BLACKFIVE: Letter to John Kerry

Veteran Uprising:

BlackFive began this post just by citing the letter to Kerry by Republican veterans, today. However, the updates are more interesting than the original post. Apparently there are three new major intiatives by Vietnam veterans who are opposed to John Kerry:

Lt.Col. Buzz Patterson has a new book, Reckless Disregard which condemns Kerry.

The New Soldier, which has published online Kerry's book of the same name.

And most importantly, Vietnam POWs have banded together and are creating a website that will oppose Kerry. It is called Stolen Honor, and should be coming online soon. Unlike the Swift Boat Vets, which accept as members only people who served with the Swifties, this organization will be composed of servicemen who suffered in the Hanoi Hilton while Kerry told fables about them to Congress.

UPDATE: Stolen Honor is up at this time.

UPDATE: And another:

We later discovered that many of those that he was quoting as witnesses to our 'crimes' had not spent one day in uniform. Others had never served in Viet Nam. None of them, not a single one, would testify under oath, even if granted immunity. Yet our 'crimes' became part of the common knowlege. Our children were given that testimony as fact in their history classes. We all knew soldiers, sailors,airmen and Marines that had died, leaving children behind, we know that those children were taught those same lies as fact. Who sat with those children as we did with ours, explaining that those were lies told for political gain?

It's bad enough that we couldn't mourn our dead then. Now we see the same man that stood over the open graves of our brothers and pissed on their bodies is back. This time he's dug up those bodies and is standing on them to give himself the stature for high office.

I am no famous war hero, just one of the two and a half million guys who wore Uncle's suit for awhile in a place where the same truck would splash red mud on your trousers and throw a cloud of dust on your face at the same time. My service was entirely undistinguished but I stood shoulder to shoulder with some genuine heros. Those heros came home in shiney aluminum caskets, they cannot speak for themselves. I hope someone more famous and more eloquent will speak for them soon. Until they do I can only say that not only is John Kerry not fit to command the young men and women that inherited the uniforms but he is not fit to speak of my comrades, much less speak for them. I shall say this as long as I have a breath left in my body.

I once worked on a documentary film dealing with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and in particular a camp they ran near Savannah, GA, that reconstructed a Civil War fortress as a national park. All of them enlisted in the Army when the war broke out, although afterwards they were broken up and sent to different units: one carried a machinegun across the Italian campaign; another was taken early and was a POW in Germany; another fought through the war and served in the Battle of the Bulge.

All of them said exactly that: I was no hero, just a man on a team. But I knew some heroes.

What heroes did Kerry know? To judge him by his own words, he was the hero, and all of his brothers were war criminals.