Veterans and the Kerry Controversy

February 21, 2004

by Thomas D. Segel

It seems the spin-doctors have gone to work early in the John F. Kerry campaign. As he makes his run to be the Democrat nominee in the race for the presidency, there is great trumpeting of his combat service in Vietnam, along with the medals he was awarded for that service. In true political fashion the spin machine wants to proclaim him a distinguished hero, while at the same time cautioning all who happen to raise an eyebrow that nobody should question Kerry’s service or valor.

I would argue that anyone who experienced shots fired in anger has the right to ask questions about any other person who makes similar claims. John Kerry and company have opened some ugly wounds and brought back to the surface sad memories of a painful war. They should be prepared to field and reply to any and all questions about the candidate’s actions in that long ago Vietnam.

To be objective, it must be pointed out Kerry did serve off the coast of Vietnam aboard the USS Gridley for six months between December 1967 and June 1968. He

“He says Bush and yourself are wrongheaded and irrational. Calling him names does not make his fundamental critique of Bush “policy” go away. Iraq undermined the war on terrorism, by diverting resources from Afghanistan where the bad guys were when we knew where they were. Is rationality subversion? Intelligent strategy, treason? Do you really expect people to take you seriously when you claim not to have heard this argument? Why would this confession of ignorance be a point of pride? ”

It seems strange coming from a ‘well-educated-pompos-arrogant-self-serving-hate-america first Liberal that they insist that by the invasion of Iraq somehow took the emphasis off Afghanistan ? The whole trouble with the leftist crowd is they dont know history, I suppose thats jingoistic to know something about your own country that may put it in a good light”, fighting a war on two fronts is not something Dondal Rumsfeld dreamed up all by himself.
They tend to forget that during the second world war this country was fighting on 3 to 4 fronts almost simultaneously, Just for their edification, there was the war in the Pacific, on the ground ,in the Air and on the Sea, there was the Island hopping campaign, there was the fight in the BMI theater, then of course there was that fight in Europe, Africa, and the soft under-belly of Italy.
Since when can not this country fight on two fronts this is lefty-commie propaganda.
He says that Kerry had the right to protest, yes he did, but what this uninformed liberal doesnt understand is that for a Naval reserve officer there are consequences, such as a General Court Marshall.
Protesting is what this country is all about, However, when it comes to lying about your country, aiding the enemy in time of war, meeting with the enemy to negotiate a settlement this is treasonous. All this John Forbes Botox Kerry did.
His association wiht Hanoi Jane Fonda, is another, she is and was at the time an avowed communist, when John Kerry associated with her it is the same thing that he too went to North VietNam and sat in the seat of a triple-A battery wearing an NVA helmet.
This has nothing to do with his service, which the Deficrats can not figure out it has to do with Subversion of ones own country and trying by overt means to disrupt and confound policies that the government has put forward, it also has to do with revolution and the violent overthrow of the government of this country, ie the Kansas city plot to assinate certain Senators who supported the war effort…. this is the left sole desire
John Kerry and ED “I wish I hadnt made a turn on that bridge” Kennedy, and the rest of the willing sheep of the Progressive left-leaning(all inclusive) Democrat party.
To believe that all Kerry did was protest the war,does indeed give credance that the Easter Bunny is real. This is where the lef is coming from. There main goal is to subvert the United States and turn it into a global policeman where the troops of this country would be under the auspices of the UN, where the sovreignty of the United States would no longer exist.
The people of this country are a lot smarter than Kerry, jennings or any other Anti-american will give them credit for and for this reason John Botox will implode under the guise of being such a phoney war hero.

Mark

Every major media owner, CEO, producer and broadcaster is a graduate of the Council on Forgein Relations, the American version of the Power Brokers and their elitist lackeys’ globalist [socialist] training center.

I would suggest that those who are unaware of the nature of their government, international banking, international industrial and international corperate and the UN objectives do the research themselves before accepting whatever is fed to them.

Michael Turley, BM2, PCF [Swift Boat] 15, Chu Lai, Da Nang, Cua Viet, Hue 1967-’68

Michael Turley, former BM2,Swift Boat LPO PCF 15,
Chu Lai, DaNang, Hue and Cua Viet, VN 1967-1968
Syracuse, NY

It sounds like your son is an independent thinker!! Being 14 and in the school systems of today can be a frustrating experience for free thinkers who arm themselves with facts instead of falling into the narrow, rigid, lockstep mindset of socialist thought.

My sons who graduated between 10 and 15 years ago were both exposed to liberal teachers bent on “converting” them to socialism were also free thinkers and are staunch conservatives to this day. On one occasion in a high school history class, my oldest son went head to head with the teacher who was bent on convincing the class that Vietnam was a failure of American imperialism. My son reminded the teacher that America’s entry into the war, along with numerous allies like Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Phillipines, and more was because of our committment to upholding the agreements of the SEATO, an organization not unlike NATO and which the teacher was unfamiliar with. My son also stated that if the military had been allowed to conduct the war instead of having it planned and executed from civilian desks in Washington, America would have left South Vietnam in democratic hands five to six years before we finally left. The teacher didn’t like being upstaged by my son and pointed to the military as being at the root of all of America’s ills and bad reputation as war mongers, at which point my son told the teacher to take back his condemnation of the military, of which his father (me) had served honorably for 24 years, or make his accusations to him outside where they could settle it. My son was very mad and regretted his challenge to the teacher and later apologized, at which time the teacher also apologized.

Some times our young people are victims of ridicule from not only their peers but also from the very people who have the most influence on their lives. Only through arming themselves with the facts obtained by their own research and experience and from listening to the experiences of the older folks around them that they become more informed and able to confront the lies of the liberals in society.

It sounds like your son is getting the facts and guidance to “fight the good fight.” More power to him…..

As expected, the Left and extreme Left have done their damndest to find any and all evidence of Vietnam atrocities in an attempt to validate the bogus Kerry testimony before Congress in 1971. At a time when their hero is catching justifiable heat for presenting suspect military records containing suspect dates and signatures, they focus their tunnel-vision on a 6 month period in 1967 that covered some of the action of Tiger Force, a 45 man contingent of the 101st Abn Div.

Now, for those of you who fail or choose not to concede what the vast majority of, if not all, veterans know is that atrocities do and have occurred in all conflicts of man and I would like to again state to you the obvious: WAR IS A BITCH and it brings out the worst in us all who have experienced it firsthand, and in those rare instances resulting from quirks in human nature, atrocities are committed.

Without even knowing and reporting all the facts, a used toilet paper rag of a newspaper called the Toledo Blade, garnered a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on atrocities perpetrated on “innocent Vietnamese civilians” by the Tiger Force, a unit David Hackworth is very familiar with: he was one its most famous?? members. Left-Wing websites like veteransforpeace.org, vietnam-embassy-usa.org, dissidentvoice.org, antiwar.com, hypocrites.org and many more picked up the story and, with unabashed glee and gusto, splattered it all over the net in hopes of easing the pressure on their chosen one. It won’t work…..

After visiting the above mentioned sites, one has to come away with the eerie feeling of being in a time warp. To a site, the rant is communist and the repetitive jingoism is glaring and nauseating. To the people associated with these sites, America is THE enemy and one even blatantly declared: “Europe Had The Nazis, Asia Had The Japs, Vietnam Had The Americans.” Pathetic does not even come close to describing those twits who gather thereabouts.

Ladies and Gentlemen hereabouts……keep your powder dry!!

Only a Useful Fool would trust Colonel Nguyen, a functionary of a communist government with a great financial and propaganda interest in making this look as bad as possible.

Tiger Unit’s existence has not exactly been a secret. That someone finally decided to pursue it in this year is ever so convenient.

Blade wins Pulitzer: Series exposing Vietnam atrocities earns top honor

Publisher John Block, left, looks on as executive editor Ron Royhab, back to camera, congratulates Mike Sallah.
( THE BLADE/JETTA FRASER )

By KELLY LECKER
BLADE STAFF WRITER

Three Blade reporters won the Pulitzer Prize — journalism’s highest honor — yesterday for uncovering the atrocities of an elite U.S. Army fighting unit in the Vietnam War that killed unarmed civilians and children during a seven-month rampage.

Michael D. Sallah, Mitch Weiss, and Joe Mahr received the investigative reporting prize for their series — “Buried Secrets, Brutal Truths” — which detailed how the Army failed to stop the atrocities after commanders were told about them. The reporters also discovered that the Army failed to prosecute soldiers who killed unarmed civilians after an investigation found the platoon had committed war crimes .

It was The Blade’s first Pulitzer Prize.

“I’m glad we won, but it’s really a somber victory,” Mr. Weiss said. “Tiger Force killed innocent men, women, and children and the men who committed these acts continue to go unpunished.”

“What’s important to me is the Army get to the bottom of who killed this investigation 29 years ago,” he said.

The New York Times and The Washington Post were other finalists in the investigative reporting category.

The Blade reporters scoured government records, interviewed 43 former Tiger Force members, and went to Vietnam to talk to family members of the victims to detail a pattern of violence by the unit during a seven-month period in 1967.

What the series found was that the highly trained reconnaissance unit killed unarmed civilians, including children, and that Army leadership knew of and in some cases encouraged the unit’s actions (See Kirk’s editorial cartoon).

“We had a moral obligation to report this news,” he said. “Where the government failed, The Blade closed that chapter.”

●Investigative Reporting: Michael D. Sallah, Mitch Weiss and Joe Mahr of The Blade, Toledo, Ohio, for their series on atrocities by Tiger Force, an elite U.S. Army platoon during the Vietnam War.

●Explanatory reporting: Kevin Helliker and Thomas M. Burton of The Wall Street Journal for coverage of aneurysms.

●Feature writing: No winner.

The reporters went beyond detailing the violence and showed how the atrocities continue to haunt the veterans nearly 40 years after the killings. A dozen Tiger Force members expressed remorse for their actions – nine have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder – and several described vivid flashbacks or nightmares.

Even though the Army investigated the actions of Tiger Force for 4 1/2 years, finding that 18 soldiers committed war crimes ranging from murder and assault to dereliction of duty, the case never reached a military court and no one was ever charged.

Mr. Royhab, The Blade’s executive editor, pointed out that the reporters did not know what they would find when they started digging through thousands of military records. It wasn’t until the team made countless trips to Washington, scoured documents, and tracked down veterans that the truth about Tiger Force became clear.

A Vietnamese military official said in October that he plans to investigate the Tiger Force unit’s actions to try to determine how many people died in the rampage. Since the series ran, the Army has begun interviewing former Tiger Force soldiers as part of a new review of the platoon’s actions in Vietnam.

Rion Causey, an Army medic during the war who witnessed the Tiger Force unit’s atrocities, said he hopes the prize brings more attention to what happened so many yuears ago. Former Army journalist Dennis Stout, another witness, said The Blade’s series was the impetus for the investigations.

“There wouldn’t have been anything happening without the series. It’s the only reason the Army did anything,” he said.

In the midst of the newsroom celebration, Allan Block, managing director of Block Communications, Inc, The Blade’s parent company said: “I have never seen a day like this in The Blade newsroom.”

“We have a lot more coming,” John Robinson Block, his brother, replied.

“There were those who questioned this, but what you did was right. The public does always have the right to know,” Mr. Ford told them. “This is going to define The Blade and Toledo.”

Yours jingoistically
Mark

The smell gets stronger and stronger!!

John H Chafee, SecNav, Jan 69 – May 72
John (NMI) Lehman, SecNav, Feb 81 – Apr 87

As medal citations usually do not carry any datestamps, it would be interesting to see the Certificates of Awards for the Silver Star and Bronze Star, which show both “award given” dates and signatures of both the MajCom commander and the service Secretary, who in Kerry’s case would have been John Chafee.

The signature on Kerry’s Silver Star Citation, as well as the Bronze Star Citation sure looks like Lehman’s!!

Please explain, Pinocchio…!!!

I would like to point out that Kerry’s transfer to Standy Reserve points out that Kerry’s stint in the Ready Reserve between 1970 and 1972 meant he was “available immediately for active service in the event of war or national emergency.”

I’m not aware of a formal defintion for civilian, in the military it is used to denote those with no affiliation to the uniformed military. Obviously, that does not apply to Kerry between 1970 and 1972. Citizen-soldier as a Reservist recently separated from active duty – OK – but from what I can tell, Kerry was required to have a military ID card, was subject to the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. I think it is also evident he was furthering his own political aspirations and personal ambitions using his ribbons, fatigues and rank as props in his demonstrations and testimony. I think this is also evident by his meeting with North Vietnamese negotiators in Paris while a Ready Reserves LT, unsuccessful political candidate and member of the VVAW.

It’s not the greatest picture. Actually I was unhappy because I was being RIF’ed into the Reserves and I wanted to stay on active duty but not enough to re-up.

–And by the way, Mr. John Moore: Your expression on that ID card somehow epitomizes for me all the ‘fun and games’ I ‘enjoyed’ while on active duty. Funny how one’s military service always looks better in retrospect….

Thank you for the high standards that you have maintained on your websites. The Left is rotten with the likes of IX, the lowest sort of dishonest, snarling and smirking stooge hiding hiding out in the disguise of a hippy. Whatever else the hippy culture produced, it did sometimes offer a kind of placid understanding of tragedy amongst the best of them, and even courage of a sort. Not with IX, who never once had the guts or intellect to face a challenge to his dissolute worldview and emptiness. What a disgrace.

If he’s proud of his hearts, wouldn’t he also be proud of his scars, his very own “red badges of courage”? Scars can’t just by tossed over a fence, symbolically or otherwise.

I predict he’ll never show those scars because (as I believe) they aren’t there, or if actually present, they are too pathetically minor to stir a sympathetic response in potential voters.