I’d like to talk a little bit about how John Kerry betrayed his brothers–the POWs who are still in Vietnam–whether they’re dead or not. He strove to “normalize” relations with Vietnam and in the process, buried the records of over 300 POWs who could still be alive.
Of all the things I’m aware that John Kerry has done in his lifetime–opposing every single conflict we’ve ever been involved in since he was an adult–this is the lowest of the low.
Michael D. Benge, a former POW in North Vietnam (1968-1973), has this to say about Vietnam at this interview at Frontpage Magazine:
Our politicians lost a winnable war. You are at a great disadvantage in getting the truth out of the enemy when you lose, instead of winning — rather like being a eunuch. The American and Vietnamese military were not defeated by the NVA, but were betrayed and defeated by politicians in the United States. These same politicians, such as John Kerry, and later, John McCain, as U.S. senators in 1993, swept it all under the rug when they were members of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs and issued their final report that there was no evidence that any POWs were still alive in Vietnam. Neither was there evidence that they were dead. Our government gave the North Vietnamese a list of over 300 POWs that were last known to be alive and in the hands of the North Vietnamese. To this date, only a handful of remains of these POWs have been returned. This begs the question, “What is the fate of those not yet accounted for?” Yet Senators McCain and Kerry, apologists and advocates for the North Vietnamese communists, claim that they are fully cooperating in the accounting process. I beg to differ with them.
You could easily compare what’s happening now to what happened then. But what’s most disturbing is this:
I cannot tell you accounts of POWs still in Vietnam after the war, but I can tell you that there was evidence that POWs were still alive after the war. In 1991, we had two satellite images of two Americans in North Vietnamese who has stamped out their pilot authenticator codes in the grass in the compound where they were being held. Although Marine Pvt. Garwood testified in close session of congress to a number of American POWs he saw while in North Vietnam after the war, this information has never been declassified. The U.S. gave the North Vietnamese a list of over 300 Americans who were known to have been captured alive and were in the hands of the North Vietnamese, but only a handful of remains of these POWs have ever been returned. Of the remains returned, several were “green” showing signs that they were of POWs alive several years after the war. Senators John Kerry and John McCain parsed the summary of the 1993 report by the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs so that it implied that although there was evidence that some Americans had been left behind, there was no compelling evidence that were alive at that time. What they deliberately forgot to say is that neither was there evidence that they were dead.
link
“When he became a senator, Kerry continued to stab Vietnam soldiers in the back. Kerry began pushing normalization of trade with Vietnam. To that purpose, he founded the Senate Select Committee for POW/MIA Affairs. Kerry became chair of the committee. In order to normalize trade, the Vietnamese government would have to prove that its hands were now clean with regard to POW/MIAs.
Kerry tried to erase the possibility that prisoners of war were still alive in captivity in Vietnam. I spoke Monday evening with Mike Benge, a POW/MIA activist. Benge was a civilian POW held from 1968 until 1973 by the North Vietnamese Army; he spent 27 months in solitary confinement, one year in a “black box,” and one year in a cage in Cambodia. Benge accuses Sen. Kerry of shredding key papers documenting “live sightings of POWs in Vietnam and Laos” during the POW/MIA hearings. According to Benge, Kerry attempted to shred all copies to prevent leaks and future declassification of the materials.”
In “Reckless Disregard, Buzz Patterson talks about what Kerry did in order to normalize relations with his commie Vietnamese comrades:
Kerry refused to interview key witnesses and ordered committee staff to shred important intelligence documents….The committee’s final report…concluded there was “no compelling evidence that proves” that American POWs were still alive in Vietnam….Kerry and his committee…made no attempt to identify those who had been abandoned, how they had died, who killed them, or where their remains might be. As he had done twenty years earlier, former naval lieutenant Kerry turned his back on those with whom he had served. (p. 63)
In his book “Reckless Disregard”, Buzz Patterson talks about making an official trip to Vietnam to collect the remains of some of these poor men who were left behind, tortured and murdered by the VC…and how absolutely humiliating it was to go to Vietnam and have the communists sneering and smiling when they turned over small boxes of “remains” and actually put their hands out to get paid for them.
It appears as though John Kerry not only wrote up his own commendations to get medals under highly disputable and questionable circumstances, sided and met with the enemy (Madame Binh in Paris), but years and years later, in order to “normalize” relations with Communist Vietnam, he AGAIN turned his back on his brothers–the POWs who might still be alive.
The gloves are off, Senator Kerry–release your records entirely, otherwise your calls for Roberts’ records, O’Neill’s records, the Swift Boat Veterans’ records and everyone else’s indicate that you operate by a devastatingly obvious double standard–as if the rules and regs that are in place apply to everyone else but you.
Join the blogbursts to help FREE Kerry’s 180 every Tuesday!
We’ve formed a blogburst group and here are the bloggers who are contributing so far. If you want to join the blogroll for Free Kerry’s 180, click here to email me, include the url for your blog. The blogburst is every Tuesday, so don’t forget to blog about it. All you have to do is encourage Kerry to set his 180 FREE, I’ll send you the code for the blogroll.
The more people we have, the merrier!
