No, Fings Sure Ain't Wot They Used T'Be

Four Kerry-Vietnam Broadsides

Here are four articles treating Kerry and his Vietnam & post-Vietnam activities. First, a Mark Steyn column from August, which I don't know how I missed then; next, a column by Swiftee Admiral Hoffmann; finally, two New York Post articles by Captain Ed & the Power Liners. (Hey, that would have been a great name for a Doo-Wop group!)

Who's to blame for nation's Vietnam wounds? Kerry. (Brackets, ellipses, and ellisions in original.)

Every serious nation, in the course of history, loses a war here and there. You hope it's there rather than here — somewhere far away, a small conflict in a distant land, not central to your country's sense of itself. During America's ''Vietnam era,'' Britain grappled with a number of nasty colonial struggles. Some they won — Malaya — and others they lost — Aden — or, at any rate, concluded that the cost of achieving whatever it was they wanted to achieve was no longer worth it. No parallels are exact, but the symbolism of the transfer of power in Aden (on the Arabian coast) is not dissimilar to the fall of Saigon. On Nov. 29, 1967, the Union Jack was lowered over the city, and the high commissioner, his staff and all her majesty's forces left. On Nov. 30, the People's Republic of South Yemen was proclaimed — the only avowedly Marxist state in Arabia. A couple of years earlier, the penultimate high commissioner, Sir Richard Turnbull, had remarked bleakly to Denis Healey, the British Defense secretary, that the British empire would be remembered for only two things: ''the popularization of Association Football [soccer] and the term 'f--- off.'"

Sir Richard was being a little hard on his fellow imperialists, but those two legacies of empire are useful ways of looking at the situation when the natives are restless and you're a long way from home: Faraway disputes you're stuck in the middle of aren't played by the rules of Association Football, and it's important to know when to "f--- off.'' Aden had been British since 1839: that's 130 years, or 10 times as long as America was mixed up in Vietnam. And yet in the end the British shrugged it off. Just one of those things, old boy. Can't be helped. As the last high commissioner inspected his troops at Khormaksar Airport on that final day, the band of the Royal Marines played not ''Land Of Home And Glory'' or ''Rule, Britannia'' but a Cockney novelty pop song, ''Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be,'' as a jaunty reflection on the vicissitudes of fate.

So when John McCain sternly warns the swift boat veterans of ''reopening the wounds of Vietnam,'' it's worth asking: Why is Vietnam a ''wound'' and why won't it heal? The answer: not because it was a military or strategic defeat but because it was a national trauma. And whose fault is that?

Well, you can't pin it all on one person, but, if you had to, Lt. John F. Kerry would stand a better shot at taking the solo trophy than almost anyone. The ''wounds'' McCain complains of aren't from losing Vietnam, but from the manner in which it was lost. Today Sen. Kerry says he's proud of his anti-war activism, but that's not what it was. Every war has pacifists and conscientious objectors and even disenchanted veterans, but there's simply no precedent for what John Kerry did: a man who put his combat credentials to the service of smearing his country's entire armed forces as rapists, decapitators and baby killers. That's the ''wound,'' Sen. McCain. That's why a crummy little war on the other side of the world still festers. That's why the band didn't play ''Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be'' and move on to the next item of business. Because Kerry didn't just call for U.S. withdrawal, he impugned the honor of every man he served with.

In his testimony to Congress in 1971, Kerry asserted a scale of routine war crimes unparalleled in American history — his ''band of brothers'' (as he now calls them) ''personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads... razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.'' Almost all these claims were unsupported. Indeed, the only specific example of a U.S. war criminal that Kerry gave was himself. As he said on ''Meet The Press'' in April 1971, ''Yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I used 50-caliber machineguns, which we were granted and ordered to use.''

Really? And when was that? On your top-secret Christmas Eve mission in Cambodia? If they'd taken him at his word, when the senator said ''I'm John Kerry reporting for duty,'' the delegates at the Democratic Convention should have dived for cover.

But they didn't. So Kerry is now the first self-confessed war criminal in the history of the Republic to be nominated for president. Normally this would be considered an electoral plus only in the more cynical banana republics. But the Democrats seemed to think they could run an anti-war anti-hero as a war hero and nobody would mind. As we now know, a lot of people — a lot of veterans — do mind, very much. They understand that, whether or not he ever mowed down civilians with his 50-caliber machinegun, Kerry is responsible for a lot of wounds closer to home.

In the usual course of events, Kerry's terrible judgment in the '70s would render him unelectable. Instead, over two decades he morphed into a respectably dull run-of-the-mill pompous senatorial windbag. Had he run for president in the '90s or 2000, he might even have pulled it off. But the Democrats turned to him this time because the tortured contradictions of his resume suited an anti-war party that didn't dare run as such. Ever since the first cries of ''Quagmire!'' back in the early days of the Afghan liberation in 2001, the left have been trying to Vietnamize the war on terror. They failed in that, but they succeeded in the Vietnamization of the election campaign, and that's turned out just swell, hasn't it? Remember that formulation a lot of Democrats were using last year? They oppose the war but ''of course'' they support our troops. Kerry's campaign is a walking illustration of the deficiencies of that straddle: When you divorce the heroism of soldiering from the justice of the cause, what's left but a hollow braggart?

The Vietnamese government used Kerry's 1971 testimony as evidence of American war crimes as recently as two months ago. In Aden, Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be, but in Hanoi Kerry's psychodrama-queen performance is a gift that keeps on giving. It would be a shame if they understood him more clearly than the American people do.

The answer: not because it was a military or strategic defeat but because it was a national trauma. And whose fault is that? Well, you can't pin it all on one person, but, if you had to, Lt. John F. Kerry would stand a better shot at taking the solo trophy than almost anyone. I touched on at least one aspect of that truth in a comment over at Summa Minutiae in May: "In fact, as far as I can tell, John Kerry was the single individual most responsible for smearing an entire generation of America's military."

The Grand Deception: "Kerry, War Hero," Is a Myth. (Brackets in orignal.)

The widely repeated myth of "John Kerry, the Vietnam Navy Hero" is one of the most dishonorable and dangerous deceptions ever perpetrated upon the American public.

John Kerry is not a hero. He built this facade with unabashed personal promotion, aided and abetted by a supportive liberal media ready and willing to repeat in print his gross exaggerations, distortions of fact, and outright lies about his abbreviated four-month, 12-day tour of duty in Vietnam.

Until the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth spoke up in press conferences, television ads, and with the now best-selling book, Unfit for Command, no one — not even the conservative media — seriously or effectively challenged the veracity of John Kerry's self-aggrandizement. Only now is his war-hero facade beginning to peel away.

Kerry arrived in Vietnam on November 17, 1968, with a strong anti-war bias and a self-serving determination to build a foundation for a future political career. Even a most casual review of his biography, Tour of Duty by Douglas Brinkley, will reveal that Kerry entered the Naval Reserve as a "vain intellectual" with contempt for military authority.

Stooped to Achieve Goal

In hindsight, his obvious objective was to emulate his idol, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, serve as short a time as possible, and escape Vietnam unscathed but with sufficient credentials and decorations to portray himself in heroic terms. To achieve his goal, Kerry stooped to scamming an after-combat reporting system that was based on trust, promoting himself for a handful of medals regardless of their dubious merits, so he could "bug out" of the war zone early.

His propensity for gross exaggeration and lying was legend to those who knew him, even early on at Cam Rahn Bay, his first duty station in Vietnam. In Tour of Duty, Kerry recounts the story of the seas being so rough during the monsoon season that sailors came in "pissing red and that several people have broken bones" — a ridiculous story that was totally unsubstantiated.

Or consider the story of how Kerry, according to Brinkley, stated, "A sampan navigating in the shroud of darkness was assumed to be Viet Cong and would be fired on" — a breach of the U.S. Navy's rules of engagement. That is an outright defamatory lie. The South Vietnamese National Government had established and promulgated well-defined coastal-control zones to facilitate surveillance, illegal activity, and infiltration of enemy arms from seaward. Although our Swift Boats and Coast Guard cutters did diligently enforce the restricted areas, a boat or ship violating a restricted zone would not be fired upon unless attempting to escape inspection, and only after proper warning in accordance with U.S. Navy strict rules of engagement.

Kerry repeatedly embellishes this lie by referring to "U.S. designated free-fire zones," implying that such zones authorized indiscriminate killing, in order to portray the U.S. military as unwanted, brutish conquerors in Vietnam. In truth, free-fire zones fell within the normal rules of engagement and authorized not an order to fire but discretion to fire first if threatened by, or when confronting, enemy forces.

Kerry's First Purple Heart

Another troubling sequence involves Kerry's first Purple Heart. Exactly two weeks after arrival in Vietnam, Kerry was involved in a scenario in which he was "wounded" by a small fragment, about the size of a rose thorn — a self-inflicted wound resulting from the careless use of his own M-79 grenade launcher. According to the testimony of the attending physician, Dr. Louis Letson, the fragment barely penetrated the skin of his right arm and was easily removed with tweezers and dressed with a Band-Aid. Despite the minor nature of the injury, Kerry still requested a Purple Heart from Division Commander Grant Hibbard. Commander Hibbard denied, noting that there was no hostile fire involved in the incident, no casualty report, and no after-action report — all requisites for a Purple Heart medal.

Still, somehow Kerry circumvented the system and somehow was awarded the Purple Heart some three months after Lt. Commander Hibbard denied the award. Who initiated the award remains a mystery and will remain so until Kerry authorizes the full release of his military and medical records, complete and unaltered. Although Kerry continues to imply that he was the officer in charge of this "Boston Whaler" operation, he fails to mention that he was under the training supervision of Lt. William Schachte, the actual officer in charge and aboard the small craft with Kerry.

Another example of Kerry's lies about his Vietnam "war hero" status involves the now infamous secret mission into Cambodia on Christmas Day, 1968, a fabrication now disclaimed by Kerry campaign spokesman Michael Meehan and Kerry's campaign biographer Douglas Brinkley.

On March 27, 1986, the then-Senator Kerry on the floor of the U.S. Senate claimed he was on Navy duty in Cambodia in Christmas, 1968, at a time when President Nixon was lying to the public, saying there were no U.S. forces in Cambodia at that time. The Congressional Record reports Kerry as saying, "I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the President of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have the memory which is seared — seared — in me."

Not even a good lie. President Nixon did not take office until January 20, 1969. Moreover, how does one differentiate the ethnic and political distinctions of the unseen foes shooting at you? As one lie begets another, Kerry's own biographer, Douglas Brinkley, writes in Tour of Duty that Kerry's private Vietnam journal places him on the Bassac River near the city of Sa Dec, Vietnam, 50 miles from the Cambodian border.

Further, the U.S. Army had placed on 24-hour surveillance a manned landing craft blocking passage into Cambodian waters, along with a huge sign designed to prevent entrance, accidental or otherwise, into Cambodian waters. The U.S. Navy also had two river patrol boats patrolling the area for the same reason, making it almost impossible for a U.S. craft to enter Cambodian waters.

Lt. (jg.) Kerry's third Purple Heart is as questionable as the first. On March 13, 1969, Kerry's boat, PCF-94, with provincial troops embarked was engaged in an infantry sweep of a known Viet Cong sanctuary on the Dong Cong canal, in An Xuyen province. During this operation, the troops blew up some huge bins of rice. According to Kerry's biography, "I got a piece of small grenade in my [rear] from one of the rice bin explosions." Kerry would later the same day claim this accidental and minor injury was a result of a mine explosion near his boat that threw him into a bulkhead, smashing his arm.

The truth is that there was only one explosion, and that this single explosion severely damaged PCF-3 near the opposite bank of the Bay Hop River. There was no damage to any other of the five Swift Boats in that formation.

Claims of Making Rescue

Based on the after-action report filed by Lt. (jg.) Kerry, he was awarded a Purple Heart for wounds resulting from a mine explosion and a Bronze Star with a "V" for rescuing Lt. Rassmann, U.S. Army, who fell overboard when Kerry's PCF-94 abruptly fled the scene of action.

Contrary to the false after-action report citing automatic weapons and rifle fire from both banks for 3.1 miles, there were six on-scene witnesses who have stated that there was no enemy fire from either bank. Kerry did return to the scene and pick up Rassmann after it was evident that there was no hostile fire. There was nothing heroic about rescuing Rassmann, who was about to be picked up by another PCF. Had the truth been known, Kerry would have been disqualified from being awarded the Bronze Star.

Medical records also report Kerry's injuries from the March 13, 1968, incident involved only a minor bruise on his right arm and minor shrapnel wounds on his buttocks. Since there was no hostile fire, and only one mine explosion, with no structural effect on PCF-94, there was no justification for the Purple Heart award.

John Kerry was the only man in the entire Task Force of 3,600 men — officers and enlisted — to request transfer out of country based on three Purple Hearts. Particularly galling to his shipmates was the fact that not one of his minor nicks was debilitating nor resulted in one lost day of duty.

Nevertheless, with his three specious Purple Hearts, John Kerry shamelessly invoked an obscure Navy directive allowing him to "jump ship" and return home, there to begin his infamous betrayal of all those U.S. soldiers, Marines, sailors, airmen, and POWs who served honorably in the Vietnam War — more than 2 million Americans who deserved Kerry's respect.

Kerry's leadership within the fraudulent and contemptible Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and his testimony before Senator William Fulbright's Committee in 1971 charging us with unspeakable atrocities remain even today an unspecified and undocumented dishonor to the men and women who dutifully and courageously stayed the course.

Meeting With Madame Binh

Kerry's meeting with Madame Binh representing the Viet Cong and with other members of the Vietnamese Communist delegations to the Paris Peace Conference in 1970, while he was yet a Naval Reserve officer, constitute meeting with the enemy during time of war. His subsequent press conference in July, 1971, urging President Nixon to accept Madame Binh's proposal for the return of our POWs, was a major propaganda victory for the Communist regime. His illegal and traitorous activities with the VVAW and the ilk of Jane Fonda unquestionably had a seriously demoralizing impact on our POWs and probably extended their imprisonment by at least two years.

Kerry is not a hero. He betrayed his comrades-in-arms in time of war. He is a chronic liar and a fraud. This is not about politics; it's about truthfulness, reliability, loyalty, and trust — all absolute tenets of command. John Forbes Kerry is not fit to be Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States of America.

Roy Hoffmann, a retired Navy Rear Admiral and the founder of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, is a resident of Chesterfield. As the commander of the Coastal Surveillance Force Vietnam in 1968-1969, Admiral Hoffman was the overall commander of U.S. Swift Boats during the period of Kerry's Vietnam coastal service.

The Mysteries Of John Kerry's War Record. (Brackets and ellipses in original.)

When John Kerry "reported for duty" at the Democratic National Convention and presented himself as qualified to lead by virtue of his service in Vietnam, he opened up for public scrutiny his actions in Vietnam and, later, as an antiwar activist. Kerry's critics, including the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, promptly responded with a critique of Kerry's record. The charges and counter-charges have left many confused, especially as some issues seem to turn on obscure, if not arcane, facts.

What follows is a primer on the main issues, the evidence and open questions.

Christmas in Cambodia

On March 27, 1986, Kerry took the floor of the U.S. Senate to deliver a dramatic indictment of Reagan administration foreign policy. As is his habit, he drew on his Vietnam experience: "I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and having the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there."

He continued: "I have that memory which is seared — seared — in me, that says to me, before we send another generation into harm's way we have a responsibility in the U.S. Senate to go the last step, to make the best effort possible to avoid that kind of conflict."

Kerry has told of this Cambodia trip many times, from a 1979 Boston Herald review of "Apocalypse Now" to a June 1, 2003, Washington Post profile. The Post's Laura Blumenfeld reported that Kerry pulled a mildewed hat out of his briefcase and described it as "my good luck hat, given to me by a CIA man as we went in for a special mission in Cambodia."

Yet parts of Kerry's story are incredible on their face — such as saying Richard Nixon was responsible for the illegal mission, when Lyndon Johnson was president in 1968.

And there is no record that Swift boats were ever used for secret missions in Cambodia. (Their size and noisy engines make them ill-suited for the job.) Kerry's authorized biography, "Tour of Duty" by Douglas Brinkley, makes no mention of any such mission during Kerry's service.

Not a single crewman who served with Kerry has supported his claim to have entered Cambodia, and three have expressly denied it. Kerry's commanding officers have denied he was ever sent there. And Kerry's own Vietnam journal (excerpted in the Boston Globe) shows that on Christmas 1968 he was docked at Sa Dec, 50 miles from Cambodia.

In mid-August, these facts promped the Kerry campaign to "correct" the story, saying the mission took place in January 1969 when Kerry "inadvertently or responsibly" crossed the border.

Yet "inadvertently" straying into Cambodia — were that even possible — belies the basic point of Kerry's original story: that he lost his faith in government because the president lied about having sent U.S. troops into Cambodia. It also contradicts his story about ferrying a CIA man.

And the "correction" plainly hasn't sunk in: The Democratic Party chairman, Terry McAuliffe, told us in an interview earlier this month that Kerry had made two missions to Cambodia to drop off CIA men.

Some questions that Kerry himself has yet to answer: When exactly did he enter Cambodia? Accidentally, or intentionally? If by accident, how did that lead him to lose faith in the government? If on a secret mission, what was its purpose? What is the name of the CIA man? Why is there no record of any Cambodia mission, even in Kerry's journals? And why do Kerry's crewmates and fellow officers unanimously deny that any such mission ever occurred?

First Combat... Maybe

Kerry won his first Purple Heart for a combat engagement on Dec. 2, 1968, while training on a skimmer, or Boston whaler. On his campaign Web site, Kerry claims that on that day, he "experiences his first intense combat; receives combat-related injury" — for which he would eventually receive a Purple Heart.

But in "Tour of Duty," Brinkley writes:

"They pulled away from the pier at Cat Lo with spirits high, feeling satisfied with the way things were going for them. They had no lust for battle, but they also were not afraid. Kerry wrote in his notebook, 'A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn't been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven't been shot at are allowed to be cocky.'"

According to Kerry's journal, the date on which he "hadn't been shot at yet" was Dec. 9. Which means he hadn't been in combat on Dec. 2.

This fits in with the Swift vets' contention that Kerry's initial request for a Purple Heart had been denied by the chain of command. In fact, he didn't get a Purple Heart commendation for his Dec. 2 injury until months later, after transferring to a different command — which took Kerry at his word on being under enemy fire in the earlier engagement.

Kerry's campaign has now admitted that his first Purple Heart wound may have been unintentionally self-inflicted, sustained when he exploded a hand grenade too close to shore. The Kerry camp has not responded substantively to questions on the discrepancies between his citation and his journal entries as published by his biographer.

False Memories Of Fighting Together

David Alston has accompanied Kerry on campaign appearances, giving powerful testimony about Kerry's leadership under fire (including perhaps the most effective speech on Kerry's behalf at the Democratic Convention).

Alston and Kerry have both spoken of two engagements in which they took fire together on PCF-94, one on Jan. 29, 1969, the other on Feb. 28, 1969, when Kerry won his Silver Star.

Problems with these stories arose this April, when Lt. Tedd Peck complained that Kerry had appropriated one of Peck's actions as his own. It turned out that Peck, not Kerry, commanded PCF-94 on Jan. 29.

Both Peck and Alston were seriously wounded in that battle. We know that no other officer was aboard PCF-94, because enlisted man Del Sandusky took command after Peck was disabled. So Kerry's claim to have commanded the boat in that engagement is clearly false.

Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan created a timeline that credited all of PCF-94's January engagements to Kerry. Only after Peck complained publicly did Kerry stop trying to take credit for engagements that occurred before he was assigned to PCF-94. The campaign Website now notes only that he took command of PCF-94 in "late January."

According to records formerly available on the site, Alston was Medevaced to an Army hospital in Binh Thuy after being injured in the Jan. 29 fight, and did not return quickly. Kerry took command of PCF-94, the next day, replacing the injured Lt. Peck. The boat also got at least one and probably two new gunners to replace Alston. Fred Short arrived as the new gunner on Feb. 13.

On Feb. 28, PCF-94 took part in the engagement that won Kerry a Silver Star, and a commendation for every member of his crew. Alston has repeatedly asserted, since at least May 2002, that he participated in that action. In an interview with ABC News on June 24, Alston said: "I know when John Kerry told Del to beach that damn boat, this was a brand-new ball game. We wasn't running. We took it to Charlie."

"We?" All of Kerry's crew received commendations for this action. Absent from the list is the name David Alston. But Short's name is listed, and he was photographed at the award ceremony along with Kerry and his five enlisted men (a full PCF crew). Not in the photo: David Alston.

In an interview with Byron York of National Review, Short said that Alston didn't return to PCF-94 until after March 4, 1969, well after the Feb. 28 engagement. The exact date of Alston's return remains a mystery because (like Kerry) Alston has refused to release his military records. What is clear is that both Alston and Kerry have lied since at least May 2002 about Alston's service under Kerry.

Why did Kerry claim to have been in command of PCF-94 on Jan. 29, 1969? Why did Kerry try to replace Fred Short with David Alston as gunner in the Feb. 28 engagement? Only Kerry and Alston can explain. But since the controversy arose, Alston has disappeared from the campaign trail.

One Medal, Three Citations

In that Feb. 28 engagement, Kerry beached his PCF to frontally assault a Viet Cong ambush. He then leapt off the boat and chased an armed VC from the beach, killing him and capturing his rocket launcher. On that much, everyone agrees. The mystery surrounds the three differing citations Kerry has for the Silver Star he earned that day.

Adm. Elmo Zumwalt personally awarded the medal to Kerry. The citation (No. 1) notes that "an enemy soldier sprang up from his position not ten feet from Patrol Craft Fast 94 and fled. Without hesitation, Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY leaped ashore, pursued the man behind a hootch and killed him..." The citations says the operation resulted in 10 Viet Cong killed.

For most people, one citation per award is sufficient. However, Kerry has another (No. 2) for this incident, this one signed by Adm. John Hyland, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet.

This citation fails to mention the VC that Kerry killed, but has added praise: Kerry now acted "with utter disregard for his own safety and the enemy rockets" and has now faced a "numerically superior force."

Citation No. 3 was signed by John Lehman as secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, more than 10 years after the action. It's nearly identical to No. 2, except it adds, "By his brave actions, bold initiative, and unwavering devotion to duty, Lieutenant (jg) Kerry reflected great credit upon himself."

What really happened on the Dong Cung River that day? Kerry's own crew (most of whom support his candidacy) insisted that Kerry chased the injured VC behind the hootch, out of sight of the crew, before killing him. Kerry denies leaving his crew's sight — which would be a brave but foolish tactical mistake for the commander of a beached boat under fire. And both later citations fail to mention Kerry personally killing the VC.

Last week, The Post's Deborah Orin confirmed from Navy sources that the original teletype of the after-action report had been found in the Naval Archives. It confirms the statements of Kerry's crew: "OinC [Officer in Command] of PCF 94 chased VC inland behind hootch and shot him while he fled capturing one B-40 rocket launcher with round in chamber."

The report also makes clear that the three PCFs carried a contingent of 90 Vietnamese RFPF troops, which would have hardly made their patrol numerically inferior to the snipers that ambushed them. And the final calculation of KIA from that mission, according to the immediately-filed after-action report, was 4 KIA, not 10 or a score as the citations state.

Kerry performed well under fire. But his changing stories regarding the action have mysteriously found their way into the extraordinary series of citations that stretch out over a decade for this single action and award.

Lehman, moreover, insists that he never signed the third citation nor wrote the additional language. On Friday, the Navy inspector general concluded, following an investigation prompted by a Judicial Watch request, that the proper procedure had been followed in the processes initially used to approve Kerry's medals and the officers involved had proper authority to approve the awards. But Adm. R. A. Route's probe didn't address any qualitative review of Kerry's awards, and Lehman's disavowal of citation No. 3 has prompted a separate investigation.

Conclusion

Much more could be said about John Kerry and the Vietnam years, but this primer may suggest why Kerry has been keeping his distance from the press these last six weeks. Kerry can put some of these questions to rest — by signing the standard military form to allow his records to be made public. Until those records are released, many questions will remain unanswered.

Minneapolis attorneys John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson are proprietors of the Web log powerlineblog.com. Minneapolis-based freelance writer Edward Morrissey is proprietor of the Web log captainsquartersblog.com.

Antiwar Activist. (Brackets and ellipses in original.)

The main reason for other veterans' anger at John Kerry is plainly what he did after returning home: As a leader of the radical anti-war group Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Kerry accused his fellow soldiers of war crimes and atrocities in testimony before Congress.

On April 22, 1971, Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Most controversial is his allegation that American soldiers were committing war crimes, "not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." He spoke of "the 200,000 [Vietnamese] a year who are murdered by the United States of America."

Kerry did not claim to have witnessed atrocities himself. But he repeated claims made in the "Winter Soldier Investigation" of three months earlier. Kerry had been a sponsor of that national conference, which took testimony from a number of witnesses. It later developed that some witnesses had never been to Vietnam at all, and others subsequently recanted their charges.

On the basis of Winter Solider, young Kerry told the senators that American soldiers had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam..."

Former POW Air Force pilot Jim Warner and others have told of how the North Vietnamese forced American prisoners of war to listen to these words and other speeches by Kerry as part of their effort to make prisoners confess to war crimes.

Kerry's campaign has argued that in his Senate testimony, Kerry was only reporting charges made by others, but that claim is not consistent with Kerry's words. Kerry's testimony is a matter of record. But some questions remain: Why did he testify to war crimes and atrocities occurring "on a daily basis" if he had no knowledge of such atrocities? What was his basis for saying that American soldiers murdered 200,000 Vietnamese a year?

The Assassination Plot

At a November 1971 meeting in Kansas City of the leaders of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, one Scott Camil proposed "Operation Phoenix" — a plan to assassinate the leading pro-war members of the U.S. Senate. The group adjourned to a secret location to debate the assassination plan, and ultimately voted it down.

John Kerry originally claimed that he resigned from VVAW's executive committee two days before that meeting, and has denied attending. But contemporaneous FBI surveillance records place Kerry in Kansas City, and a number of witnesses — including the head of Kerry's campaign in Missouri, Randy Barnes — have said that Kerry attended the Kansas City meeting and argued against the assassination plan. (Thomas Lipscomb broke this story in the New York Sun this spring.)

Why has Kerry been unable to point to any evidence that he resigned from VVAW prior to the Kansas City meeting? If Kerry was there, why didn't he tell the authorities that some members were plotting political assassinations?

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Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 09/23/04 07:43:46 PM
Categorized as John Kerry.