John Kerry 'Swiftboats' POWS

Friday, September 21st, is National POW/MIA Day.

Since John Kerry is in the news again, I thought a memory re-freshening might be in order.

On April 22, 1971 John Forbes Kerry, aka Hanoi John, as a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, gave his infamous war-bashing Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declaring -under oath- that he and many other veterans of that conflict were war criminals, and insisting that the United States had a definite obligation to make extensive economic reparations to the people of Vietnam.

Kerry mentioned that while in Paris about a year earlier, he had meetings with "both sides" of the Paris Peace Talks.

No doubt he meant the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong sides.

U.S. Veteran Dispatch noted in 1996:

“Kerry's testimony, it should be noted, occurred while some of his fellow Vietnam veterans were known by the world to be enduring terrible suffering as prisoners of war in North Vietnamese prisons. Kerry was a supporter of the ‘People's Peace Treaty,’" a supposed ‘people's’ declaration to end the war, reportedly drawn up in communist East Germany. It included nine points, all of which were taken from Viet Cong peace proposals at the Paris peace talks as conditions for ending the war.”

One of those points was a provision offering to set a date for the return of U.S. prisoners of war in exchange for the Americans setting a date for complete, unilateral military withdrawal from Vietnam. In other words, America could have her POWs back only if we would agree we lost, surrendered, and set a date to leave.

Kerry blatantly advocated the enemy's position while hundreds of captured American fighting men suffered as prisoners of war in North Vietnamese prisons.

Robert J. Caldwell October 24, 2004, San Diego Union-Tribune:

"Virtually all of America's former Vietnam prisoners of war also believe – with good reason, as North Vietnam's army commander has since said publicly – that the anti-war movement Kerry helped lead in the early 1970s encouraged Hanoi to fight on despite the odds - and prolonged the imprisonment of American POWs."

... Skip ahead 20 years ...

Senator John Kerry was named chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs in 1992.

Kerry repeatedly praised his former enemy during committee visits to Vietnam.

Kerry and his committee determined in a 500-page final report that American POWs were left alive in Vietnam after the war but felt none were still alive. It made NO attempt to identify those left behind, how they died, who killed them or where their remains might be located.

The Upshot: In 1991-1992, Senators John Kerry and John McCain hijacked the U.S. Senate Select Committee on POWs in southeast Asia to pave the way to normalizing relations with Hanoi by writing off American POWS and POW/MIA families who wanted definitive answers as to what happened to their men.

After Kerry declared to the world, “President (GHW) Bush should reward Vietnam within a month for its increased cooperation in accounting for American MIAs", Vietnam announced it had granted Boston-based Colliers International the right as the exclusive real estate agent representing Vietnam. The company was positioned to rake in multi-millions of dollars in future contracts to upgrade Vietnam’s ports, railroads and other infrastructure.

C. Stewart Forbes, chief executive officer of Colliers International, is John Forbes Kerry’s cousin.

Ironically, Kerry 2004 presidential campaign's Web site stated:

“When John Kerry returned home from Vietnam, he joined his fellow veterans in vowing never to abandon future veterans of America’s wars. Kerry’s commitment to veterans has never wavered and stands strong to this day."

"I apologize to no one." -- John Forbes Kerry