Don Bendell
A few months ago on TV, Senator John Kerry, you angrily asked a detractor, “Are you questioning my patriotism?” He responded that he was not, but I sure am. Rather than deciding which power tie you should wear each day, I feel you should be in an orange jumpsuit in a federal penitentiary for treason. You betrayed all my fellow Vietnam veterans, our POW’s, our loyal Montagnard allies (at the cost of many of their lives), and you betrayed me. Your entire political career was launched when you spoke before Congress in 1971, using eloquent testimony written by Bobby Kennedy’s head speechwriter, but based on outright lies from 7 men from the Detroit Winter Soldier Rally, who all claimed to be Vietnam veterans that committed atrocities such as those you described. As you well know, only 2 of those men were even in the military, and they were never in combat, and the other 5 all claimed to be Navy SEALS in the Top Secret Phoenix Program, but they were never even in the military. It did not matter to you. In fact, Congress investigated and discovered that most of the so-called highly-decorated veterans at the Detroit Rally were also not even in the military. You did not care. You were on your way towards the Presidency then, with no regards to who got hurt along the way, including all of us Vietnam veterans. John Kerry, like a chameleon, you change your appearance to fit the environment you are in at the time. You do only what is politically-expedient for you, no matter who gets hurt. You always have. You always will.
Now, 250 sailors who served with you in Vietnam, and who know what you are really like under the stresses of combat, have condemned you [i] and declared you “unfit to be commander in chief of our armed forces.” Your boss in Vietnam and his boss are included in this list, and these men even started their own website http://www.swiftvets.com/, but the liberal media flatly refuses to expose this to the American public. You publicly said that you witnessed atrocities, so you literally called these honorable, brave men, who served alongside you, “war criminals.” And you call yourself a man of honor?
The doctor who treated you for your first wound, for which you received your first Purple Heart, Dr. Louis Letson [ii], now a retired practitioner in Alabama, swore: “I simply removed the piece of metal by lifting it out of the skin with forceps. I doubt that it penetrated more than 3 or 4 mm. It did not require probing to find it, did not require any anesthesia to remove it, and did not require any sutures to close the wound. The wound was covered with a band-aid.”
It has been reported that you got that wound by firing an M-79 at rocks on shore nearby, after a boat-mate warned you not to, and a tiny sliver ricocheted and nicked you. 3 or 4mm’s? “lifting it out of the skin?” John Kerry, in fact, all three of your Purple Hearts in Vietnam were for wounds that only required a band-aid. Little wonder you do not wish those records released so those you have swayed can see the real you. And you call yourself a “man of honor.”
You were awarded the Silver Star for beaching your craft, chasing a wounded Viet Cong and dispatching him with a head-shot, but John Kerry, he had been already wounded by your boat-gunner employing twin .50’s. In other words, you killed a man who had been wounded from less than a hundred yards away, by a pair of Browning M2 .50 caliber machine guns, which shoot 1,100 rounds per minute of six-inch by half-inch cartridges at a muzzle velocity of 2,930 feet per second, and a range of 4.22 “miles.” Do you have a clue what happens to a man who has been shot in the hand, foot, leg, arm, or anywhere by such a round, let alone torso or head? According to the USAF, an earlier version of the same machine gun in WWII fired on Japanese Zeros from B25 Mitchell Bombers, would cause the “enemy plane to explode.” I shot a 50-pound bag of rice hanging under a bamboo tripod from the same approximate distance with one round, center mass, and the whole bag exploded everywhere from the impact. You ran down a man wounded by such a weapon and “dispatched him.” No wonder you have publicly-stated that you committed war crimes. And you call yourself a man of honor.
Regarding your television ad showing you in Vietnam: Every guy I ever knew in Vietnam who was filmed was shot with a usually shaky hand-held 8mm camera and always looked at and joked for the camera, except for you, John Kerry, the patrolling actor, who cannot even carry an M-16 correctly, and you claim “to be a man of honor.”
The real “JFK,” John F. Kennedy, FDR, Harry Truman, LBJ, Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, Dwight Eisenhower, no other President, except Abraham Lincoln; during a time of war, has been so publicly chastised, slandered, and denigrated like you and your supporters have been doing to George W. Bush during this dangerous and critical time in US history. Have you tried to quash their attacks and cared about our country’s security? Or did you encourage your attack machine to play right into the enemy’s hands and add fuel to their propaganda machine, and yours? And you claim to be a man of honor.
You are rated as the “most” liberal Senator in the US Senate, and your running mate as the 4th most liberal Senator, but you spin it for the American public to seem like you are “middle of the road.” You are rated as the wealthiest Senator in US history and you and your supporters have spun it like George W. Bush is the spoiled rich kid. And you claim to be a man of honor.
I receive tens of thousands of e-mails by veterans and active military serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, almost totally supportive of President Bush, for many reasons. For example, many have heard that George W. Bush and his wife privately and quietly go to military hospitals and visit wounded soldiers all the time and visit with families of KIA’s, without cameras around, because they truly care. The only time you have ever visited them has been when there was a “photo op,” because you have never been into “we,” only “me.” And you claim to be a man of honor.
If President, you would have our brave young men and women risking their lives, not for the red, white, and blue, but for the powder blue of the United Nations, and would put their lives and safety under the command of foreign officers who are trained by people we have trained, with the hopes that particular commander is not one of the corrupt ones in the UN, a crap-shoot at best.
When you chaired the Senate Select Committee on MIA/POW Affairs and closed the books on it in 1992, [iii] at the same time that your first cousin, C. Stewart Forbes, was making a one billion dollar deep sea port deal with Hanoi and was also being awarded the exclusive real estate development rights for the entire country of Vietnam, [iv] you shredded documents, which absolutely proved the existence of living American POW’s, ignored 42,00 pieces of evidence, and closed the books, saying there was no significant evidence proving any Americans still lived. And you call yourself a man of honor.
Why does what happened three decades ago pertain to today? You betrayed many in our country then, and if elected President, you will do it again. A leopard cannot change its spots, but a chameleon changes colors whenever it’s advantageous.
I ran into an orphaned, unsighted chameleon in the jungle, and he asked me what type of animal he was.
I said, “You have beady eyes, you’re slimy, very low, you change colors to blend into your environment, whenever you move you look crooked, and it doesn’t look to me like you have any testicles.”
The chameleon responded, “Heaven help me. I must be John F. Kerry.”
John Forbes Kerry, I do not hate you. My words are direct and strong, because I simply do not like you, respect you, or trust you, and do not want our country put in harm’s way by your Presidency, because, unlike you, I am a man of honor. You are not. Never will be. You are simply a chameleon. We are at war, and you have already proven the type of loyalty you display to American’s fighting men and women during war.
