Kerry's Legacy

From The Big Trunk at PowerLine comes this link to a column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The author, former Vietnam POW Paul Galanti, spent 2,432 days in captivity: bq. Kerry's Legacy: No One Who Has Aided the Enemy Deserves to Become President bq. Being a prisoner of war in Vietnam had some high points but many more low ones. The worst days physically were behind us in 1970, 1971, and 1972. After Ho Chi Minh died in 1969, the routine torturing of POWs for propaganda purposes pretty much stopped. Our captors panicked in November, 1970, following the daring raid on a closed POW camp at Son Tai 20 miles west of Hanoi - and moved all of us into the huge Hoa Lo prison in central Hanoi. We finally were permitted a semblance of societal life after years in solitary and/or stuffed into tiny windowless cells with two or three other POWs. bq. Our morale - at least in the cells in which I lived during this time - while not so idyllic as those portrayed in the farcical "Hogan's Heroes," was tolerable compared with the dark ages of 1965-1969. He talks a little more about Prison life and also the timeline -- the Paris talks, the Tet Offensive... The he brings up the Vietnam Veterans against the War. bq. And then in 1971 we started hearing about "Vietnam Veterans Against the War," whose leader was a former Naval officer. From various sources I've since learned that the most senior leader of VVAW was LTJG John Kerry, a U.S. Naval Reserve officer. Kerry claimed Vietnam was "ravaged equally by American bombs and search-and-destroy missions as well as by Viet Cong terrorism . . . ." Hunh? Hadn't I been shot down because we were required to fly close to the targets to minimize civilian casualties? bq. Asked for a recommendation as to possible courses of action for Congress to pursue, Kerry said he had spoken to representatives from Hanoi and from the PRG (Viet Cong) at the Paris peace talks, and mentioned his support for "Madame Binh's points." At that time Madam Nguyen Thi Binh was the Viet Cong foreign minister. These meetings took place in the spring of 1970, apparently before Kerry joined the VVAW. Hunh? It's illegal for U.S. citizens to do this, much less commissioned officers. And more: bq. But the worst was when Kerry, clad in store-bought camouflage and festooned with his decorations, told the world he and his comrades routinely had committed war crimes while ravaging the countryside like Genghis Khan. bq. It was a terrible lie, but it reinforced what the leaders of the peacenik movement had been saying for several years. It was the antithesis of what our government had been reporting. And it was simultaneously the worst betrayal of the United States to those of us who had been spectating for so many years in enemy territory. bq. It was very simple to us. Kerry sold out his shipmates from the Swift Boats. He sold out every one of us in Hanoi - and likely extended our stay there (for which we all offer him ever so many thanks) - by concocting the lies he now calls "a little over the top." And he continues to fabricate stories to cover up a lackluster career in the Senate. When I heard a tape of Kerry's Boston accent complaining about our forces "ravaging the countryside like Genghis Khan," I had my only flashback to the large cell in Hoa Lo where I first had heard it when Hanoi Hannah - North Vietnam's woman propagandist - was bragging about Kerry's "Winter Soldiers" and the testimony of this Naval officer before a committee of the U.S. Senate. bq. Kerry's legacy isn't that he has the same initials as John Fitzgerald Kennedy or that he motored around the rivers of South Vietnam in a small boat for four months before asking to leave the war early. His legacy is more along the lines of Benedict Arnold's. The only difference is that Benedict Arnold was a successful soldier before he committed treason. I doubt Benedict Arnold would have much success running for President today. Are we to believe that someone who aided the enemy in time of war is worthy of becoming President? Good stuff told by someone who was there and suffered the effects of Kerry's grandstanding...