Now THAT could be the smoking gun: John Kerry in Paris, and quotes from his "negotiations" winding up as documented propaganda used against our POWs.
perhaps this is what he meant yesterday when he said to the Legionaires:
"And while your service and sacrifice is well-known," he told the Legion, "what is not as well-known is how hard we fought after we returned from service to keep faith with our fellow soldiers."
what a disgusting scumbag
In a question-and-answer session before a Senate committee in 1971, John F. Kerry, who was a leading antiwar activist at the time, asserted that 200,000 Vietnamese per year were being "murdered by the United States of America" and said he had gone to Paris and "talked with both delegations at the peace talks" and met with communist representatives.
When Kerry was asked by committee chairman Senator J. William Fulbright how he proposed to end the war, the former Navy lieutenant said it should be ended immediately and mentioned his involvement in peace talks in Paris.
"I have been to Paris," Kerry said. "I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government and of all eight of Madam Binh's points . . . ."
The latter was a reference to a communist group based in South Vietnam. Historian Stanley Karnow, author of "Vietnam: A History," described the Provisional Revolutionary Government as "an arm of the North Vietnamese government." Madam Nguyen Thi Binh was a leader of the group and had a list of peace-talk points, including the suggestion that US prisoners of war would be released when American forces withdrew.
After their May 1970 marriage, Kerry traveled to Paris with his wife, Julia Thorne, on a private trip, Meehan said. Kerry did not go to Paris with the intention of meeting with participants in the peace talks or involving himself in the negotiations, Meehan added, saying that while there Kerry had his brief meeting with Binh, which included members of both delegations to the peace talks.
As Kerry runs for president, he is finding that many of his statements and activities over the last 33 years are drawing new attention. Last year, the Globe published White House transcripts of discussions about Kerry by President Nixon in the Oval Office. More recently, the Los Angeles Times focused on FBI surveillance reports, obtained by historian Gerald Nicosia, in which the FBI monitored meetings of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a group that Kerry led in 1971.
Indeed, there may be a tie between Kerry's statement before the Senate committee and the interest of the FBI in his activities. One FBI report provided to the Globe by Nicosia shows that the government was monitoring whether Kerry planned to go to Paris again. Kerry was "planning to travel to Paris, France . . . for talks with North Vietnamese peace delegation," said the report, dated Nov. 11, 1971.
Kerry's Senate testimony spans about six pages in the committee publication, but the lesser-known question-and-answer session was another 24 pages. As he opened the latter session, Kerry said Nixon should declare a cease-fire and "accept a coalition regime which would represent all the political forces of the country which is in fact what a representative government is supposed to do and which is in fact what this government here in this country purports to do, and pull the troops out without losing one more American, and still further without losing the South Vietnamese."
Kerry then suggested that Congress should permit a special national referendum on ending the Vietnam War, leading Fulbright to remind Kerry that Congress "cannot directly under our system negotiate a cease-fire or anything of this kind. Under our constitutional system, we can advise the president." Kerry responded that, "I realize that full well as a study of political science. I realize that we cannot negotiate treaties, and I realize that even my visits in Paris, precedents had been set by Senator [Eugene] McCarthy and others, in a sense are on the borderline of private individuals negotiating, et cetera."
Kerry's statement dealt with the question of whether he was trying to negotiate in Paris as a private citizen and was thus on that "borderline" of what was allowable. A US law forbids citizens from negotiating with foreign governments on matters such as peace treaties. Meehan said Kerry was not negotiating.