October 24, 2006
A response re: Swift Boats and Kerry on YouTube
Apparently SO never served in the military, especially the Navy. "Served with," in the context of a small brown-water boats means the squadron, not the boat. The Swift boats normally went out in small flotillas, for obvious military reasons, operating from bases that had a number of boats. Hence those on the other boats that were with Kerry's were in a position to directly witness his actions. The captains of the boats were likely better informed about the tactical situation (since their job involved coordinating with the other boats) than the crew of Kerry's boat.
Those who need to believe the SBVT was lying cling to the myth that only those on Kerry's boat served with him or were able to judge. What a joke! The two who appeared with him at the Democratic National Convention had a total, between them, of 6 whole days with Kerry.
The captains fought together, ate together, worked together and lived together. The crew (not officers) lived with other crews, not their captains (duh... a little knowledge of the Navy would really help those who criticize without facts). Guess what! The vast majority of surviving Captains backed the SBVT - see this and click on the group photo.
I served with many people in Navy Air (I was at Cam Rahn Bay just before wounded himself there with a grenade launcher). By the logic here, I didn’t serve with the comrades I lost because they weren’t on MY airplane. What rubbish!
Kerry, the self appointed expert on Vietnam who constantly demeaned and condemned the rest of us, spent 4 months in country before getting out of Dodge as fast as he could - on the basis of three "wounds," none of which required hospitalization or significant treatment. His extremely exaggerated claims of American war crimes provided a perfect excuse for the North to hold on to our "war criminals" forever, even as Kerry tarred us, our nation and our efforts, while conspiring with the North against us. As late as 2004, during the campaign, the Vietnamese totalitarians were using this testimony to attack the US and justify their "humane" treatment of our POWs. Did you ever see this in the news (note the URL from that link - it’s to a Vietnamese government site)? Why not?
Everything I heard O'Neill say in that clip was accurate. In fact, Kerry was acting exactly like an agent-of-influence for North Vietnam, meeting with them and then carrying their water in his outrageous, slanderous propaganda-filled "testimony" to the Senate in 2001. As John O’Neill said, acceding to Madame Binh’s proposal would have left the POWs there, because it would have removed our last bargaining chip. You don’t surrender, and then expect to get back badly mistreated POWs from the victor!
On the clip, O’Neil says (re: POWs) "that’s why they were all with us." In the context of the clip, that is not an assertion that every POW was with them - "all" in that context could mean "all of the POWs" or "all of the POWs in the group". Even so, I have yet to hear from a POW who defended Kerry - have you? On the other hand, the senior POW in the camp, later a Senator, accused Kerry of treason - using the language from the constitution that defines treason, not the word - on the floor of the senate. I guess this man didn’t know what he was talking about either.
Nobody can read John Kerry’s mind, but we can read his actions, and those were the actions of a traitor. There were many who protested the war (at least until the threat of the draft vanished for them personally) and many of these people were not on the side of the enemy (although a disappointing number openly hoped for the North to win - I went to some of those demonstrations).
But, few met with the enemy (once secretly, once not secretly) and exactly parroted the enemy’s propaganda and openly advocated surrender on exactly the enemy’s terms - but Kerry did. Few were highly active in a group which had sufficient connections to NVN to be able to offer better treatment to POWs if their wives made anti-war statements - but the VVAW - Kerry’s group did.
The Vietnamese dictators, in 2004 advocated John Kerry’s election, as did Iran.
I knew little about Kerry until I heard that testimony replayed on the radio in 2004. Those lies and slanders so angered me that I formed my own group of Vietnam Veterans to fight Kerry’s campaign. Later we merged with a sister group of the Swifties.
I have discussed these issues with John O’Neill. I have studied the evidence about Kerry - especially his post-war activities. I watched the media distort the story of the SBVT (for example, widely reporting a minor change to an affidavit by one of the boat captains - an affidavit I have - as a recanting - even though the affidavit explicitly states that it was just a technical correction). The mainstream media narrative, and that of those here, is simply at odds with the truth.
If you really want to know about Kerry, go to Winter Soldier and read the copious amount of information available there, or my blog article for a quick set of links.