have been joined in their criticisms of Lt. Kerry by several ex-Vietnam era POW's--men with the SAME credentials to comment as Senator McCain--and, to a man, they've said that Kerry's testimony before Congress in 1971 and his subsequent campaigns against the war on TV on behalf of VVAW and under Jane Fonda's aegis did more damage to the war effort and the early end to that war than anything the Viet Cong ever did. They are literally accusing Kerry of treason--at least partly because he led a delegation of anti- war activists to Paris to meet with the VC and NVA delegates to the Paris "Peace" Talks and then returned home to campaign for the communists' "solution," including reparations to the forthcoming communist government in Vietnam. He did this while still holding a Naval reserve commission, too, which would make him subject to the penalties of the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) It's still a curiosity as to why he was never so tried--other than that someone in the Government decided the political climate wasn't then conducive to such an effort at that time. It's recently been revealed that Kerry's photograph, testifying before the Fulbright Committee hearings in 1971 enjoys a prominent place in a museum in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) dedicated to the "heros" of the communist revolution. Kerry joined McCain in an effort in the early 90's which was reputed to have been an effort to solve the MIA issue with Vietnam. What it turned out to be, however, was, in fact, a campaign to "normalize" relations with Communist Vietnam and the MIA issue was once again basically ignored. In fact, one of the "benefits" of that effort at "normalization" of relations with Vietnam was that a Kerry cousin was given a real estate contract with the Vietnamese government worth a reputed ONE BILLION DOLLARS. Ron Brown, the late Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration who died in a mysterious plane crash in Bosnia, was, at the time of his death, under Congressional investigation for reported kick-backs from the Vietnamese government for HIS efforts to affect that "normalization," too. All in all, Kerry's 4-month-long tour of duty in Vietnam, during which he drove a boat up and down a few rivers and canals in the Mekong Delta (for most of his tour) is seen by the Kerry campaign as the primary reason he should be elected President and CIC of the Armed Forces. There are a lot of Vietnam era vets who don't think so. I'm on THEIR side. ------------ About the author: A semi-retired middle-manager in the oil and gas industry, Mr. Jared is currently writing his first book, which will contain TRUTHFUL accounts of his two tours in Vietnam, which should be a refreshing change from anyone who's read "Tour of Duty." Email: Pappadave@sbcglobal.net |
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