John Kerry: friend of Vietnam veterans?

In case you haven't heard, John Kerry is a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War. Just listen to him for a couple of minutes and he'll tell you.

That's funny, he made a big show of tossing away some medals once when he thought it might advance his career. Is it possible that he really didn't mean it?

Now Kerry is angling for a vote from veterans. He is presenting himself as their friend. Is he?

That depends - can they be used to further his career? When it looked like he might do better to dump on them, he wrote a book called "The New Soldier" as noted here on Betsy's Page and The Patriette.

Then there's this:

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 23, 1971, Kerry claimed under oath that American soldiers had “raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam.”

He dramatically told reporters that such atrocities were the norm, not rare exceptions, for U.S. soldier behavior. This Kerry false blood libel against honorable soldiers gave protestors a kind of license to protestors to attack, belittle and ridicule soldiers returning to America.

So beware, Vietnam vets. You might not want to follow John Kerry into battle this time.