Candidate John Kerry mentions his Vietnam service at every opportunity, and now a lot of veterans are armed and ready to refight the argument about the way our troops were sold out at home by Kerry and other protesters.
Terry Garlock of Georgia seems to be one. A recipient of the Purple Heart, Bronze Star and Distinguished Flying Cross, he has a few things to say about John Kerry.
Like Kerry, I have a couple of medals, but who has what medal among combat veterans doesn't make a dime's worth of difference between us. What matters is that we are, for the rest of our life, brothers who kept faith with one another in a miserable war.Posted by Alan at January 29, 2004 10:03 PMA young Kerry, however, broke faith with his brothers when he returned to the United States. With the financial aid of Jane Fonda, he led highly visible protests against the war. He wrote a book that many considered to be pro-Hanoi, titled "The New Soldier."
The cover photo of his book depicted veterans in a mismatch of military uniforms mocking the legendary image of Marines raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi in the 1945 battle for Iwo Jima, holding the American flag upside down.
Kerry publicly supported Hanoi's position to use our POWs as a bargaining chip in negotiations for a peace agreement. Kerry threw what appeared to be his medals over a fence in front of the Capitol building in protest, on camera of course, but was caught in his lie years later when his medals turned up displayed on his office wall.
Many good and decent people opposed the Vietnam War. Many of us who fought it hated it, too. I know I did.
But like Fonda's infamous visit to Hanoi in 1972, Kerry's public actions encouraged our enemy at a time they were killing America's sons. Decades after the war was done, interviews with our former enemy's leaders confirmed that public protests in the United States, like Kerry's, played a significant role in their strategy.
Many of us wonder which of our brothers who died young would be alive today had people like Fonda and Kerry objected to the war in a more suitable way.
Now that it serves his ambition to be president, Kerry reminds the public of his war record daily. But the dark side of that record is not being told. Many Vietnam veterans have taken notice, and many of us will vigorously oppose Kerry's election to any office.
Via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution