Posted on 02/17/2004 9:46:04 AM PST by truthandlife
These days former Vietnam war POW Sen. John McCain has nothing but praise for his fellow Vietnam veteran, Sen. John Kerry, the Democrats' current presidential front-runner.
But after he was released from the Hanoi Hilton in 1973, Sen. McCain publicly complained that testimony by Kerry and others before J. William Fullbright's Senate Foreign Relations Committee was "the most effective propaganda [my North Vietnamese captors] had to use against us."
"They used Senator Fullbright a great deal," McCain wrote in the May 14, 1973 issue of U.S. News & World Report. While he was languishing in a North Vietnamese prison cell, Kerry was telling the Fullbright Committee that U.S. soldiers were committing war crimes in Vietnam as a matter of course.
Sen. Ted Kennedy, a key Kerry presidential backer, was "quoted again and again" by jailers at the Hanoi Hilton, McCain said.
"Clark Clifford was another [North Vietnamese] favorite," the ex-POW told U.S. News, "right after he had been Secretary of Defense under President Johnson."
"When Ramsey Clark came over [my jailers] thought that was a great coup for their cause," McCain recalled. Months earlier Sen. Kerry had appeared with Clark at the April 1971 Washington, D.C. anti-war protest that showcased his testimony before the Fullbright Committee.
"All through this period," wrote McCain, his captors were "bombarding us with anti-war quotes from people in high places back in Washington. This was the most effective propaganda they had to use against us."
McCain biographer Paul Alexander chronicled the Arizona Republican's anger toward Kerry during their early careers in the Senate together.
"For many years McCain held Kerry's actions against him because, while McCain was a POW in the Hanoi Hilton, Kerry was organizing veterans back home in the U.S. to protest the war."
In his 2002 book, "Man of the People: the Life of John McCain," Alexander says that the two Vietnam vets finally reconciled in the early 1990s after having "a long - and at times emotional - conversation about Vietnam" during a mutual trip to Kuwait.
Later, Kerry sought to minimize the rift, telling Alexander, "Our differences occurred when we were kids, or at least close to being kids. It was a long time ago, and we both came back and realized that there were a lot of difficulties in the prosecution of that war."
NewsMax gratefully acknowledges the help of U.S. Veteran's Dispatch editor Ted Sampley for supplying McCain's revealing 1973 account in U.S. News.
From the article:"They used Senator Fullbright a great deal," McCain wrote in the May 14, 1973 issue of U.S. News & World Report. While he was languishing in a North Vietnamese prison cell, Kerry was telling the Fullbright Committee that U.S. soldiers were committing war crimes in Vietnam as a matter of course.
Sen. Ted Kennedy, a key Kerry presidential backer, was "quoted again and again" by jailers at the Hanoi Hilton, McCain said.
"Clark Clifford was another [North Vietnamese] favorite," the ex-POW told U.S. News, "right after he had been Secretary of Defense under President Johnson."
"When Ramsey Clark came over [my jailers] thought that was a great coup for their cause," McCain recalled. Months earlier Sen. Kerry had appeared with Clark at the April 1971 Washington, D.C. anti-war protest that showcased his testimony before the Fullbright Committee.
"All through this period," wrote McCain, his captors were "bombarding us with anti-war quotes from people in high places back in Washington. This was the most effective propaganda they had to use against us."
Kerry 02-03-2004:
"For the second time this week a New England Patriot Won!"Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry
(Click here or on the pic)John Kerry's History Page
(Click here)
I just read this post by WKB on another thread, and thought it may fit just fine here. It is an insight into Kerry from someone who has had dealings with him.
Speaking of a real hero.
Receieved this in an Email this morning:
I would like to add my two cents about my John Kerry experience. During my career as an Air Force pilot, I spent two years flying a small twin engine prop plane around the Pacific from my base in Okinawa, Japan. On one trip we had to fly Senator Kerry, his congressional aide, and a Navy Captain (Vietnam, A-4 fighter pilot) who was also in Kerry's party to various locations in Vietnam and Cambodia as part of the MIA/POW talks. When I met him, he was wearing a shirt with a picture of his sailboat on it. I told him I had a small 27 sailboat in Okinawa, he remarked "Oh I never sail on anything less than 135 feet."
When we first flew him into Phnom Penh, he went to the back of the airplane and grabbed the pizza that was put aside for the crew and passed it around to his staff. He was never offered any pizza because they were supposed to have lunch with the Cambodian government once we landed. The pizza would have been our only meal that day.
Then when we picked him up in Cambodia, he was an hour late getting to the airport. We could not start the engines and therefore the air conditioning until he arrived. Phnom Penh at that time was over 100 degrees with 95% humidity and we were basically sitting in a greenhouse behind the cockpit windows. When he finally did arrive, we were wringing out our clothes from the perspiration. He walks out of the air conditioned car, into the airplane and asks us "Could you guys get the air conditioning running, I'm a little warm?" The other pilot had to physically restrain me from going back there and picking a fight.
Then we took him into Noi Bai airfield in Hanoi. After we picked him up the next day (he stayed the night in Vietnam, we stayed in Bangkok) we taxied out, ran up the engines for takeoff, and noticed that our prop rpm was vibrating all over the place. We taxied off to the side to look at it, but there was a good possibility that there was an engine malfunction and the engine may fail if we took off with it.
Well, Mr. Senator sticks his head up in the cockpit and says "This plane WILL take off, I have a press conference in Bangkok in three hours!" (Maybe this is an indication of how he will run the FAA). We ran the engines again, and did not have the problem, so we took off and made it back. During the flight, he told everyone how he had taken a Cessna (a small General aviation plane) up with a fighter pilot, and the fighter pilot remarked that Kerry was one of the best pilots he had ever seen. I don't know about other pilots out there, but it's hard to imagine a little, single-engine prop plane pilot being able to show the "right stuff." After Kerry left the plane, the Navy Captain came up to us, apologized and said basically that "he knows Kerry is a jerk" and t hat we should be glad we don't have to deal with him every day. David Ford de435@earthlink.net
Good for Dim.....YES!
Bad for Dim.......NO!
He was also Bill Clinton's political mentor aside from being an arch segregationist who filibustered the Civil Rights Act along with Sheets Byrd.
In politics, everybody is out for himself.
You could be right, but I'd wager that the injuries McCain received because of what Kerry did are more severe and deeply hurting than what Bush did.
Now I've heard everything.
Kerry was born in 1943, and he gave this testimony in the early 70s. He was 30 years old, for crying out loud.
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