Viet Vet Urges Kerry To Come Clean

www.jenmartinez.com ^ | Sunday, May 25, 2003 | Larry J. O'Daniel #

[Old Airplane Driver]

Thanks, Sam, this is very useful information. My own take on Kerry is that he was in the military as a stepping stone to political aspirations. He did an ignominious 6-month tour on a destroyer off the coast and well out of harm's way and then decided he needed a better resume, so he volunteered for coastal patrols in the Swift Boats. Little did he know that the Swift Boats would be used for riverine warfare by the time he arrived. I have read with interest that his boat was based in An Thoi. Although that means nothing to most people, An Thoi is located on Dao (island) Phu Quouc, well off the western Vietnam coast. Dao Phu Quoc just happened to be the location of the huge US POW camp. It was about as secure as Berlin, NH. I know, I flew in there many times. We looked forward to an approach with no ground fire, a nice swim in the ocean to cool off, and a fine meal at the Navy mess hall. An Thoi had the best food in Vietnam.

I suspect the source of his rage against the war and his lies about his fellow officers and men stems from his own inexperienced behavior. I have read varying accounts of his "kills" and it sounds like a boatload of out of control people, who should have been under the command of Lt. Kerry. He was brought up in a normal, if privileged, manner and he likely suffered from enormous feelings of guilt about his own actions and his failure to command his men appropriately. Instead of taking personal responsibility for his failings, he decided to attempt to place the blame elsewhere to assuage his own guilt. I also suspect he is very vulnerable on this whole episode.

While he attempts to paint GW as serving less than honorably, I find that hard to swallow. He accepted two of his Purple Hearts for wounds that were nothing more than scratches, knowing that three PHs and he had a way out. His total tour was just four months. Obviously, he was a better guardhouse lawyer than I, as I had never heard of the three Purple Heart loophole, nor would I have applied for it under the circumstances Kerry did. On the other hand, no self-respecting officer would accept a Purple Heart for a "band-aid" wound if he had ever seen the men who truly earned the award. I cannot imagine an officer who would use a loophole to sneak out and leave his brothers to do the fighting. Most of us served out our tours as prescribed and didn't let down our fellow officers and men.

Now GW, on the other hand, graduated from USAF Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) in about the same era as I did and I know exactly what he had to do to make the grade. He went on to fly the F-102 Flying Coffin, which takes a special type of person. There is no crew to bail you out of trouble; it is just you and the airplane and you survive on your own skill and ability. I have respect for any man who had the right stuff to graduate from UPT -- 53 weeks of intensive training with never a let-up. As an aside, the F-102 was never assigned to South Vietnam; the closest GW would have been, even if activated, was Thailand. Despite what the media like to say, GW did not take the "easy way out", that was the province of the Klintoon and many others like him.

It seems to me that the realization is beginning to settle on the Dems that Kerry is going to lead the parade and they are terrified now that it has happened. He is not a leader and, in fact, is downright weak. We just have to exploit his flaws to our advantage.

[Steven W.]

yes, but since, amongst his many slanderous and treasonous allegations, he was perjuring himself about troops involved with rape so the DemoncRATs will say, "it's all about sex"

[Victoria Delsoul]

Think he'll ever be held accountable?

Let's see… is he a Republican?

[harpo11]

Lest We Forget September 11, 2001

Senator Kerry's military service to our great country should be applauded and cheered. His anti-war activities I deplore. Kerry's still stuck on fighting Viet Nam. President Bush is seriously fighting al Qaeda.

Senator Kerry makes me truly wonder if he ever could give our brave USA Troops the support and high regard that our President does.

[SAMWolf]

Thanks for the info on An Thoi.

On the other hand, no self-respecting officer would accept a Purple Heart for a "band-aid" wound if he had ever seen the men who truly earned the award. I cannot imagine an officer who would use a loophole to sneak out and leave his brothers to do the fighting. Most of us served out our tours as prescribed and didn't let down our fellow officers and men.

I agree with you there, Kerry was there to get his ticket punched for a future political career, image his dismay that when he got home the war had turned unpopular. So he now becomes a protester because that is what it took to be popular back then.

[There's millions of'em]

Isn't it convenient that he recommended himself for the decorations...

Can we get supporting documentation of this?

And if we can, we should HOLD all further JFK disclosures until AFTER he is selected as the dem candidate>

[baseballmom]

Thanks for posting.

I would love to hear Kerry answer some of these questions. I won't hold my breath.

[Old Airplane Driver]

Sam, I am ever more convinced that it was his way of blame-shifting for the atrocities he, himself, admits to committing. I came home from Vietnam with a clear conscience; something I don't think is true of J F'in K. In my tour, I never saw any of the things that Kerry claims were "commonplace". What I saw was mostly a bunch of guys doing the best to do their lawful duty under very trying circumstances, which were only made more difficult by the likes of Hanoi Jane and Hanoi John. I attend a reunion every year of the men who served in my wing with me and I don't think any of them feels much different than I do. We are proud of our service and with good reason; we served with honor.

[SAMWolf]

We are proud of our service and with good reason; we served with honor.

Thanks for your service.

[PhilDragoo]

Kerry Key to My Victory!

[Victoria Delsoul]

LOL! good one, Phil.

[SAMWolf]

Interview of Bui Tin conducted by Stephen Young
How North Vietnam Won The War

Taken from The Wall Street Journal, Thursday August 3, 1995

What did the North Vietnamese leadership think of the American antiwar movement? What was the purpose of the Tet Offensive? How could the U.S. have been more successful in fighting the Vietnam War? Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, answers these questions in the following excerpts from an interview conducted by Stephen Young, a Minnesota attorney and human-rights activist. Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of North Vietnam's army, received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. He later became editor of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of Vietnam. He now lives in Paris, where he immigrated after becoming disillusioned with the fruits of Vietnamese communism.

Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?

Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said, "We don't need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out."

Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?

A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.

Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits? A: Keenly. Q: Why? A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.

[dalebert]

Thanks for posting this.

[Ohioan from Florida]

I know you speak the truth about your experience with Vietnam, and how the true veterans don't discuss what happened. My father-in-law won't speak much about his time in WWII. I also had a boyfriend who had been in Vietnam and he wouldn't talk much either. Just not a topic that either one wanted to revisit. Neither considered themselves a war hero, although I do know that my father-in-law was awarded the purple heart. He still suffers some physical difficulties resulting from those injuries.

John Kerry wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Soon enough he'll have to face up to all the things he's said and done over the years. He may be able to run, but he won't be able to hide from everything! This is the age of the internet, isn't it! The internet does a lot towards keeping our "freedom of the press" a real freedom!

[Salvation]

** Kerry lacks what it takes to be Commander in Chief.

Kerry would be an extreme embarrassment to his party if nominated for President.**

Couldn't agree more with this combat officer, Larry J. O'Daniel.

[backhoe]

Isn't this unbelieveable -- my inbox has been filled today with anti-Kerry articles. Someone is doing a data dump on Kerry but the broadcast media is still all gaga over Kerry!

I am going nuts trying to compile, link, and cross-reference ( link ) all this stuff.

It's unbelievable how tainted Kerry is. How he managed to rise to high office is an astounding testimony to how gullible voters, and the "watchdog press" are.

[snippy_about_it]

Kerry Key to My Victory!

Shout it to the mountain tops!

[GailA]

http://www.620wtmj.com/620programs/charliesykes/weblog.asp

As stunning as his charges, Kerry insisted that the barbaric acts of American soldiers “were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.”

As evidence for his sweeping indictment of the American soldier in Vietnam, Kerry cited the testimony from the Winter Soldier Investigation. As Kerry explained: “The term Winter Soldier is a play on words of Thomas Paine's in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriots and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.”

The “Winter Soldier Investigation,” Mackubin Thomas Owens recently wrote in National Review Online, was, in fact “organized by the ‘usual suspects’ among antiwar celebrities such as Jane Fonda, Dick Gregory, and Kennedy-assassination conspiracy theorist, Mark Lane.” Owensis a professor of strategy and force planning at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. He led a Marine infantry platoon in Vietnam in 1968-1969. He notes that “Kerry's 1971 testimony includes every left-wing cliché about Vietnam and the men who served there.”

Even worse, much of what Kerry said turned out to be demonstrably false.

Owens writes: “In fact, the entire Winter Soldiers Investigation was a lie. It was inspired by Mark Lane's 1970 book entitled Conversations with Americans, which claimed to recount atrocity stories by Vietnam veterans. This book was panned by James Reston Jr. and Neil Sheehan, not exactly known as supporters of the Vietnam War. Sheehan in particular demonstrated that many of Lane's ‘eye witnesses’ either had never served in Vietnam or had not done so in the capacity they claimed….

“When the Naval Investigative Service attempted to interview the so-called witnesses, most refused to cooperate, even after assurances that they would not be questioned about atrocities they may have committed personally. Those that did cooperate never provided details of actual crimes to investigators. The NIS also discovered that some of the most grisly testimony was given by fake witnesses who had appropriated the names of real Vietnam veterans. Guenter Lewy tells the entire study in his book, America in Vietnam.”

http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vietnamcenter/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/lesson.htm

. Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi’s victory? A. It was essential to our strategy. Support for the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.

Q. [Why] did the Politburo pay attention to these visits? A. These people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize the will to win. While we need not attribute North Vietnam’s victory solely to domestic dissent in the U.S., we need to recognize that such dissent poses some unresolved issues. Clearly in a democracy, the government shouldn’t be able to mold public opinion. Dissent against an unwise or immoral war is a necessary part of democratic society. In some way, however, it must be possible to counter dissent which involves collaboration with the enemy. We must not allow the enemy to intervene in our domestic politics, even under the guise of dissent. However, this issue has yet to be satisfactorily resolved.

http://www.geocities.com/seavet72/AW/ws-kerry.htm

http://www.geocities.com/seavet72/LI/link-1.htm#AWP2-6

[Ben Hecks]

"An Thoi is located on Dao (island) Phu Quouc, well off the western Vietnam coast"

Seems like I remember an Army aviation unit (Caribou) had their own unofficial R&R facility on an island off the coast but I don't remember the name.