Posted on 08/04/2004 12:53:43 PM PDT by kattracks
Three Vietnam veterans who were held captive for years in the prison known as the "Hanoi Hilton" revealed Tuesday that their Communist jailers repeatedly cited John Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony branding them as war criminals to justify threatening them with execution and drive down their morale."These statements [by Kerry] ... were proof I deserved to be punished," former POW Air Force pilot Jim Warner told United Press International. During every interrogation session, said Warner, his Vietnamese jailers echoed Kerry's charges that he was a war criminal. "The memory of that was still pretty fresh in my mind, and I was extremely uneasy. ... This officer said I committed crimes, that this war was illegal. ... All along they told us they would execute us for our 'crimes.'"
His captors even waved a four-page transcript of Kerry's Senate speech, Warner said, where the Democratic nominee had accused his brother soldiers of raping, torturing and mutilating innocent Vietnamese civilians.
The ex-POW pilot said also that audio from Kerry's speech was regularly played on Radio Hanoi and piped into the prison camp.
But what particularly incensed him was efforts by Kerry and Jane Fonda to use his parents for propaganda purposes - by persuading them to appear at the Fonda-sponsored Winter Soldier Investigation in 1971.
"His sisters had told him that Fonda and Kerry were involved in getting his parents to appear," UPI said.
"The [North Vietnamese guards] were always talking about that [anti-war demonstrations], and they picked right up on Kerry's throw-away line, 'Don't be the last man to die in a lost cause,'" ex-POW Kenneth Cordier told UPI. Cordier, an Air Force pilot who spent 2,284 days as a prisoner, said his jailers "repeated [Kerry's quote] incessantly."
He also remembers his captors using photographs of the protest march where Kerry famously threw his war medals over the White House fence.
"They kept talking about the Vietnam Veterans Against the War [Kerry's group]," recalls a third ex-POW.
Navy pilot Paul Galanti told UPI that his Hanoi Hilton jailers would cite Kerry as a shining example of someone who had seen the light and had "crossed over to the people's" side.
Kerry can rot in a Vietnamiese POW camp for 20 yrs for all I care.
bump!
Nope... Kerry's service stopped at 71 when he came back from Vietnam and his political career only started right after the DNC convention. We shouldn't take anything in between seriously!!!
Can we go on...
So did the North Koreans when they had the Pueblo crewmen in captivity. Since this was in 1968 and 69 they couldn't use Kerry's but they did use propganda against these guys from the antiwar crowd. Kerry should have been aware of this in 1971 when he made his speeches and knew it would aid the enemy.
Oooops, please strike out the EX! Sorry about that!
I remember those days so conveniently forgotten.How a major American political party can thrust a boob of this nature into a race to attempt directing the Country is pathetic and quite disturbing.
Yup, this Kerry is quite a guy; quite a guy.
My Dad's a Vietnam vet, and is behind Kerry 100%. Even if this stuff is true and he was a young lying twerp, he was still committed to making his country a better place. Maybe he was misguided (ever know a 21-yr-old who wasn't?) but he was trying to make a difference.
What was Georgie up to in '71?
What does that show about who is more committed to the safety of fellow Americans?
The sad thing is that if these stories only appear in the likes of NewsMax and WND they will have zero effect on the voting populace.
The people reading those two aren't going to vote for Kerry anyway, and the occasional leftist dropping in will vote for Kerry no matter that he has admitted to being a war criminal and betrayed our soldiers after he got back from Vietnam.
If only we had a press remotely balanced politically. If one leftist lying about Bush's Guard service was enough to get a complete top to bottom look at Bush's record, you'd think some reporter somewhere would have a notion to follow up on vertern after veteran decrying Kerry's record.
ZOT
Bush was proudly serving his country in the National Guard while Kerry was chit chating with the VC/NV in Paris and slandering our troops back in the States.
My Dad's a Vietnam vet, and is behind Kerry 100%.
Your dad raised a liar.
Yep.
I know two men in the military during Vietnam. One was a Marine in Vietnam, the other a sailor in the Atlantic Fleet at the time.
They both *detest* Kerry.
You know we got quite a problem here.I's no wonder various vicious crimes and strangely stupid behaviour is exhibited by so many around us when they can be so easily bought for our common destruction.The societal breakdown and dumDown of so many has been so successful that these things are even considered.
Send this to all the email addresses that you can.
Don't be surprised if EX POW Johnny McCain comes out and defends Kerry
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