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Banned
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Originally Posted by daswig
I dunno...does privately meeting with the leadership of the enemy your country is in a shooting war with, and then coming home and advocating their plan for your country's surrender qualify as giving "aid and comfort" to said enemy?
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daswig, your posts contain no linked sources. They appear to contain only unsubstantiated, accusatory statements. The information I am posting is intended for those who might confuse the "things" that you post, for facts. If I can provide a referenced alternative opinion or conclusion to one person who visits these threads with the intention of becoming more informed, it will be worth the effort. I expect that most people appreciate the option to use the web the way it was intended; as a web of connected information, with the info in my post as a starting point, or a stepping stone; a "strand" in the web. Posts that don't contain linked sources are dead ends. They distract from efficient use of the web. Notice that I am countering your "points" with info from web sources..... in contrast to the content of your posts, which appear to consist only of your opinion.
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Ad Says Kerry 'Secretly' Met With Enemy; But He Told Congress of It
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 22, 2004; Page A08
The veterans organization that sparked controversy last month when it questioned John F. Kerry's military service in Vietnam plans to launch a new commercial today that equates Kerry with Vietnam War protester Jane Fonda and accuses the Democratic presidential nominee of secretly meeting with "enemy leaders" during the conflict.
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth said it will spend $1.3 million to air its advertisement in five battleground states and on national cable television networks over the next week. The ad, titled "Friends," makes no assertion of any direct link between Kerry and Fonda, but it suggests that their contacts with North Vietnamese leaders during the war were equally dishonorable.
"Even before Jane Fonda went to Hanoi to meet with the enemy and mock America, John Kerry secretly met with enemy leaders in Paris," begins the spot, with grainy footage of the actress and a young Kerry. ". . . Then he returned and accused American troops of committing war crimes on a daily basis. Eventually, Jane Fonda apologized for her activities, but John Kerry refuses to."
The group, whose members served in the Navy at the same time as Kerry, is referring to a meeting Kerry had in early 1971 with leaders of the communist delegation that was negotiating with U.S. representatives at the Paris peace talks. The meeting, however, was not a secret. Kerry, a leading antiwar activist at the time, mentioned it in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April of that year. "I have been to Paris," he testified. "I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and Provisional Revolutionary Government," the latter a South Vietnamese communist group with ties to the Viet Cong.
Kerry's campaign said earlier this year that he met on the trip with Nguyen Thi Binh, then foreign minister of the PRG and a top negotiator at the talks. Kerry acknowledged in that testimony that even going to the peace talks as a private citizen was at the "borderline" of what was permissible under U.S. law, which forbids citizens from negotiating treaties with foreign governments. But his campaign said he never engaged in negotiations or attended any formal sessions of the talks.
"This is more trash from a group that's doing the Bush campaign's dirty work," Kerry spokesman Chad Clanton said. "Their charges are as credible as a supermarket rag."
In an interview yesterday, John O'Neill, an organizer of the Swift boat group and co-author of the anti-Kerry book "Unfit for Command," said it would be "unprecedented" for a future commander in chief to have met with enemy leaders. "It would be like an American today meeting with the heads of al Qaeda," he said.
Historian Douglas Brinkley said Kerry's trip to Paris, after his honeymoon with his first wife, Julia Thorne, was part of Kerry's extensive fact-finding efforts on the war. "He was on the fringes," said Brinkley, the author of "Tour of Duty," a book about Kerry's military service. "But he was proud of it. . . . He wanted to make his own evaluation of the situation."
The Swift boat group's first ad gained widespread exposure last month through talk-radio programs, cable television talk shows and newspaper articles because of its assertions that Kerry had exaggerated his war record as the commander of a Navy Swift boat in Vietnam.
Some of the independent organization's assertions were refuted, and several links between it and President Bush's campaign subsequently came to light. But the media storm created by the ad put Kerry and his campaign on the defensive.
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39744-2004Sep21.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39744-2004Sep21.html</a>
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<a href="http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761581713_2/John_Kerry.html">http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761581713_2/John_Kerry.html</a> VI Senate Years
Kerry arrived in Washington, D.C., in 1985, returning to the forum where he had first come to fame in 1971 as an antiwar leader. Now Kerry was leading the fight against another war: the Reagan administration’s effort to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Kerry flew to Nicaragua and met with the Sandinista leader, Daniel Ortega. Ortega shortly thereafter flew to Moscow, then still the capital of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), to pick up a $200-million loan. The Reagan White House mocked Kerry for dealing with Ortega, calling him a Soviet ally, but Kerry kept a close eye on the Reagan administration’s dealings with the small Central American country.
Soon, Kerry began to hear stories about secret U.S. assistance to a group known as the contras that was trying to overthrow the Sandinista government. Although President Reagan viewed the contras as “freedom fighters,” Kerry called them a “mercenary army” financed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In an echo of his accusations about U.S. actions in Vietnam, Kerry charged that< the contras had been “guilty of atrocities against civilians.” Kerry’s investigations helped lead to revelations of what became known as the Iran-contra scandal, in which profits from secret U.S. arms sales to Iran were illegally diverted to help finance the contras.
As a former prosecutor, and with his war experience providing him with a skeptical view of U.S. foreign policies, Kerry became known more as an investigator than a legislator. Kerry’s investigations included an examination of a banking scandal involving the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI), which engaged in fraud and laundered money from illegal drug trafficking. Some of Kerry’s critics charge that his Senate career lacked distinction because of his failure to draft and sponsor the passage of major legislation. But his defenders answer that Kerry was not known for authoring bills because that task was left to his senior colleague, Democratic senator Edward Kennedy. Nevertheless, Kerry did help write and support many key pieces of legislation. Not all of the bills fit the liberal mold that Kerry is known for. Kerry, for instance, joined Republicans in backing a deficit-reduction bill. He was a fierce critic of the abuse of illegal narcotics, working on antidrug issues with some of the most conservative Republicans, including former senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina.
Kerry also earned a reputation as a publicity seeker. He was given the nickname Liveshot for his ability to attract news coverage. But he also won many admirers who believed that Kerry was willing to tackle difficult issues. For example, Kerry worked with Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and fellow Vietnam veteran, on an investigation into whether American soldiers were still being held in Vietnam. The pair determined there was no proof that Americans were still imprisoned, and they stood by President Bill Clinton’s side in 1995 when the United States announced it was normalizing relations with Vietnam.
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<a name="Opposition_to_the_Vietnam_War"></a><h3> Opposition to the Vietnam War </h3>
<p>In April 1970, Fred Gardner, Fonda and <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Donald_Sutherland">Donald Sutherland</a> formed *FTA* ("Free The Army" or sometimes referred to by servicemen as "Fuck The Army"), an antiwar road show designed as an answer to <a href="http://http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Bob_Hope">Bob Hope</a>'s <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/USO">USO</a> tour. The tour, referred to as "political vaudeville" by Fonda, visited military towns along the West Coast, with the goal of establishing a dialog with soldiers to get their throughts on their upcoming deployments (which were later made into a movie).
</p><p>Also in 1970, Fonda spoke out against the war at a rally organized by <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Vietnam_Veterans_Against_the_War">Vietnam Veterans Against the War</a>, in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. She offered to help raise funds for VVAW, and was bestowed the title of Honorary National Coordinator for her efforts. Beginning <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/November_3">November 3</a>, she toured college campuses and raised funds for the organization. As noted by the <em>New York Times</em>, Fonda was a "major patron" of the VVAW.
</p><p>In March 1971 , Fonda travelled to Paris (some claim alone, some claim with an unnamed VVAW representative) to meet with NLF foreign minister Madam Nguyen Thi Binh . According to a transcript in which she was translated to Vietnamese and back to English, she told Binh at one point "Many of us have seen evidence proving the Nixon administration has escalated the war causing death and destruction perhaps as serious as the, bombing of Hiroshima.". Afterwards, she travelled to London. A speech that she gave in London was criticized for her discussion of the US use of torture in Vietnam. Her financial support to VVAW at this time was apparently not significant, as within a month VVAW was broke and Kerry raised the needed funds.
</p><p>Sixteen months later, Fonda went on her well-known trip to Hanoi.
</p>
<a name="Hanoi_Jane"></a><h3> Hanoi Jane </h3>
<p>Although the war was largely protested at home by this time, and many Americans were against the war, her actions in 1972 were widely perceived as over the top. The anti-war movement of the time was not characterized by a single motivation: some, such as Quakers and other traditionally <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Pacifism">pacifist</a> groups were opposed to <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/War">war</a> in any circumstances; some felt that the war was not an American responsibility or concern, arguing especially that it was a <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Civil_war">civil war</a> in which the <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/United_States">US</a> was choosing sides; some, such as young men of <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Conscription">draft age</a>, their parents and friends, didn't want their lives risked in an unpopular war; but some expressed a partisanship for the opposing side in the war, including Jane Fonda - and this made her a polarizing figure.
</p><p>She became the target of hatred from many Americans because of her visit to <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Hanoi%2C_Vietnam">Hanoi</a> where she advocated opposition to the war. Because of this visit she acquired the nickname <em>Hanoi Jane</em>, comparing her to war propagandists <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Tokyo_Rose">Tokyo Rose</a> and Hanoi Hannah . She has often been associated with contributing to a perceived anti-soldier sentiment among Vietnam War protesters, such as <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Spitting_on_soldiers_during_the_Vietnam_War">spitting on soldiers</a>. Because of her actions, John Wayne cut off all contact with her, in spite of the fact that he was a close friend of her father Henry Fonda.
</p><p>When Jane Fonda was honored by <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Barbara_Walters">Barbara Walters</a> in 1999 as one of the 100 great women of the century, sentiments regarding Fonda's actions in Vietnam were rekindled. Rumors that Fonda handed over information about U.S. soldiers to <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/National_Front_for_the_Liberation_of_Vietnam">National Liberation Front</a> (NLF) insurgents (better known in the U.S. as the "<a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Viet_Cong">Viet Cong</a>") are provably untrue, as are reports that a pilot spat at Fonda and was beaten for it and that one POW was beaten to death for refusing to meet with her. The latter story, though, may be an exaggeration of the true account of Michael Benge, a civilian advisor captured by the NLF in 1968 and held as a POW for 5 years. He wrote "When Jane Fonda was in Hanoi, I was asked by the camp communist political officer if I would be willing to meet with her. I said yes, for I would like to tell her about the real treatment we POWs were receiving, which was far different from the treatment purported by the North Vietnamese, and parroted by Jane Fonda, as 'humane and lenient.' Because of this, I spent three days on a rocky floor on my knees with outstretched arms with a piece of steel re-bar placed on my hands, and beaten with a bamboo cane every time my arms dipped." <span class='hidext'>[1]</span> <span class='txlink'>http://www.snopes.com/military/fonda.htm</span> <span class='hidext'>[2]</span> <span class='txlink'>http://www.pownetwork.org/fonda/fonda_benge_letter.htm</span>
</p>
<div style="width: 250px; float:right; margin:0 0 1em 1em; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Image:Fonda-Hanoi1.jpg" class="image"><img src="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Fonda-Hanoi1.jpg" alt="Jane Fonda in Hanoi, 1971" /></a><br />Jane Fonda
<p>in Hanoi, 1971
</p>
</div >
<p>Fonda posed for a picture at an anti-aircraft battery and participated in several radio broadcasts. She also visited American <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Prisoners_of_war">prisoners of war</a> who assured her that they had neither been tortured nor brainwashed. Fonda believed these claims and relayed them to the American public. When cases of torture began to emerge among POWs returning to the United States, Fonda called them liars. She also added, concerning the POWs she met, "These were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed." Concerning torture in general, Fonda told the <em><a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/New_York_Times">New York Times</a></em> in 1973, "I'm quite sure that there were incidents of torture...but the pilots who were saying it was the policy of the Vietnamese and that it was systematic, I believe that's a lie.". Her stance has some backing, as former vice presidential candidate and POW <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/James_Stockdale">James Stockdale</a> wrote that no more than 10% of US pilots in captivity received more than 90% of the torture, usually for acts of resistance. Additionally, John Hubbel's research into the conflict indicates that the majority (but certainly not all) of the torture occurred before 1969 (Fonda's visit was in 1973).
</p><p>To her credit, Fonda did deliver home letters from many American POWs in Vietnam. She also is often credited with publicly exposing the strategy of <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Bombing_of_Vietnam%27s_Dikes"> bombing the dikes in Vietnam</a>, for which she was at the time called a liar by then-UN ambassador <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/George_H._W._Bush">George H. W. Bush</a>. In <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/1988">1988</a>, Fonda apologized for her actions to the American POWs and their families. She has also stated:
</p><p>"I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me in an anti-aircraft gun, which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes. It hurt so many soldiers. It galvanized such hostility. It was the most horrible thing I could possibly have done. It was just thoughtless."
</p><p>In <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/U.S._presidential_election%2C_2004">2004</a>, her name was used as a disparaging epithet against <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/United_States_Democratic_Party">Democratic Party</a> presidential candidate <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/John_Kerry">John Kerry</a> by <a href="a/../Republican_Party_of_the_United_States">Republican National Committee</a> Chairman <a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Ed_Gillespie">Ed Gillespie</a>, who called Kerry a "Jane Fonda Democrat". In addition, a photograph was circulated showing Fonda and Kerry in the same large crowd at a 1970 anti-war rally, although they were sitting several rows apart.
</p><p>She funded and organized the Indochina Peace Campaign which continued to mobilize antiwar activists across the nation after the 1973 Paris Peace Agreement when most other antiwar organizations closed down.
</p><a href="http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Jane_Fonda">http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Jane_Fonda</a>
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<p> The case of Jane Fonda reveals the double standards and hypocrisies afflicting
our memories. In Tour of Duty, the Kerry historian Douglas Brinkley describes
the 1971 winter soldier investigation, which Fonda supported and Kerry attended,
where Vietnam veterans spilled their guts about "killing gooks for sport,
sadistically torturing captured VC by cutting off ears and heads, raping
women and burning villages." Brinkley then recounts how Kerry later told
Meet the Press that "I committed the same kinds of atrocities as thousands
of others," specifically taking responsibility for shooting in free-fire
zones, search-and-destroy missions, and burning villages. Brinkley describes
these testimonies in tepid and judicious terms, calling them "quite unsettling."
By contrast, Brinkley condemns Fonda's 1972 visit to Hanoi as "unconscionable,"
without feeling any need for further explanation. </p>
<p> Why should American atrocities be merely unsettling, but a trip to Hanoi
unconscionable? </p>
<p> In fact, Fonda was neither wrong nor unconscionable in what she said and
did in North Vietnam. She told the New York Times in 1973, "I'm quite sure
that there were incidents of torture...but the pilots who were saying it
was the policy of the Vietnamese and that it was systematic, I believe that's
a lie." Research by John Hubbell, as well as 1973 interviews with POWs,
shows that Vietnamese behavior meeting any recognized definition of torture
had ceased by 1969, three years before the Fonda visit. James Stockdale,
the POW who emerged as Ross Perot's running mate in 1992, wrote that no
more than 10 percent of the US pilots received at least 90 percent of the
Vietnamese punishment, often for deliberate acts of resistance. Yet the
legends of widespread, sinister Oriental torture have been accepted as fact
by millions of Americans. </p>
<p> Erased from public memory is the fact that Fonda's purpose was to use
her celebrity to put a spotlight on the possible bombing of Vietnam's system
of dikes. Her charges were dismissed at the time by George H.W. Bush, then
America's ambassador to the United Nations, who complained of a "carefully
planned campaign by the North Vietnamese and their supporters to give worldwide
circulation to this falsehood." But Fonda was right and Bush was lying,
as revealed by the April-May 1972 White House transcripts of Richard Nixon
talking to Henry Kissinger about "this shit-ass little country": </p>
<p> NIXON: We've got to be thinking in terms of an all-out bombing attack....
I'm thinking of the dikes. </p>
<p> KISSINGER: I agree with you. </p>
<p> NIXON: ...Will that drown people? </p>
<p> KISSINGER: About two hundred thousand people. </p>
<p> It was in order to try to avert this catastrophe that Fonda, whose popular
"FTA" road show (either "Fun, Travel, Adventure" or "Fuck the Army") was
blocked from access to military bases, gave interviews on Hanoi radio describing
the human consequences of all-out bombing by B-52 pilots five miles above
her. After her visit, the US bombing of the dike areas slowed down, "allowing
the Vietnamese at last to repair damage and avert massive flooding," according
to Mary Hershberger. </p>
<p> The now legendary Fonda photo shows her with diminutive Vietnamese women
examining an antiaircraft weapon, implying in the rightist imagination that
she relished the thought of killing those American pilots innocently flying
overhead. To deconstruct this image and what it has come to represent, it
might be helpful to look further back in our history. </p>
<p> Imagine a nineteenth-century Jane Fonda visiting the Oglala Sioux in the
Black Hills before the battle at Little Big Horn. Imagine her examining
Crazy Horse's arrows or climbing upon Sitting Bull's horse. Such behavior
by a well-known actress no doubt would have infuriated Gen. George Armstrong
Custer, but what would the rest of us feel today? </p>
<p> In Dances With Wolves, Kevin Costner played an American soldier who went
"native" and, as a result, was attacked and brutalized as a traitor by his
own men. But we in the modern audience are supposed to respect and idealize
the Costner "traitor," perhaps because his heroism assuages our historical
guilt. Will it take another century for certain Americans to see the Fonda
trip to Hanoi in a similar light? </p>
<p> The popular delusions about Fonda are a window into many other dangerous
hallucinations that pass for historical memory in this country. Among the
most difficult to contest are claims that antiwar activists persistently
spit on returning Vietnam veterans. So universal is the consensus on "spitting"
that I once gave up trying to refute it, although I had never heard of a
single episode in a decade of antiwar experiences. Then came the startling
historical research of a Vietnam veteran named Jerry Lembcke, who demonstrated
in The Spitting Image (1998) that not a single case of such abuse had ever
been convincingly documented. In fact, Lembcke's search of the local press
throughout the Vietnam decade revealed no reports of spitting at all. It
was a mythical projection by those who felt "spat-upon," Lembcke concluded,
and meant politically to discredit future antiwar activism. </p>
<p> The Rambo movies not only popularized the spitting image but also the
equally incredible claim that hundreds of American soldiers missing in action
were being held by the Vietnamese Communists for unspecified purposes. John
Kerry's most noted achievement in the Senate was gaining bipartisan support,
including that of all the Senate's Vietnam veterans, for a report declaring
the MIA legend unfounded, which led to normalized relations. Yet millions
of Americans remain captives of this legend. </p>
<p> It will be easier, I am afraid, for those Americans to believe that Jane
Fonda helped torture our POWs than to accept the testimony by American GIs
that they sliced ears, burned hooches, raped women and poisoned Vietnam's
children with deadly chemicals. Just two years ago many of the same people
in Georgia voted out of office a Vietnam War triple-amputee, Senator Max
Cleland, for being "soft on national defense." </p>
<a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20040322&s=hayden">Tom Hayden - March 4, 2004</a>
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Last edited by host; 10-18-2004 at 01:33 AM..
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10-11-2004, 10:49 AM
