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> THE WASHINGTON TIMES
> 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 antiwar 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 US
> 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 antiwar 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 antiwar 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 Copyright (c) 2002 News World Communications, Inc. All
> rights reserved
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