[VeteranIssues] Truths & untruths about John Kerry

[travisab1]

I'm relating this to you as I hope this helps;

From: ColonelDan ColonelDan@worldnet.att.net

I don't care who veterans support or who they vote for.. as long as they get out and vote... also check stuff out before you believe everything you read.
John Kerry also wrote, The New War, a book on the fight against global crime and terrorism. and also A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America

somebody needs to also read the Book "Home to War, A history of the Vietnam Veterans Movement" by Gerald Nicosta, Corte Madera, Calif
Crown Publisher, 2001, LA Times called it one of the best books of the year. gerald@geraldnicosia.com

http://www.geraldnicosia.com/html/geraldframeset2.html

He did extensive research for his book, and desputes much of the bad press anti-Kerry groups are sending around. He had an article WSJ,, Jan 30, Letters to Editor

John Kerry did "not" emcee the winter soldier investigation in Detroit
It was emceed by several Vietnam veterans leaders of the VVAW, including Scott Moore, Mike Oliver, and AL Hubbard. The veterans testifying were carefully screened by the VVAW, and no "imposters" have ever been uncovered. Speeches given there are at
http://lists.village.virginia.edu/si.../WS_entry.html

It is true that Jane Fonda did fund the Winter Soldier Investigation, but she did not finance the VVAW in any of it's other activities.
John Kerry was not one of the original founding members of VVAW in 1967.

Furthermore Sen. Kerry's reference to atrocities was a very small part of his landmark sppech to the Senaate Foreigh Relations committee. Mainly he spoke of American troops who felt abandoned by their government, and of their "sense of anger and a sense of betrayal which no one has yet grasped". Anybody can read the speech themselves
http://lists.village.virginia.edu/si...ry_Senate.html

Several versions of stories about Kerry throwing his medals back, at the VVAW's Dewey Canyon Convention Demonstration at the Capitol in April 1971. Records of his speech indicate he was quite clear about throwing back the medals of two close friends who had asked him to do so, one of them was still in a VA hospital

Reviews for Home to War:

Home to War is a superbly researched book that needed to be written. It sets forth in compelling detail a whole other dimension of America's tragic war in Vietnam, which, until now, has never been completely captured.

-General Harold G. Moore, author of We Were Soldiers Once?And Youngg

Home to War is simply the best. Gerry Nicosia has written the definitive story of the deep sense of human and humane conscience among ordinary soldiers during an extraordinary time in American history. Read this book and discover why the epoch of our war in Vietnam still keenly reverberates from the kitchen tables and porches, newspapers and journals, as well as classrooms all across this country.

-Larry Heinemann, author of Paco's Story

Home to War is a comprehensive analysis which illuminates the efforts of the men who fought not just in the jungles of Vietnam, but also when they returned to America. We should be grateful to Gerry Nicosia for documenting this struggle in a meaningful and heartfelt way.

-Oliver Stone, director of Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July

Gerry Nicosia has an uncommon understanding of the struggle of veterans to give meaning to their war and a struggle, too, to redeem themselves. Home to War is a powerful history of our times.

-Gloria Emerson, author of Winners and Losers

Home to War is a fascinating account of the generation of young Americans whose lives were thrown into turmoil and put at risk by the Vietnam War, of their bravery under enemy fire over there and their bravery under political fire at home.

-Senator Alan Cranston, Chair, Veterans' Affairs Committee

Every Vietnam veteran should read this remarkable book. It's a part of our history that a lot of us don't know anything about, and it's essential for an understanding of how the war finally came to an end and what happened to the soldiers who fought it.

-Angelo J. "Charlie" Liteky, awarded the Congressional Medal of
Honor for "exceptional heroism" while serving with the 199th
Light Infantry Brigade on December 6, 1967, in Bien Hoa
Province, Republic of Vietnam.
After war, we forget. We lose history. Home to War is about veterans of the war in Vietnam who take on the responsibility of remembering. They serve again by telling the consequences of war. Gerald Nicosia has written a history that we as a nation have not faced. This book is a must-read if we are to understand the America we have become.

-Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior

Home to War captures America's struggle to heal the wounds of a war too many?particularly those at the highest levels of our government?would have preferred to forget. From triple canopy junglles along the Ho Chi Minh trail and the waters of the Mekong Delta, to VA hospitals across the nation, heated debates in both chambers of Congress, and an incredible grassroots movement led by Vietnam veterans aiming to keep faith with their brothers and sisters in arms, Gerry Nicosia's important new book ties together the many threads of a difficult period in our history every American should take the time to understand in its totality.

-Senator John F. Kerry, swift-boat commander in South Vietnam,
1969, and recipient of the Silver Star

Home to War is an extraordinary achievement of research and writing. Its eloquence and power will serve the cause of justice for veterans, but also give to all Americans a sobering lesson about war, peace, and broken promises. I hope it will be widely read.

-Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

Home to War for the first time puts together a history that has been an intimate part of the lives of thousands of us in the veterans' community over the past 30 years?makes a coherent whole of thatt journey toward healing and recognition, which otherwise would probably have been forgotten. Thanks to Gerald Nicosia, these people and events are now preserved and will be remembered. This book needs to be on every library shelf in America.

-Colonel David H. Hackworth, author of About Face

Blurbs for Home to War -- Page 3 A quarter century after the Vietnam War ended, the story of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement remains compelling. In this captivating work by Gerry Nicosia, the voices and stories of these American veterans force us to confront the issues of the war and the question of why soldiers who came home to peace could find none. The sense of loss and waste that pervades Home to War is overwhelming.

-Duong Van Mai Elliott, author of The Sacred Willow: Four
Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family

Home to War describes the complex history of those Vietnam veterans who returned to America (long before the 58,000-plus names of those killed-in-action were etched on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial) with the sincere conviction that the war was both misdirected and poorly-led. Refusing to be silent about the things they had learned, this generation of veterans protested in ways both creative and destructive?and Nicosia portrays itt all in a book that is well-researched, well-written and ultimately courageous.

-Asa Baber, "Men" columnist, Playboy Magazine

With the same painstaking thoroughness and clarity that made his biography of Jack Kerouac definitive, Gerald Nicosia illuminates in his new book another mortal struggle with hell-bent?and here literally murdderous?received opinion. Indeed, with Home to War, Nicosia lays claiim to being our preeminent historian of the hard and gritty birth pains of the new paradigm. This work has the feel of a milestone of political and social history.

-Aram Saroyan, author of Trio and Last Rites

******

Gerald Nicosia spent 12 years researching and writing his massive history, HOME TO WAR, a comprehensive, 33-year chronicle of Vietnam veteran activism, readjustment, and healing. It was cancelled by three consecutive publishers in the mad publishing decade of the 1990's, which saw one corporate buyout after another, and the wholesale firing of editors and dumping of books-in-progress. HOME TO WAR will come out, finally, on April 24 from Crown/Random House. It has already garnered great praise, including starred reviews in PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (March 12) and LIBRARY JOURNAL (March 15), which wrote: "The frequently heroic, more often tragic saga of the veterans who fought in the war and then fought against it is told in this gripping narrative, which takes hold of the reader with its haunting cover and doesn't let go for almost 700 pages."

It has been called an epic, narrative history that chronicles, for the first time, the experience of America's Vietnam veterans, who returned home to fight a different kind of war.

The 3.4 million Americans who served in Vietnam fought two wars: one on the other side of the world and one for the hearts and minds of their countrymen when they returned home. Based on 600 interviews and 12 years of research, HOME TO WAR is the definitive history of that second war.

HOME TO WAR paints a fresh picture of the American war heroes who were rejected by the nation in whose name they fought and by the government that sent them to risk life, limb, and spirit in Southeast Asia. It chronicles their heroic?and ultimately victorious?battle on the home frontont, from their role in the anti-war movement to their campaign for medical help and compensation for Agent Orange exposure and post-traumatic stress wounds.


----- Original Message -----
From: SChiefret72@aol.com
To: quincyil@cruzers.com
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2004 11:51 AM
Subject: Why I'm voting for George Bush


----- I did some looking around on the Internet and was able to verify through other sources the basic information in this e-mail about Kerry's anti-war activities, publishing of book with described cover, etc.




Subject: FW: Why I am voting for GW


I received this today and found it
VERY INTERESTING


Vietnam stance irks veterans By TERRY GARLOCK


Terry L. Garlock of Peachtree City was a Cobra helicopter pilot in Vietnam.


File
John Kerry, who headed a veterans' group opposed to the Vietnam War, receives support from a gallery of peace demonstrators and tourists as he testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971. Forum:
? Were John Kerry's protests against the Vietnam War inapproopriate?

Now that U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is claiming the veteran vote based on his war record, both sides of that story should be told.To appreciate the dark side of Kerry's war record, you should know a few things about Vietnam veterans.The public and the press make a mistake when they divide us into decorated veterans like Kerry and then all the others.We like to think of ourselves as brothers -- those who fought the enemy directly in combat and those who provided vital support in protected areas that were in many cases exposed to attack.Even today, when two Vietnam veterans meet for the first time, they might say, "Welcome home, brother!" because many were never welcomed home. They met the cold shoulder of an ungrateful nation on their return.Those of us whose job was combat feel an even deeper sense of brotherhood. We learned to trust our brothers on the ground, on the water and in the air to do the right things to protect one another, a bond that cannot be fully explained in words.We quietly feared dying in battle, but there was something we feared even more. We knew if we should panic under fire and fail to do our job, we might lose our brothers' trust or we might lose their lives, and this we feared more than anything.Like Kerry, I have a couple of medals, but who has what medal among combat veterans doesn't make a dime's worth of difference between us. What matters is that we are, for the rest of our life, brothers who kept faith with one another in a miserable war.A young Kerry, however, broke faith with his brothers when he returned to the United States. With the financial aid of Jane Fonda, he led highly visible protests against the war. He wrote a book that many considered to be pro-Hanoi, titled "The New Soldier."The cover photo of his book depicted veterans in a mismatch of military uniforms mocking the legendary image of Marines raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi in the 1945 battle for Iwo Jima, holding the American flag upside down.Kerry publicly supported Hanoi's position to use our POWs as a bargaining chip in negotiations for a peace agreement. Kerry threw what appeared to be his medals over a fence in front of the Capitol building in protest, on camera of course, but was caught in his lie years later when his medals turned up displayed on his office wall.Many good and decent people opposed the Vietnam War. Many of us who fought it hated it, too. I know I did.But like Fonda's infamous visit to Hanoi in 1972, Kerry's public actions encouraged our enemy at a time they were killing America's sons. Decades after the war was done, interviews with our former enemy's leaders confirmed that public protests in the United States, like Kerry's, played a significant role in their strategy.Many of us wonder which of our brothers who died young would be alive today had people like Fonda and Kerry objected to the war in a more suitable way.Now that it serves his ambition to be president, Kerry reminds the public of his war record daily. But the dark side of that record is not being told. Many Vietnam veterans have taken notice, and many of us will vigorously oppose Kerry's election to any office.

I thought I'd throw this in.

Regards,
Travis

[SuperScout]

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 23, 1971, Kerry claimed that U.S. soldiers had ?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, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam.? Kerry offered no proof of these revolting crimes, or if he had any, was obligated to reveal this information to the proper authorities, in order to bring to justice those who had allegedly committed these heinous acts. As history has shown, he had no proof, and was simply grandstanding for his own amusement or glorification. Naturally, the press sucked up this rubbish to justify their further vilification of the armed forces.

Testifying further, Kerry claimed there was no communist threat in Southeast Asia. Apparently, Kerry fought in a different war than the rest of us, or he never heard or read of the countless scholars who wrote about how communism had already enslaved millions in Laos, North Vietnam, parts of Cambodia and other nations. Kerry was naive enough to note that, ?In 1970 at West Point Vice President Agnew said ?some glamorize the criminal misfits of society while our best men die in Asian rice paddies to preserve the freedom which most of those misfits abuse,? and this was used as a rallying point for our effort in Vietnam. But for us, as boys [here, Kerry resorts to pandering, calling the American soldiers in Vietnam "boys"; I don't know about his unit, but my unit only had "men."] in Asia whom the country was supposed to support, his statement is a terrible distortion from which we can only draw a very deep sense of revulsion, and hence the anger of some of the men who are here in Washington today. It is a distortion because we in no way consider ourselves the best men of this country ?.? Speak for yourself, you elitist snot! Maybe you weren't the best, but that appilation cannot be applied to the warriors I knew.

[travisab1]

SuperScout;
I never was much of a Kennedy fan with all the Cuban Communisum/Mafia, Pope Confessions/Communist thing, Bay of Pigs retreate he was supposedly associated with.

When I saw how deep in with the Kennedy's Kerry was I gave up on him seeing him drinking on big yahts and all with illegal gotten moneys from selling Booze the Kennedy's got during prohibition times. I was 20 miles out to sea waiting in the messhall line off shore of California when we heard that Kennedy had been shot. I'd hate to tell you what I heard from all my fellow seaman in responce to his death. You wouldn't believe it anyway.

Money corrupts a lot of people ie OJ/Clinton/Kerry and so on.

Don't get mad at me for my take on politics. I don't remember meeting a politician I ever liked. Sort of like Will Roger's never met a man he didn't like. He never met people like Sadaam, Al Quida ETC...

Travis