A Veterans response

[Gimpy]

to the lies and deception of the "Swift-Bums"

####

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts"

Senator Daniel P. Moynihan



My Response to Swift Veterans for "Truth"

I am a US Marine who served in Vietnam during 1969-1970. My older brothers Franklin (1968 -1970), and Stewart (1967) also served with the US Marines in Northern I Corps in Vietnam and as grunts. My oldest brother Edward served in the Air National Guard and was deployed to Germany during the Berlin Crisis for 15 months. My youngest son David is currently completing Basic Combat Training at Ft. Benning Georgia, whereupon he will then attend OCS.

I have seen your advertisement on television, and I have to ask you this. What kind of outfit where you guys running down there in the Delta? Your statements and your deeds today certainly do not reflect a cohesive combat unit with high morale. I assume that your commanding officer LTCMDR George Elliott must be responsible for a lot of this. He appears in your advertisement denigrating LTJG Kerry yet the very same man gave Kerry outstanding Fitness Reports and recommended him for the Bronze Star with Combat V for Valor, and the Silver Star. Recommendations that were ultimately approved and signed off by John Leahey, Secretary of the Navy, and Admiral Elmo Zumwalt. Tell me how can LTCMDR Elliott and all of you for that matter possibly be credible now?

Another question. I noticed in your television advertisement slandering Kerry, that all of you had your name, rank, and medals such as Purple Hearts, Bronze and Silver Stars superimposed on the television screen as each of you were talking. The question is were all of your medals won honorably too or do you all deserve them as much as Kerry supposedly deserved his? I would like to know because to hear all of you talk, it is as if LTCMDR Elliott was handing them out like popcorn.

If Kerry's medals were not deserved then why should we believe yours were? Why should we believe that all of you are any more honorable than John Kerry; a man who by your own admission you never directly served with? A man that has devoted a lifetime to serving his country including 20 years in the U.S. Senate.

This attempt at revisionist history which is demonstrated by your willingness to so blatantly create these false slanders, reinforces my personal belief that your group has little respect for the intelligence of your fellow Americans. There has been a lot of that going around lately and I feel it is an insult to your countrymen.

I understand that LTCMDR. Elliot has since retracted his statements about LTJG Kerry's character while he served with him in Vietnam. How does your group reconcile that? How do you reconcile that Senator Kerry?s own boat crew and the Green Beret officer he saved have impeached all of your stories?

You charge LTJG Kerry with lying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971. That he was responsible for disgracing Vietnam Veteran including his shipmates. You blame him for "accusing" Vietnam Veterans of atrocities and yet if you read the actual transcript from that hearing during 1971 he was reporting (not accusing), what had already been testified to by 150 Vietnam combat veterans during the ?Winter Soldier? investigations held earlier in Detroit. Are you trying to suggest that there where no atrocities committed by our troops in Vietnam? No "Free Fire Zones"? No "County Fair" operations that resulted in burnt out villages and dead livestock? No deaths of civilians and prisoners? I personally witnessed the results of some of these atrocities myself.

You fail to mention however that Kerry and his group the "Vietnam Veterans Against the War" (VVAW) totaled over 30,000 combat veterans in 1972 and that VVAW were among the first activists and instrumental in getting the US Government to acknowledge the problems such as Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and Agent Orange. Because of those efforts many veterans today are being treated and receiving health and financial benefits from our government.

You also fail to mention that none of you, not one of you, served directly with John Kerry on his boat. Yet those who have served directly with LTJG Kerry (his crew), have all stood in support and by his side. Admiral Hoffman, the chairperson of your organization admitted that he never even knew John Kerry, yet he denigrates his service as well. O'Neill who wrote the book "Unfit for Command" also never personally knew John Kerry while he was in Vietnam. Yet he slanders a brother officer and Vietnam veteran with wild abandon.

You conveniently fail to mention that it was John Kerry and John McCain that went to Vietnam to work with the government in Vietnam to find answers to those heroes that were "Missing in Action". That as a result of their efforts many of their remains where brought back to their families where they belong, and in so doing help return our relationship with Vietnam to one where we earned their cooperation.

John O?Neill gets his 15 minutes of fame by debating John Kerry on the Merv Griffith Show back in June, 1971. Indeed you fail to mention that O'Neill did this on behalf of one of the most corrupt administrations in US History working through Charles Coulson (we all know who he is). An administration whose leader Richard Nixon became the only U.S. President to leave office in disgrace and who saw John Kerry and the "VVAW" as potent critics of his policies in Vietnam. Today, again we see that Mr. O'Neill is out there trying to extend his 15 minutes of fame to thirty minutes by doing the same thing on behalf of an administration whose ethics are being question by at least half the electorate. He writes a book with the dubious Mr. Jerome Corsi. I find this shameful. Another question. Do you think that it might be important to the American public to mention that the financing you received to produce and air these ads on television came from operatives that have long since supported the current administration?

I believe what you are doing is unprecedented in the history of U. S. Presidential campaigns. I do not believe any American veteran has ever allowed politics to transcend his service, or the respect he had for his brother's service. They may have disagreed with a candidate, they may not have like him when they served with him, but no one has ever stooped as low as you all have with these kind of personal attacks. Frankly you all insult the intelligence of normal people.

I and my brothers served honorably in Vietnam, and while I cannot speak for my brothers, I have felt my service was important and that the legacy of all of our service was not to necessarily stop the spread of communism, but to insure that senseless wars like Vietnam, where never fought again. I thought it was our duty to insure that we would never send our youth off to distant shores to spill their blood, over a war that was not necessary. Look where we are now.

And here you guys are. You allowed mere politics to transcend our honor, and our legacy. You slander and insult to the world another Vietnam Veteran. A veteran you served with no less. You bring shame and disgrace to your unit, your commanding officer, the U.S. Navy, and all the other Veterans who served in Vietnam many of whom, I might add, do not agree with you.

I join Senator John McCain and condemn your advertisement as ?dishonest and dishonorable? and I will not cheapen the sacrifice that my brothers, my friends, John Kerry, and other Vietnam veterans have made, good and bad, in the service of their country for any political agenda or ideology.

Finally I ask you this. What self respecting Vietnam veteran would ever take sides against and smear another decorated combat veteran (especially one he fought along side in combat), for a group where it is widely known for the most part to have used legal loopholes to avoid going to Vietnam? No matter how I try I find it personally difficult to reconcile this one glaring fact.

You are the ones that sold us out not John Kerry. By creating rumors and falsehoods, manipulating the truth, and maliciously slandering a brother veteran, you are trying sell out honorable veterans of the Vietnam War, and ultimately the American people. It is my opinion that you are by what you are doing, betraying the sacrifice and brotherhood forged on the battlefield by the rest of us who served honorably.

Barry DeLong, USMC (RVN 1969-70) (notsoswiftveterans.com)