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John Kerry Folks....that **French looking Mass/Democrat who thinks he is JFK

Sunday, May 25, 2003

Viet Vet charges urges Kerry to come clean

Vietnam Veteran Larry J. O'Daniel has today challenged former fellow officer and veteran, John Forbes Kerry to come clean with charges Kerry has made in the past. O'Daniel, a decorated combat veteran from Vietnam and Phoenix says that the issue is one that the Senator himself has brought on.

Senator John Forbes Kerry is attempting to be our generation's Vietnam War hero, much the same way his avowed idol, John F. Kennedy was of that generation. Kerry falls short in many ways. I do not deny his heroism under fire. His Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Hearts all attest to that. Attempting to ride into the White House on those medals alone is not enough. As a former officer who served as a combat advisor and participant in a Special Operations program, I know a little bit about integrity, courage, and character. Kerry lacks what it takes to be Commander in Chief.

Kerry would be an extreme embarrassment to his party if nominated for President. On the surface, he seems to be the exact type of rival needed to run against a popular President with a military background, albeit not in combat. A popular President who proved his courage jockeying supersonic aircraft. On the surface, Kerry would seem to be able to cut into the military vote that has become increasingly one party over the past 30 years.

This senator is JFK from Massachusetts, a coincidence that he has played upon for years. Like the first JFK, he is a heroic Naval Officer. However, he has a record which speaks volumes about his current abilities and views. Kerry will both exploit his war record and run from it. His checkerboard past explains his actions today. He has been critical of the way the current war on terrorism has been waged. Inevitably, his criticism is always preceded by media notices of Kerry, decorated Vietnam war veteran. However, thirty two years ago, Kerry charged decorated war veterans with unspeakable crimes. Those charges were never proven accurate.

Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971, Kerry asserted he represented veterans, honorably discharged and very highly decorated, who participated in war crimes. These crimes were not isolated incidents, he charged, but crimes committed on a day - to - day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. Crimes that this country made them do.

These veterans personally raped women, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned on the power. They cut off limbs; blew up bodies; randomly shot at civilians; razed villages like Ghenghis Khan; shot livestock for fun; poisoned food; and ravaged the Vietnamese countryside. From his personal experience, Kerry asserted that the Vietnamese only wanted to work in rice paddies without our helicopters strafing and napalming them and their villages. Our men died while our allies refused to help and fight. Kerry said we rationalized destroying villages in order to save them; accepted a My Lai; enforced free fire zones by shooting anything that moves. Our GIs falsified body counts while leaders glorified body counts. In a well orchestrated political move, he asked, how do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? The well scrubbed veteran began his career that day.

A problem arises. Kerry's testimony was largely untrue. These charges were investigated then and since. My challenge as we honor veterans of that war and others - Prove them or apologize.

Kerry's widely covered charges largely paralleled that of another highly decorated veteran, LTC Anthony Herbert. Some of the unsubstantiated and uncorroborated accusations of Kerry were almost identical to specific charges leveled by Herbert. Both charged war crimes were ignored, uninvestigated, part of the routine.

Kerry relied upon phonies and wannabes for support. His prominence has allowed current phonies and wannabes to continue the unsubstantiated allegations made all those years ago and which Kerry appears to condone even today. For example:

Elton Mazione, claiming Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) credentials, Kerry's original organization, along with his friends, John Laboon, Eddie Swetz, and Kenneth Van Lesser. They claimed to kill children and remove body parts as part of the notorious Phoenix program. They were neither in Phoenix nor in Vietnam.

Kerry's VVAW leader friend from 1971, Al Hubbard, lied about being an officer, Vietnam Veteran, and sustaining war injuries. Michael Harbert, another VVAW crony of Kerry, lied about his Vietnam service.

Frank Dux: He charged many recognizable Vietnam vets with using techniques bordering on war crimes. Dux was a fraud and non Vietnam Veteran.

Yoshia K. Chee claimed we in Vietnam routinely resorted to the most hideous forms of torture, threw people out of helicopters, and decapitated prisoners. He was a phony.

Mike Beamon, an alleged SEAL and Phoenix assassin, was never in the military.

The Senator's own VVAW and similar groups relied upon people like: K. Barton Osborn, a Vietnam veteran and testifier of atrocities to Congress. He told of prisoners being thrown out of helicopters, a woman starved to death, a prisoner being killed by a six inch dowel pushed through his ear. Osborn was not in Phoenix, refused to name names, and provided no documentation.

Lieutenants Francis Reitemeyer and Michael J. Cohn. Both sought conscientious objector status because of Phoenix. Reitemeyer testified to being assigned to Phoenix as an adviser and maintained a kill quota of fifty bodies a month. They became famous as My Lai hit the news. Neither served in Vietnam, in Phoenix, or had any first hand information. Reitemeyer later denied receiving any assassination training. Both were at Ft. Holabird when I underwent my intelligence training there.

Dux, like others relied, upon the specific charges of Herbert, which were publicly aired in this same time frame as that of Senator Kerry, in order to prove his charges. Herbert was highly decorated, apparently corroborating the Senator¹s charges. Despite highly specific unit naming charges of some 21 war crimes, the facts of a subsequent investigation contradict both Herbert and Kerry. Overall, this contemporaneous investigation lasted seven months. Investigators located and interviewed 333 personnel located in 31 different states, and six different foreign countries, including Vietnam. Out of the 21 incidents involved in the initial charges by Herbert, only seven charges had sufficient substance to merit action or further investigation. Two of the seven had already been acted upon with justice administered. One ended with an article 15 punishment and one with a general court martial.

Two more of the seven involved Vietnamese versus Vietnamese offenses, outside the scope of American jurisprudence and not necessarily proven. The remaining three, at the time of the DA writing, November 5, 1971, were then pending further action by officers exercising general court martial jurisdiction. In other words, it was being further investigated to see if it warranted charges being filed. This shows atrocities and allegations of atrocities were neither condoned nor swept under the rug.

The Senator allegedly knew from personal experience of atrocities being committed and condoned by officers at all levels of command. He was obligated to report those atrocities. There is no known record of any such report from the Senator. My Lai was not condoned, it was prosecuted. Fellow anti-war activist Daniel Ellsberg, who likewise served in the war zone, belied atrocity charges being more pronounced in Vietnam versus previous wars. The Senator used trumped up allegations from phonies, wannabes, stretchers of the truth to sully the valor, service, and integrity of his fellow veterans to climb a political ladder of success. When sentiments changed, he embraced those same veterans becoming an alleged champion of the Vietnam era.

When challenged last week to repudiate his previous testimony, after I faxed to his office for review, a spokesman there abruptly terminated the call saying if Senator Kerry testified to it, he stands by it. The Senator recently condoned the alleged atrocities, war crimes, committed by a fellow Democratic Senator and Vietnam Veteran, Robert Kerrey. He said the operation should not be investigated because it allegedly happened all the time in Vietnam. Further, on the Sam Donaldson show, Kerry short shrifted the program, Phoenix, under which the atrocity allegedly occurred, saying he personally helped conduct similar anti-infrastructure operations, ferrying SEALs. This, apparently is part of the source of the Senator¹s alleged first hand knowledge he testified to before.

The Senator, as a former officer, knows his obligations were to avoid participating in war crimes and reporting them when knowledge of them occurred. Instead, the Senator broad brushed veterans of the war as crazed killers forced to be that because of governmental policy. As a US Senator now, when faced head on with an allegation that a member of his party, his Senatorial Fraternity, Robert Kerrey helped cut a civilian's throat and possibly commanded an operation that killed over 20 civilians without provocation, the Senator Kerry reverted to the 1971 allegations that everyone did it. He ignored the formalized eyewitness allegation by a veteran of that operation who belatedly lived up to a responsibility to report a crime. Murder in a war zone has no time limits for investigation or prosecution.

The Senator, knows the charge is that Kerrey was on a Phoenix mission, like those he self proclaimed to have participated in, because the Senator and Sam Donaldson discussed that specific aspect on Donaldson¹s show. As I watched the Senator's response from that show, he implied personal knowledge of those Phoenix missions, although he clearly ducked any involvement with Phoenix. No proud Vietnam warrior emerged in that interview.

My challenge is clear. Make the specific charges, times, dates, persons, programs, units involved, of war crimes as outlined in your 1971 testimony. Be specific on your own knowledge of these war crimes. Clear the air about Phoenix, your participation, knowledge, even suspicions. Support the investigation of the war crime allegations of your former colleague. Do not allow his status of being a fellow privileged fraternity member from doing your sworn duty, either now as a Senator, or from that era, where as an officer and gentleman, you claimed personal knowledge of atrocities.

Either itemize those incidents or apologize to the veterans of Vietnam whose reputations, valor, and integrity you sullied then and now and renounce those charges you then and now refuse to itemize. I make this challenge as a veteran of Vietnam, Phoenix, and as a former fellow officer and colleague. Duty - Honor - Country - These are our obligations. You are at a fork in a path. Integrity or disgrace. Your choice.

Your 26, Viet Vet charges urges Kerry to come clean is echoed in a site by other veterans featuring these and other telling glimpses:

Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry

Kerry organized one of the most confrontational protests of the entire Vietnam War called Operation Dewey Canyon III. It began April 18, 1971, with nearly 1,000 Vietnam vets gathered on the Washington, D.C., Mall for what they called "a limited incursion into the country of Congress."

On April 23, 1971, Kerry led members of VVAW in a protest during which they threw their medals and ribbons over a fence in front of the U.S. Capitol.

Much of Kerry's speech before Congress painted his fellow GIs as so brutal that, today, they could easily be mistaken for Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen killers. He told Congress that U.S. soldiers 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, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."

Kerry was a supporter of the "People's Peace Treaty," a supposed "people's" declaration to end the war, reportedly drawn up in communist East Germany. It included nine points, all of which were taken from Viet Cong peace proposals at the Paris peace talks as conditions for ending the war.
One of the provisions stated: "The Vietnamese pledge that as soon as the U.S. government publicly sets a date for total withdrawal [from Vietnam], they will enter discussion to secure the release of all American prisoners, including pilots captured while bombing North Vietnam."
In other words, Kerry and his VVAW advocated the communist line to withdraw all U.S. troops from Vietnam first and then negotiate with Hanoi over the release of prisoners. Had the nine points of the "People's Peace Treaty" favored by Kerry been accepted by American negotiators, the United States would have totally lost all leverage to get the communists to release any POWs captured during the war years.