The "Other" 300; US Vietnam War POWs - Discarded, Disregarded, Abandoned and Betrayed! Will Hillary Use Them Against McCain?
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Copyright © 2008 By Ronald Winter
While Republican candidates running for the presidential nomination were slugging it out in South Carolina last week, news began seeping out in the national media that a group of Vietnam Veterans was campaigning against fellow Vietnam veteran Sen. John McCain!
That Vietnam vets would take umbrage against McCain was surprising, but to find that they were angry with him over his handling of the POW/MIA issue from that war is outright shocking, considering McCain's status as the most famous of the Vietnam era POWs. Their issues can be found at http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/
Regardless of what any individual or media outlet thinks about this issue or the people who are raising it, John McCain has to face it head on and deal with it now. If he doesn't, and he is the Republican nominee for president, you can bet whatever is of value to you that Hillary Clinton will successfully use it against him if she wins the Democratic nomination.
Anyone who doubts that should find a video of the Democratic debate in South Carolina between Clinton, Barack Obama and occasionally John Edwards on Jan. 21. Watch her. Listen to her. Learn from that confrontation and you will know what any Republican candidate who faces her can expect next fall.
The group that is opposing the Arizona senator, Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain, to some degree is questioning his conduct as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. But the bigger and more volatile issue driving the group's criticism is McCain's conduct 20 years later as a member of a Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs charged with investigating persistent reports of live sightings of American POWs in Southeast Asia.
The chairman of the select committee was John Kerry. Members of this group were also active in the 2004 election, under the heading Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry.
For those who weren't born in the Vietnam era, John McCain was a naval aviator and son of an active duty Navy admiral who was shot down on a mission over North Vietnam in 1967. He spent more than 5 years as a captive and was released with nearly 600 other American Prisoners of War who had been held by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong communists under unspeakably brutal conditions.
After the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973, America's leaders proudly proclaimed that all the POWs had come home, which the negotiators said was a direct result of their bargaining abilities in Paris, France where the Peace Accords were agreed upon and signed.
McCain came home with permanent injuries sustained during this period, as did many other prisoners. He was awarded numerous medals for valor and heroism during his captivity, and later became a US Senator with strong support in the veteran community.
But from 1991 to 1993, as a member of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, McCain's critics maintain that he sided with committee chairman, John Kerry, and between them shut down all inquiries that would have determined whether American servicemen were still alive in Southeast Asia, particularly Laos.
The committee was created on August 2, 1991; in October, 1991, Kerry was appointed Chairman, and eleven others including McCain were appointed as members; the hearings began on November 5, 1991; the Committee's Final Report was issued on January 13, 1993.
Considering that this was nearly two decades after the fall of Saigon, that the mainstream media never gave much credence to the POW issue, that the Gulf War had been fought during this time, and that Bill Clinton, a Vietnam-era draft dodger who was notoriously anti-military had been elected president, the American public was not exactly engaged in these hearings.
Thus one of the dirtiest secrets of the Vietnam era - that the US government knowingly abandoned some 300 American POWs to the Laotian communists - was allowed to slip into the record with little to no national fuss.
This is the issue that has angered veterans who are aware of it, and one way or another, John McCain is going to have to face these allegations head on. He of course was in no position to know what transpired between negotiators in Paris and Washington in 1972 and 1973, but he certainly was in a position to take a strong stand on resolving the issue when he joined the POW-MIA select committee in 1991.
Were his actions above board and simply the result of hard cold facts about the war in Indochina? Or was there a "move ahead" mentality driven by a desire after the Russians left Vietnam to regain use of the ports we had constructed at Da Nang and Cam Ranh Bay?
McCain's critics say that rather than facilitate finding the truth about the POWs, McCain was abusive to the families who testified or asked for help, and dismissive of a mountain of evidence that suggested reliable live sightings well into the late 1980s. Some have said that even Kerry treated the POW family members with more respect and consideration than McCain.
I am not in a position to know the truth about any of this. But the people who are driving this issue are passionate about it, they won't go away, and it could become the most divisive issue to hit the Republican Party in this election.
The committee report shows that American leaders knowingly left more than 300 POWs behind. There is written evidence of this, it was included in the 2007 New York Times bestseller An Enormous Crime, and it has now surfaced in the presidential primary race.
Here is why this is a major bomb as a campaign issue. The Democrats may have started the war in Vietnam, but it was the administrations of Republicans Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford that ignored the military successes on the battlefield, and allowed South Vietnam to fall. Encouraged by Henry Kissinger, first as National Security Adviser and then Secretary of State, they agreed to cease-fire terms that all but insured the non-communist southern government would fall, and stood by idly when North Vietnam violated the Paris Accords and invaded South Vietnam in 1975.
The repatriation of American POWs held by the communists was one of the most compelling issues driving the American negotiations during the peace talks. Ultimately an agreement was reached that supposedly gave the United States "Peace With Honor" in Nixon's terms, but which in fact sealed South Vietnam's fate, and didn't even secure the release of all American prisoners.
Nixon, Kissinger and other administration officials were responsible for not insisting on conditions favorable to the south before the accords were signed. Ford was in office after Nixon stepped down during Watergate, and made speeches in 1974 reassuring the communists that the US would do nothing to help South Vietnam even if the communists violated the terms of the accords.
The Nixon Administration was well aware of the 300 left in Laos, since both sides had lists supposedly containing the names of all servicemen known to have been captured. But from the outset, the US list was much longer than the communists' lists. American knew of hundreds of servicemen who disappeared in Laos, but the communists only listed 10.
From the summary of the 1993 Select Committee report: The Nixon administration sent a message to the Vietnamese communists stating, "US Records show there are 317 American military men unaccounted for in Laos, and it is inconceivable that only 10 of these men would be held prisoner in Laos."
Laos was not a party to the negotiations, and did not sign the peace accords. American negotiators said they believed North Vietnam was in charge of communist military activities in Laos, but after the prisoner exchange the North Vietnamese claimed they had no control over the actions of their Laotian counterparts.
Despite military and diplomatic options offered to the Nixon administration to resolve the issue of the missing 300, the 1993 report states that no action was taken. Once the prisoners who had been held by the North Vietnamese were returned, the report states, the issue of prisoners in Laos entered a bureaucratic limbo. Year by year, administration by administration, they slipped into oblivion, abandoned and betrayed.
Until now.
As I mentioned earlier, the mainstream media hasn't cared one whit about the fate of American POWs from the Vietnam War, nor do the elitists inside the DC Beltway, on Manhattan Island, and certainly not in the left wing of the Democratic Party. The current Democratic leadership has claimed support for the troops but not the president in the War on Terror, but that approach hasn't engendered much support from the American public.
But if Hillary Clinton decides it is an issue, then you can be assured, it will become an issue overnight.
She can and will maintain that it was Republican presidents, Republican administrations, and a Republican Secretary of State who knew the secret of the 300 POWs. The Democratic Congress may have shut off the funding to South Vietnam and forced the withdrawal of the victorious American military, but Hillary can maintain the REPUBLICANS were LYING - just as the left has claimed all along.
She can turn and twist this issue to such a degree that the vast majority of the voting public will hear only a few sound bites. Republicans Lied, POWs Died!
And remember, the co-chair of this committee was John Kerry, the Senate icon of communist collaborators, who has endorsed Hillary's strongest opponent, Barack Obama. She owes Kerry nothing and for the first time in her political life she can make a military issue work in her favor.
Hillary Clinton can win back the anti-war segment of the Democratic Party that Barack Obama seems to have cornered for the moment. Plus, she can provide evidence that American servicemen were used by the government and abandoned to a horrible fate when they ceased being an asset and instead became an embarrassing liability to the careers of DC insiders and politicians.
I have already heard respected conservative commentators saying they don't want to discuss this issue, claiming that they don't want to needlessly harm Sen. McCain's reputation or his standing. Well, they can stick their heads in the sand all they want, this issue will roll right over them and keep on going.
Hillary Clinton will not hesitate for an instant to make this an issue that she can wield to her advantage. She will bring it up, she will shove it in McCain's face, and she will drive it home.
Consider that during the debate with Obama on Jan. 21, Hillary stated with no hesitation, "I am better positioned, better able to take on John McCain," especially in the areas of defense and international relations. Regardless of what kind of relationship she had with McCain in the past, this race is for the ultimate prize and she will go for his throat to get it.
Come October, she can use this issue to make McCain's candidacy an uncertain question, rather than a dead certain landslide.
Come October, if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee and McCain is the GOP nominee, he will HAVE to answer to this issue.
But by then, it will be too late.
Copyright © 2008 By Ronald Winter
While Republican candidates running for the presidential nomination were slugging it out in South Carolina last week, news began seeping out in the national media that a group of Vietnam Veterans was campaigning against fellow Vietnam veteran Sen. John McCain!
That Vietnam vets would take umbrage against McCain was surprising, but to find that they were angry with him over his handling of the POW/MIA issue from that war is outright shocking, considering McCain's status as the most famous of the Vietnam era POWs. Their issues can be found at http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/
Regardless of what any individual or media outlet thinks about this issue or the people who are raising it, John McCain has to face it head on and deal with it now. If he doesn't, and he is the Republican nominee for president, you can bet whatever is of value to you that Hillary Clinton will successfully use it against him if she wins the Democratic nomination.
Anyone who doubts that should find a video of the Democratic debate in South Carolina between Clinton, Barack Obama and occasionally John Edwards on Jan. 21. Watch her. Listen to her. Learn from that confrontation and you will know what any Republican candidate who faces her can expect next fall.
The group that is opposing the Arizona senator, Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain, to some degree is questioning his conduct as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. But the bigger and more volatile issue driving the group's criticism is McCain's conduct 20 years later as a member of a Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs charged with investigating persistent reports of live sightings of American POWs in Southeast Asia.
The chairman of the select committee was John Kerry. Members of this group were also active in the 2004 election, under the heading Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry.
For those who weren't born in the Vietnam era, John McCain was a naval aviator and son of an active duty Navy admiral who was shot down on a mission over North Vietnam in 1967. He spent more than 5 years as a captive and was released with nearly 600 other American Prisoners of War who had been held by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong communists under unspeakably brutal conditions.
After the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973, America's leaders proudly proclaimed that all the POWs had come home, which the negotiators said was a direct result of their bargaining abilities in Paris, France where the Peace Accords were agreed upon and signed.
McCain came home with permanent injuries sustained during this period, as did many other prisoners. He was awarded numerous medals for valor and heroism during his captivity, and later became a US Senator with strong support in the veteran community.
But from 1991 to 1993, as a member of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, McCain's critics maintain that he sided with committee chairman, John Kerry, and between them shut down all inquiries that would have determined whether American servicemen were still alive in Southeast Asia, particularly Laos.
The committee was created on August 2, 1991; in October, 1991, Kerry was appointed Chairman, and eleven others including McCain were appointed as members; the hearings began on November 5, 1991; the Committee's Final Report was issued on January 13, 1993.
Considering that this was nearly two decades after the fall of Saigon, that the mainstream media never gave much credence to the POW issue, that the Gulf War had been fought during this time, and that Bill Clinton, a Vietnam-era draft dodger who was notoriously anti-military had been elected president, the American public was not exactly engaged in these hearings.
Thus one of the dirtiest secrets of the Vietnam era - that the US government knowingly abandoned some 300 American POWs to the Laotian communists - was allowed to slip into the record with little to no national fuss.
This is the issue that has angered veterans who are aware of it, and one way or another, John McCain is going to have to face these allegations head on. He of course was in no position to know what transpired between negotiators in Paris and Washington in 1972 and 1973, but he certainly was in a position to take a strong stand on resolving the issue when he joined the POW-MIA select committee in 1991.
Were his actions above board and simply the result of hard cold facts about the war in Indochina? Or was there a "move ahead" mentality driven by a desire after the Russians left Vietnam to regain use of the ports we had constructed at Da Nang and Cam Ranh Bay?
McCain's critics say that rather than facilitate finding the truth about the POWs, McCain was abusive to the families who testified or asked for help, and dismissive of a mountain of evidence that suggested reliable live sightings well into the late 1980s. Some have said that even Kerry treated the POW family members with more respect and consideration than McCain.
I am not in a position to know the truth about any of this. But the people who are driving this issue are passionate about it, they won't go away, and it could become the most divisive issue to hit the Republican Party in this election.
The committee report shows that American leaders knowingly left more than 300 POWs behind. There is written evidence of this, it was included in the 2007 New York Times bestseller An Enormous Crime, and it has now surfaced in the presidential primary race.
Here is why this is a major bomb as a campaign issue. The Democrats may have started the war in Vietnam, but it was the administrations of Republicans Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford that ignored the military successes on the battlefield, and allowed South Vietnam to fall. Encouraged by Henry Kissinger, first as National Security Adviser and then Secretary of State, they agreed to cease-fire terms that all but insured the non-communist southern government would fall, and stood by idly when North Vietnam violated the Paris Accords and invaded South Vietnam in 1975.
The repatriation of American POWs held by the communists was one of the most compelling issues driving the American negotiations during the peace talks. Ultimately an agreement was reached that supposedly gave the United States "Peace With Honor" in Nixon's terms, but which in fact sealed South Vietnam's fate, and didn't even secure the release of all American prisoners.
Nixon, Kissinger and other administration officials were responsible for not insisting on conditions favorable to the south before the accords were signed. Ford was in office after Nixon stepped down during Watergate, and made speeches in 1974 reassuring the communists that the US would do nothing to help South Vietnam even if the communists violated the terms of the accords.
The Nixon Administration was well aware of the 300 left in Laos, since both sides had lists supposedly containing the names of all servicemen known to have been captured. But from the outset, the US list was much longer than the communists' lists. American knew of hundreds of servicemen who disappeared in Laos, but the communists only listed 10.
From the summary of the 1993 Select Committee report: The Nixon administration sent a message to the Vietnamese communists stating, "US Records show there are 317 American military men unaccounted for in Laos, and it is inconceivable that only 10 of these men would be held prisoner in Laos."
Laos was not a party to the negotiations, and did not sign the peace accords. American negotiators said they believed North Vietnam was in charge of communist military activities in Laos, but after the prisoner exchange the North Vietnamese claimed they had no control over the actions of their Laotian counterparts.
Despite military and diplomatic options offered to the Nixon administration to resolve the issue of the missing 300, the 1993 report states that no action was taken. Once the prisoners who had been held by the North Vietnamese were returned, the report states, the issue of prisoners in Laos entered a bureaucratic limbo. Year by year, administration by administration, they slipped into oblivion, abandoned and betrayed.
Until now.
As I mentioned earlier, the mainstream media hasn't cared one whit about the fate of American POWs from the Vietnam War, nor do the elitists inside the DC Beltway, on Manhattan Island, and certainly not in the left wing of the Democratic Party. The current Democratic leadership has claimed support for the troops but not the president in the War on Terror, but that approach hasn't engendered much support from the American public.
But if Hillary Clinton decides it is an issue, then you can be assured, it will become an issue overnight.
She can and will maintain that it was Republican presidents, Republican administrations, and a Republican Secretary of State who knew the secret of the 300 POWs. The Democratic Congress may have shut off the funding to South Vietnam and forced the withdrawal of the victorious American military, but Hillary can maintain the REPUBLICANS were LYING - just as the left has claimed all along.
She can turn and twist this issue to such a degree that the vast majority of the voting public will hear only a few sound bites. Republicans Lied, POWs Died!
And remember, the co-chair of this committee was John Kerry, the Senate icon of communist collaborators, who has endorsed Hillary's strongest opponent, Barack Obama. She owes Kerry nothing and for the first time in her political life she can make a military issue work in her favor.
Hillary Clinton can win back the anti-war segment of the Democratic Party that Barack Obama seems to have cornered for the moment. Plus, she can provide evidence that American servicemen were used by the government and abandoned to a horrible fate when they ceased being an asset and instead became an embarrassing liability to the careers of DC insiders and politicians.
I have already heard respected conservative commentators saying they don't want to discuss this issue, claiming that they don't want to needlessly harm Sen. McCain's reputation or his standing. Well, they can stick their heads in the sand all they want, this issue will roll right over them and keep on going.
Hillary Clinton will not hesitate for an instant to make this an issue that she can wield to her advantage. She will bring it up, she will shove it in McCain's face, and she will drive it home.
Consider that during the debate with Obama on Jan. 21, Hillary stated with no hesitation, "I am better positioned, better able to take on John McCain," especially in the areas of defense and international relations. Regardless of what kind of relationship she had with McCain in the past, this race is for the ultimate prize and she will go for his throat to get it.
Come October, she can use this issue to make McCain's candidacy an uncertain question, rather than a dead certain landslide.
Come October, if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee and McCain is the GOP nominee, he will HAVE to answer to this issue.
But by then, it will be too late.
Copyright © 2008 By Ronald Winter
posted by Ron Winter at 9:10 AM
2 Comments:
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the - Web Reconnaissance for 01/23/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
If Hillary & McCain are the best we get...I'm turning in my voter card.
I will not support either one.
We have a manipulator or a weakling. That is the best we can come up with?
God please help us.
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