Revolt of the Vietnam Veterans

Post mortems in the liberal press on the role that Vietnam veterans played in presidential candidate John Kerry's defeat mask the key role of the liberal press, which tried to suppress the vets' story and is distorting it now. I was there at the creation of a veterans group and all along, and know better. The American people deserve to know better too.

In 1971 I organized Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace. John O'Neill enlisted to counter the smears of American servicemen in Vietnam. No one else spoke up for us, so we had to. The mainstream press was more diverse than today and we got a spotty but honest hearing.

Kerry's light dimmed then. Americans got the message that a motley crew of exaggerators and frauds didn't speak for Vietnam veterans. We said our piece and went home, back to our diverse, nonpolitical lives.

Meanwhile, anti-Vietnam war protesters of the 1960s marched through academia and the media to claim its power as their own. In 2004, they fought to defend their self-image by defaming that of anti-Kerry Vietnam veterans.

In February 2004, anti-Kerry Vietnam veterans were shocked that he won the Democratic nomination. The mainstream media blessed this coronation. No one except Kerry and his advisers really wanted to revisit Vietnam, but they saw it as a way to appeal to anti and pro-war voters.

Kerry's Vietnam veteran opponents hadn't been in contact for over 30 years, so we searched each other out. Scott Swett, creator of wintersoldier.com that collected research on Kerry's protest activities, was an invaluable connector among us, creating an Internet political network that bound us together.

While we knew all too well about Kerry's anti-Vietnam protest period, we compared notes and surprised ourselves at the extent of deceptions in Kerry's self-hagiography about being a sterling war hero. It was intolerable that John Kerry brazenly glorified this suspect record to centerpiece his few months as a junior officer 35 years ago as qualification to lead the United States in this most challenging time since the Cold War.

The liberal media portrayed anti-Kerry Vietnam veterans as a long-planned, far-right funded conspiracy of liars. That's far, far from the truth. The real story is like the Minutemen, rising from peaceful lives to spontaneously come together to again fight for the America we so deeply love.

There was little or no coordination, just mutual support, with each volunteer shooting from behind his own tree in the same direction. We came to know each other on the field of our revolt against the false image created by Kerry of himself in the media and the false image Kerry was instrumental in painting of us and America.

John O'Neill got off his sickbed. He asked me whether I had the contacts and resources to lead as I did in 1971, which I didn't, and he dug in his own pocket to get the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth started. Vietnam veterans from every service, and Americans from every walk of life, joined in and followed O'Neill into political combat.

Early in the year a friend with access to the Kerry campaign warned me it was digging for any kind of dirt to destroy us. Contrary to the liberal media's story that we surprised Kerry in August, he thought the mainstream media could succeed in ignoring and stifling the Swift Boat veterans, and he had long planned a new smear campaign against us.

The surprise to the Kerry camp and liberal press was that the new media did break through and that Vietnam veterans could not be intimidated. In August, as reported by Newsweek, Kerry operatives fed negative documents and talking points to the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe. Subsequent articles in those newspapers reflected negatively on the Swiftees.

With only one halting exception, the mainstream media refused to investigate the sworn affidavits of 60 credible witnesses to Kerry's behavior, or to follow up on the abundance of additional information given them. The New York Times repeatedly used "unsubstantiated" as its adjective describing the Swift Boat veterans' allegations without ever exerting its considerable power to investigate.

Kerry wasn't pressured by the mainstream media to reveal his full military records to resolve issues, nor questioned as to what he was hiding. The mainstream media's zeal in chasing down every scrap of trivia about Bush's service stands in sharp contrast. That alone strongly suggested a liberal bias.

This behavior by some of the liberal media was purposeful. The survival of their favored candidate was endangered by our truth and facts. As important, the self-image of many reporters was endangered. Their myths of our pervasive evils in defending Vietnamese freedom, and of their valiant memories of mounting school libraries' ramparts, could not take the incongruence of exposure.

In the campaign to discredit anti-Kerry Vietnam veterans, some charged that we were reviving an old vendetta. Actually, we had ignored Kerry until last February. Some charged that we were refighting a cultural war from the '60s. Again, untrue. Many of us smoked marijuana, rocked to the same songs, grew the same long hair. We're Democrats, independents and Republicans.

The true post mortem of Kerry's defeat is simply the last hurrah of simple patriots, amateurishly but fervently rising up and banding together, with few resources, to defeat the mainstream media's boy and juggernaut. Polls and the election show we succeeded.

Find this article at: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041219/news_z1e19kesler.html

Thank you Swifties - you did what hundreds of us wanted to do and didn't - God Bless You and keep You safe till the next time.

Wounds from war heal but the scars are visible forever. Mental scars are not visible and most never heal. Kerry wounded several generations with his lies. Political lies are easily covered up but lies that affect people are remembered. I did not kill babies.

I WILL NOT FORGET!!!

As important, the self-image of many reporters was endangered. Their myths of our pervasive evils in defending Vietnamese freedom, and of their valiant memories of mounting school libraries' ramparts, could not take the incongruence of exposure.

LOL!!

God bless Bruce Kesler, John O'Neill and the Swiftees, Scott Swett, Jerry Corsi and the other patriots who worked together to bypass old media to get the word out about John Kerry. But for these people, we very well may have seen a Kerry presidency in '5.

Awesome post and story. These Vietnam Veterans represent the best that America can offer. For more reasons than beating John Kerry.

I have two Christmas wishes: One is that the troops who are serving today know that we are grateful for them, and two- that the Vietnam Vets know this election was as much about each one of them as it was about John Kerry. We never got to show our appreciate and love for the Vietnam Vets before, we did back in Nov of 2004.

Thank you Swifties for you have given us so much.

27 posted on 12/19/2004 1:00:00 PM PST by Diva Betsy Ross (I am not NOT PC.. And Proud of it!: Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah!)

Bruce Kesler will be our guest on The Inquisition, webcast at RighTalk.com this afternoon at 2pm Eastern. We'll cover Bruce's work during the recent campaign, as well as discussing how and why he founded Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace as a counter to the VVAW in 1971.

I never felt more proud to have had the opportunity to give...How true!
The Swift Boat Veterans gave me the hope that TRUTH would win out. The RNC was way too political to tackle Kerry's lies, deception and arrogance.
I too would like to see the "rest of the Story"...the meetings with the Cong in Paris, the spin of lies by Cronkite, the funding of the antiwar movement by commies, Kerry's dishonorable discharge...The betraying of America by Liberals from the 60's to 2004.

It is about time, but it's going to take a lot to make up for the twenty-five years of smearing Vietnam Vets, and what they had to live with.

We’ll quietly slide back into the woodwork – until needed again. It would be nice to see Hanoi John held accountable for his sedition and treason, but others can handle that end.

31 posted on 12/20/2004 6:29:04 AM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink.)

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