The People Kerry Betrayed -- And Why He Must Not Get The Chance To Do Worse

John Kerry's Senate testimony and the Winter Soldier Investigation painted a picture of American fighting men in Vietnam as monsters raping and ravaging their way across the countryside. That picture was and is false. Ask the Vietnamese people. Michael P. Tremoglie did, and what he found was very enlightening.

A few weeks ago, I did just that. I met with a group of Vietnamese refugees--past and present. Some were among the 1980s "Boat People," who fled the horror of Communist Vietnam on rafts, boats, and pieces of driftwood, risking their lives in the process. Others were more recent arrivals. All fled the purported utopia Vietnam was supposed to become according to Kerry and his anti-war colleagues.

Ask Quyen V. Ngo.

He was a boat person rescued by an American merchant ship after three nights at sea. Fifty-nine years old, Quyen was a schoolteacher in Vietnam and a Captain in the South Vietnamese army (ARVN).

. . .

I asked him if the Communists committed genocide after they obtained power. He said the Communists killed many people. Those who were not killed were placed in re-education camps. There they worked 12 hours a day and had little food.

Ngo never witnessed any atrocities by American soldiers, neither did he hear of any American atrocities. He said he did not believe a thing Kerry said about American troops, systematically committing war crimes. He thinks Kerry fabricated this.

He felt sorry for those who opposed the war because they did not see the truth about the war and the Communists. As far as he is concerned, they betrayed the American and Vietnamese soldiers. Testimony like Kerry's, Ngo believes, resulted in encouraging the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong Communists to kill more Vietnamese and American soldiers.

Or perhaps you could ask the survivors of the Montagnards.

Currently, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has cited several examples of atrocities by Vietnam's Communist rulers. One such was the Easter week massacre. Montagnards, protesting the lack of religious freedom, were killed. According to HRW ". . . sources in the Central Highlands confirm . . . hundreds of demonstrators were wounded and many were killed by security forces . . . ."

Remember, John Kerry is the man who said in his Senate testimony that all political groups would be represented in a Communist Vietnam. We now know that to be false, and those who believed that tragically wrong.

Do we really want to give Kerry the chance to make such a mistake again, when the fate of another people rides upon his clear thinking?