Subscribe"We believe it is incumbent on ALL presidential candidates to be totally honest and forthcoming regarding personal background and policy information that would help the voting public make an informed decision when choosing the next president of the United States."if these guys are anything other than a stealth group to help elect kerry, do they really want to go down this road?
Kerry served and was decorated and then came home to protest the war.
From start to finish, the public took Dewey Canyon III at face value, not understanding that they were watching brilliant political theater. Kerry, a Kennedy protege with white-hot political aspirations, ascended center stage as both a war hero and as an antiwar hero throwing away his combat decorations. His speech, apparently off the cuff, was eloquent, impassioned.-- from "Stolen Valor", B. G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley, Verity Press, 1998
But years later, after his election to the Senate, Kerry's medals turned up on the wall of his Capitol Hill office. When a reporter noticed them, Kerry admitted that the medals he had thrown that day were not his. And Kerry's emotional, from-the-heart speech had been carefully crafted by a speechwriter for Robert Kennedy named Adam Walinsky, who also tutored him on how to present it. TV reporters totally ignored another Vietnam veteran, Melville L. Stephens, a former aide to Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, chief of Naval Operations, who that same day urged the Senate not to abandon America's allies in South Vietnam. "Peace for us must not come at the cost of their lives," Stephens said in a speech he wrote himself.
"We are going to be presenting a letter that deals with Kerry's unfitness to be commander and chief that has been signed by hundreds of swift boat sailors, including most of those who served with Kerry," O'Neill explained.Here's an op-ed piece, Unfit for Office, also written by John O'Neill from today's Wall Street Journal. It's not clear if this is a separate writing or an excerpt taken from the actual letter.
"The ranks of the people signing [the letter] range from admiral down to seaman, and they run across the entire spectrum of politics, specialties, and political feelings about the Vietnam War," he added. "Comrades who actually served with him, almost all of them, are opposed to him, and believe he would be an unfit commander in chief and intend to bring the truth of his actual record to the attention of the American people," O'Neill said.
O'Neill hopes the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth can reveal to the American people what he sees as Kerry's flawed character.
"In the military, loyalty between commanders and the troops serving them is a two-way street. We have here a guy (Kerry) that with all of us in the field [in Vietnam] -- actually fighting the North Vietnamese -- came home and then falsely accused all of us of war crimes at a time when the people in uniform couldn't even respond," O'Neill said.
"And he did that knowing that was a lie," he added.
Like John Kerry, I served in Vietnam as a Swift Boat commander. Ironically, John Kerry and I served much of our time, a full 12 months in my case and a controversial four months in his, commanding the exact same six-man boat, PCF-94, which I took over after he requested early departure. Despite our shared experience, I still believe what I believed 33 years ago--that John Kerry slandered America's military by inventing or repeating grossly exaggerated claims of atrocities and war crimes in order to advance his own political career as an antiwar activist. His misrepresentations played a significant role in creating the negative and false image of Vietnam vets that has persisted for over three decades.______________________________________________
Neither I, nor any man I served with, ever committed any atrocity or war crime in Vietnam. The opposite was the truth. Rather than use excessive force, we suffered casualty after casualty because we chose to refrain from firing rather than risk injuring civilians. More than once, I saw friends die in areas we entered with loudspeakers rather than guns. John Kerry's accusations then and now were an injustice that struck at the soul of anyone who served there.
During my 1971 televised debate with John Kerry, I accused him of lying. I urged him to come forth with affidavits from the soldiers who had claimed to have committed or witnessed atrocities. To date no such affidavits have been filed. Recently, Sen. Kerry has attempted to reframe his comments as youthful or "over the top." Yet always there has been a calculated coolness to the way he has sought to destroy the record of our honorable service in the interest of promoting his political ambitions of the moment.
Part of Senator John Kerry's appeal to a certain segment of Americans is his Vietnam-veteran status coupled with his antiwar activism during that period. On April 12, 1971, Kerry told the U.S. Congress that American soldiers claimed to him that they had, "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned on the power, cut off limbs, blew up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan."
The exact sources of that assertion should be tracked down. Kerry also ought to be asked who, exactly, told him any such thing, and what it was, exactly, that they said they did in Vietnam. Statutes of limitation now protect these individuals from prosecution for any such admissions. Or did Senator Kerry merely hear allegations of that sort as hearsay bandied about by members of antiwar groups? To me, this assertion sounds exactly like the disinformation line that the Soviets were sowing worldwide throughout the Vietnam era. KGB priority number one at that time was to damage American power, judgment, and credibility. One of its favorite tools was the fabrication of such evidence as photographs and "news reports" about invented American war atrocities. These tales were purveyed in KGB-operated magazines that would then flack them to reputable news organizations. Often enough, they would be picked up. News organizations are notoriously sloppy about verifying their sources. All in all, it was amazingly easy for Soviet-bloc spy organizations to fake many such reports and spread them around the free world.
As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements throughout Europe. KGB chairman Yuri Andropov managed our anti-Vietnam War operation. He often bragged about having damaged the U.S. foreign-policy consensus, poisoned domestic debate in the U.S., and built a credibility gap between America and European public opinion through our disinformation operations. Vietnam was, he once told me, "our most significant success." As far as I'm concerned, the KGB gave birth to the antiwar movement in America.
Leftist intellectuals in America now look to Europe — steeped for years in anti-American propaganda from the Soviet Union — for "a sane and frank European criticism of the Bush administration's war policy." Indeed, anti-Americanism in Europe today is almost as ferocious as it was during Vietnam. France and Germany insist we are torturing the al Qaeda prisoners held at Guantanamo Base. The Mirror, a British newspaper, is confident that President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were "killing innocents in Afghanistan." The Paris daily Le Monde put Jean Baudrillard on its front page asserting that "the Judeo-Christian West, led by America, not only provoked the [September 11] terrorist attacks, it actually desired them."
In June 2002, a documentary film on "U.S. war crimes" in Afghanistan was shown in the German Bundestag by the crypto-Communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). The film faithfully reincarnated the style of old Soviet-bloc "documentaries" demonizing the U.S. war in Vietnam. According to this 20-minute movie, American soldiers were involved in the torture and murder of some 3,000 Taliban prisoners in the region of Mazar-e-Sharif. One witness in the film even claimed he had seen an American soldier break the neck of one Afghan prisoner and pour acid on others.
During my last meeting with Andropov, he said, wisely, "now all we have to do is to keep the Vietnam-era anti-Americanism alive." Andropov was a shrewd judge of human nature. He understood that in the end our original involvement would be forgotten, and our insinuations would take on a life of their own. He knew well that it was just the way human nature worked.
When he first ran for Congress in 1970, he advocated doing away with the CIA and bringing all US troops abroad under the direct command and control of the godless anti-American United Nations. According to excerpts obtained by the Boston Globe in June 2003, Kerry told a college paper that it was time to "almost eliminate CIA activity." He also stated that he wanted to see U.S. troops "dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations." Kerry also authored an anti-war book, "The New Soldier." When he ran for Congress, he tried to suppress reproduction of the cover picture of his book, which depicts a bunch of druggies trying to mimic the pictorial of the Iwo Jima memorial with an American flag turned upside down in an attempt to mock the famous photo of the U.S. Marines at Iwo Jima.
John Kerry's former swift boat commanders and colleagues on Tuesday described the presumptive Democrat nominee as a self-absorbed and devious sailor during the Vietnam War who was there merely to advance a future political career.And once again, certain "Anyone but Bush!" commenters try to take the focus off their man and smear somebody else, in this case John O'Neill, who writes:
A group of 18 veterans gathered in the nation's capital asking Kerry to authorize the Department of the Navy to independently release his military records, including medical information, about his service during the Vietnam War. Many said Kerry was unfit to be commander-in-chief of the U.S. military
More than 200 veterans have signed a letter from the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth seeking the release of records. Retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann commanded the fleet of swift boats -- the Navy's Task Force 115 -- during Kerry's tour of duty. Today he serves as chairman of the veterans' group.
"He arrived in country with a strong anti-Vietnam War bias and a self-serving determination to build a foundation for his political future," Hoffmann said. "He was aggressive, but vain and prone to impulsive judgment, often with disregard to specific tactical assignments. He was a loose cannon.
"In an abbreviated tour of four months and 12 days," Hoffmann added, "and with his specious medals secure, Lt. j.g. (junior grade) Kerry bugged out of Vietnam and began his infamous betrayal of all United States forces in the Vietnam War."
But according to Hibbard, one of Kerry's commanders in Vietnam, questions remain about the three Purple Hearts that Kerry was awarded for injuries in Vietnam. Based on Hibbard's recollection, one of Kerry's injuries didn't appear to warrant a medal.
"He showed me a scratch on his arm and a piece of shrapnel in his hand that appeared to be from one of our own M-79s," Hibbard said. "He later received a Purple Heart for that scratch, and I have no information as to how or whom."
Another officer, retired Capt. Charley Plumly, said Kerry was under his command for two or three naval operations. He criticized Kerry's attitude and behavior.
"Kerry would be described as devious, self-absorbing, manipulative, disdain for authority, disruptive," Plumly said, "but the most common phrase you would hear [was] 'requires constant supervision.' "
Since 1971, I have refused many offers from John Kerry's political opponents to speak out against him. My reluctance to become involved once again in politics is outweighed now by my profound conviction that John Kerry is simply not fit to be America's commander in chief. Nobody has recruited me to come forward. My decision is the inevitable result of my own personal beliefs and life experience.Your vehement defender of JK, karl. . . MattGunn.com -- a political diary from a slightly above average man. What a fucking tool. Reminds me of John Kerry.
"We endorse nobody at all for president. If Kerry drops out and allows the Democratic Party a genuine choice, a fit choice to be commander-in-chief, we're all going home," O'Neill said. "We're unified on absolutely nothing, except one thing: John Kerry is not a fit commander-in-chief based on our experience with him."
I revisited what I wrote last year on May 2, 2003 –Jesus. No bias there, no inclination to defend Kerry no matter what the allegation. Hmm, remind you of anyone here?
"My only hope is that John Kerry will be the Democratic nominee. . ."
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The point is, those other soldiers aren't running for president as a Vietnam veteran.
posted by MrAnonymous at 1:11 PM on May 4, 2004