Text 3022, 251 rader
Skriven 2006-10-29 10:56:54 av Tim Richardson (1:123/789.0)
Kommentar till text 3018 av John Massey (1:123/789.0)
Ärende: POW Lawsuit
===================
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.
I'm glad you posted this in here. If you hadn't I was going to
cross-post it in here myself, addressed to `Attention: Dan Ceppa'.
--- XanaNews/1.18.1.3
* Origin: (1:123/789.0)
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