Documentary Focuses on Kerry in Vietnam --- 'Brothers in Arms'

WASHINGTON - John Kerry (news - web sites)'s former crew mates vouch for his Vietnam war heroics in a documentary being released in the midst of a campaign debate about his actions as a swift boat skipper.

"Brothers in Arms," a first film by journalist Paul Alexander, features Kerry and four men who served with him on Patrol Craft 94, the last of three boats he commanded during the war and the one from which he won the Silver Star for chasing down and killing a combatant who threatened his crew with a rocket.

With testimony from crew mates who have campaigned by Kerry's side as a Senate candidate and now Democratic presidential nominee, the film is not the definitive word on what happened in the Mekong Delta. Kerry's critics are not interviewed in it.

A campaign ad sponsored by a group of swift boat veterans who did not serve directly under Kerry asserted his wartime injuries and combat actions had been exaggerated and that he did not deserve his Purple Hearts or Bronze and Silver stars.

President Bush (news - web sites), speaking after the ad that caused a great stir stopped running, said Monday that Kerry "served admirably and he ought to be proud of his record."

In "Brothers in Arms," opening at a New York theater on Friday just days before the Republican National Convention starts in the city, Kerry's mates relate the familiar story of their commander fearlessly ordering their boat to be beached in the thick of an enemy outpost, and hunting down a man who intended to fire a rocket at them. They also recount an ambush during which Kerry and his crew rescued survivors of another patrol boat that hit a mine.

Alexander's previous work includes a behind-the-scenes account of Kerry's run for the White House and biographies of Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) and cultural icons James Dean and Sylvia Plath. He said he interviewed the crew over the last 18 months, beginning the project well before Kerry was a sure bet to become the presidential nominee.

In the film, Kerry and crew mates David Alston, Mike Medeiros, Del Sandusky and Gene Thorson talk about the bond they formed under fire and their lives since the war. "If anyone knows the truth of what happened to John Kerry in Vietnam, they do," he said. "Brothers in Arms" is their story."

The New Soldier by John Kerry and Vietnam Veterans Against the War

FREE Download of The New Soldier by John Kerry
and and Vietnam Veterans Against the War

Print and distibute the book that John Kerry "forgets" to mention!

The one book he refuses to bring up.

"honor" John Kerry

Help America know what a "hero" he was at the Winter Soldier
scam he and Jane Fonda pulled on the USA when he came home.

Make sure Kerry "fans" get their copy!

http://nomayo.mu.nu/archives/New%20Soldier%20Inro.pdf
http://nomayo.mu.nu/archives/New%20Soldier.pdf
http://nomayo.mu.nu/archives/New%20Soldier%20Epilogue.pdf

"Phony Vietnam veterans alleged in books
Guenter Lewy's 1978 book America in Vietnam (pages 316-317) and B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley's Stolen Valor (Verity Press, Inc., Dallas, Texas)(pages 113, 131-137) contain similar information about alleged flaws in Lane's book. Neither book, however, refutes any of the testimony given during the Winter Soldier Investigation.

Lawyer and leftist activist Mark Lane was one of the organizers of Winter Soldier. In 1970, Lane had published a book called Conversations With Americans purporting to be interviews with Vietnam veterans about war crimes, containing Vietnam tales of atrocities. Reporter Neil Sheehan showed some interviewed in Lane's book had never served in Vietnam and others had not been in the situations they described. Lane admitted he did not check military records, as confirmation of details was not relevant. Lane later confirmed these militarty records.
The following are often falsely listed as being participants in Winter Soldier, but were actually in Lane's book instead. This confusion is probably due to Stolen Valor having an explanation of Lane's history within the section on Winter Soldier.
Chuck Onan, stock room clerk in Beaufort, S.C.
Michael Schneider, deserted in Europe and deserted again in the USA.
Terry Whitmore, was in an unpopulated area of Vietnam.
Garry Gianninoto, medical corpsman at battalion headquarters.
VVAW leader and Winter Soldier co-organizer Al Hubbard lied about being an officer, and sustaining war injuries - but he never testified at Winter Soldier .
According to the investigative work of Burkett, Lewy and others, there were many imposters, liars, and plain nutjobs who infiltrated the ranks of the anti-war movement, and, in some cases, testified to war crimes and atrocities that never occurred in order to get attention, sympathy, and, in one documented case, medals and honors."

http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/W/Winter-Soldier-Investigation.htm

http://www.flightskills.com/rvn25.html

Debunking Some Myths About Anti-Vietnam War Protestors

For me, as a combat veteran of the Vietnam War, the most odious thing about the 25th anniversary of its end has been the endless media parade of leftover anti-Vietnam War protestors. They are all over television and in print, recounting the story of their brave, noble and ultimately successful struggle for peace and justice against an oppressive establishment.

There is only one thing wrong with this picture. It is a crock.

Former anti-Vietnam War protestors are using their positions of power and influence in the media, academe and the Clinton administration to try to revise history and hide the truth about their movement. Here are the biggest of their myths and the truths behind them:

Myth: They were protesting for peace. Fact: the anti-Vietnam War movement was not a pro-peace movement it was an anti-USA movement. Remember the Viet Cong flags? The posters of Ho Chi Minh? Jane Fonda posing on an anti-aircraft gun in Hanoi? Former anti-Vietnam War protestors want you to forget these images, because they show clearly that the movement was calling not for peace by for a Vietnamese Communists victory and a US defeat. Wanting the US to lose also means that they wanted American servicemen to die - there is no escaping that conclusion.

Myth: The anti-Vietnam War protestors were free thinkers, bravely challenging the conventional wisdom and entrenched authority. Fact: When interviewed, they all drop the same telling comment: "Everybody I knew was against the Vietnam War." The truth is that support for the Vietnamese Communists and hatred of the US was the conventional wisdom on college campuses during the Vietnam War, and it required absolutely zero personal courage and moral fiber to take that stance. Strangely enough, that is still the case today.

Myth: They were noble and pure, occupying the moral high ground. Fact: Torched ROTC buildings. Trashed university administrative offices. Rocks and bottles thrown at police by rioting mobs. All more images that the anti-Vietnam War protestors would like you to forget. In America, everyone has a right to protest. The anti-Vietnam War protestors went beyond protest into rioting, arson and vandalism.

Myth: The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were not so much Communists as they were nationalists, certainly preferable to the evil, corrupt South Vietnamese government. Fact: After the Vietnamese Communists won they executed thousands of their people, sent hundreds of thousand of them to "re-education' camps, and installed a totalitarian police state and socialist economic system that would have made Stalin proud. Two million Vietnamese fled the new regime, most hoping to come to the USA. It was not nationalism and "agrarian reform" they were fleeing, it was torture, political repression, economic hardship and death.

The war has been over for a quarter of a century, the U.S. trade embargo ended nine years ago, and relations between Hanoi and Washington have been "normalized." Yet, even with all of their excuses gone, the Vietnamese government remains a brutal and oppressive police state, and the Vietnamese people continue to suffer economic hardship and political repression as a result. Not the happy Vietnam free of foreign devils that the anti-Vietnam War protestors predicted but rather exactly the human rights disaster that the supporters of the Vietnam War warned would result from an American pullout.

Myth: We lost the war, which proves that in the end the anti-Vietnam War protestors were right. Fact: We lost the war because of incompetent and uncommitted political and military leadership. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, McNamara, Kissinger, and Westmoreland were not FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and MacArthur. It also did not help that the anti-Vietnam War protestors and their allies in the media clouded the issues surrounding the war (as they continue to do today) and that America's so-called leadership had neither the will nor the smarts to counter these deceptions.

Well, so what? Why not bury the past and let bygones be bygones. Why not just let the healing begin? Because letting the former anti-Vietnam War protestors succeed in their campaign to be remembered as Quakers with love beads and tie-dyes rather than as the America-hating, radical left-wing fifth columnists that they were gives them a moral authority and influence over public opinion and policy that is undeserved and dangerous. This is not just some musty historical debate waged between aging and irrelevant antagonists. The history that the former anti-Vietnam War protestors hope to revise has practical lessons that are still relevant to America today. If we let them succeed, they will obscure the truth about the Vietnam War, whose real mistakes we will then be doomed to repeat.

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