John Kerry War Record

Letters to the Editor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
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John Kerry's war record

As Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, considers a bid for the
White House, Americans should know a few things about him that he
might prefer go unmentioned - and I don't mean his $75 haircuts.

When Mr. Kerry pontificated at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on
Veterans Day, a group of veterans turned their backs on him and walked
away. They remembered Mr. Kerry as the anti-war activist who testified
before Congress during the war, accusing veterans of being war
criminals. The dust jacket of Mr. Kerry's pro-Hanoi book, "The New
Soldier," features a photograph of his ragged band of radicals mocking
the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial, which depicts the flag-raising on Iwo
Jima, with an upside-down American flag.

Retired Gen. George S. Patton III charged that Mr. Kerry's actions as
an anti-war activist had "given aid and comfort to the enemy," as had
the actions of Ramsey Clark and Jane Fonda. Also, Mr. Kerry lied when
he threw what he claimed were his war medals over the White House
fence; he later admitted they weren't his. Now they are displayed on
his office wall.

Long after he changed sides in congressional hearings, Mr. Kerry
lobbied for renewed trade relations with Hanoi. At the same time, his
cousin C. Stewart Forbes, chief executive for Colliers International,
assisted in brokering a $905 million deal to develop a deep-sea port
at Vung Tau, Vietnam - an odd coincidence.

As noted in the Inside Politics column of Nov. 14 (Nation), historian
Douglas Brinkley is writing Mr. Kerry's biography. Hopefully, he'll
include the senator's latest ignominious feat: preventing the Vietnam
Human Rights Act (HR2833) from coming to a vote in the Senate,
claiming human rights would deteriorate as a result. His actions sent
a clear signal to Hanoi that Congress cares little about the human
rights for which so many Americans fought and died.

The State Department ranked Vietnam among the 10 regimes worldwide
least tolerant of religious freedom. Recently, 354 churches of the
Montagnards, a Christian ethnic minority,were forcibly disbanded, and
by mid-October, more than 50 Christian pastors and elders had been
arrested in Dak Lak province alone. On Oct. 29, the secret police
executed three Montagnards by lethal injection simply for protesting
religious repression. The communists are conducting a pogrom against
the Montagnards, forcing Christians to drink a mixture of goat's blood
and alcohol and renounce Christianity. Thousands have been killed or
imprisoned or have just "disappeared." The Montagnards lost one-half
of their adult male population fighting for the United States, and
without them, there might be thousands more American names on that
somber black granite wall at the Vietnam memorial.

As Mr. Kerry contemplates a run for the presidency, people must
remember that he has fought harder for Hanoi as an anti-war activist
and a senator than he did against the Vietnamese communists while
serving in the Navy in Vietnam.

MICHAEL BENGE

Foreign Service officer and former Vietnam POW (1968 to 1973)
Washington