Posted on 03/06/2004 10:13:53 PM PST by chance33_98
Smith Introduces Vietnam Human Rights Act
WASHINGTON, D.C. Congressman Chris Smith, Vice Chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, has been joined by 30 bipartisan colleagues in reintroducing the Vietnam Human Rights Act today.
Smiths legislation will prohibit any increase in U.S. non-humanitarian aid to Vietnam unless Hanoi makes significant progress toward releasing political and religious prisoners and respecting the human rights of ethnic minorities.
The bill also authorizes funding to overcome Vietnams jamming of Radio Free Asia and expands outreach to Vietnamese refugees to ensure they have access to resettlement programs.
The Vietnam Human Rights Act will impose significant penalties on the dictators in Hanoi for their ongoing and egregious persecution of their own people, Smith said today at a press conference attended by bill cosponsors and human rights activists. What this bill is all about is standing with the oppressed rather than the oppressor.
Vietnam is a government that consistently employs a policy of harassment, discrimination, intimidation, and -- increasingly in the last three years -- imprisonment and other forms of detention against those who peacefully express opposition to Hanois extreme policies against religion and freedom, Smith said. This is a government that punishes not just individuals who oppose it, but also often their family members.
Smith introduced similar legislation during the last Congress. That bill passed the House by a vote of 410-1 but died in the Senate because Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts placed a hold on the bill and prevented it from being brought to the floor for a vote.
I pledge to do everything in my power to ensure that this bill passes not only the House but also the Senate and reaches the Presidents desk as well, Smith said.
Opponents of this measure often invoke the phrase Vietnam is a country, not a war. I agree that Vietnam is a country, but as such we expect Vietnam to behave as a country that protects the rights of its citizens.
For Immediate Release: April 3, 2003
Now that GWB has released all of his records while in the Texas Air National Guard, how long do you think it will be before Ed Gillespie calls for John Kerry releases his?
Just yesterday, Carl Cameron of FOX NEWS interviewed John Kerry and asked him why it's OK for him to tout his Vietnam record, but it's not OK for George W. Bush to tout his handling of 9/11.... Kerry responded by saying something like "I fought and lived that war, So I can talk about it, that was my experience"
I don't care how much controversy the Kerry Campaign can stir up, The bottom line is this..... John Kerry has been in the Senate for almost 20 years and has nothing to show for it, before that he was trashing our troops in Vietnam, so the only thing he has is his 4 months on the Mekong Delta where he earned 5 medals (3 Purple Hearts, 1 Bronze and 1 Silver Star) and I think his only honorable service needs to be examined in the light of day and see how John Kerry stacks up.
In any case my friend, John Kerry's record is a target rich environment, and you can best bet that the Bush Campaign has those targets marked and mapped out for the battle that's coming. President Bush has a record of success, he led the nation like few could after 9/11, he has taken this war to our enemies, and all the while giving us three tax cuts, raising the pay for our troops by 19%, taken us out of the recession he inherited and restored Honor and Dignity back to the White House.
John Kerry's public record doesn't even come close
I would like to add my two cents about my John Kerry experience. During my career as an Air Force pilot, I spent two years flying a small twin-engine prop plane around the Pacific from my base in Okinawa, Japan. On one trip we had to fly Senator Kerry, his congressional aide, and a Navy Captain (Vietnam, A-4 fighter pilot) who was also in Kerry's party to various locations in Vietnam and Cambodia as part of the MIA/POW talks. When I met him, he was wearing a shirt with a picture of his sailboat on it. I told him I had a small 27 sailboat in Okinawa, he remarked 'Oh I never sail on anything less than 135 feet'. I laughed to myself and realized this guy was no sailor.
When we first flew him into Phnom Penh, he went to the back of the airplane and grabbed the pizza that was put aside for the crew and passed it around to his staff. He was never offered any pizza because they were supposed to have lunch with the Cambodian government once we landed. The pizza would have been our only meal that day. He just never cared to ask.
Then when we picked him up in Cambodia, he was an hour late getting to the airport. We could not start the engines and therefore the air conditioning until he arrived. Phnom Penh at that time was over 100 degrees with 95% humidity and we were basically sitting in a greenhouse behind the cockpit windows. When he finally did arrive, we were wringing out our clothes from the perspiration. He walks out of the air conditioned car, into the airplane and asks us 'Could you guys get the air conditioning running, I'm a little warm." The other pilot had to physically restrain me from going back there and picking a fight.
Then we took him into Noi Bai airfield in Hanoi. After we picked him up the next day (he stayed the night in Vietnam, we stayed in Bangkok) we taxied out, ran up the engines for takeoff, and noticed that our prop rpm was vibrating all over the place. We taxied off to the side to look at it, but there was a good possibility that there was an engine malfunction and the engine may fail if we took off with it. Well, Mr. Senator sticks his head up in the cockpit and says 'this plane WILL take - off, I have a press conference in Bangkok in three hours!"(Maybe this is an indication of how he will run the FAA). We ran the engines again, and did not have the problem, so we took off and made it back.
During the flight, he told everyone how he had taken a Cessna (a small General aviation plane) up with a fighter pilot, and the fighter pilot remarked that Kerry was one of the best pilots he had ever seen. I don't know about other pilots out there, but it's hard to imagine a little, single-engine prop plane pilot being able to show the 'right stuff'.
After Kerry left the plane, the Navy Captain came up to us, apologized and said basically that he knows Kerry is a jerk and that we should be glad we don't have to deal with him every day....
Or will we?
What?!
bump!
But it notes that Kerrys participation in the committee became controversial in December 1992 when Hanoi announced that it had awarded Colliers International, a Boston-based real estate company, an exclusive deal to develop its commercial real estate potentially worth billions. Stuart Forbes, then the CEO of Colliers, is Kerrys cousin.
Vietnam's 'Appalling' Persecution [John Kerry]
Freeper Alert: Sen. KERRY / Communist Vietnamese Killing Off Christains in Central Highlands...
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