The Phoenix Project

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCXXXII

More on John "F" Kerry, Captain Sergeant Al Hubbard, and VVAW.

A couple of follow-up articles at CNS News; plus, the Sun shines on Kerry.

First, Kerry Says Credibility Not Damaged By Former Comrade's Lie, at CNS, Mar. 11 (emphasis and brackets in original):

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry Thursday said his credibility was not affected by his previous association with a man who fabricated his military credentials while serving as executive director of a prominent anti-war group that included Kerry.

Al Hubbard appeared with Kerry in 1971 on NBC's Meet the Press, was introduced as a former decorated Air Force captain who had spent two years in Vietnam and was wounded in the process. In reality, Hubbard had lied about his military rank and other issues, as later investigations revealed.

At the time, Kerry, Hubbard and other members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War were alleging that U.S. troops were committing widespread atrocities against Vietnamese civilians. Kerry even testified about the issue before a congressional committee around the same time he and Hubbard appeared on Meet the Press.

"I think our credibility was tremendous," Kerry told CNSNews.com's Marc Morano during a press conference on Capitol Hill Thursday. Kerry was surrounded at the press conference by Democratic members of the U.S. Senate.

"I think that was one of the most moving and important weeks in an effort to end a war that needed to be ended, and I'm proud of the role that I played in helping to do that," Kerry said, referring to his television appearance with Hubbard and congressional testimony. "I think people all over this country joined together in trying to get our servicemen home," Kerry added.

After his lie was discovered, Hubbard appeared on NBC's Today Show and admitted lying about his rank because, he said, "he was convinced no one would listen to a black man who was also an enlisted man."

Kerry said he hasn't spoken to Hubbard since the week of April 19, 1971, "and everybody was disappointed by what they learned back in 1971. To his credit, [Hubbard] did serve his nation. He had simply exaggerated his particular position. But nobody knew it at the time, and those things happen."

But as CNSNews.com previously reported, Hubbard had done more than just exaggerate his rank in the Air Force. CBS News reporter William Overend, a writer for the network's anchorman Walter Cronkite in 1971, investigated Hubbard's war claims even further and discovered that there was no record of Hubbard having ever served in Vietnam. In addition, Hubbard was not shot down as he alleged and did not receive a Purple Heart for injuries sustained during battle.

See The "Winter Soldier Investigation" Deceit.

Next, Kerry Lying About Anti-War Past, Supporter Alleges at CNS, Mar. 18 (emphasis and brackets in original):

A Vietnam War historian and supporter of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has told CNSNews.com that Kerry is lying about key events related to his anti-war activities in 1971.

Kerry said he hasn't spoken to former anti-war associate Al Hubbard since the two men appeared side by side on national television in April 1971, but according to author Gerald Nicosia, that assertion is wrong. So is Kerry's insistence that he did not attend a November 1971 meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), at which group members discussed the possibility of assassinating U.S. senators who were still supporting the war in Vietnam, Nicosia said.

Nicosia backed up his comments regarding Kerry's presence at the November 1971 meeting by providing CNSNews.com with the FBI's redacted files about that meeting.

Questions about events that happened 33 years ago continue to nag the Kerry candidacy as the Massachusetts Democrat's November match-up against President Bush comes into sharper focus.

Kerry faces increasing skepticism about answers he gave to certain questions as well as recent statements he made, including his claim that some foreign leaders had told him they were hopeful Bush would be defeated this year.

Among the questions surrounding Kerry's involvement as a 27-year-old anti-war protester are those about his relationship with Hubbard, the former executive director of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Kerry and Hubbard appeared on NBC's Meet the Press on April 18, 1971 to argue for an end to the war.

But shortly thereafter, Hubbard, who had been introduced on the NBC program as a decorated Air Force captain, was exposed for having exaggerated his military credentials. A separate news investigation revealed that there were no military records showing that Hubbard had either served in Vietnam or was injured there.

Last week, during a Capitol Hill news conference, CNSNews.com asked Kerry whether he was still in touch with Hubbard or whether he was willing to repudiate Hubbard because of Hubbard's fabricated war record.

"I haven't talked to Al Hubbard since that week" of the Meet the Press appearance, Kerry replied. Kerry also said he did not believe that VVAW's credibility was hurt as a result of Hubbard falsifying his war record.

But Gerald Nicosia, author of the book Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement and a Kerry supporter, disagreed with Kerry's contention that he and Hubbard saw no more of each other after the week of April 18, 1971.

"That is bull****. No, no, [Kerry] saw [Hubbard] at numerous meetings after that, including the one I talk about in my book, the July meeting in St. Louis," Nicosia told CNSNews.com.

[Kerry] saw [Hubbard] in July, and according to FBI [files on Vietnam Veterans Against the War] and the minutes of those meetings, [Kerry] probably saw him in November [1971] too," Nicosia said.

Kerry and Hubbard had a heated argument at the St. Louis meeting in July that was "witnessed by 200 veterans," according to Nicosia.

Despite the presidential candidate's claim last week that Hubbard had not hurt the anti-war group's credibility in 1971, Kerry actually believed otherwise, according to Nicosia.

"There was a big fight with Al Hubbard in which Kerry confronted him and they were screaming at each other across the hall," Nicosia explained. Hubbard, who had ties to the radical Black Panthers group, and Kerry "couldn't have been more opposite personalities," Nicosia said.

The simmering tension between the two men finally reached a boil in St. Louis, Nicosia said, with Kerry shouting, "Who are you, Al Hubbard? Are you even really a veteran?

"So it was a big screaming match," he added.

Nicosia told CNSNews.com he was uncomfortable disputing Kerry's statements.

"I am in kind of an awkward position here. I am a Kerry supporter and I certainly don't want to do anything that hurts him. On the other hand, my number one allegiance is to truth. So I am going to go with where the facts are, and John is going to have to deal with that," Nicosia said.

"I am having some problems with the things he is saying right now, which are not matching up with accuracy," he added.

November 1971 meeting

Nicosia also disputed Kerry's denial that he was in attendance when VVAW members met in Kansas City in November 1971 to discuss the possibility of assassinating U.S. senators still committed to the Vietnam War.

Kerry was at the meeting, Nicosia insisted, pointing to FBI files and the minutes from the VVAW meeting, which he has obtained. "The minutes of the meeting — November 12th through the15th — it's got John Kerry there, it's got John Kerry resigning there on the third day," Nicosia said.

Nicosia provided CNSNews.com with a copy of the FBI's redacted files of that November 1971 VVAW meeting. The files refer to the fact that Kerry had "resigned for 'personal reasons.'"

"You are talking to a Kerry supporter, but I will tell you, after everything that I have heard and seen, I would conclude that he was there," he added.

Nicosia said he is not sure why Kerry is answering questions on the issue in the manner he is.

"Why didn't [former President Bill] Clinton say he [had sex with] Monica Lewinsky? It took him until he had to be confronted with the hard evidence before he said he did," Nicosia said.

"I think [Kerry] may be worried or the people around him may be worried that his association with VVAW is a very negative thing and they want John to back away from it," he added.

Nicosia concluded with advice for Kerry.

"The chickens are coming home to roost, and unfortunately he is starting to backtrack and I personally don't think backtracking is going to work because people are going to go at him and find the discrepancies," Nicosia said.

As recently as two days ago, Kerry's presidential campaign spokesman David Wade told the New York Sun that, "Kerry was not at the Kansas City meeting." Wade added that Kerry had resigned from the VVAW "sometime in the summer of 1971."

Now, the New York Sun has been shining on John Kerry lately. First, Kerry Retreats From His Denial on Vietnam Meet, referenced above, Mar. 19:

Senator Kerry of Massachusetts yesterday retreated from his earlier steadfast denials that he attended a meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War at which a plan to assassinate U.S. Senators was debated.

The reversal came as new evidence, including reports from FBI informants, emerged that contradicted Mr. Kerry’s previous statements about the gathering, which was held in Kansas City, Mo. in November 1971.

“John Kerry had no personal recollection of this meeting 33 years ago,” a Kerry campaign spokesman, David Wade, said in a statement e-mailed last night from Idaho, where Mr. Kerry is on vacation.

Mr. Wade said Mr. Kerry does remember “disagreements with elements of VVAW leadership” that led to his resignation, but the statement did not specify what the disagreements were.

“If there are valid FBI surveillance reports from credible sources that place some of those disagreements in Kansas City, we accept that historical footnote in the account of his work to end the difficult and divisive war,” the statement said.

It did not address the murder plot, though as recently as Wednesday a top aide to Mr. Kerry said that the Massachusetts senator and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee was “absolutely certain” he was not present when the assassination plan, known as the “Phoenix Project,” was discussed.

The New York Sun first reported last week that other anti-war activists placed Mr. Kerry at the Kansas City meeting. A total of six people have now said publicly that they remember seeing Mr. Kerry there. Participants say the plot was voted down, and several say they remember Mr. Kerry speaking and voting against it.

A historian and expert on activism against the Vietnam War, Gerald Nicosia, provided the Sun yesterday with minutes of the meeting.

Mr. Nicosia also read quotes from FBI surveillance documents he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act as he was preparing his 2001 book, “Home to War.”

“My evidence is incontrovertible. He was there,” Mr. Nicosia said in an interview yesterday. “There’s no way that five or six agents saw his ghost there,” said the historian, who lives in Marin County, north of San Francisco.

Mr. Nicosia said that the records show Mr. Kerry resigned from the group on the third day of the meeting, following discussion of the assassination plan and an argument between Mr. Kerry and another VVAW national coordinator, Al Hubbard.

Reading from an FBI informant report, Mr. Nicosia said, “John Kerry at a national Vietnam Veterans Against the War meeting appeared and announced to those present that he resigned for personal reasons but said he would be able to speak for VVAW” at future events. Another document “describes a conversation actually a confrontation between John Kerry and Hubbard that was taking place on one of the days of that meeting,” Mr. Nicosia added.

Mr. Nicosia said it is clear that Mr. Kerry and the others resigned because of the extreme actions the group was considering.

“It’s kind of unmistakable to see a pattern. All four of them were out the door, bingo, the morning after” the so-called Phoenix plot was discussed, the author said.

Mr. Nicosia generally declined to speculate on why Mr. Kerry had denied being present. However, the author did observe, “Especially if you’re running for president, you don’t want to be associated with a plot for assassinating people.”

Mr. Nicosia repeatedly stressed that he was not calling Mr. Kerry a liar and said he has no animus towards the senator. The historian said he sent copies of some of the documents to the Kerry campaign yesterday morning on his own initiative. “I think Senator Kerry better get his story straight on this,” Mr. Nicosia said.

“I’m a Kerry supporter. I honor the guy,” Mr.Nicosia said.He noted that Mr. Kerry threw a book party for “Home at War” at the Hart Senate Office Building. The senator also wrote a positive blurb for the book’s dust jacket.

The book does not mention Mr. Kerry’s presence at the Kansas City meeting. Mr. Nicosia said he did not have the FBI files as he was writing the manuscript. Other accounts led him to think that Mr. Kerry had quit the group at a July meeting in St. Louis.

Mr. Nicosia also provided the Sun with minutes of the meeting that he obtained from the Wisconsin state archives, which hold most of VVAW’s papers.

The minutes, prepared at the group’s national office in New York, recount the actions taken by VVAW’s “emergency steering committee” during the four-day meeting, which ran from November 12 to 15, 1971. The minutes indicate that at the end of the day on Saturday, November 13, discussion turned to “national actions and other things.” The meeting is reported to have adjourned at 10 p.m. and resumed at 11 a.m. Sunday. The document goes on to say that the group passed a motion to hold a “national action… in 3 to 5 different sites.” The next entry in the minutes is, “John Kerry, Scott Moore, Mike Oliver and Skip Roberts resigned as national coordinators.” A later entry indicates that it was decided that the resignations and the decision on the “national action” should be reflected in all the group’s papers.

According to Mr. Nicosia, the FBI documents and other records do not include any direct reference to the assassination plot. However, Mr. Nicosia said some informants who attended the Kansas City meeting warned the FBI of a “drastic move toward more violent actions.”

A VVAW chapter newsletter obtained by the Sun reports that after “much argument” the Kansas City meeting went into closed session “for various opaque reasons of security and expediency in order to discuss the national Christmas action.” The newsletter also notes the resignation of Mr. Kerry and the other three leaders. It cites “personality conflicts and differences in political philosophies” as the main reasons for the resignations.

A group of VVAW members seized the Statue of Liberty on behalf of the group on December 27, 1971. It’s unclear whether that action was approved at the Kansas City meeting in November.

The three other men who appear to have resigned along with Mr. Kerry did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Mr. Moore did not reply to an e-mail and messages left at his home. Mr. Roberts is now the legislative director for the Service Employees International Union, which is supporting Mr. Kerry’s presidential bid. Reached at his union office Wednesday, Mr. Roberts said he would call back but did not. Efforts to locate Mr. Oliver were unsuccessful.

Earlier in the week,some aides to Mr. Kerry suggested that because he appeared on a PBS “Firing Line” broadcast with William F. Buckley on November 14, 1971, Mr. Kerry could not have attended the Kansas City gathering. But that contention also disintegrated yesterday on closer examination.

Tapes of the “Firing Line” television program are housed at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. An archivist there, Carol Leadenham, told the Sun that Mr. Kerry and Mr. Buckley taped a program on November 2, 1971. No air date was noted, but Ms. Leadenham said it is likely that it aired about two weeks later.

“That’s about the usual time between the taping and the air date,” she said.

Some discrepancies in Mr. Kerry’s earlier statements about VVAW remain unaddressed by the campaign. Last week, Mr. Kerry said he last saw Mr. Hubbard in April 1971, shortly before a National Review article exposed Mr. Hubbard for exaggerating his rank and his service record in Vietnam. However, a New York Times report put Mr. Kerry at a fund-raiser with Mr. Hubbard on Long Island on August 29, 1971. Now, Mr. Nicosia’s documents indicate that Mr. Kerry had a verbal altercation with Mr. Hubbard in November of that year.

Here is the earlier article, How Kerry Quit Veterans Group Amid Dark Plot, Mar. 12:

The anti-war group that John Kerry was the principal spokesman for debated and voted on a plot to assassinate politicians who supported the Vietnam War.

Mr. Kerry denies being present at the November 12-15, 1971, meeting in Kansas City of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and says he quit the group before the meeting. But according to the current head of Missouri Veterans for Kerry, Randy Barnes, Mr. Kerry,who was then 27,was at the meeting, voted against the plot, and then orally resigned from the organization.

Mr. Barnes was present as part of the Kansas City host chapter for the 1971 meeting and recounted the incident in a phone interview with The New York Sun this week.

In addition to Mr. Barnes’s recollection placing Mr. Kerry at the Kansas City meeting, another Vietnam veteran who attended the meeting, Terry Du-Bose, said that Mr. Kerry was there.

There are at least two other independent corroborations that the antiwar group Vietnam Veterans Against the War, of which Mr. Kerry was the most prominent national spokesman, considered assassinating American political leaders who favored the war.

Gerald Nicosia’s 2001 book “Home To War” reports that one of the key leaders of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Scott Camil, “proposed the assassination of the most hard-core conservative members of Congress,as well as any other powerful, intractable opponents of the antiwar movement.”The book reports on the Kansas City meeting at which Mr.Camil’s plan was debated and then voted down.

Mr. Nicosia’s book was widely praised by reviewers as varied as General Harold Moore, author of “We Were Soldiers”; Gloria Emerson, who had been a New YorkTimes reporter during the Vietnam War, and leftist Howard Zinn. Mr. Kerry himself stated in a blurb on the cover that the book “ties together the many threads of a difficult period.” Mr. Kerry hosted a party for the book in the Hart Senate Office Building that was televised on C-SPAN.

Another source is an October 20,1992, oral history interview of Scott Camil on file at the University of Florida Oral History Archive.In it,Mr.Camil speaks of his plan for an alternative to Mr.Kerry’s idea of symbolically throwing veterans’ medals over the fence onto the steps of the Capitol during the Dewey Canyon III demonstration in Washington in April of 1971.

“My plan was that, on the last day we would go into the [congressional] offices we would schedule the most hardcore hawks for last — and we would shoot them all,” Mr. Camil told the Oral History interviewer. “I was serious.”

In a phone interview with the Sun this week, Mr. Camil did not dispute either the account in the Nicosia book or in the oral history. He said he plans to accept an offer by the Florida Kerry organization to become active in Mr. Kerry’s presidential campaign. Campaign aides to Mr. Kerry invited Mr.Camil to a meeting for the senator in Orlando last week, but they did not meet directly.

Mr. Camil was known to colleagues in the anti-war movement as “Scott the Assassin.” Mr. Camil told The New York Sun he got the name in Vietnam for “sneaking down to the Vietnamese villages at night and killing people.”

According to the Nicosia book and interviews with VVAW members who were involved, at theVietnamVeterans Against the War Kansas City leadership conference, Mr. Camil tried to put his plan into effect. He called together eight to 10 Marines to organize something he called “The Phoenix Project.” The original Phoenix Project during the Vietnam War was an attempt to destroy the Viet Cong leadership by assassination. Mr. Camil’s Phoenix Project planned to execute the Southern senatorial leadership that was financing the Vietnam War. Senators like John Stennis, Strom Thurmond, and John Tower were his targets, according to Mr. Camil. They were to be killed during the Senate Christmas recess the following month.

After an attempt to parcel out the hit jobs required to kill the senators, Mr. Camil’s plan was presented to all the chapter coordinators present and the VVAW leadership. Mr. Nicosia’s book recounts, “What Camil sketched was so explosive that the coordinators feared lest government agents even hear of it. So they decamped to a church on the outskirts of town with the intention of debating the plan in complete privacy.When they got to the church, however, they found that the government was already on to them; their ‘debugging expert’ uncovered microphones hidden all over the place. An instantaneous decision was made to move again to Common Ground, a Mennonite hall used by homeless vets as a ‘crash pad.’”

“Camil was deadly serious, brilliant, and highly logical,” Mr. Nicosia told the Sun.

The plan was voted down. There’s a difference of opinion as to how narrow the margin was.

The claims of Mr. Kerry’s involvement in the assassination discussions in Kansas City have apparently not been previously reported.

The most recent book that focuses on Mr. Kerry’s relations with his fellow Vietnam veterans, Douglas Brinkley’s “Tour of Duty,” reports the events as follows: “In a November 10 letter housed at the VVAW papers in Madison, Wisconsin, Kerry quit, politely noting he had been proud to serve in the national organization. His reason was straightforward: ‘personality conflicts and differences in political philosophy.’ In two days,VVAW was meeting in Kansas City and he would be a noshow.”

But in a footnote, Mr. Brinkley acknowledges, “I could not locate Kerry’s November 10 VVAW resignation letter supposedly housed at the Wisconsin archives. The quote I used comes directly from Andrew E. Hunt’s essential ‘The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (1999).”

When asked by the Sun who told him Mr. Kerry was “no-show” at Kansas City, Mr. Brinkley replied, “Senator Kerry.” Mr. Brinkley also stated that Mr. Kerry did not have a personal copy of the resignation letter either.

But in an interview with the Sun, the “essential” historian Mr. Brinkley relied on as his source, Andrew E. Hunt, said “I never stated that there was a letter of resignation, or even implied in my book that I saw one. I never could find one in the archives in Wisconsin. I don’t know how Brinkley got the idea that I had. I never could figure out when Kerry resigned.” When asked about Mr. Brinkley’s statement that Mr. Kerry didn’t have a copy of the resignation letter either, Mr. Hunt said, “I don’t know about that. I never could get an interview with Senator Kerry. But I never saw anyone who saves things the way Kerry does.”

Whether or not there was a letter of resignation dated November 10 is obviously important, since it predates the Kansas City assassination discussions by two days.

Mr. Camil said he did not recall whether Mr. Kerry was at the Kansas City meeting nor did he recall whether he had discussed his assassination plan with Mr. Kerry.

But Mr. Barnes, the head of the Missouri Veterans for Kerry, said, “I don’t think there was a letter of resignation. He just said he was resigning after the vote.”

Clearly there is considerable confusion about the time of Mr. Kerry’s resignation. According to Mr. Nicosia,“He resigned from the executive committee” after a spectacular argument with VVAW leader Al Hubbard at the July national leadership meeting in St Louis.

But on behalf of the John Kerry campaign, spokesman David Wade told the Sun yesterday that Mr. Kerry resigned from Vietnam Veterans Against the War “sometime in the summer of 1971 after the August meeting in St. Louis, which Kerry did not attend.”

Mr.Wade also said,“Kerry was not at the Kansas City meeting.”

Two-thirds of the American troops in Vietnam at the height of American commitment in 1969 had already been withdrawn in the “Vietnamization” policy in effect at the time of the VVAW Kansas City conference in November 1971. When asked recently by the Sun why the assassinations still seemed necessary, Mr. Camil replied: “The war was still going on. We had to stop it.”

Finally, Setting Straight Kerry's War Record, Feb. 27 (brackets in original):

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.

See Was Kerry Testifying Surreptitiously About Himself in 1971?

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 03/22/04 05:47:49 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & John Kerry.