"To my fellow Americans:
February 24th was the thirty-fifth anniversary of my arrival, at the age of 19, in what was the free Republic of Vietnam. I was stationed at Can Tho Army Airfield in the Mekong Delta from Feb.'69 to Feb.'70. The first two months I was there overlapped with Monsieur Kerry's last two months "in country". During those two months, he had to have motored his Swiftboat right past our base many times. In the year I was there, I learned how to be an unofficial "ambassador" soldier in my off duty time. Contrary to the horrendous and utterly false picture eminating from the imagination of Swiftboat Commander Kerry about we soldiers who lived among the people, we were not feared by that country's citizens with whom I became aquainted. On the contrary, I made many close Vietnamese friends who welcomed me into their homes and businesses as a friend. I had a girlfriend, Lan Nuyen, in the village of Bien Xe Moi, whose sister had married a GI and was living in Watertown, Massachusetts -- ten miles from where I grew up in Wakefield. I visited her when I returned home before losing track of them both in 1971.
Ask any Vietnam refugee, "Who was the aggressor in that war?" Ask why they chose to come here to America. Was it because we were so brutal and cruel to them, or because they knew us Americans to be kind, generous, and willing to fight for THEIR freedom? It was the Kerry testimony at the Congressional hearings in 1971 that gave the American soldier in Vietnam a false and disgraced reputation. His word is not to be believed. He can not deny that his public professions hurt our efforts to end the war with a positive result, otherwise known as victory. Neither can he deny the smearing of my reputation as a patriotic American, along with my brothers, who sacrificed blood, sweat and tears in an effort to hold back the tide of totalitarianism and its slaughter of innocents for the Communist ideal.
I am proud to be a Vietnam Veteran. I am ashamed that the actions of one of our own did so much damage to our cause, which was to secure the liberty of a people in a small far away land, which we abandoned to the enemy in part because of his political ambitions and lies.
Yours in truth,
Specialist E5 Bruce A. Seibert US Army, 244th Airplane Surveilance Co. 1st Aviation Brigade / IV Corps RVN '69-'70
Lando 