Kerry & his Vietnam Buddies

Avatar for schifferle
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Kerry & his Vietnam Buddies
131
Thu, 07-29-2004 - 9:52am
A perspective from Vietnam Vets who served with Kerry. Few Swift Officers support him. "Of 19 Swift boat skippers pictured other than Kerry" in the photo the Kerry campaign featured in an advertisement released in May titled Lifetime. "11 consider him unfit, 4 are neutral, two have died, and 2 are working with the Kerry campaign. Four other officers were not present for the photo session; all oppose Kerry."

http://www.swiftvets.com/

Senator John Kerry has made his 4-month combat tour in Vietnam the centerpiece of his bid for the Presidency. His campaign jets a handful of veterans around the country, and trots them out at public appearances to sing his praises. John Kerry wants us to believe that these men represent all those he calls his "band of brothers."


But most combat veterans who served with John Kerry in Vietnam see him in a very different light.

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has been formed to counter the false "war crimes" charges John Kerry repeatedly made against Vietnam veterans who served in our units and elsewhere, and to accurately portray Kerry's brief tour in Vietnam as a junior grade Lieutenant. We speak from personal experience -- our group includes men who served beside Kerry in combat as well as his commanders. Though we come from different backgrounds and hold varying political opinions, we agree on one thing: John Kerry misrepresented his record and ours in Vietnam and therefore exhibits serious flaws in character and lacks the potential to lead.

We regret the need to do this. Most Swift boat veterans would like nothing better than to support one of our own for America's highest office, regardless of whether he was running as a Democrat or a Republican. However, Kerry's phony war crimes charges, his exaggerated claims about his own service in Vietnam, and his deliberate misrepresentation of the nature and effectiveness of Swift boat operations compels us to step forward.

For more than thirty years, most Vietnam veterans kept silent as we were maligned as misfits, addicts, and baby killers. Now that a key creator of that poisonous image is seeking the Presidency we have resolved to end our silence.


The time has come to set the record straight.


(cont.)





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Avatar for tmcgoughy
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Mon, 08-02-2004 - 1:41pm

"...back to basic civics class!"


I'll meet you there ;-)

The first key to wisdom is constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.  -
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Mon, 08-02-2004 - 1:42pm
--

Please take a deep breath, because your tone is getting way out of hand. You have personally insulted some and that is uncalled for.

--

Oh no no no, this very behavior is what's driven the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign. Come on, they've spent almost 120 million dollars on television ads to stuff this stuff down our throats, it hasn't worked, it isn't working and it's not going to work.

What they need to do, is stop running their mouths and start running the country.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-05-2003
Mon, 08-02-2004 - 1:43pm
John Kerry admitted to being a war criminal on Meet the Press in 1971 before a national TV audience... I do not see how accepting the mans own words causes any trouble in this debate... that Kerry is a war criminal is something he himself admits to.
Avatar for tmcgoughy
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Mon, 08-02-2004 - 1:44pm

"Voting against something DOES mean you don't support it... it means you seek to negate it to have it made meaningless.... Kerry voted NOTHING for our deployed troops... troops he voted to deploy. This cannot be reconsiled..."


Things must be so simple in your world.

The first key to wisdom is constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.  -
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Mon, 08-02-2004 - 1:45pm
Okay, here's metrochick's post:


I caught a clip of the Kerry - O'Neill debate on TV over the weekend, in which O'Neill stated, as he does in the piece you posted that "Neither I, nor any man I served with, ever committed any atrocity or war crime in Vietnam." Kerry just looked at him and asked "DId you shoot in free fire zones?" And O'Neill said yes. Kerry read him a code which prohibits the use of free fire zones (areas in which you can kill anyone who moves without ID'ing them as enemy forces). O'Neill asked him where he got that, and Kerry replies "The Geneva Conventions. Are you familiar with them?"

So apparently John O'Neill did see and commit what are techinically war crimes, but he just wasn't aware of it. And 30 years later, John Kerry's rebuke seems to have slipped his mind.

(I'd provide a link to some sort of transcript of the debate on the Dick Cavett show, but searches have only turned up people lamenting that there are no transcripts.)

I think much of the misunderstanding over Kerry's anti-war stance comes from people just not getting that he wasn't accusing his fellow soldiers of the atrocities - he was accusing the military and political leadership of endorsing and promoting tactics which were against the rules of warfare. The soldiers just carried out these tactics.

Here's an article which details Kerry's experiences in free fire zones in Vietnam:

In the free fire zone

The possibility of killing innocent civilians haunted Kerry. With many of the South Vietnamese waterways in ''free fire zones'' - meaning that the US Navy was authorized to shoot anyone who was violating a curfew - the likelihood that innocent villagers could be killed was high.

One of Kerry's crewmates on swift boat No. 44 said such an event happened. Drew Whitlow of Arkansas said he was on patrol with Kerry when Whitlow spotted movement along the shore and yelled, "I'm going to fire!" The quiet river exploded in gunfire, with people on the shoreline dropping, dead or wounded, and no fire being returned.

Whitlow recalled the scene: "This is a free fire zone, I will fire, I will put rounds in, I'm doing my thing, I'm feeling Mr. Macho. But then when you get close, you see the expressions of the village people, people waving their arms, saying, `No, no, no! Wait a minute, hold this off.' I ended up putting a few down, and then I found out it was friendlies."

To make matters worse, a mortar round ricocheted back at the boat and wounded three crewmen.

Kerry, asked about Whitlow's account, said he had no recollection of the episode and wondered whether Whitlow was confusing it with another event or whether he was with Whitlow on that occasion. Naval records do not resolve the matter. After being told about Whitlow's recollection by the Globe, Kerry discussed the matter with Whitlow and said he still doesn't remember it.

But Kerry does recall a harrowing incident, which he has never previously publicly discussed, in which he said a crew member shot and killed a Vietnamese boy of perhaps 12 years of age.

A member of Kerry's crew announced he was shooting, and the air filled with the ack-ack-ack of gunfire. The rounds blasted into a sampan, hurling the child into the rice paddy. The mother screamed as the flimsy craft began to sink, and Kerry, shining a searchlight, yelled, "Cease fire! Cease fire!"

Kerry said his crew rescued the mother, took her aboard the Navy vessel for questioning, and left the child behind. Due to the dangerous location, and the possibility that the gunfire had drawn the notice of Viet Cong, Kerry never had a chance to see whether the woman was hiding weaponry in the sunken boat, and does not know to this day whether his crew faced a real threat.

"It is one of those terrible things, and I'll never forget, ever, the sight of that child," Kerry said. "But there was nothing that anybody could have done about it. It was the only instance of that happening.

"It angered me," Kerry said. "But, look, the Viet Cong used women and children." He said there might have been a satchel containing explosives. "Who knows if they had -- under the rice -- a satchel, and if we had come along beside them they had thrown the satchel in the boat. ... So it was a terrible thing, but I've never thought we were somehow at fault or guilty. There wasn't anybody in that area that didn't know you don't move at night, that you don't go out in a sampan on the rivers, and there's a curfew."

The details of the episode are murky, however, because none of Kerry's crewmates remembers it the way Kerry does. The closest recollection comes from William Zaladonis, a crewmate on No. 44 who vividly recalls killing a 15-year-old boy, but does not remember a mother being rescued. "I myself took out a 15-year-old" when the crew came across a sampan in a free-fire zone, Zaladonis said. "It was all legitimate. We told them to stop. When we fired across the bow, people started jumping from the boat. At that time my officer, whoever it was, told me to open up on them, and I did. And there was one body still in the boat, a 15-year-old kid. But over there, 15-year-old kids were soldiers."

http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061603_p.shtml











iVillage Member
Registered: 07-05-2003
Mon, 08-02-2004 - 1:46pm
"Just as I thought, this stuff is almost a year old."

Actually it's almost 40 years old. :-) Kerry is the one who is making a big deal of his service to our country. That he has stated the service was as a war criminal we have his word on... his record should be opened for public review to see if he missed any war crimes :-)

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Mon, 08-02-2004 - 1:47pm
Yes I read it, what you're saying is out of context with what he said.

But, maybe if you really try you can see what the statute of limitations is on this, and bring him up on REAL charges instead of vapor ones.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-05-2003
Mon, 08-02-2004 - 1:49pm
"Things must be so simple in your world. If only the real world was like that."

Not really... Kerry however makes it very easy... generally a no is a no... it's like being a little bit pregnant you are or you aren't... Kerry in this case voted against funding our troops. He voted to deploy same. This is not good leadership, this is not the kind of leadership anyone seeking to be commander in chief should display.

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-21-2003
Mon, 08-02-2004 - 1:50pm
Sound the Alarms, Cheney is not fit to be a VP much less President...He supports cuts in the defense...LOL.

Your argument is just laughable..Read below.

The inclusion of some of the items listed here is all the more ridiculous given that they were weapons systems that a previous Republican administration advocated eliminating. For example, it was Dick Cheney himself, in his capacity as Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush, who testified before the House Armed Services Committee on 13 August 1989 that he had recommended cancelling the AH-64 Apache Helicopter program:

The Army, as I indicated in my earlier testimony, recommended to me that we keep a robust Apache helicopter program going forward. AH-64 . . . forced the Army to make choices. I said, "You can't have all three. We don't have the money for all three." So I recommended that we cancel the AH-64 program two years out. That would save $1.6 billion in procurement and $200 million in spares over the next five years.

(Note that this testimony took place over six years before Senator Kerry supposedly voted to "kill" the AH-64.)

Likewise, on 1 February 1992, Secretary of Defense Cheney complained to the Senate Armed Services Committee that he was being "forced" to spend money on unneeded weapons such as the M-1, the F-14, and the F-16:

Congress has let me cancel a few programs. But you've squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don't fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements . . . You've directed me to buy more M-1s, F-14s, and F-16s — all great systems . . . but we have enough of them.

And President Bush noted in his 1992 State of the Union address that he was phasing out several weapons systems, including the B-2, to "reflect the changes of the new era":

Two years ago, I began planning cuts in military spending that reflected the changes of the new era. But now, this year, with imperial communism gone, that process can be accelerated. Tonight I can tell you of dramatic changes in our strategic nuclear force. These are actions we are taking on our own because they are the right thing to do. After completing 20 planes for which we have begun procurement, we will shut down further production of the B-2 bombers. We will cancel the small ICBM program. We will cease production of new warheads for our sea-based ballistic missiles. We will stop all new production of the Peacekeeper missile. And we will not purchase any more advanced cruise missiles.

Last updated: 26 July 2004


The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/politics/kerry/weapons.asp


For the Record I don't think Cheney for the reasons above should not be VP or president, I have other reasons.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Mon, 08-02-2004 - 1:51pm
You go girl! If it didn't work in every Senate campaign he ran in, I'm sure it will now.

If you attempt to discredit someone enough times, maybe they'll start ignoring the Bush/Cheney record of 2001 - Present.

Maybe.... After 120 million in tv ads it hasn't happened yet, but your voice may bring the tipping point.

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