(10/15/2006)

Thirty five years ago John Kerry slandered an entire generation of men who fought in Vietnam branding them as a "war criminals." Today, much of the same thing is being said about our young men and women in Iraq.

Now, a lawsuit filed in Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas will test the very foundation of Kerry’s anti-war persona for the first time. It isn’t dubious medals or Kerry’s disputed service record in Vietnam that is being called into question. This time Kerry may finally be forced to answer for the events that launched his public career, one that made him an anti-war hero for many American liberals and a turncoat for millions of Vietnam veterans.

The lawsuit (Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation, et al. v. Kenneth Campbell, et al.) challenges the basis, the factual accuracy of then-Lt. (j.g.) Kerry’s acrimonious testimony before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971. It was there Kerry’s public career was catapulted with his now ubiquitous portrayal of American soldiers as murderers, rapists and torturers "who ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam . . . [and] razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan."

Kerry said then his accusations were based on the so-called "testimony" of "150 honorably discharged" Vietnam veterans who, like himself, claimed to have committed or witnessed "war crimes, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

Many if not all were members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), an organization led by Kerry and financed by Jane Fonda during the early 1970s. Now, a number of those "witnesses" will be required to testify, under oath for the first time ever, about what they really did and saw in Vietnam.

What these VVAW witnesses say could have implications reaching beyond Kerry’s veracity and reputation. Their lasting portrait of the American soldier as a blood-thirsty butcher, a baby killer, is also at stake. And that picture remains entrenched among their kind, "proof" that those serving in the U.S. military, even today, truly are a "horde of barbarians" capable of unspeakable brutalities. That is the underlying theme, the constant drumbeat from the mainstream media and others as they try to undermine the American military today.

For the anti-war, anti-American protesters, the American soldiers are the "terrorists," and the enemies are the victims of a barbaric U.S. military which tortures and murders defenseless civilians.

That false premise, one of the most vicious and enduring smears spawned by Kerry 35 years ago, will also be put to the test once Kerry’s true "Band of Brothers" are put under oath in a Philadelphia courtroom.

VVLF 

Hmmm...  I suspect the Defeatocrats will do everything they can to shut this down, but it could get interesting.  Of course, "Under Oath" means nothing to these people.