Kerry told the truth in 1971. Without truth, our nation is weak. When we go to war based on lies and self-defeating policies we always lose. Any army does.
You cannot separate Kerry's very real combat heroism and the heated divide in the country in 1971 from that event. In those days you were either pro or con the war. And being against the war turned out to be the right place to be. Very much so.
What Kerry did was very courageous. His testimony shook the world and put him right in the cross-hairs of the most powerful man in the world, Richard Nixon, who had been lying about the war. Nixon ordered Kerry "destroyed" on the Watergate tapes, and put his dirty trickster Charles Colson (soon to be imprisoned) and his assistant John O'Neill (35 years later to be the lying SOB frontman of the Bushie smearvets) in charge, and they tried to find any dirt they could on Kerry, but found nothing but courage, honor and lawful decency.
Remember too, Kerry was the spokesman for the troops against the war, thousands of them, including the ex Green Berets and SEALS who carried out many of the grisley duties of the Phoenix Program (including beheadings, torture, etc.).
As Kerry told me personally when I asked him what it was like, he said "just like APOCALYPSE NOW without the surfboards", but they did waterski, he said. They also had to take part in missions of an atrocious nature. And my Lai was no isolated event. |
