Posted on 08/04/2004 12:18:22 AM PDT by kattracks
Sen. John Kerry's bid to become commander in chief of wartime America has opened old wounds among some former Vietnam-era prisoners of war who bristle over the Massachusetts Democrat's anti-war activism.
His activities and statements, pushed out of sight by a campaign that spotlights Mr. Kerry's service in Vietnam, were used by the POWs' North Vietnamese captors to sap the morale of prisoners and U.S. troops still in the field in South Vietnam, say former POWs.
"They were always talking about [anti-war demonstrations], and they picked right up on Kerry's throwaway line, 'Don't be the last man to die in a lost cause, or die for a lost cause,' " said Kenneth Cordier, an Air Force pilot who spent 2,284 days as a prisoner. "They repeated that incessantly.
"They used these photographs and inputs, voice tapes, whatever, from these peace people to try to convince us the whole country had turned anti-war and we were showing a very bad attitude and would never go home."
Jim Warner, a prisoner of the North Vietnamese in the Hoa Lo prison complex -- known to U.S. servicemen as the Hanoi Hilton -- does remember. In 1971, a North Vietnamese guard and interrogator nicknamed "Boris" by the prisoners pulled papers from his pocket and gave them to Mr. Warner to think about, he said.
Apart from clippings from a leftist newspaper in the United States, there was a typewritten transcript of Mr. Kerry's testimony before a U.S. Senate panel in which he repeated charges that U.S. troops were committing atrocities routinely, attacked the war and said communism was not a threat in Vietnam.
Mr. Warner said Mr. Kerry and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which had staged large demonstrations in Washington, were often mentioned in the radio broadcasts that played incessantly
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
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Kerry has opened Pandora's Box.
I am glad they're speaking out.
You predicted this.
I recall you saying if he runs on his Vietnam
record, he'll have it handed to him.
In a just world Kerry would be getting ready for his first parole hearing at Leavenworth instead of running for president.
We said this last week when he saluted.
He's going to be sorry he ever brought this up; they can say Bush is behind this, or a Texan is paying for it (was it you?), they can say whatever they want.
But the TRUTH is going to get out there.
Yeah, and that's the rub.
He still has his ill-gotten medals
and now he's running for CIC/POTUS.
I would love to be the one. LOL
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Man, that's a real stumper, isn't it?(!)
What was left out of the article were the extra beatings and torture they had to endure as a result of hanoi john's activities.
bump...
THANKS.
SENDING to my email list.
I am stumped.
BTTT
Even if you take into account the fact that his kidnapping resulted from an indecisive foreign policy in that specific part of the Middle East by the Reagan administration (and I'll be the first to admit that Reagan, along with Begin and many other great statesman, bear some responsibility for the failure to crush the mullah-sponsored terror that metastasized into the imminent threat we face today), I don't think that necessarily explains Terry Anderson's conversion to liberalism after being released from captivity.
After all, the alternative being offered by Kerry-Edwards isn't a stiffer, more robust response to Iran's tactics of state repression and exporting terror abroad.
In fact, it's more of an acceptance of their form of "negotiation." Essentially, what Kerry is saying is that we need to concede the fact that these revanchist fascists are going to remain in power and that the only way to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons is by placating them on every front.
It didn't work in '94, when Senator Kerry's professed political role models, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, tried to appease the DPRK, and highly doubt that it's going to succeed in this case.
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