Kerry Betrayed American POW's with Lies about the Vietnam War (from Unfit for Command)

Unfit for Command | August, 2004 | John O'Neill & Jerome Corsi

[Silver Falconer]

This is an excerpt from the book Unfit for Command, copyright 2004 by John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi. The excerpt begins on page 117 at the subtitle of "Skid Row."

"Skid Row"

Marine First Lieutenant Jim Warner had had a rough time, even for a POW in the gulag of North Vietnam in the spring of 1969. Having been interrogated and tortured for four months by the North Vietnamese, who threatened to hold him after the war for trial as a war criminal, Warner (once the proud backseat navigator of a Phantom jet) had just been transferred by the North Vietnamese to the "place for punishment" outside Hanoi known by the prisoners as "Skid Row." Just as things didn't seem that they could get much worse, they did.

An interrogator confronted Warner with testimony from his own mother and father asking for his return at John Kerry's Winter Soldier investigation hearings. He told Warner, "Even your parents know you are a war criminal." The interrogator showed Warner a large piece of cardboard with photographs of John Kerry and news clippings relating to Kerry's Senate testimony and demonstrations and said that "everyone knows you are a war criminal." Warner had resisted beyond caring, but he hoped that the North Vietnamese had made it all up. Upon reviewing his mother's testimony in The New Soldier,Warner asked: "What kind of ghoul would exploit my mother and family to claim I was a war criminal while I was in a North Vietnamese prison? How could someone do something like this for political advantage?"

Lieutenant General John Flynn, distinguished as one of the three highest-ranking POWs in Vietnam, met John O'Neill at a 1977 party in San Antonio. Lieutenant General Flynn thanked O'Neill profusely for having debated John Kerry in 1971 on the Dick Cavett Show, while he had been in captivity in Vietnam. He said that he and his fellow POWs would never forget the lies of Kerry and the VVAW that the North Vietnamese had presented to them to break their spirits. He described the hollow feeling they shared when they saw pictures or read testimony of their fellow veterans in the United States betraying the bond that sustained them in the POW camps.

Admiral Jeremiah Denton and many other POWs never forgot the North Vietnamese attempt to use "war crimes" claims from their own fellow veterans, led by Kerry, against them. Ron Bliss, a POW for five years, has spent thirty years trying to forget the small cells with a single speaker and his sense of betrayal and loneliness resulting from the claims of the North Vietnamese jailers that his military "comrades" in the VVAW had testified to his alleged guilt. Navy Lieutenant Paul Galanti felt particularly betrayed that a fellow Navy lieutenant would sell him out with false war crimes charges, cited over and over by the North Vietnamese as proof that he had committed war crimes and should confess.

Words once spoken cannot be taken back. Kerry's false words, so conducive to a quick bubble of popularity in 1971, caused untold grief, beginning first with the POWs languishing in the North Vietnamese jails and then in camps from Laos to Cambodia to the Cau Mau peninsula of South Vietnam. Many of these POWs never made it home. John Kerry's words, his book The New Soldier, and his organization, the VVAW, likewise gave birth to the now thirty-year-old caricature of U.S. soldiers as drug-sated criminals. No foreign enemy ever dealt so direct and devastating a blow to the morale of America's armed forces and its veterans than John Kerry did. He struck directly--and falsely--at the honor of their service, the glue binding all units together.

[GOPJ]

Silver, You're right about Kerry. But here's the problem. The millions of Americans in the 1960s who came to doubt the war are not the same as turncoats like Kerry.

When both groups are painted with the same brush it gives cover to Kerry.

There's a difference between a man who meets with the enemy, lies about war crimes under oath, betrays his country and a citizen who came to believe VietNam was a bad idea.

The Swift Boat people need to stress the difference. And forgive everyday citizens, people of good will who opposed the war. They are not the same as the Kerry types. How many citizens would lie about war crimes? Or meet with enemy? There is a difference. When both groups are lumped together, it works for Kerry -- gives him cover.

[GOPJ]

But here's the problem. The millions of Americans in the 1960s who came to doubt the war are not the same as turncoats like Kerry.

When both groups are painted with the same brush it gives cover to Kerry.

There's a difference between a man who meets with the enemy, lies about war crimes under oath, betrays his country and a citizen who came to believe Vietnam was a bad idea.

The Swift Boat people need to stress the difference. And forgive everyday citizens, people of good will who opposed the war. They are not the same as the Kerry types. How many citizens would lie about war crimes? Or meet with enemy? There is a difference. When both groups are lumped together, it works for Kerry -- gives him cover.

[carl in alaska]

Bump again for Swift Boat Vets! Go get 'em SBV's. Let the big dawg hunt.

[carl in alaska]

One last bump on this thread for Swift Boat Vets. Go get 'em Swifties!