Unfit for Office

[darrels joy]

May 4, 2004
11:16am

CAMPAIGN 2004

Unfit for Office
I was on Mr. Kerry's boat in Vietnam. He doesn't deserve to be commander in chief.

BY JOHN O'NEILL
Tuesday, May 4, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

HOUSTON--In 1971, I debated John Kerry, then a national spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, for 90 minutes on "The Dick Cavett Show." The key issue in that debate was Mr. Kerry's claim that American troops were committing war crimes in Vietnam "on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." Now, as Sen. Kerry emerges as the presumptive Democratic nominee for the presidency, I've chosen to re-enter the fray.

Like John Kerry, I served in Vietnam as a Swift Boat commander. Ironically, John Kerry and I served much of our time, a full 12 months in my case and a controversial four months in his, commanding the exact same six-man boat, PCF-94, which I took over after he requested early departure. Despite our shared experience, I still believe what I believed 33 years ago--that John Kerry slandered America's military by inventing or repeating grossly exaggerated claims of atrocities and war crimes in order to advance his own political career as an antiwar activist. His misrepresentations played a significant role in creating the negative and false image of Vietnam vets that has persisted for over three decades.

Neither I, nor any man I served with, ever committed any atrocity or war crime in Vietnam. The opposite was the truth. Rather than use excessive force, we suffered casualty after casualty because we chose to refrain from firing rather than risk injuring civilians. More than once, I saw friends die in areas we entered with loudspeakers rather than guns. John Kerry's accusations then and now were an injustice that struck at the soul of anyone who served there.

During my 1971 televised debate with John Kerry, I accused him of lying. I urged him to come forth with affidavits from the soldiers who had claimed to have committed or witnessed atrocities. To date no such affidavits have been filed. Recently, Sen. Kerry has attempted to reframe his comments as youthful or "over the top." Yet always there has been a calculated coolness to the way he has sought to destroy the record of our honorable service in the interest of promoting his political ambitions of the moment.

John Kennedy's book, "Profiles in Courage," and Dwight Eisenhower's "Crusade in Europe" inspired generations. Not so John Kerry, who has suppressed his book, "The New Soldier," prohibiting its reprinting. There is a clear reason for this. The book repeats John Kerry's insults to the American military, beginning with its front-cover image of the American flag being carried upside down by a band of bearded renegades in uniform--a clear slap at the brave Marines in their combat gear who raised our flag at Iwo Jima. Allow me the reprint rights to your book, Sen. Kerry, and I will make sure copies of "The New Soldier" are available in bookstores throughout America.

Vietnam was a long time ago. Why does it matter today? Since the days of the Roman Empire, the concept of military loyalty up and down the chain of command has been indispensable. The commander's loyalty to the troops is the price a commander pays for the loyalty of the troops in return. How can a man be commander in chief who for over 30 years has accused his "Band of Brothers," as well as himself, of being war criminals? On a practical basis, John Kerry's breach of loyalty is a prescription of disaster for our armed forces.

John Kerry's recent admissions caused me to realize that I was most likely in Vietnam dodging enemy rockets on the very day he met in Paris with Madame Binh, the representative of the Viet Cong to the Paris Peace Conference. John Kerry returned to the U.S. to become a national spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a radical fringe of the antiwar movement, an organization set upon propagating the myth of war crimes through demonstrably false assertions. Who was the last American POW to die languishing in a North Vietnamese prison forced to listen to the recorded voice of John Kerry disgracing their service by his dishonest testimony before the Senate?

Since 1971, I have refused many offers from John Kerry's political opponents to speak out against him. My reluctance to become involved once again in politics is outweighed now by my profound conviction that John Kerry is simply not fit to be America's commander in chief. Nobody has recruited me to come forward. My decision is the inevitable result of my own personal beliefs and life experience.

Today, America is engaged in a new war, against the militant Islamist terrorists who attacked us on our own soil. Reasonable people may differ about how best to proceed, but I'm sure of one thing--John Kerry is the wrong man to put in charge.

Mr. O'Neill served in Coastal Division 11 in 1969-70, winning two Bronze Stars and additional decorations for his service in Vietnam.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editor...l?id=110005036

[SuperScout]

Thanks for finding and posting this indictment of John F. Kerry. While I'm not surprised by what John O'Neill wrote, neither am I surprised by the attacks on him, calling O'Neill part of the "dirty tricks" team of the Nixon White House. O'Neill was recruited by the FBI to help build a dossier on Kerry, when it was learned that Kerry and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War were planning and plotting attacks on and assassinations of certain US senators. My guess is that if questioned by reporters about this anti-American plot, Kerry is will offer several versions of the story, will attack the reporters, throw his medals and/or ribbons at them, then jump in his wife's Gulfstream III and fly to another campaign rally, missing another day of work in the US Senate, most of which he's already missed this year anyway.

To overlay some great golfing advice onto John O'Neill's assesment of Kerry, I'd venture to say that O'Neill is Dead Solid Center. Totally unfit to be commander in chief, and actually, little else.

[reconeil]

ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto, etc., etc., etc.,...SuperScout.
Plus, Thank You Very Much for the pertinent and MUCH NEEDED by America information.

Neil

[SuperScout]

Celebrating the 29th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the North Vietnamese general who led his forces to victory said Friday he was grateful to leaders of the U.S. antiwar movement, one of whom was presidential candidate John Kerry.

"I would like to thank them," said General Vo Nguyen Giap, now 93, without mentioning Kerry by name. "Any forces that wish to impose their will on other nations will surely fail," he added.
Reuters, which first reported Giap's comments, suggested that the former enemy general was mindful of Kerry's role in leading some of the highest profile antiwar protests of the entire Vietnam war.

Before the British wire service quoted Gen. Giap, it noted:
"The Vietnam War, known in Vietnam as the American War, has become a hot issue in the U.S. presidential race with Democrat John Kerry drawing attention to his service and President Bush's Republicans disparaging Kerry's later anti-war stand."

North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin, who served under Gen. Giap on the general staff of the North Vietnamese army, received South Vietnam's unconditional surrender on April 30, 1975. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal after his retirement, Col. Tin explicitly credited leaders of the U.S. anti-war movement, saying they were "essential to our strategy."

"Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9AM to follow the growth of the antiwar movement," Col. Tin told the Journal. Visits to Hanoi by Kerry antiwar allies Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and others, he said, "gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses."

"We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war," the North Vietnamese military man explained. Kerry did much the same thing in widely covered speeches like the one he delivered to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971.

"Through dissent and protest [America] lost the ability to mobilize a will to win," Col. Tin concluded.

Thank you, John Kerry and Jane Fonda, for your part in helping the North Vietnamese.

Throw this over the f***ing wall!

[reconeil]

Also once heard on The History Channel (once posted same on some thread) that General Giap stated words to the effect that America's War Protestors were more valuable to the North Vietnamese war effort,...than if having TWENTY MORE DIVISIONS to field against The Americans.

Wonder what quite suspect of both word and intent and War Protestor Kerry thought about that episode of the documentary? I know that it certainly and disgustingly impressed me about how a 27 year old (age at the time) acted after coming home from Vietnam. Can any such type even be trusted to be A Commander-In-Chief?

Neil