This article has been posted to DoctorZin’s New News Blog!
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.
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Burn!!!!
High five comin' at ya.
Oh wow.
Kerry was in Vietnam?
I am beyond enraged to learn this. (I had suspected that something like this was true, but I didn't know.)
I am almost ill to my stomach.
What is Kerry going to do about these Swiftboat and now POW eruptions. Will he start calling them trash or simply revert to calling them baby killers.
Every time I see Kerry I get a strong urge to .308 through the tv.
We won't see any of the major media gimps talk about this.
I can see why so many Vietnam Vets are troubled and bitter.
They were wronged. When they returned home they were treated with disrespect. We still owe them parades.
Chau:
Word! That dude is a veritable sack of whack.
-good times, G.J.P. (Jr.)
Its a shuddering thought that so many (apparently) Americans are sold on this guy.
I think a lot of them are more burning with rage at Bush over what they view as a "stolen" election than sold on Kerry.
There must be SOME percentage of DemocRats who can be turned off by his background and history - at least to stay at home, or perhaps vote for Nader.
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