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Hanoi Kerry's War Record

Setting straight Kerry's war record

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com

1 March

Senator Kerry recently wrote a letter to President Bush complaining, "You and your campaign have initiated a widespread attack on my service in Vietnam, my decision to speak out to end that war," and warning, "I will not sit back and allow my patriotism to be challenged."

In the absence of any evidence from Mr. Kerry of an attack from the Bush campaign, Mr. Kerry seems to have originated his own doctrine of "pre-emption." How valid are his concerns?

No one denies Mr. Kerry's four bemedaled months in "Swiftboats" or his seven-months' service as an electrical officer on board the USS Gridley, during its cruises back and forth to California, or even his months as an admiral's aide in Brooklyn, before he was able get out of the Navy six months early to run for office.

Taking a look at Mr. Kerry's much-promoted Vietnam service, his military record was, indeed, remarkable in many ways. Last week, the former assistant secretary of defense and Fletcher School of Diplomacy professor, W. Scott Thompson, recalled a conversation with the late Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. that clearly had a slightly different take on Mr. Kerry's recollection of their discussions:

"[T]he fabled and distinguished chief of naval operations, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, told me — 30 years ago when he was still CNO —that during his own command of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam, just prior to his anointment as CNO, young Kerry had created great problems for him and the other top brass, by killing so many non-combatant civilians and going after other non-military targets. 'We had virtually to straitjacket him to keep him under control,' the admiral said. 'Bud' Zumwalt got it right when he assessed Kerry as having large ambitions — but promised that his career in Vietnam would haunt him if he were ever on the national stage." And this statement was made despite the fact Zumwalt had personally pinned a Silver Star on Mr. Kerry.

Mr. Kerry was assigned to Swiftboat 44 on December 1, 1968. Within 24 hours, he had his first Purple Heart. Mr. Kerry accumulated three Purple Hearts in four months with not even a day of duty lost from wounds, according to his training officer. It's a pity one cannot read his Purple Heart medical treatment reports which have been withheld from the public. The only person preventing their release is Mr. Kerry.

By his own admission during those four months, Mr. Kerry continually kept ramming his Swiftboat onto an enemy-held shore on assorted occasions alone and with a few men, killing civilians and even a wounded enemy soldier. One can begin to appreciate Zumwalt's problem with Mr. Kerry as commander of an unarmored craft dependent upon speed of maneuver to keep it and its crew from being shot to pieces.

Mr. Kerry now refers to those civilian deaths as "accidents of war. "And within four days of his third Purple Heart, Mr. Kerry applied to take advantage of a technicality which allowed him to request immediate transfer to a stateside post.

Once back in the States, Mr. Kerry joined "the struggle for our veterans," as he called it last week in Atlanta, by joining a scruffy organization called the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The VVAW's executive director, Al Hubbard, supposedly a former Air Force captain wounded in Vietnam, quickly appointed Mr. Kerry to the executive committee.

Mr. Kerry participated with the VVAW at agitprop rallies such as Valley Forge and the "Winter Soldier" guerrilla theater atrocity trials in Detroit, finally testifying in April 1971 before the Senate as an authority on the war crimes his fellow American servicemen had committed in Vietnam.

Outside of his own "accidents of war," there is no evidence that Mr. Kerry had then or has now the least idea what may or may not have been the realities of ground combat. However, he had no problem reeling off

for the Senate a series of unproven, secondhand allegations that would have been perfectly at home at the Nuremberg trials indicting his fellow veterans.

Mr. Kerry stated there were "war crimes committed in Southeast Asia...not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-today basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do."Then Mr. Kerry got specific:

"They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam...we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free-fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search-and-destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam."

In other words, My Lai was just another day in the life of the Vietnam War.

This wasn't a one-time occasion. The VVAW had been peddling this line from the day Mr. Kerry joined them and had been publishing charges like this for the previous two years. Mr. Kerry repeated them on "Meet the Press" with Al Hubbard, who was found to be a total fraud and who never served in Vietnam, much less was wounded. However, Mr. Kerry has never renounced the charges he made.

Recently, his fellow VVAW supporter, Jane Fonda, has tried to minimize a potentially damaging picture of him a few rows behind her at the three-day VVAW Valley Forge rally in September 1970.And many members of the press fell for the line that it was accidental or coincidental, including Fox's Chris Wallace and ABC's Tim Russert.

However, there were only eight or nine speakers that day, including Donald Sutherland, Mark Lane, Bella Abzug, and Ms. Fonda. And far from being a casual audience member, Mr. Kerry, an executive committee member, not Ms. Fonda, was the lead speaker.

Ms. Fonda had been funding VVAW events since before Mr. Kerry joined its executive committee. At Valley Forge, Ms. Fonda said: "…My Lai was not an isolated incident but rather a way of life for many of our military."

Their appearance together in that picture may be a lot of things, but it was not a coincidence.

Mr. Kerry has already confessed his complicity in killing civilians as "accidents of war. "However, he has offered a classic Nuremberg defense that this was not only a commonplace occurrence throughout the Vietnam War, but he was carrying out a policy "with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

His commander of naval operations in Vietnam, who specifically designed the mission that Mr. Kerry and the other Swiftboat commanders executed, Admiral Zumwalt, clearly disagreed. An examination of the truth behind this disagreement is not an attack on Mr. Kerry. It is a matter of vital historical interest.

JOHN KERRY NOT TOO ANXIOUS TO SERVE IN ARMED SERVICES

By J. Grant Swank, Jr.

Mar 11, 2004, 12:01 EST

The way Senator John F. Kerry tells it, he was jumping to the recruiting station to serve America in Vietnam. Not so.According to Charles Laurence of New York, Kerry wanted time to go to Paris before doing anything armed services like. Yes. Paris. He "tried to defer his military service for a year." That’s what an old Harvard publication states.

"He wrote to his local recruitment board seeking permission to spend a further 12 months studying in Paris, after completing his degree course in the mid-1960s," Laurence explains.Now all the while Kerry has been pooh-poohing United States President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas National Guard,

making it to be that Mr. Bush went that route so he wouldn’t have to see Vietnam.

"John Kerry: A Navy Dove Runs for Congress" is the headline of the Harvard Crimson newspaper piece. "When he approached his draft board for permission to study for a year in Paris, the draft board refused and Kerry decided to enlist in the Navy." Samuel Godhaber wrote the article. He keeps to the details, he relates today. "It was a long

time ago, and I was 19 at the time, so it is hard to remember every detail. But I do know this: at no point did Kerry contact either me or the Crimson to dispute anything I had written."

Republicans are reporting to media that this in Kerry’s past cuts through his wrangling about Mr. Bush. Further, it makes one wonder all the more about his "credibility among ordinary Vietnam veterans." Kerry enjoyed the media limelight back then when heading war-protests in the 60’s and early 70’s. While others were dying in

Vietnam, Kerry returned to America to undercut their sacrifices.With this new revelation, there are those questioning the Democratic Party’s apparent rewrite of Kerry’s history. The way they tell it is that Kerry signed up for the Reserve Officer Training Corps at Harvard because he was so anxious to serve his country. He then set

sail under the Navy banner, ready to give his life in combat upon his 1966 graduation.

Kerry broadcasts his receiving a "purple heart" medal for three wounds, getting him honorably discharged. In addition he got a gallantry medal for being gunboat captain on the Mekong Delta. Democrats like to underline that Kerry is more commendable than Mr. Bush, the latter copping out of overseas duty by joining the Guard. That obviously says what the Democrats think of those who sign up and serve well in the National Guard. May the Guardsmen and women remember that when it comes to November.

Now back to Kerry’s wounds — three of them — which yield him present-tense applause meter high rating. Lucianne Goldberg, a well-known Republican campaigner, says that she and others find "that he had only one day off sick — with three wounds? What exactly were these wounds?"

Makes one wonder — on all counts.

email comments to josephswank@yahoo.com

This Soldier's Story

By JOHN KERRY

Published: March 1, 2004

Nineteen-sixty-eight was a year unlike any other I have known. I was 24 years old, a newly minted naval officer in a convoy headed for the Gulf of Tonkin.

I remember lazy moments standing watch on the U.S.S. Gridley — out on the fantail, the fo'c'sle, anywhere, looking at the sea, enjoying glorious sunsets and sunrises on the bridge.

Then, on the afternoon of Feb. 26, having left Midway Island, the reality of Vietnam hit me right between the eyes. Gridley's executive officer came to me and asked if I had a friend named Pershing — and I knew immediately why he was asking.

I fought to restrain an empty crying. I didn't even have to read the telegram; I knew that Dick Pershing, my childhood and college friend, was dead. For days on the empty Pacific I could barely stand the knowledge that I would never see him again. It was the loss of someone irreplaceable, a loss of innocence, a loss of the sense of invincibility and bravado that young men have as they go to war.

Soon after, off Vietnam, we learned that Senator Eugene McCarthy and a band of college students living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches had rocked the foundations of the political world in the New Hampshire primary, sending the message to President Lyndon Johnson that he couldn't be president any more. Weeks later we heard of the death of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., assassinated while campaigning for justice in America. We knew that cities across the country had exploded in riots and much of Washington itself was in flames. There was war all around us and war at home.

After a few months of search and rescue work in the Gulf of Tonkin, the ship was returning to California when the crackling radio picked up the end of Robert Kennedy's victory speech, the shots fired in the kitchen, the chaos. We docked early the next morning — June 6, 1968. Robert Kennedy died that day.

I spent a lost weekend in Long Beach glued to the television set. It was strange, leaving a place of violence to come home to violence — violence that shook our sense of the order of things.

Later that summer I reported for swift boat training in Coronado, Calif. We lived with the deep-throated roar of phantom afterburners streaking out of the naval air station, carriers dominating the harbor, Marine recruits surviving basic training, and we watched the turmoil in our own country. I had been a participant and an observer, and my beliefs were challenged during that difficult time.

Soon I found myself back in Vietnam, on the front lines of a very different war from the one I had known on my first tour of duty. We were outsiders in a complex war among Vietnamese. Too many allies were corrupt. Adversaries were ruthless. Enemy territory was everywhere.

It is hard still to explain the clashing feelings. There was the deep and enduring bonds forged among crewmates, brothers in arms from all walks of life fighting each day to keep faith with one another on a tiny boat on the rivers of the Mekong Delta. And there was the anger I felt toward body-counting, face-saving leaders sitting safely in Washington sending to the killing fields troops who were often poor, black or brown.

But that was Vietnam, where the children of America were pulled from front porches and living rooms and plunged almost overnight into a world of sniper fire, ambushes, rockets, booby traps, body bags, explosions, sleeplessness, and the confusion created by an enemy who was sometimes invisible and firing at us, and sometimes right next to us and smiling.

I found understanding only in the shared experience of those for whom the war was personal, who had lost friends and seen brothers lose arms and legs, who had seen all around them human beings fight and curse, weep and die. At times it seemed that we were the only ones who really understood that the faults in Vietnam were those of the war, not the warriors.

I returned home to America and moved to New York City, prepared to serve out the remainder of my naval duty in Brooklyn. Part of me wanted to forget Vietnam and get on with my life, but part of me felt compelled to tell the story. I was unsure how.

Then, in April 1969, I received news so eerily similar to what had happened on that first voyage to Vietnam. Another close friend — Don Droz — had been killed in a swift boat ambush in the Duong Keo River.

At that moment I knew I couldn't wait. There was no further thinking to do. It was time. That's the day I decided to give all my energy and strength to one more mission: to end the war in which I'd fought.

OP-Ed to John Kerry Article Above

The Above is very Admirable, passionate, believable and understandable. I myself have been there and done that. What you did above this line is admirable and we commend you for it.

It is the after that phase, which you failed to write about, ending the war. You slandered your own men, Me personally, and every other soldier that wore the uniform . The lives you cost are sickening. Yes John, you have blood on your hands, they are on "The Wall" untold hundreds, 2 MIllion South Vietnamese civilians after we left, 750,000 South Vietnamese to re-education camps and mine clearing, 2 million dead Cambodians in the Killing Fields. CW2 Richard Worthington and others is in a hell hole in Laos or North Vietnam because of your "End The War, and Screw the troops attitudes and politics". You put Money in front of lives, Lies in front of truth, and to me you are a traitor and belong on the same page as Ramsey Clark, MacNamarra, Jane Fonda and others.

You are ambitious, politcally ruthless, speak out of both sides of your mouth at the same time,and will do whatever it takes to appease the day. You lack intestinal fortitude to believe in something, and hang tough despite the consequences, so I guess John to me, once you were a heroic honorable young man. Now you are a Political Coward.

This isn't about Politcal parties John. If you were a Republican, a Green, or a snake, my opinion would be the same, it's about the man named John F. Kerry

Ron Leonard

Op-Ed 2

Tell me Lt(jg) Kerry, why did you not speak these words to the SenateCommittee? Why did you not tell how honorable your fellow Americans were when they were confronted by this horror? Why did you not tell the Senate Committee how horrified we all were when the things you reported were done by us or (most times) by the enemy? Tell me why you did not shame the Congress, to whom you were lecturing, about their medaling into our lives? How their interference caused needless deaths? Why did you not call their attention to how valiant our people were, where heroism was a daily event but went unrecognized? Why did you not tell them that they were conducting the war as a political tool for themselves and that we felt like pawns? Or were you thinking that someday you, too, may act the same as they did?

Yes, Senator Kerry, war is ugly. None of us liked it. Many tears were cried by us on those battlefields. Dry tears because there were none left to cry. Why didn't you tell them how we carried the burden of the memories with us back home, tucked away in our heads and hearts, only to be greeted, not with love and sympathy, but words echoed from your testimony. "Baby Killers", "Murderers", and other things you put into the minds of those who followed you behind the flag of the enemy who killed our brothers. Tell us, Senator Kerry. Why did you choose to say what you did? Why did you paint all of us who were praying for another day of life so we could see our friends and family again as robotic killers? You knew better, didn't you.

You never saw such things yourself, did you? Not all of us chased down a wounded enemy who was running away and dispatched them with a neat bullet to the back. No, those kind of things were only done by a few, callous, insensitive people who did not follow military orders or procedures. Those were the ones with the stigma, not he rest of us. We fought honorably and well. You forgot to tell them THAT, didn't you?

It is now 36 years later and we all remember when we had to kill to survive. Does the memory still haunt you of the enemy you chose to kill for a bit of metal? Do you remember how you felt as you pointed your pistol and pulled the trigger at a retreating back?

Tell us how you feel, Senator Kerry.

Jim

On the campaign trail, White House wannabe Sen. John Forbes Kerry regularly mentions his Vietnam War combat experience, during which he received three Purple Hearts, the Silver Star and Bronze Star.

However, the Massachusetts Democrat doesn't like to talk much about how he received the awards or the time after he returned home when he was rubbing shoulders with Hanoi Jane Fonda as a much-celebrated organizer for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), one of America's most radical pro-communist groups

About this photograph

Sen. Kerry, the "noble statesman" and "highly decorated Vietnam vet" of today, is a far cry from Kerry, the radical, hippie-like leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in the early 1970s.

Soon after Kerry, as a Navy Lieutenant (junior grade) commanding a Swift boat in Vietnam, was awarded the Silver Star, he used a loop hole in Navy regulations to leave Vietnam and his crew before completing his tour of duty.

After returing home, he quit the Navy early and changed the color of his politics to become a leader of VVAW. Kerry wasted no time organizing opposition in the United States against the efforts of his former buddies still ducking communist bullets back in Vietnam.

Kerry participated in the so-called Winter Soldier Investigation where his fellow protesters accused his fellow GIs of war crimes.

Kerry's betrayal of American prisoners of war, his blatant disrespect for the families of our missing in action, Vietnam veterans, the military, his support for communist Vietnam and his waffling over the issue of use of force in Iraq proves he is a self promoting Chameleon Senator who cannot be relied on to protect the best interests of the United States.

Although Kerry voted to support military intervention in Iraq he is now claiming that he only approved the threat of force by the United States.

The Constitution for the United States of America declares: "The President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States when called into the actual service of the United States; he may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment."

Read the following and decide for yourself if you trust this man to be our Commander-in-Chief.

Young John Forbes Kerry grew up well connected in the upper-class due to his Forbes and Winthrop roots. Kerry is said to have idolized John F Kennedy, with whom he and his family socialized. Kerry, who often alluded to having the same initials as President Kennedy, is pictured on the left sailing with President Kennedy.

John F. Kerry (right) sailing with President John F Kennedy (seated left) 1962
Kerry graduated from Yale University in 1966.
Like John F. Kennedy (who served on a World War II patrol boat, PT 109), Kerry sought to do the same. He enlisted in the Navy and became an officer.
After training, Kerry volunteered for Vietnam. He served a relatively uneventful six months, far removed from combat, from December 1967 to June 1968, in the electrical department aboard the USS Gridley, a guided-missile frigate that supported aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin
His ship returned to its Long Beach, Calif., port on June 6, 1968. Five months later, Kerry went back to Vietnam, securing an assignment as "swift boat" skipper.
Kerry commanded his first swift boat, No. 44, from December 1968 through January 1969. He received no medals while serving on this craft.	While in command of Swift Boat 44, Kerry and crew operated without prudence in a Free Fire Zone, carelessly firing at targets of opportunity racking up a number of enemy kills and some civilians. His body count included-- a woman, her baby, a 12 year-old boy, an elderly man and several South Vietnamese soldiers. "It is one of those terrible things, and I'll never forget, ever, the sight of that child," Kerry later said about the dead baby. "But there was nothing that anybody could have done about it. It was the only instance of that happening. Kerry said he was appalled that the Navy's ''free fire zone'' policy in Vietnam put civilians at such high risk.
Kerry experienced his first intense combat action on Dec. 2, 1968. He was slightly wounded on his arm, earning his first Purple Heart.
In late January 1969, Kerry joined a five-man crew on swift boat No. 94 completing 18 missions over 48 days, almost all of them in the Mekong Delta.
Kerry earned his second Purple Heart after sustaining a minor shrapnel wound in his left thigh on Feb. 20, 1969.
Kerry was given a Silver Star for an action on February 28, 1969: When Kerry's Patrol Craft Fast 94 received a B-40 rocket shot from shore, he hot dogged his craft beaching it in the center of the enemy position. To his surprise, an enemy soldier sprang up from a hole not ten feet from Patrol Craft 94 and fled. The boat's machine gunner hit and wounded the fleeing Viet Cong as he darted behind a hootch. The twin .50s gunner fired at the Viet Cong. He said he "laid 50 rounds" into the hootch before Kerry leaped from the boat and dashed in to administer a "coup de grace" to the wounded Viet Cong. Kerry returned with the B-40 rocket and launcher..
Kerry and crew stand together in An Thoi, Vietnam, on February 28, 1969, after presentation of Kerry's Silver Star. He also received a Purple Heart for a minor wound. From left: Del Sandusky, John Kerry, Gene Thorson, Thomas Belodeau. Kneeling from left, Mike Medeiros, Fred Short.
On March 13, 1969, a mine detonated near Kerry's boat, slighting wounding Kerry in the right arm. He was awarded his third Purple Heart. PCF (Patrol Craft Fast) 94 crew in March 1969, from left, Gene Thorson, David Alston, Thomas Belodeau, Del Sandusky, and John Kerry.
When later asked about the severity of the wounds, Kerry said that one of them cost him about two days of service, and that the other two did not interrupt his duty. "Walking wounded," as Kerry put it.	"Walking wounded," as Kerry put it.
After his third Purple Heart Kerry requested to be sent home. Navy rules, he pointed out, allowed a thrice-wounded soldier to return to the United States immediately. Commodore Charles F. Horne, an administrative official and commander of the coastal squadron in which Kerry served, filled out a document on March 17, 1969, that said Kerry had "been thrice wounded in action while on duty incountry Vietnam. Reassignment is requested ... as a personal aide in Boston, New York, or Wash., D.C. area."	In April 1969, having engineered an early transfer out of the conflict because of his three minor wounds, John Kerry left his crew behind and returned home to a sweet assignment as an admiral's aide.
In October 1969, Kerry began to associate	with anti-war protestor, Adam Walinsky, a former speech writer for Robert F. Kennedy
On Jan. 3, 1970, Kerry requested that his discharge from the Navy so that he could run	superior, Rear Admiral Walter F. Schlech, Jr.,grant him an early for Congress.
Kerry, a decorated veteran who seemed to to the military service on a patrol boat Three-months later, when it became clear dropped out.	be a clone of former President John F.Kennedy, right down made a 1970 bid for Congress n Massachusetts' Third District. his opponent would get the Democratic Party nomination, Kerry
Realizing that running for public office in Eastern Massachusetts as a decorated Vietnam veteran was not at that time politically correct, Kerry moved hard to the left. He attended a February 1971, VVAW conference bankrolled by Jane Fonda, the group's most prominent promoter. Over 125 self-proclaimed Vietnam veterans testified at a Detroit Howard Johnson's about wholesale rape, torture, and murder they claimed U.S. soldiers committed in Vietnam. Kerry later said he found the accounts shocking and irrefutable. Pictured right - VVAW supported demonstration at the Capitol, one of many that became known as the Washington Spring Offense.- April - May 1971.
Kerry soon assumed a leadership position in the rabid pro-communist VVAW organization. Kerry, pictured right, directing VVAW's massive pro-Hanoi demonstration in Washington. - April 1971
As a national leader of VVAW, Kerry campaigned against the effort of the United States to contain the spread of Communism. He used the blood of servicemen still in the field for his own political advancement by claiming that their blood was being shed unnecessarily or in vain. Under Kerry's leadership, VVAW members mocked the uniform of United States soldiers by wearing tattered fatigues marked with pro-communist graffiti. They dishonored America by marching in demonstrations under the flag of the Viet Cong enemy. Pictured right, April 1971, VVAW demonstration - Washington, D.C.
Kerry organized one of the most confrontational protests of the entire Vietnam War called Operation Dewey Canyon III. It began April 18, 1971, with nearly 1,000 Vietnam vets gathered on the Washington, D.C., Mall for what they called "a limited incursion into the country of Congress. Pictured right, VVAW demonstrators armed with toy rifles, stage guerrilla theatre with mock "search and destroy" missions and massacres of civilians.
Sen. Ted Kennedy and protest leader Kerry discuss the demonstration.
On April 23, 1971, Kerry led members of VVAW in a protest during which they threw their medals and ribbons over a fence in front of the U.S. Capitol.
"We came here to undertake one last mission, to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war," Kerry told the cheering mass.
At a jammed Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on April 23, 1971, Kerry took his case to Congress. In a room crammed with television cameras, Kerry, dressed in green fatigues decorated with a Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Heart ribbons, gave testimony that defined him and made possible his political career. In a political style, reminiscent of John Kennedy's memorable "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Kerry asked, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam – How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
Much of Kerry's speech before Congress mistaken for Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen He told Congress that U.S. soldiers had portable telephones to human genitals at civilians, razed villages, shot cattle countryside of South Vietnam."	painted his fellow GIs as so brutal that, today, they could easily be killers. "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the
Kerry was a supporter of the "People's Peace Treaty," a supposed "people's" declaration to end the war, reportedly drawn up in communist East Germany. It included nine points, all of which were taken from Viet Cong peace proposals at the Paris peace talks as conditions for ending the war. One of the provisions stated: "The Vietnamese pledge that as soon as the U.S. government publicly sets a date for total withdrawal [from Vietnam], they will enter discussion to secure the release of all American prisoners, including pilots captured while bombing North Vietnam." In other words, Kerry and his VVAW advocated the communist line to withdraw all U.S. troops from Vietnam first and then negotiate with Hanoi over the release of prisoners. Had the nine points of the "People's Peace Treaty" favored by Kerry been accepted by American negotiators, the United States would have totally lost all leverage to get the communists to release any POWs captured during the war years. VVAW supported demonstration, Washington Spring Offensive, April - May 1971
Several weeks later, Kerry was featured in a on CBS's "60 Minutes." Correspondent Morley Safer, in the segment portrayed Kerry as an eloquent man who had a "Kennedyesque" future. "Do you want to be president of the United States?" Safer asked Kerry.	"No," Kerry replied. "That's such a crazy question when there are so many things to be done and I don't know whether I could do them."
Vice President Spiro T. Agnew said that Kerry, "who drew rave notices in the media for his eloquent testimony before Congress," was using material ghosted for him by a former Kennedy speech writer (Adam Walinsky). Pictured right, VVAW supported demonstration during the Washington Spring Offensive, April - May 1971. Notice the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong flags.
During Memorial Day weekend, Kerry joined a throng of antiwar protesters on the green in Lexington, Mass., where he and hundreds of others were arrested.
Kerry ran for election to the U.S. House in 1972 during which he found it necessary to suppress reproduction of the cover picture appearing on his own book, The New Soldier. His political opponent pointed out that it depicted several unkempt youths crudely handling an upside down American flag to mock the famous photo of the U.S. Marines at Iwo Jima.
He graduated from Boston College Law Middlesex County.	School in 1976, then worked as an Assistant District Attorney in
He was elected Lieutenant Governor in	1982
Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984
In 1991, the United States Senate created the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs to examine the possibility that U.S. POW/MIAs might still be held by the Vietnamese. As chairman of the Select Committee, Kerry proved himself to be a masterful chameleon portraying to the public at large what appeared to be an unbiased approach to resolving the POW/MIA issue. But, in reality, no one in the United States Senate pushed harder to bury the POW/MIA issue, the last obstacle preventing normalization of relations with Hanoi, than John Forbes Kerry. In fact, his first act as chairman was to travel to Southeast Asia, where during a stopover in Bangkok, Thailand, he lectured the U.S. Chamber of Commerce there on the importance of lifting the trade embargo and normalizing relations with Vietnam. During the entire life of the Senate Select Committee, Kerry never missed a chance to propaganderize and distort the facts in favor of Hanoi.	C. Stewart Forbes, Chief Executive Officer of Colliers International (Kerry's cousin), was awarded a contract worth billions designating Colliers International as the exclusive real estate agent representing Vietnam.
In December of 1992, not long after Kerry was quoted in the world press stating "President Bush should reward Vietnam within a month for its increased cooperation in accounting for American MIAs," Vietnam announced it had granted Boston, Massachusetts based Colliers International, a contract worth billions. Colliers International became exclusive real estate agent representing Vietnam.	That deal alone put Colliers in a position to make tens of millions of dollars on the rush to upgrade Vietnam's ports, railroads, highways, government buildings, etc.
Sydney H. Schanberg, associate editor and columnist for New York Newsday and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist veteran of the Indochina War whose book, The Death and Life of Dith Pran, became the subject of the Academy Award-winning film The Killing Fields, chronicled some of Kerry's more blatant pro-Hanoi biases in several of his columns.	In a Nov. 21, 1993 column, Schanberg wrote, "Highly credible information has been surfacing in recent days which indicates that the headlines you have been reading about a 'breakthrough' in Hanoi's cooperation on the POW/MIA issue are part of a carefully scripted performance. The apparent purpose is to move toward normalization of relations with Hanoi. "Sen. John F. Kerry, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, is one of the key figures pushing for normalization. Kerry is currently on a visit to Vietnam where he has been doing two things: (1) praising the Vietnamese effusively for granting access to their war archives and (2) telling the press that there's no believable evidence to back up the stories of live POWs still being held. "Ironically, that very kind of live-POW evidence has been brought to Kerry's own committee on a regular basis over the past year, and he has repeatedly sought to impeach its value. Moreover, Kerry and his allies on the committee - such as Sens. John McCain, Nancy Kassebaum and Tom Daschle - have worked to block much of this evidence from being made public."
In the Senate debate itself, Kerry, rather than embarass Vietnam by demanding the truth, launched a highly publicized diversionary investigation of the POW/MIA families and activists, who were demanding an honest accounting. Kerry labeled them "professional malcontents, conspiracy mongers, con artists, and dime-store Rambos" who were only involved in the POW/MIA issue for money. Pictured right, Sen. John Kerry in Hanoi seated under a bust of Communist Vietnam's deceased leader, Ho Chi Minh.
Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs January 1993 Final Report	IThe Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs published in its January 1993 Final Report (page 6) that American servicemen were left behind alive and in captivity. Kerry's Select Committee staff, in order to soft pedal this abandonment, added in the report "We acknowledge that there is no proof that U.S. POWs survived." Kerry's "no proof" assertion, was an outright lie. It was an effort by Kerry's pro-Hanoi staff to bury our POW/MIA's and further open the doors to trade with Vietnam. Kerry maintained there was "no proof U.S. POWs survived," but never produced evidence proving the left behind POWs were dead, or who was responsible for their deaths or where their remains were located. Kerry never demanded that Vietnam explain.
Re-elected to the Senate in 1996
Pictured right with Sen. Ted Kennedy, Kerry was re-elected to the Senate in 2002.

2003 Kerry stopped Vietnam Human Rights Act (HR2833)

Montagnard Christians forced to drink a mixture of goat's blood and alcohol and renounce Christianity.

By Former Vietnam POW Mike Benge

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

About this photograph. The Viet Cong flag was added as a back drop to J.F. Kerry to symbolize the aid and comfort he gave Vietnam's "revolutionary Communists" with his high profile participation in Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) demonstrations.

As a key VVAW leader, organizer and spokesman, Kerry marched in demonstrations where there was a clear presence and "abundance of Vietcong flags, clenched fists raised in the air, and placards plainly bearing legends in support of China, Cuba, the USSR, North Korea and the Hanoi government."

Kerry was a vocal supporter of the "People's Peace Treaty," a supposed "people's" declaration to end the war, reportedly drawn up in communist East Germany. It included nine points, all of which were taken from Viet Cong (Vietnamese Communist) peace proposals at the Paris Peace Talks as conditions for a United States retreat from the Vietnam War.

This communist Vietnamese flag fits Kerry well.

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Hanoi Jane: Yesterday's Fiery Communist Revolutionary

She's today's very rich capitalist

October-December 1996 Issue

By Ted Sampley

U.S. Veteran Dispatch

When Jane Fonda traded in her Ho Chi Minh sandals and Viet Cong pajamas for a pair of tights and a leotard, most Americans quickly forgot how the illustrious star of stage and screen had only a few years earlier been one of communist Vietnam's most loyal and fiery supporters. Fonda's involvement with the Vietnam War began in 1967, after several visits with French Communists and underground revolutionaries in this country convinced her America was the bastard nation of the world.

Using her wealth and influence, she managed to garner support from American college campuses, advocating communism and encouraging rebellion and anarchy against the U.S. government. In a speech to Duke University students in 1970, Fonda told the gathering, "If you understood what Communism was, you would hope and pray on your knees that we would someday become Communist."

Not content with spreading her poison within the home ranks, Fonda began soliciting returned Vietnam veterans to speak publicly about alleged atrocities committed by American soldiers against Vietnamese women and children. The broadcasts were coordinated with North Vietnamese officials in Canada.

A series of "Coffee Houses" established outside U.S. military bases was another scheme Fonda concocted to counter the positive effect patriotic entertainers such as Bob Hope, Martha Raye, and according to Fonda "their ilk" were having on the morale of U.S. forces. There, special employees would attract off-duty servicemen, get them relaxed, and then urge them to desert. According to some of those men approached, they were also promised jobs and money if they deserted.

Fonda was the major financial support to one of the most damaging pro-Hanoi groups called Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), which was led for a time by Robert Muller, a Vietnam veteran who had been shot in the spine. VVAW, at its peak membership, mustered about 7,000, some of whom had been indoctrinated in the "Coffee Houses." That organization was later led by Vietnam vet John Kerry, now a U.S. senator and former co-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs.

In 1972, Fonda took her pro-communist radicalism to North Vietnam. She visited that country's Russian built anti-aircraft emplacements and cheered the spirits of its communist gunners by wearing a gunners steel helmet and peeping through the gun sight, "looking for one of those blue eyed murderers."

At a time when 50,000 U.S. servicemen had already died on the battlefields of Vietnam, Fonda sided with the communists, making radio broadcasts from Hanoi designed to break the morale of U.S. fighting forces while encouraging the North Vietnamese to fight harder and kill more Americans. Fonda's Hanoi radio broadcasts and propaganda films were especially painful and damaging to American servicemen held as prisoners of war by the Hanoi Reds. Communist interrogators used the Fonda recordings, along with starvation and torture in attempting to brainwash American POWs into becoming turncoats.

Upon returning to the United States, Fonda told the world press that U.S. prisoners of war were being well treated and not tortured. Her outrageous claims were later exposed when American POWs were finally freed and told of years of agonizing tortures and inhuman treatment. Fonda responded, not with an apology, but with an accusation calling our returned POWs "liars and hypocrites." Fonda's actions stirred up a firestorm in America, prompting nationwide demands that she be tried for treason.

David Hoffman, a former POW who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1971, said that he had been tortured because of Fonda's visit to Hanoi. "The torture resulted in a permanent injury that plagues me to this day," says Hoffman, who suffers a disfigured arm inflicted by brutal communist guards at the POW camp known as the "Zoo."

"When Jane Fonda turned up, she asked that some of us come out and talk with her," he recalled bitterly. "No one wanted to. The guards got very upset, because they sensed the propaganda value of a famous American war protestor proving how well they were treating us.

"A couple of guards came to my cell and ordered me out. I resisted, and they got violently angry. My arm had been broken when I was shot down, and the Vietnamese broke it a second time. It had not healed well, and they knew it caused me great pain. "They twisted it. Excruciating pain ripped through my body.

"Still I resisted and they got more violent, hitting me and shouting, 'You must go!' I knew there was a limit to which I could push them before they might actually kill me.

"I was dragged out to see Fonda. I decided to play the role. I knew if I didn't, not only would I suffer - but the other guys would be tortured or beaten or worse. "When I saw Fonda and heard her antiwar rhetoric, I was almost sick to my stomach. She called us criminals and murderers.

"When I had to talk to the camera, I used every phony cliche I could. My arm hung limply at my side, and every move caused me pain which showed in my face. \

"When it was over, Fonda unbelievably did not see through the ruse - or she didn't want to. I was taken away politely - then shoved back into my cell.

"I detested Jane Fonda then and I detest her now - but I would fight to the death to protect her right to say what she thinks.

"What she did was a slap in the face to every American. It was wrong, ill-advised and stupid. But it was her right. Unfortunately, it was not my right to refuse to be seen with her.

"There is no way I will ever forget what she did to me. I have the reminder here - in an arm that can never be normal again.

In late January, 1973, Fonda divorced her husband and three days later married pro-communist radical leader Tom Hayden, who had founded the revolutionary Students For Democratic Society in 1962 and was a defendant in the conspiracy trial of the "Chicago Seven."

In 1975, after North Vietnam violated the 1973 "Peace Agreement" resulting in the takeover of South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, Hayden greeted the news by saying "I see this as a result of something we have been working toward for a long time." That "we" includes Fonda of course.

Another infamous deed of Fonda is the naming of her son, Troy. Fonda returned to Vietnam shortly after the war ended in 1975, with her small son, to attend a special service being held in her honor. Fonda was still a recognized idol and hero to the Communist regime from her earlier years of sending money, food and moral support to the North Vietnamese.

But the ceremony, it turned out, was not just to recognize and honor Fonda for her love of the Communists. Her newborn son was formally christened and named for the Communist hero Nguyen Van Troi. Troi was a Viet Cong sapper who was executed by the South Vietnamese in 1963 for attempting to assassinate U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

Immediately after the christening ceremony, the baby developed a serious case of bronchitis, according to reports. The Vietnamese and Fonda panicked and called for a Russian doctor. The child was treated and Fonda and her child returned to the United States.

As a result of the communist takeover of South Vietnam, Fonda's friends in Hanoi turned all of Vietnam into a communist Gulag of slave labor camps with police-state oppression and no freedom of speech, press and worship. Millions of Vietnamese were forced to flee their country and turned into homeless "boat people."

Years later, Fonda was invited by NASA as V.I.P. to witness the first space shuttle launching. Apparently, one source said, NASA and its officials felt little or no threat from Fonda's taste for Red Government.

In late 1987, when it became known that Fonda planned to film her new movie "Stanley & Iris," in Waterbury, Conn., there was a huge backlash from local veterans. Veterans held rallies, promising violent demonstrations if the filming began. Many bumper stickers reading "I'M NOT FONDA HANOI JANE," begin appearing throughout the community. On June 18, 1988, Fonda flew to Waterbury in an attempt to pacify the veterans. She met with them for four hours. Fonda later recalled "I told them my story - why I was antiwar and why I had gone to Vietnam."

A few weeks later Fonda appeared on TV with Barbara Walters and apologized saying: "I'm very sorry for some of what I did...I'd like to say something not just to the veterans in Waterbury but to the men in Vietnam who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of the things I said or did. I feel I owe them an apology...There were times when I was thoughtless and careless...I'm very sorry that I hurt them."

The vets did not buy it.

They said Fonda, an award winning actress, was faking an apology because veterans were protesting against her all over the country. As a result of the protest, the vet said, her movies were doing badly and she had been removed from Nabisco Shredded Wheat boxes.

The vets said "no apology will ever erase the pictures of Jane Fonda in giggly bliss, laughing and clapping her hands, as she mounted the gunner's seat of a communist Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun." Bui Tin, a former high ranking Vietnam Communist Party official and North Vietnamese Army colonel who served on the North Vietnamese Army general staff during the war, became disillusioned with communism after the war and went into exile in Paris and the United States. He testified in 1991 before the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs about his knowledge of U.S. prisoners of war.

Bui Tin said in a recent interview by Minnesota human rights activist Stephen Young, that Fonda's highly published support of the North Vietnamese gave them "confidence" to continue to fight and "hold on in the face of the battlefield reverses."

When Fonda appeared at a press conference in Hanoi wearing a red Vietnamese dress and declared she was "ashamed of American actions" in the war and that she would struggle along with the communists, "we were elated," Bui Tin said.

He said the American antiwar movement was "essential" to the North Vietnamese strategy for victory. "I'd say a lot of American boys lost their lives because of the encouragement she gave the North Vietnamese," said a former rifle platoon leader from Texas.

In December of 1991, Hanoi Jane, the once fiery communist activist, who advocated violent revolution to overthrow America's democracy and the free enterprise system, married billionaire Ted Turner, a leading American capitalist and chairman of the Atlanta based Turner Broadcasting System Inc., the parent company of Cable News Network.

Today, the communist architects of Ho Chi Minh's brutal war against democracy, freedom and capitalism, which resulted in the deaths of over 3 million North and South Vietnamese, and 58,000 American servicemen, are now "best friends" with Western bankers and capitalist businessmen. They are even traveling the world appealing to foreign investors to bring more big business and money back to Vietnam, so like Hanoi Jane, they too can be rich.

A veteran summed it up: "It is a shame that some of those who fought so well for America can be treated as 'forgotten ghosts' and left to rot as POWs in Hanoi's prisons, while those like Fonda, who so passionately supported our enemy and condemned our system of government, are now overwhelmingly blessed by its wealth."