Kerry Lied, Men Died

I’ve written before about the War Dogs of Vietnam, and how they were tragically left behind after Vietnam ended. This was a heartbreak for the handlers who grew to love them. But did you know that we left behind SERVICEMEN, TOO??? And that John Kerry and John McCain had a hand in it?

In the past I’ve written about John Kerry and John McCain, and how they made sure that evidence of their fellow service members who were still in Vietnam and ’survived into captivity’ was buried when they were on the 1991-92 Senate Select Committee on POW and MIA Affairs. There are numerous examples of the despicable behavior of both of these men toward their fellow service members.

We are looking for someone who can identify these two men:

There are, in fact, at least 19 servicemen that we know ’survived into captivity’ who the POW/MIA families have been pleading the government to help find out what happened, yet Kerry, in cold-hearted response, rolls his eyes and says “talk to my aid, I don’t have time for this.’

Nine servicemen, acknowledged by the Vietnamese as “captured alive” are:

Carlos Ashlock, James T. Egan, Jr., Robert L. Greer, Roger D. Hamilton, Gregory J. Harris, Donald S. Newton, Madison A. Strohlein, Robert L. Platt and Fred Schreckengost. Remains for both Greer and Schreckengost were recovered. Commenting on Greer and Schreckengost, Tourison notes; “During the recovery of their remains in 1990 Vietnamese officials acknowledged they had been captured alive and killed in captivity. The U.S. Marine Corps still does not list them as having died in captivity but to have died while in a MIA status.”

Of the 7 remaining “new POWs” Tourison offers the following information:

Carlos Ashlock – “Vietnam has now acknowledged that Corporal Aslock (sic) was captured alive in Quang Ngai Province. His eventual fate has not yet been determined.”

James Egan, Jr. — – “Vietnam has now acknowledged that Lieutenant Egan was captured alive and has reported that he died in captivity in December 1968.”

[It should be noted that Egan’s name was not on the list of POWs who died in captivity presented in Paris in January 1973. Yet, based on this new information Egan survived in captivity for almost 3 years, from January 21, 1966 to December 1968. As no other POW reported seeing Egan in captivity, where was he held?]

Roger D. Hamilton – “Vietnam has now acknowledged that Lance Corporal Hamilton was captured alive in Military Region 5. His eventual fate has not yet been determined.”

Gregory J. Harris – “Vietnam has now acknowledged that Corporal Harris was captured alive. His eventual fate has not yet been determined.”

Donald Newton – “Vietnam has now acknowledged that Sergeant Newton was captured alive and taken to Hospital 102 of Military Region 5. His eventual fate has not yet been determined.”

Robert L. Platt – “Vietnam has now acknowledged that Private First Class Platt was captured alive. His eventual fate has not yet been determined.”

Madison Strohlein – “Vietnam has now acknowledged that Sergeant Strohlein was captured alive on June 22, 1971 in Quang Nam Province. His eventual fate has not yet been determined.”

Whatever the reason, this information was not made public during the life of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs.

Added to the list of men who “survived into captivity” are: Richard C. Bram, John F. Dingwall, Fredric M. Mellor, Charles J. Scharf/ Martin J. Massucci, John F. O’Grady, Thomas A. Mangino, Paul A. Hasenbeck, David M. Winters, Daniel Nidds, and John T. McDonnell.

John Kerry, who prides himself as a veteran, who stood in front of the American people saluting, saying he was ‘reporting for duty’, doesn’t have time for the families of these servicemen, his brothers at arms. He doesn’t have time to see to it that they return home. He doesn’t have time to put their families’ hearts to rest and solve the mysteries or answer the questions surrounding their ’survival into captivity’ at the hands of the Vietcong. On top of all of that, he met with the Vietcong and quickly accepted their lies that the POW issue was closed. This is reminiscent of Jane Fonda passing the palmed notes from American POWs back to their Vietcong captors.

It isn’t enough that Kerry found a legal loophole to cut and run from Vietnam after just four months of service (running from the enemy), or that he returned and joined Jane Fonda’s Vietnam Veterans Against the War as a spokesman, or that he met with Madame Binh in Paris to come back and talk the communist talking points, or filmed himself on the battlefield with his own Super 8 camera for his political campaigns later. It isn’t enough that he claimed Christmas in Cambodia was seared in his memory…in true John Kerry style, years later, sitting on the Senate Select Committee on POW and MIA Affairs, he made sure he crushed any hope for the families of POW/MIAs awaiting news or word of their loved ones’ fates.

The horrible emotional toll of not knowing if your loved one is alive or dead, or just wanting to bring them home for a proper burial is a devastating reminder of what kind of man we’re dealing with in John Kerry; someone who puts his political aspirations, and friendships with other lying communists, above all else.

Ted Sampley has written about this, too. See his bio, here.

Sampley points out that Kerry isn’t the only one to have taken part in burying evidence that there were POW/MIAs alive in Vietnam;

“the person in Washington who has done more to bury the POW/MIA issue than any other elected official is none other than U.S. Senator John McCain from Arizona, himself a former POW.”

The POW/MIA families will readily supply file folders inches thick of correspondence related to Kerry and McCain’s betrayal.

The Select Committee, established in August 1991, was tasked with the mission of resolving the lingering POW/MIA issue by either gaining the release of American prisoners of war believed to be alive under the control of Hanoi, but never released, or explaining what happened to the missing prisoners.

In hindsight, it is obvious that McCain and Kerry were more interested in using the Select Committee as a means to justify lifting the U.S. imposed trade embargo against Vietnam than resolving the issue of missing U.S. servicemen.

From the onset of the hearings, Kerry and McCain’s obvious bias for Vietnam were the source of many confrontations between the Select Committee and the POW/MIA activists.

At one point during the Select Committee hearings, the Kerry/McCain team were caught coaching DIA witnesses on how to discredit satellite imagery that showed the presence of living U.S. POWs in both Vietnam and Laos. When the activists found out about the witness tampering, they confronted Kerry and demanded his resignation. Numerous letters were written to the Select Committee demanding an outside investigation of the incident.

To deflect attention from their many clearly unethical acts, Kerry and McCain teamed up again and turned on the activist, managing to divert the entire Select Committee away from investigating Vietnam focusing instead on investigating the POW/MIA families and activist for alleged fraudulent fund raising.

The Kerry/McCain team disguised their investigation of the POW/MIA families and activists and the subpoenaing of private and organizational financial records by claiming they only wanted “to get to the truth.” Kerry and McCain explained that they were looking for “professional predators” who were at work within the POW/MIA issue “feeding on the false hopes of the POW/MIA families.”

By 1994, the way was clear for Kerry and McCain to provide political cover for President Clinton with his efforts to lift the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam.

In a smoothly choreographed political maneuver, Clinton used the two “Vietnam War heroes” and their “no POWs are left alive conclusion” as justification to lift the trade embargo…having them stand side by side with him when he made the announcement.

At the same time, to ensure that the POW issue could be not be resurrected by the POW/MIA families and activist, Kerry and McCain consummated their deceit by spoon feeding tainted and false data to Susan Katz Keating, an ambitious Washington Times reporter with intiment ties to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). She planned writing a bestseller book - Prisoners of Hope - with information spoon fed her by DIA.

Col. Joe Schlatter has kept the lies in Keating’s failed book alive by posting it’s contents on the Internet on news groups such as alt.war.vietnam.

By 1997, he had created a “MIA Facts” web domain www.miafacts.org/

Kerry and McCain also relied heavily on a secret Pentagon collaborator, Army Col. Joe Schlatter who from 1986 to 1995, was tasked with running the Defense Intelligence Agency Special Office for POW-MIA Affairs.

Schlatter’s job while heading the POW/MIA office was to correlate and interpret the hundreds of intelligence reports about living American POWs left in Southeast Asia that were pouring into the Pentagon.

Schlatter had actually early on in his assignment begun to systematically kill on paper the several hundred U.S. servicemen described as prisoners in the intelligence reports.

Later, when called upon by the Kerry/McCain team, Schlatter joined in attempting to discredit (killing the messenger) any individual or group that got in the way of plans to normalize U.S. trade relations with Vietnam.

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On November 5, 1991, then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney said: “The families of POW’s and MIA’s have been, and will continue to be, our most important constituents. This nation is committed to keeping the faith with every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, and civilian until the fullest possible accounting is achieved. We owe them, and their families, nothing less. We will not rest until the job is done.”

We know there are any number of fraudsters out there who are making hay on this issue. There are people selling bones, there are people doctoring photographs, telling made-up stories, to the point where the MIA issue has become so clouded with haze that MIA families have been painted as “the MIA cult”. People should stop a moment and have some compassion for people who’ve been waiting over 30 years to find word about family members who they’ve been told by the government were “MIA” or “KIA”, and then later found they ’survived into captivity’ when no remains have turned up. In some cases, these men were not classified as POWs, when it is clear that they were.

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When John Kerry was interviewed on the Tim Russert Show about releasing his records his 180 form, he said he would release them. Then, he cleverly used a magician’s trick: sleight of hand. He re-released the same records that were already out there, to his biographer, Michael Kranish, at the Boston Globe, and declared the controversy closed.

But we still have many questions about his record. We would still like to know about the 6 years between his leaving the Navy and his discharge. We would still like to know the circumstances around his purple hearts, and his having written up the paperwork to get at least one of them. We would still like to know who it was exactly who signed off on that paperwork. And the list goes on.

Because he claims to have already released his records, we’re asking that Kerry’s MIA 180 be released, just like we would like the remains of his brothers at arms released, or at least find out what happened to them, because they are still in Vietnam to this day.

Join the blogbursts to help FREE Kerry’s 180 every Tuesday!

We’ve formed a blogburst group and here are the bloggers who are contributing so far. If you want to join the blogroll for Free Kerry’s 180, click here to email me, include the url for your blog. The blogburst is every Tuesday, so don’t forget to blog about it. All you have to do is encourage Kerry to set his 180 FREE, I’ll send you the code for the blogroll.

Image: LindaSog.com

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