OPEN LETTER TO SENATOR KERRY FROM A VETERAN

I never met my uncle Will. He was a lieutenant in the Navy during World War II. He was killed in action on his PT boat in the Pacific. For his fatal wounds, he received the Purple Heart posthumously.

The first-captain of my West Point class took a bullet through the heart while leading a South Vietnamese airborne battalion into combat. For this fatal wound, he was awarded the Purple Heart posthumously.

My senior-year roommate at West Point became a tunnel rat. A booby trap explosion killed him in the tunnels of Duc Pho. The army awarded him the Purple Heart posthumously. My plebe-year roommate lost an eye and became permanently crippled. For his extensive wounds, he received the Purple Heart.

My battalion commander in Viet Nam was one of the bravest men I ever knew. He went out ahead of the troops in his light observation helicopter to find and kill enemy before they had a chance to fire on his men. That's how he died. For his fatal wounds, he received the Purple Heart posthumously.

My words pale in their import compared to the terse comment of a high school classmate of mine. We played lacrosse together in Baltimore. He went to the Naval Academy and upon graduation became a marine. This past July at our annual lacrosse crab feast, I asked him what he thought of your Purple Hearts. He said, ''Bob, nine of us lieutenants went over there together, and only three of us came back. All three of us who survived spent at least a month in the hospital recovering from wounds we suffered in combat.''

John Kerry, you didn't need any recovery time from your three alleged ''wounds.'' How does one get ''wounded'' and yet not need to recover from those ''wounds''? With wounds comes suffering. Where was your suffering? How could you merit a Purple Heart when you weren't even a casualty? You did not earn your Purple Hearts; you wrangled them from the system through deception so you could go home early and get out of eight months of combat. That is despicable and shameless.

During the Democratic Convention, your flagrant boastful show of your ''heroism'' gave the impression that you had been a man in the thick of combat, when in fact, you had been a man on the very edge of it, all the while slyly conniving your way out of it. Instead of ''Reporting for duty,'' you should have said, ''Derelict in my duty.'' I marvel at your pomposity, and at the astonishing facility with which you present your phony war record as fact to the American people.

Let's compare your wounds with those of a West Point classmate of mine and his men. As my classmate directed artillery fire onto suspected enemy positions, shrapnel from an enemy mortar ripped into his leg. A medivac chopper took him to the Americal Division field hospital. When he returned to his company two weeks later, many new faces met him: the lieutenant who had taken over had marched the company into a u-shaped ambush resulting in two-thirds of the men being killed or wounded. Those wounded in that battle didn't have to put themselves in for the Purple Heart, Senator Kerry.

You exhibit the characteristics of a narcissist. Narcissus, for whom this malignant character defect is named, fell in love with his image in a pool of water. As with Narcissus, your image has become the focus of your life. This image of yourself with which you are enamored, so greedy for recognition and praise, is only two dimensional: it has breadth and width, but no depth. And while your image may appear grand and heroic on the surface, there is no substance to it.

My high school marine friend and my West Point classmate--true heroes--didn't take movie cameras with them to Viet Nam, but you did--with the express purpose of recording your imaginary exploits and feeding your grandiose image of yourself.

The truth is you faked combat wounds in Viet Nam, and your actions were devious and self-serving. You were a ''Purple Heart hunter,'' just as the Swift Boat Vets say. Narcissus was an actor, and so are you.

I don't understand how any veteran, or any member of a veteran's family, or any sane-thinking American could even consider voting for you, a man who faked Purple Hearts in wartime. A man who will fake Purple Hearts for the sake of glorifying his image has no integrity and misdefines truth as whatever enhances the power and prestige of that image. A man without depth and substance stands for anything and everything--so long as his image is glorified.

Narcissists such as you cannot be trusted; and they can be very dangerous, especially when they become paranoid about protecting their image, and especially when they occupy positions of great authority and consequence. The issues in this election are truthfulness and character, and you lack both.

In 1971, I became a regional coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) for a short time. Many other vets and I were very angry at our government. We had experienced horror, terror, trauma, and grief in a no-win war and couldn't see the reason for it. We felt betrayed by our government and our military leaders. You stepped in and became our spokesman.

What enabled you to rise to the leadership of VVAW? What caused us, back then, to respect a four-month mini-veteran of the war? The answer is your medals--your phony medals for valor and your three phony Purple Hearts. Your congressional testimony about the war began with your own assertions that you had received the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. What better spokesman than an heroic, thrice-wounded veteran! Our mistake was that we all assumed you were an honest and good man. But before your antiwar days, you had decided to trade your integrity for the spotlight, and to barter your loyalty for vain political ambitions.

Most of us in VVAW expressed our outrage with government war policies through speeches, marches, and protests. We told the truth about what we saw and did in Viet Nam and we demanded from our leaders acknowledgement and change. You usurped the leadership of VVAW under false pretenses and dragged it in the direction of Jane Fonda and collaboration with the enemy. If, God forbid, you are elected president, in what awful direction will you and your foreign-born-and-raised wife drag our country?

Your deceit is an explicit slur upon my uncle Will's Purple Heart award, and you mock all other veterans who made the supreme sacrifice or suffered genuine wounds in combat throughout our nation's history. Your rise to prominence is based upon your abominably perverse desecration of our ideals; you have trivialized and demeaned the sacred and the solemn, and no amount of fluent sophistry or braggart pretense can cover it up.

Your conduct goes far beyond dereliction of duty. You betrayed your comrades in Viet Nam, you betrayed the trust of antiwar veterans, and now your self-fabricated credentials and continued lies contaminate the political process.

Remember the professor a few years ago who lied about being a Viet Nam veteran? His college reprimanded and suspended him for foisting such an abominable sham upon a few hundred students. I ask you in closing, Senator Kerry, what punishment is fitting for a man who fabricates medals as sacrosanct as the Purple Heart, and who continues to lie about his VietNam service to the entire world?

Editor: Robert Johnson is the author of ''The Parthenon Code, Mankind's History in Marble'' available at solvinglight.com

This is so powerful, that I'm wondering why Robert Bowie Johnson wasn't one of the speakers at the Republican convention in New York City. He clearly voices the sentiments of thousands of veterans whose outrage at the Kerry candidacy is NOT being covered sufficiently by the liberal media anywhere!

Very powerful indeed! He expresses my thoughts and feelings in a way I never could. I am printing out his letter and hope to be able to remember some of those lines next time I need to express my feelings about John Kerry. All I can usually choke out is "John Kerry it a self promoting, vain glorious rat bastard girlie man traitor". This letter is MUCH more eloquent than I am!

Great read, but I find it hard to believe that this author, a West Point graduate, joined the VVAW. It doesn't make sense that he would associate himself with that group at any time or for any purpose. His training should have been such that he would know instinctively not to associate himself with such a group.

He was right on the money when he said that Kerry exhibits the characteristics of a narcissist. I have never seen anyone so enamored with himself (except for William Jefferson Clinton). And, I have rarely witnessed such outright and blatant disrespect for the American people as when he saluted and said "Reporting for duty" at the Democratic Convention. He expects that the average American will look past his behavior and lack of honesty and courage and actually elect him as the their president. It goes back to the fact that it is all about HIM and what HE wants and what is good for HIM......everyone else be damned.

I can't wait to get this election over with so we aren't force-fed pictures of him anymore when George W. Bush is re-elected. John Kerry will lose and he will soon be a footnote in history.....which is still more than what he deserves.

Everytime I read a letter from a Vietnam Vet to John Kerry, I can feel the anger in their words. I understand their anger because John Kerry slandered my older brothers who served in Vietnam. I also agree with this Vet that John Kerry is a Narcissist.

John Kerry will pay for what he did to our Vietnam Vets in this life time or the next

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