Text 3025, 284 rader
Skriven 2006-10-29 12:50:34 av John Massey (1:123/789.0)
   Kommentar till text 3022 av Tim Richardson (1:123/789.0)
Ärende: POW Lawsuit
===================
"Tim Richardson -> John Massey" <tim_richardso50@hotmail.com> wrote in
message news:19508$POL_INC@JamNNTPd...
 TR> John Massey -> All wrote:

 JM>> POW Lawsuit Could Force Kerry To Come Clean
 JM>> On Vietnam 'War Crimes' Charges
 JM>> - by George "Bud" Day, Chairman, Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation

 JM>> (10/15/2006)

 JM>> Thirty five years ago John Kerry slandered an entire generation of
 JM>> men who fought in Vietnam branding them as a "war criminals." Today,
 JM>> much of the same thing is being said about our young men and women
in
 JM>> Iraq.

 JM>> Now, a lawsuit filed in Philadelphia's Court of Common Pleas will
 JM>> test the very foundation of Kerry's anti-war persona for the first
 JM>> time. It isn't dubious medals or Kerry's disputed service record in
 JM>> Vietnam that is being called into question. This time Kerry may
 JM>> finally be forced to answer for the events that launched his public
 JM>> career, one that made him an anti-war hero for many American
liberals
 JM>> and a turncoat for millions of Vietnam veterans.

 JM>> The lawsuit (Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation, et al. v. Kenneth
 JM>> Campbell, et al.) challenges the basis, the factual accuracy of
 JM>> then-Lt. (j.g.) Kerry' s acrimonious testimony before the U.S.
Senate
 JM>> Foreign Relations Committee in 1971. It was there Kerry's public
 JM>> career was catapulted with his now ubiquitous portrayal of American
 JM>> soldiers as murderers, rapists and torturers "who ravaged the
 JM>> countryside of South Vietnam . . . [and] razed villages in a fashion
 JM>> reminiscent of Genghis Khan."

 JM>> Kerry said then his accusations were based on the so-called
 JM>> "testimony" of "150 honorably discharged" Vietnam veterans who, like
 JM>> himself, claimed to have committed or witnessed "war crimes, not
 JM>> isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with
 JM>> the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

 JM>> Many if not all were members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War
 JM>> (VVAW), an organization led by Kerry and financed by Jane Fonda
 JM>> during the early 1970s. Now, a number of those "witnesses" will be
 JM>> required to testify, under oath for the first time ever, about what
 JM>> they really did and saw in Vietnam.

 JM>> What these VVAW witnesses say could have implications reaching
beyond
 JM>> Kerry' s veracity and reputation. Their lasting portrait of the
 JM>> American soldier as a blood-thirsty butcher, a baby killer, is also
 JM>> at stake. And that picture remains entrenched among their kind,
 JM>> "proof" that those serving in the U.S.  military, even today, truly
 JM>> are a "horde of barbarians" capable of unspeakable brutalities. That
 JM>> is the underlying theme, the constant drumbeat from the mainstream
 JM>> media and others as they try to undermine the American military
today.

 JM>> For the anti-war, anti-American protesters, the American soldiers
are
 JM>> the "terrorists," and the enemies are the victims of a barbaric U.S.
 JM>> military which tortures and murders defenseless civilians.

 JM>> That false premise, one of the most vicious and enduring smears
 JM>> spawned by Kerry 35 years ago, will also be put to the test once
 JM>> Kerry's true "Band of Brothers" are put under oath in a Philadelphia
 JM>> courtroom.

 JM>> The background to this lawsuit is long and complex, but even a
 JM>> condensed version is rich in irony and poetic justice.

 JM>> It had it roots in 2004 with the documentary Stolen Honor: Wounds
 JM>> that Never Heal. Many may recall the film, although it is probably
 JM>> best known for not being seen, suppressed after Sinclair
Broadcasting
 JM>> Company courageously announced it was going to air the documentary
in
 JM>> its entirety. Thanks to Kerry and his liberal colleagues in the
 JM>> Senate and their enablers in the mainstream media, Sinclair was
 JM>> browbeaten into withdrawing the film, its broadcast license
 JM>> threatened by a Kerry campaign manager in 2004.

 JM>> Stolen Honor focused on Kerry's venomous diatribe before the Senate
 JM>> Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971 when he accused Vietnam
 JM>> veterans of "war crimes" on a genocidal scale. (A full transcript is
 JM>> available at
 JM>> http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/index.php?topic=Testimony. ) It
 JM>> examined the impact Kerry's widely reported statements had on
 JM>> hundreds of Americans who were being held prisoners of war by the
 JM>> North Vietnamese communists. The film's producer, Carlton Sherwood,
a
 JM>> Pulitzer Prize and Peabody Award-winning investigative reporter,
 JM>> interviewed former POWs for the documentary.

 JM>> I was among those whom Sherwood, a decorated Marine combat veteran
 JM>> himself, asked to participate in Stolen Honor. I was a POW for
nearly
 JM>> six years, held in North Vietnam prison camps, including the
 JM>> notorious Hanoi Hilton, a place of unimaginable horrors -- torture,
 JM>> beatings, starvation and mind-numbing isolation. When Kerry branded
 JM>> us "war criminals," he handed our captors all the justification they
 JM>> needed to carry out their threats to execute us.  Thanks to Kerry,
 JM>> Jane Fonda and their comrades in the anti-war movement, our
captivity
 JM>> was prolonged by years. The communists in Hanoi and Moscow couldn' t
 JM>> have had a better press agent to spread their anti-American
 JM>> propaganda.

 JM>> To guarantee Stolen Honor would never be seen by anyone - not even
 JM>> theatre-goers - the producer was slapped with a libel and defamation
 JM>> lawsuit. That lawsuit was filed by Kenneth Campbell, a University of
 JM>> Delaware professor, Kerry campaign aide, and long-time anti-war
 JM>> disciple of the Massachusetts Senator. Campbell co-founded the
 JM>> Philadelphia chapter of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and, in
 JM>> 1971, he was one of Kerry's key war crimes "witnesses," one of
 JM>> several on whom Kerry claims he based his Senate testimony.

 JM>> Campbell was and still is regarded by some as one of the VVAW's most
 JM>> articulate and published "experts" on U.S. atrocities in Vietnam. He
 JM>> has "testified" before Congress, in Europe, and elsewhere that while
 JM>> in Vietnam he deliberately killed "dozens and dozens" of innocent
 JM>> civilians as a Marine artillery forward observer. He has written
 JM>> extensively about his and others' atrocities in Vietnam and he even
 JM>> teaches a course on the Vietnam War that showcases his war crime
 JM>> accusations. Campbell, like Kerry, met with enemy delegations --
 JM>> Vietcong and North Vietnam Communist officials -- in Paris in 1971
 JM>> while he was still a U.S. uniformed reservist. He was also flown to
 JM>> Moscow that same year to meet with other Communist leaders, all
 JM>> expenses paid by the Soviets.

 JM>> Campbell's lawsuit put a unique spin on the definition of
defamation:
 JM>> He claimed that Stolen Honor damaged the public reputations of
 JM>> himself, Kerry and others by questioning whether they truly were the
 JM>> baby-killers they claimed to be!

 JM>> Ignored and censored by the mainstream news networks, Stolen Honor
 JM>> eventually aired on some small local cable outlets. The documentary
 JM>> managed to penetrate Kerry's blacklisting in rural northern Ohio,
 JM>> Florida, Pennsylvania and several other places. But, Campbell's
 JM>> lawsuit against Sherwood continued in 2005, when he even added POWs
 JM>> who appeared in the film to the litigation!

 JM>> The POWs and the wives of POWs who participated in Stolen Honor
 JM>> refused to abandon the facts conveyed in the film. For some of us,
it
 JM>> was the first time since our release by the Communists in 1973 that
 JM>> we were able to have our voices publicly heard, to tell our stories
 JM>> about the consequences of Kerry's treachery. In 2005, we formed a
 JM>> nonprofit organization, the Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation
 JM>> (VVLF), to gather records, documents and other materials to form a
 JM>> fact-based, educational repository for students and scholars of
 JM>> Vietnam history and to tell the true story of the American soldiers
 JM>> in Vietnam. The VVLF's mission is "to set the record straight,
 JM>> factually, about Vietnam and those who fought there."

 JM>> For our efforts, we were promptly sued by Campbell and another
 JM>> long-time anti-war Kerry follower and VVAW member, Dr. Jon Bjornson.
 JM>> It was clear that Kerry not only wanted to punish us for Stolen
 JM>> Honor; he intended to use surrogates to sue us into permanent
silence
 JM>> and financial ruin.

 JM>> But in lawsuits, even defendants have an opportunity to question the
 JM>> accuser under oath in pre-trial depositions -- even when a lawsuit
is
 JM>> filed solely to harass, intimidate and silence and when the legal
 JM>> system is abused for political vengeance, as these lawsuits clearly
 JM>> were.

 JM>> Our chance came earlier this year when Kenneth Campbell was deposed.
 JM>> Among the first thing he disclosed was that this was the first time
 JM>> he had actually been put under oath in over 35 years of "testifying"
 JM>> about Vietnam "war crimes." Neither he nor any of his fellow "war
 JM>> criminals" - Kerry included - had ever been sworn in at any
hearings,
 JM>> not before the Senate, the House of Representatives, or anywhere.

 JM>> All of the so-called "testimony" the old mainstream media trumpeted
 JM>> for nearly four decades -- graphic, sickening and grisly "testimony"
 JM>> about savage atrocities committed by Vietnam veterans, "testimony"
to
 JM>> which Congress and the media gave so much weight and credibility --
 JM>> wasn't "testimony" at all! Just propagandist speeches told without
 JM>> limitation or fear of consequences, least of all penalties for
 JM>> perjury. As for the "war crimes" Campbell claimed for years he
 JM>> committed and personally witnessed, he now conceded he didn't
 JM>> actually see innocent civilians killed by his artillery barrages. In
 JM>> fact, if anyone had been killed or wounded, he admitted, they may
not
 JM>> have been civilians at all! Concerning other atrocities Campbell
 JM>> identified in his lawsuits -- things like Marines massacring an
 JM>> entire village, killing surrendering enemy soldiers -- those
 JM>> incidents, too, failed to stand up under questioning. Some were
 JM>> things he said he had heard or assumed happened; others, he
 JM>> acknowledged, were simply "rumors."

 JM>> That Campbell alleged personal knowledge of horrible atrocities in
his
 JM>> complaints and then gave wholly different stories of hearsay and
 JM>> assumption at his deposition is detailed in the recently filed
 JM>> Philadelphia lawsuit, which repeatedly alleges that Campbell lied
 JM>> about supposed war crimes in 1971 and lied again when he claimed in
 JM>> 2004 that his war crime stories were true.

 JM>> While hard evidence may have been in short supply during his sworn
 JM>> testimony, Campbell did offer the names of "witnesses" who would
 JM>> confirm his stories. Not surprisingly, the first two were Kerry
State
 JM>> Veterans Campaign Coordinators and long-time VVAW organizers in
 JM>> Florida and Massachusetts.

 JM>> Subpoenas were served on both men but, before either could be
 JM>> deposed, one checked himself into a hospital for elective back
 JM>> surgery and the other had himself arrested and committed to a mental
 JM>> institution. At last press reports, he was released from the
 JM>> psychiatric hospital and fled the country to Vietnam via Hawaii.

 JM>> Both men clearly knew what was coming, as did Campbell. For the
first
 JM>> time in nearly four decades they would be forced to answer for their
 JM>> alleged "war crimes," their slanderous accusations against their
 JM>> fellow soldiers finally examined, under oath.

 JM>> It was just a matter of days before all the lawsuits were withdrawn,
 JM>> nearly two years of costly litigation abruptly ended, Campbell's
 JM>> libel claims ground to dust under the weight of his own testimony.

 JM>> Like their leader, John Kerry, his surrogates wanted no part of
 JM>> having to defend these despicable allegations, or for being held
 JM>> accountable for the great harm they and he continue to inflict on
our
 JM>> men and women in uniform.  They fled the moment the light of truth
 JM>> shined their way.

 JM>> My fellow POWs and I who were the target of these lawsuits are not
 JM>> willing to quit or surrender. Kerry and his cowardly followers may
 JM>> have achieved their purpose of keeping the American people from
 JM>> seeing Stolen Honor in 2004, but we refuse to allow the truth about
 JM>> Vietnam to remain untold.

 JM>> Forced to spend huge sums to defend ourselves from these frivolous
 JM>> lawsuits, we have filed a countersuit against these Kerry surrogates
 JM>> and intend to reveal the truth about the lawsuits and their
sponsors.
 JM>> We believe that we can prove that the purpose of nearly two years of
 JM>> litigation was to cover up for Kerry's treachery, to drain us
 JM>> financially and spiritually, and to prevent us from setting the
 JM>> record straight.

 JM>> At stake is ultimately nothing less than the integrity of the
American
 JM>> military in Vietnam, the honor of the men who served their country,
 JM>> the nobility of those who gave their lives, and the truth of
 JM>> America's history in Vietnam. Until or unless we do correct the
 JM>> existing record, the American military may never be free of the
myths
 JM>> and smears of Vietnam, its honor and integrity cleansed as it fights
 JM>> to defend freedom at home and around the world.

 JM>> Our mission is hardly over. We hope you will join us in fighting
this
 JM>> battle . . . for our soldiers, then and now.

 JM>> Col. George E. "Bud" Day, USAF (Ret.,) was a POW in North Vietnam
for
 JM>> five years, seven months and 13 days. He served in three wars (WWII,
 JM>> Korea, and Vietnam) and earned the Medal of Honor. He is the Air
 JM>> Force's most decorated living veteran. He is the Director and
 JM>> President of the Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation, Inc., an
 JM>> organization created to better educate and inform the public about
 JM>> the Vietnam War, its events, its history, and the men and women who
 JM>> sacrificed to serve their country.


 TR> I'm glad you posted this in here. If you hadn't I was going to
 TR> cross-post it in here myself, addressed to `Attention: Dan Ceppa'.

Kerry is another SOB I wouldn't walk across street to piss on if he was on
fire.
I hope this group succeeds in it's efforts.

--- Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1409
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