It's sentiment like this that will defeat Kerry:
Posted on Fri, Sep. 17, 2004
A clear picture of betrayal
Kevin Ferris
is a member of The Inquirer Editorial Board
John Kerry wanted to talk about the Vietnam era, and plenty of vets seem willing to oblige.
In the midst of a continuing controversy focused on CBS's questionable memos on President Bush's Guard service, a documentary criticizing Kerry's antiwar activities was released.
The 42-minute video, Stolen Honor, is about the torture and propaganda endured by American POWs in Vietnam, and the sense of betrayal they felt when part of the propaganda used against them came from a highly decorated Navy officer, John Kerry. Specifically, they object to Kerry's blanket accusations, that, in their view, branded all Vietnam veterans as war criminals.
Kerry's war record is not challenged in the video; the vets honor him for it. Kerry's right to protest is not questioned; vets believe they fought so others could have that right. The reporting of war crimes isn't objected to; vets are adamant that officers are duty-bound to report such crimes.
However, testifying, as Kerry did, that war crimes were routine, with full knowledge from all levels of the chain of command, is a lie, the vets say. Worse, they say Kerry knew it was a lie. He stole their honor, besmirched their reputations, to further his own career.
As one vet says in the film, POWs were mercilessly beaten to utter the very words that John Kerry gave the North Vietnamese for free.
The torture wasn't overly sophisticated, but that didn't lessen the brutality.
"It was just fundamental raw torture," said Leo K. Thorsness in a phone interview from his home in Arizona. "It was just old-fashioned beatings with hoses or an old fan belt."
Another method was what Thorsness called "the suitcase." Prisoners were bound, their bodies cruelly twisted into a bundle and thrust onto their cell floor. "Backs were broken, shoulders were pulled out," Thorsness says.
You never knew when it was your turn, Thorsness said. Sometimes, he says, "if they heard a sound, they just beat you," hoping to keep prisoners from communicating with each other. Maybe their captors wanted new propaganda, in writing or on film. Maybe they needed to break a senior man to set an example.
The documentary taps into what producer Carlton Sherwood calls the "huge reservoir of resentment and contempt" for John Kerry among many vets.
Sherwood's career has taken him from combat duty in Vietnam to a Pulitzer Prize to working for fellow vet Tom Ridge in Harrisburg. When it was clear that Kerry would be the Democratic nominee for president, and that Vietnam would figure prominently in his campaign, Sherwood and other vets started talking. "We were aghast," he says.
Kerry's antiwar activities and his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 were news to most Americans, but veterans had stewed about it for decades, Sherwood said. They believe Kerry not only betrayed and further endangered those still serving in Vietnam, but also, Sherwood said, "created the template for the Vietnam veteran as a drugged-out, barbarian loser."
With backing from Pennsylvania vets (about $220,000 so far), Sherwood formed the for-profit Red, White & Blue Productions. When he sent out an e-mail to vets about possible interviews, "my computer lit up like a Christmas tree.
"This is deeply, deeply personal; it's not political" Sherwood says, explaining the reaction. "We would love to elect a Vietnam combat veteran as president of the United States, but... no way we'd vote for somebody who betrayed us."
This isn't just a long-running feud among Vietnam veterans, a distraction from the current war. For many, it all speaks to character. On one side are those who believe Kerry's antiwar activities were acts of courage that helped shorten the war and save lives.
Thorsness, a pilot who earned the Medal of Honor for lives he saved in the weeks before his capture, sees things differently.
"Character is an important trait of leadership, going back thousands of years," he says. "Those with character, discipline, honesty and integrity, who stick up for their troops, they have in the long term been better leaders than those who are lacking character, or who don't stick up for their troops, or who step on people on their way up."
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For more information, visit www.stolenhonor.com or www.c-span.org/vote2004/jkerrytestimony.asp. Contact Kevin Ferris at 610-701-7644 or kferris@phillynews.com. |
