Vietnam Vet Questions Kerry on War Record (long article with new details about John O'Neill)

AP ^ | 8/26

[ambrose]

Vietnam Vet Questions Kerry on War Record

Thursday August 26, 2004 8:01 PM

AP Photo MNJM101

By JERRY SCHWARTZ

AP National Writer

Twice in 33 years, John O'Neill looked up from a hospital bed and saw John Kerry on television. Each time, he was stirred to action.

In 1971, while recovering from leg surgery, O'Neill watched his fellow Vietnam veteran tell a Senate committee that U.S. soldiers had admitted committing war crimes there. Infuriated, O'Neill debated Kerry on national television. He accused him of libel and spreading ``the big lie.''

This year, in intensive care after donating a kidney to his wife, O'Neill watched on television as John Kerry emerged as the leading Democratic presidential candidate. This time, O'Neill wrote a best-selling book that helped unleash a national furor.

Co-written with Jerome R. Corsi, ``Unfit for Command'' has rallied Vietnam veterans who question Kerry's heroism, deplore his anti-war activism and want to deny him the presidency.

``He criminalized the Vietnam War and made all of us criminals,'' O'Neill said in an Associated Press interview.

Critics have rebutted O'Neill and Corsi's accusations and charged that the campaign surrounding the book is orchestrated by President Bush's people. They dismiss O'Neill as a Republican stooge, citing his donations to GOP candidates and his law firm's ties to Republicans.

But Gerry Birnberg, chairman of the Harris County Democratic Committee in Houston, has known O'Neill more than 20 years, and while he believes O'Neill is wrong about Kerry, he does not see a Republican plot. O'Neill simply ``has intense personal antipathy'' for Kerry, he says.

Things Kerry did and said in 1971 ``stick in John's craw,'' he says.

Both Kerry and O'Neill were decorated in Vietnam - the Navy says O'Neill received three Bronze Stars - and both commanded swiftboat No. 94 at different times.

But Kerry is a product of Yale; O'Neill, of the U.S. Naval Academy, where his father (a retired rear admiral), two brothers and 15 other relatives had graduated. Kerry spent 10 months in Vietnam, including six on a frigate offshore; O'Neill was there for 18.

Returning from Vietnam, Kerry got an early discharge to run for Congress and joined the anti-war movement. O'Neill came back to work for the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps at the College of Holy Cross.

Hospitalized for an injury exacerbated in Vietnam, O'Neill watched Kerry tell the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the war was foolhardy and recount stories by other veterans about how they had ``raped, cut off ears, cut off heads.''

O'Neill believed in the war effort, thought immediate withdrawal would abandon prisoners of war and was outraged by Kerry's war crime reports.

When the Foreign Relations Committee didn't respond to his offer to rebut Kerry, he contacted Bruce Kesler, an ex-Marine who had written a New York Times op-ed piece supporting the war.

Kesler invited him to a Washington news conference for the new Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace.

He was ``a young guy like ourselves, very sweet and straight, a Midwestern sort of guy ... ,'' Kesler recalls. ``He had one suit, which was going out of style even then, a blue-and-white seersucker. And he wore white socks.''

That day, O'Neill gave a speech that drew notice from the Nixon administration, alarmed by Kerry's increasing star power.

Kerry ``was very articulate, a credible leader of the opposition. He forced us to create a counterfoil,'' Nixon aide Chuck Colson once said, reported Joe Klein in The New Yorker. ``We found a vet named John O'Neill and formed a group called Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace. We had O'Neill meet the president, and we did everything we could do to boost his group.''

Kesler and O'Neill deny the White House instigated their effort. Kesler says Nixon might have exploited his group but didn't create or fund it.

O'Neill visited Nixon for an hour. He remembers they talked of Vietnam, Kerry and politics. He also recalls Nixon's awkward pause when O'Neill said he supported Hubert Humphrey in 1968.

Tapes show he told Nixon that he had been in Cambodia with his swiftboat - though he has since denied it, and has called Kerry's claims of being in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968 ``complete lies.''

Two weeks after meeting Nixon, O'Neill debated Kerry on ``The Dick Cavett Show.''

``You obviously are quite good on the polished rhetoric, but I did serve in the same place you did ... and I never saw anything,'' O'Neill said, ``and I would like you to tell me about the war crimes you saw committed there, and also why you didn't do something about them.''

Kerry insisted there were violations of the Geneva Conventions and said O'Neill's group should be named ``Vietnam Veterans for a Continued War.''

After a speaking tour and appearance at the 1972 Republican National Convention, O'Neill entered the University of Texas law school, graduated first in his class and clerked for Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. He married, had two kids and practiced law, often pressing security fraud cases against brokerages.

He describes his political involvement as minimal. He says he voted for Al Gore in 2000, has given $7,000 to Republicans in recent years but also $20,000 to Democratic candidates for Houston mayor and councilman.

But at age 58, he joined the effort to derail the candidacy of the man he debated at age 25. Others in what became Swift Boat Veterans for Truth had been researching Kerry's record since January; O'Neill and Corsi wrote their book in May and June.

Rolled out with hard-hitting television spots, the book has 650,000 copies in print.

For the second time, O'Neill is being pilloried as a puppet of a Republican president. He is again in a debate involving Vietnam, a war that ended in 1975 and yet may never end.

``I hope that's not true,'' he says. ``I hope we can all forget about it.''

[Coop]

John O'Neill - stepping into the line of fire for his country once again.

[FesterUSMC]

this is a double post remove it... hatchet job

O'Neill said he was on the Cambodia border

O'Neill Graduated First in his class at University of Texas

O'Neill is a good man and does not deserve this crap!

[FesterUSMC]

Why didn't they tell about Kerry going to France meeting with Vietnamese diplomats while he was still a Naval Officer?

[isthisnickcool]

After a speaking tour and appearance at the 1972 Republican National Convention, O'Neill entered the University of Texas law school, graduated first in his class and clerked for Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. He married, had two kids and practiced law, often pressing security fraud cases against brokerages.

Out of a class of over 500 that year. O'Neill received the third highest scores in the history of UT law school.

Rolled out with hard-hitting television spots, the book has 650,000 copies in print.

And O'Neill is not taking any $$$ for the books sales.

[G.Mason]

"Tapes show he told Nixon that he had been in Cambodia with his swiftboat - though he has since denied it, and has called Kerry's claims of being in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968 ``complete lies.''

Really?

Now lets go to the tape!

[holyscroller]

John O'Neill is a remarkable man in another respect too. He's an honest Democrat, and that puts him in a very special and very small category.

[FesterUSMC]

For the second time, O'Neill is being pilloried as a puppet of a Republican president. He is again in a debate involving Vietnam, a war that ended in 1975 and yet may never end.

IF YOU HAVE PROOF OF THIS THEN SHOW IT! OTHERWISE SAY "KERRY SAY'S" OR "ALLEGED" THIS IS CRAP!

[Knownothing]

I have a feeling that the next phase of this thing will be Kerry campaign leaking dirt on the vets to the press.

[NavySEAL F-16]

I have a feeling that the next phase of this thing will be Kerry campaign leaking dirt on the vets to the press.

I think that will be a little tricky. John O'Neill has more information coming and the Kerry campaign doesn't know what it is.

Kerry has to be very careful what he says, or he could step in it even bigger than he already has. As if that's possible. LOL

I don't think Kerry's "Band" is squeaky clean. That's why they're in hiding from the press.

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

Ramsey Clark to Join Panel for Saddam’s Defense

arabnews press release 25 August 2004

NOTE :
Ramsey Clark is pictured below with Kerry and
Vietnam phony vet Al Hubbard
Who was head of the
Vietnam Veterans Against the War movement.



NEW:
FReeper smith288 has an online version of
Kerry's "The New Soldier"
You can read it without downloading pdf files!
CLICK HERE

From Kerry's "The New Soldier":
Al Hubbard Sgt., 22 Troop Carrier Squadron Aug. ’65-June ’66

Emotions: Walking down the flight line at Saigon past stacks of aluminum cases containing American bodies and past stacks of aluminum luggage containing American currency. Seeing the tight, sad face of an Airman loading the bodies aboard a dirty Air Force Transport and the wide smiling face of a stewardess greeting the passengers aboard a clean Pan American Clipper Jet. Hearing a Vietnamese beg you to leave his country and an American colonel tells you to bomb his country. Hearing a Vietnamese invite you to live in his home, after the war and an American explain why you can’t live in his block, after the war. Flying over barren, brown, safe American held terrain and over lush, green unsafe enemy terrain. Feeling happy to be leaving a country in which you do not belong and sad to be returning to a country in which you are not allowed to belong. Sacrificing a portion of your consciousness so you won’t have to deal with being there and building mental blocks so you won’t have to deal with having been there.

- Al Hubbard, proven fraud who never set foot in Viet Nam. The only Vietnamese he ever met was when he was collaborating with the North Vietnamese in Paris
on the American Communist Party's nickel.
John Kerry's explanation: "He (Hubbard) simply exaggarated his particular position.
But nobody knew it at the time. And those things happen."

The New Soldier, (46 pages)
By John Kerry
and Vietnam Veterans
Against the War
PART I (pdf file)
PART II (pdf file)
PART III (pdf file)

Kerry hopes everyone
in the USA gets this book!

NEW:
“Without question,
we were held captive longer
because of the anti-war people,
the Kerrys, the Fondas and Haydens,
the names we knew over there -
they encouraged the enemy to hang on.”
Excerpt from “Stolen Honor” website
- Leo Thorsness
Former Vietnam POW
CLICK HERE



Send this url for the online version

http://ejsmithweb.com/fr/newsoldier/

Send this url for the Stolen Honor website

http://www.stolenhonor.com/

Print this out (46 pages) and disribute it,
especially to the liberals you know.

Copy and paste the links to everyone you know.

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

[backhoe]

To read the latest on the Franchurian Candidate's bizzare exploits, click the picture, goto "last," and work backwards:

If you would like to help the Swift Boat Vets ( as I have, and I urge all to do-- even a few dollars will help ) kindly click on this logo:

If, perchance, the top "click the pic" link is not visible, click here:

-John Kerry- some selected, informative links...--

---

Judge for yourself- see the SwiftVet ads here:

 Swift Boat Ad #3: Kerry's Own Shipmate Calls Kerry on Lie

 The video

The first two ads:

 http://www2.swiftvets.co m/index.php?topic=Ads

To read the latest on the Franchurian Candidate's bizzare exploits, click the picture, goto "last," and work backwards:

If you would like to help the Swift Boat Vets ( as I have, and I urge all to do-- even a few dollars will help ) kindly click on this logo:

[Coop]

IF YOU HAVE PROOF OF THIS THEN SHOW IT! OTHERWISE SAY "KERRY SAY'S" OR "ALLEGED" THIS IS CRAP!

It's an Associated Press article. Prove it's incorrect.