In Vietnam...In Context (The elusive pic of Kerry with Fonda??)

Sacred Cow Burgers ^ | 02/11/2004 | Sacred Cow Burgers

[Prime Choice]

Well, he did tell us he was in Vietnam...I'll give him that.

[Prime Choice]

[Happy2BMe]

ALL JOKES ASIDE - You DO realize there were American POW's within hearing distance of Jane Fonda's voice when that photo was taken, do you not?

These men were undergoing incredible torture (electric shock to genitals, ice water baths, arms roped up behind backs, walking, crawling on broken glass, public rapings, etc.).

Just so you younger troopers get a little perspective on how much (how very much) we hate John Kerry's guts!

[Prime Choice]

ALL JOKES ASIDE - You DO realize there were American POW's within hearing distance of Jane Fonda's voice when that photo was taken, do you not?

Aye. What's more, while John McCain was a prisoner at the Hanoi Hilton, his abusers used John Kerry's words to torment him. How's that for providing aid and comfort to the enemy, eh?

Kerry and Fonda are cut of the same wretched cloth. Fonda had at least the decency to apologize (which I personally don't accept, considering the vast damage she did). Kerry, on the other hand, doesn't think he did anything wrong. UGH!

[ErnBatavia]

Speaking of McCain, why is he keeping so damned quiet on this business?

[Prime Choice]

Speaking of McCain, why is he keeping so damned quiet on this business?

I wish I knew. I've long since given up trying to understand the guy... : (

[Steven W.]

because there is no need for him to get involved - he has fought against Kerry for many years in the Senate, all the while fighting those commmie ba$tards who near killed him, while Hanoi John Kerry gave them aid and comfort and did everything he could to promote communism and further the reign of dictators and despots all around the world. McCain's job, for now, is to figure out what needs to be fixed in our intelligence arena & to report back in 2005.

[GaltMeister]

Wheres That Tourist Guy?

[Prime Choice]

Wheres That Tourist Guy?

Last I saw, somewhere on Mars. Hasn't been heard from since...

[counterpunch]

[Happy2BMe]

KERRY LOVES JANE PING

[SAMWolf]

The following public domain information is a transcript from the US Congress House Committee on Internal Security, Travel to Hostile Areas, HR 16742, 19-25 September, 1972, page 7671. (From the CompuServe Military Veteran's Forum.)

[Radio Hanoi attributes talk on DRV visit to Jane Fonda; from Hanoi in English to American servicemen involved in the Indochina War, 1 PM GMT, 22 August 1972. Text: Here's Jane Fonda telling her impressions at the end of her visit to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam;(follows recorded female voice with American accent);]

---

This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I've had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life--workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the women's union, writers.

I visited the (Dam Xuac) agricultural coop, where the silk worms are also raised and thread is made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The bees were danced by women,and they did their job well.

In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me--the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays while US imperialists are bombing their country.

I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam--these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters.

I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek against cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets-schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system.

As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble- strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer. And like the young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging tome tightly--and I pressed my cheek against hers--I thought, this is a war against Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is America's.

One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo-colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist.

I've spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their parents had to sell themselves to land lords as virtual slaves, when there were very few schools and much illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their own lives.

But now, despite the bombs, despite the crimes being created--being committed against them by Richard Nixon, these people own their own land, build their own schools--the children learning, literacy--illiteracy is being wiped out, there is no more prostitution as there was during the time when this was a French colony. In other words, the people have taken power into their own hands, and they are controlling their own lives.

And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign invaders--and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism--I don't think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way, shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country,and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history, particularly their poetry, and particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi Minh.

[recording ends]

[SAMWolf]

Citizen Jane, by Christopher P. Anderson, Published by: Henry Holt and Company, New York, Copyright: 1990, ISBN 0-8050-0959-0 (Amazon.com indicates the book is out of print). It has taken a long time to find anything on Jane Fonda's radio broadcasts and I can't find the full length versions anywhere and believe me, I've tried. Here are some excerpts from Christopher Anderson's "Citizen Jane".

Page 254

This is Jane Fonda speaking in Hanoi,

and I'm speaking privately to U.S. servicemen who are stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin . . . . Seventh Fleet in the Anglico Corps (Marine spotters for naval gunfire in the south of Vietnam.) You are very far away, perhaps, and removed from the country you're being ordered to shoot shells at and bomb, and the use of these bombs, or the condoning of the use of these bombs makes one a war criminal.
The men who are ordering you to use these weapons are war criminals according to international law, and in the past in Germany and Japan men who were guilty of these kinds of crimes were tried and executed.



In a [Jane Fonda] broadcast to U.S. Pilots on July 21;
Nixon is continuing to risk your lives and the lives of the American prisoners of war under the bombs in a last desperate gamble to keep his office come November. How does it feel to be used as pawns? You may be shot down, you may perhaps even be killed, but for what, and for whom?

The people back home are crying for you. We are afraid of what, what must be happening to you as human beings. For it isn't possible to destroy, to receive salary for pushing buttons and pulling levers that are dropping illegal bombs on innocent people without having that damage your own soul. Tonight when you are alone, ask yourselves; What are you doing? Accept no ready answers fed to you by rote from basic training on up; but as men, as human beings; Can you justify what you are doing? Do you know why you are flying these missions, collecting extra combat pay on Sunday?



The next day, Jane Fonda hit the airwaves again:


This is Jane Fonda in Hanoi. I'm speaking to the men in the cockpits of the Phantoms, in the B-52s, in the F-4s; those of you who are still here fighting the war, in the air, on the ground, the guys in the Anglico Corps, on the Seventh Fleet . . .

(Page 255)

. . . the Constellation, the Coral Sea, the Hancock, Ticonderoga, the Kitty Hawk, the Enterprise . . . All of you, in your heart of hearts, know the lies-cheating on body counts, falsified battle reports, the numbers of planes that are shot down, what your targets really are. Knowing who was doing the lying . . . should you allow these same liars to decide for you who your enemy is? Should we examine the reasons given to justify the murder you are being paid to commit? If they told you the truth, you wouldn't fight, you wouldn't kill. You were not born and brought up by your mothers to be killers. So . . . you have been told lies so that it would be possible for you to kill.