Posted on 08/28/2004 1:51:15 PM PDT by areafiftyone
Decorated Marine's TV documentary portrays 'betrayal' of vets
A Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and highly decorated Vietnam veteran is behind a new television documentary that features devastating testimony by former POWs of the demoralizing impact of John Kerry's war-crimes accusations more than 30 years ago.
As WorldNetDaily first reported, the film will be released in September on the heels of a television ad by Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, which charges Kerry with betrayal for accusing them of war atrocities during his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971.
But producer Carlton Sherwood says his Red, White and Blue Productions was planning the documentary even before the first ad by the swiftboat vets.
Sherwood also has won a Peabody Award, and The Carlton Sherwood Media Award is named in his honor.
The documentary, titled "Stolen Honor," now has its own website, which includes sample interviews.
Currently in the final stages of production, it will be available for broadcast and on DVD and VHS video, according to Red, White and Blue Productions.
The film, according to the website, "investigates how John Kerry's actions during the Vietnam era impacted the treatment of American soldiers and POWs. Using John Kerry's own words, the documentary juxtaposes John Kerry's actions with the words of veterans who were still in Vietnam when John Kerry was leading the anti-war movement."
In a March 12 story by Fox News, Sherwood was noted as being among the veterans who consider Kerry's 1971 testimony slanderous and concocted to push a political agenda.
"He knew as an officer that those were lies. It never happened," said Sherwood. "He was principally responsible for cementing the image of Vietnam veterans as drugged-out psychopaths who were totally unrestrained and who were a murderous hoard."
Among the POWs whose voices are heard in the film are two who spent seven years in prison, Ralph Gaither, a two-time Navy Silver Star winner, and Gen. Robinson Risner.
The film's narration includes:
"In other wars, captured Americans subjected to the hell of an enemy prison were considered heroes. In other wars, they were not abandoned. In Vietnam , they were betrayed.""Little did the American prisoners of war imagine that half a world away events were conspiring to make their precarious situation even more desperate. That an American Naval lieutenant after a four-month tour of duty in Vietnam was meeting secretly in an undisclosed location in Paris with a top enemy diplomat. That this same lieutenant would later join forces with Jane Fonda to form an antiwar group of so-called Vietnam veterans, some of whom would be later discovered as frauds who never set foot on a battlefield. All this culminating in John Kerry's Senate testimony that would be blared over loud speakers to convince our prisoners that back home they were being accused and abandoned. Enemy propagandists had found a new and willing accomplice."
Red, White & Blue Productions is a for-profit corporation based in Harrisburg, Pa.
Veterans provided the initial funding of the film's production costs, the company says, adding it welcomes financial support for its distribution and dissemination.
Sherwood won a Pulitzer Prize for his investigative reporting of a Catholic scandal involving the Pauline Fathers of Doylestown, Pa. He also is known for his inside investigation of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. Sherwood said he entered the probe hoping to uncover dirt about the leader but ended up concluding Moon and his followers "were and continued to be the victims of the worst kind of religious prejudice and racial bigotry this country has witnessed in over a century."
Moi Kerri will need a lot of ice and band aids after this ad hits the air.
"Thanks for post. I'm enjoying this payback to Kerry and his ilk. One of my ambitions is to live long enough to piss on Jane Fonda's grave."
She is #2 on my list of graves to urinate on. Fidel Castro is #1 as he came close to killing millions of us. Even with that data, Fidel barely beats out Fonda.
"On a more positive note and speaking to sterling character of most Vietnam Vets, let me relate a story told to me by my son. He is a grunt with 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. He returned to Camp Pendleton from fallujah and al-Kharma, Iraq in July. When the USAF plane landed in Maine at an Air Force base to refuel at 2:00 a.m. in the morning, the Marines were allowed to disembark for a short period, still in their 782 gear. He was amazed and delighted that there, as they deplaned, were veterans waiting to welcome them home with coffee, donuts, and handshakes for a job well done. He found out that Vietnam veterans had been the driving force in arranging these welcome home parties for all troops. They had invited and rounded up vets from all the services, ranks and times of service to greet these young men. He still talks about it. God Bless 'em one and all."
Thanks to your son and his fellow Marines for serving our country and protecting us.
This is great to hear.
bump and I hope you airplane didn't do that!
Thanks for your service to America and us.
Your response below needs to be repeated and repeated until every vet with a brain and sense of morality is totally outraged at Kerry.
"I was at my combat ptsd group on Friday. I'll tell you how we are doing.
Most of us are really getting torqued up. To hear that man's testimony again, and hear that he 'stands by it' is almost too much to bear. You see many of us came back with some very painful memories. We had to do things to survive that were not pretty. It is normal to be affected by that.
However, the reception we got on our return, convinced most of us to just try and forget about it. That is the WORST thing you can do with war trauma. You have to be able to process it so it will not haunt you as much.
I, and many other Nam Vets, hold Kerry, the VVAW, and Fonda personally responsible for this. What they did was despicable. The damage is irreparable. That is not even counting what they did to the POW's.
I am so sick and tired of seeing guys with that 1000 yd. stare who have had a living hell for the past 35 years. Most of this was preventable. This is Kerry's legacy.
On Friday, one of our guys was finally able to talk about when his chopper (he was a door gunner) went to extract a copter team that had been shot down. When they got there, the crew had been stripped, strung up my their feet, genitals cut off and in their mouthes. They knew all of them. As they returned, they came upon the VC wearing the clothes of the copter team. There were no prisoners taken. A crew member had to pull him off the .50 caliber gun.
He still is dealing with the sting of being called a war criminal. Was that a war crime? Go witness what he did, find the perpetrators and tell my what you would do.
You see, Kerry never presented any information about the VC or how any of these 'war crimes' happened. He never related the horror stories of how the VC treated prisoners, dead, wounded or alive. He doesn't talk about a whole village's children who had their left arms cut off, because the US Medics had gone there to vaccinate them, and the VC found out. He didn't talk to a Vietnamese woman who did some work for us whose 3rd husband had been killed by the VC because she worked on the American base camp.
Anyway, he will not be getting many votes from his 'band of brothers'."
First Kerry then Hanoi Jane Fondue (raw meat in a RED Sauce)!
BTTT!
* bump * I have nothing worth adding to that, but it sure is worth repeating.
Bite your tongue. I'm having serious FR withdrawal I want you to know.
< /sarcasm>
Please go to post #4 right now.
Click on the links (Wolverine so generously) provided.
Watch 'em.
Could very well be the most damning indictment against the treasonous, traitorous, and certainly cowardly John F. Kerry to date, hands-down.
If y'all have viewed these videos, please excuse my ping; BUT, make damned sure the videos & their links are saved to your HD for further distribution to those who may not have seen 'em.
Should a majority of the citizens of this great and fair land this November decide they want this louse as our CIC, so be it.
But then let no man or woman who freely casts their precious vote for the disgraceful fruad, say they didn't know about this video, either.
...many thanks Wolverine for the links.
Great story. G-d bless these vets; they had to learn this the hard way. And they are making sure the next generation of vets doesn't have to go through that again.
They should just bury her under an outhouse.
Thanks for the ping ol buddy.
I purchased the Movie, "THE HANOI HILTON" at Wal-Mart a few weeks ago because it was on sale for $5.99. I recall seeing the movie on television many years ago. I had a chance to watch the movie yesterday and now it the movie, more than ever is relevant to the anti-war actives of John Kerry during the Vietnam War and how the POW's were tortured many times due to the actions of John Kerry, Jane Fonda and their friends in the media.
If you have an opportunity I recommend highly that you see this movie and let others get to see just a glimpse of what the POW's went through while held prisoner by the Communist North Vietnamese.
The video is available from Amazon and other online video stores.
From website: "Shot in the Dark" http://www.shotinthedark.info/
"In 1987, Lionel Chetwynd's excellent Hanoi Hilton received widely-mixed reviews (many of them politically-motivated). Worse, its distributor essentially sat on the movie, under pressure from Hollywood leftists, for its treatment of Jane Fonda. The movie depicted life at North Vietnam's Hoa Lo prison accurately - but it changed the last names of the prisoners, and of their visitors, including Jane Fonda. An actress who represents Fonda ("Paula") does everything Fonda is said to have done while in the Hilton. That was one of several stories that Hollywood didn't want told (that and, of course, the moral of the story; the men survived because of their military training and warrior ethic). "Hanoi Hilton" was buried, received a tiny theatrical release, and is hard to find on video today. (Do it if you can - it's an excellent movie)."
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