BoatBanter.com - I read "The New Soldier" this weekend

And I doubt Bubbles, Vito, Gaynz will take the effort to read what a
back stabber Kerry became after returning from Vietnam. How he became
fondafied.

John F. Kerry downplayed any threat posed by the
communist government of North Vietnam in his 1971 book The New Soldier
and instead charged that American soldiers "were killing women and
children" and helping to create "a nation of refugees, bomb craters,
amputees, orphans, widows, and prostitutes..." in Vietnam.

The book, a copy of which I had to buy off ebay is very difficult
to find 33 years after it was written. Single copies of the book
are selling for as high as $849.95. The cover of the book displays
long-haired, bearded men carrying an upside down American flag in an
apparent mockery of the famous planting of the American flag on Iwo
Jima during World War II.

The book might not mean much if Kerry weren't the frontrunner in the
Democratic race for president.

But Kerry's anti-war activism of three decades ago is being attacked
by among others, a retired Green Beret, who labels the Massachusetts
senator's behavior upon returning from Vietnam "a Benedict Arnold type
of betrayal."

In the book's epilogue, which begins on page 158, Kerry sums up his
views on the war by writing, "We were sent to Vietnam to kill
Communism. But we found instead that we were killing women and
children." Kerry served in Vietnam, receiving three Purple Hearts, a
Silver Star and a Bronze Star.

The book is a compilation of testimonies from members of the anti-war
group Vietnam Veterans Against the War. It alleges abuses and crimes
committed by U.S. soldiers while on duty in Vietnam.

Kerry is listed as the author. His former brother-in-law and current
campaign adviser, David Thorne and documentary maker George Butler
were credited with editing the book.

Ted Sampley, a retired Green Beret and founder of the website
VietnamVeteransAgainstJohnKerry.com said that Kerry's book
and his anti-war activism during the early 1970s represented nothing
less than "a Benedict Arnold type of betrayal."

Sampley, a Vietnam veteran and current publisher of the U.S. Veteran
Dispatch, said "the communists used [Kerry's and his group's
allegations] and gained great propaganda value out of that."

In the book, Kerry states that Vietnamese citizens "didn't even know
the difference between communism and democracy" and he instead blamed
the United States for causing chaos in Vietnam.

"In the process we created a nation of refugees, bomb craters,
amputees, orphans, widows, and prostitutes, and we gave new meaning to
the words of the Roman historian Tacitus: 'Where they made a desert
they called it peace,'" Kerry explained.

Kerry also said he "saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and
search-and-destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism..."

But Sampley refutes Kerry's charges of widespread atrocities. "Many of
the people who made those [atrocity] allegations were not even Vietnam
veterans," Sampley said.

"From my experience of two combat tours in Vietnam, I never witnessed
anything like [Kerry] described anywhere and if I had, I would not
have allowed it to happen," Sampley said. "Most American soldiers are
really offended [by Kerry's allegations], because everyone would not
have behaved like that and it was a lie," he added.

Kerry predicted that as a result of their experiences during the war,
veterans like himself "will not readily join the American Legion and
the Veterans of Foreign Wars..."

"We will not uphold traditions which decorously memorialize that which
was base and grim," he wrote.

Long before Kerry's Democratic rival, Sen. John Edwards of North
Carolina, complained of there being "two Americas," one for the rich
and powerful, the other for the poor, Kerry was using the phrase in
his 1971 book.

"I think that more than anything, the New Soldier is trying to point
out how there are two Americas - the one the speeches are about and
the one we really are," Kerry wrote.

"We are asking America to turn from false glory, hollow victory,
fabricated foreign threats, fear which threatens us as a nation,
shallow pride which feeds off fear, and mostly from the promises which
have proven so deceiving these past ten years," Kerry added.

Kerry wrote that his tours of duty in Vietnam irrevocably transformed
his outlook on the military.

"Because of all that I saw in Vietnam, the treatment of civilians, the
ravaging of their countryside, the needless, useless deaths, the
deception and duplicity of our policy, I changed," Kerry wrote.

While Kerry maintained on page 166 that he was "still willing to pick
up arms and defend it (America) - die for it if necessary," the book
left the impression that the nature of war needed to be classified as
criminal activity.

One page after Kerry's epilogue concludes the book quotes Ernest
Hemingway calling all war "a crime."

"Never think that war no matter how necessary nor how justified is not
a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead," reads the Hemingway quote
on page 167 of Kerry's book.

So all of us veterians now know that Kerry thinks we are criminals.

Thanks for your support Kerry.

I will give your wife a call and sell my copy of your discraceful book
for 10,000 dollars. We all know your doing everything you can to hide
from your past.

Joe