Oh great......more Vietnam ammunition for the *ies......

[MsUSA]

What is this doing in the Village Voice magazine. This is just the kind of stuff Kerry doesn't need right now. "The story I am about to lay out is one of high irony, for it is a story of how—roughly a decade ago—John Kerry, the Democrats' presidential candidate, allied himself with Dick Cheney, George Bush's vice president, on a critical issue—Vietnam prisoners of war.

Cheney was then the Secretary of Defense for the first President Bush, and Kerry, then as now a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, had been named to head the specially created Senate Select Committee on P.O.W.–M.I.A. Affairs. The committee's life ran for nearly a year and a half—from August 1991 to January 1993, when its final report was issued.

It was a voluminous, 1,223-page tome that said, in its brief executive summary, that beyond the 591 men returned in 1973 after the Nixon administration signed its peace treaty with Hanoi, "a small number" may still have been held in captivity, but that there was "no compelling evidence that proves" any of these men were still alive in 1993. Evidence but not compelling enough. Evidence but no proof. The summary read like a pinch-minded legal brief."

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0431/schanberg.php

[vi5]

1. They are doing their damndest to tear down Kerry....

Some of the stuff I've seen in that paper lately has been worse than some stuff I've seen from more conservative rags. I know they're super left and probably think Kerry is too conservative. I could see not supporting him but if I didn't know better it would seem like they are actively trying to take him down.

[demnan]

2. Who wouldn't support bringing home the POWs

that's a non-partisan issue!

[Union Thug]

3. yeah, i'm not sure how this is an attack..

...I mean, I haven't read the article, but if it is about an alliance with Cheney to investigate and bring home vietnam pows then how can it be negative? I'll read the story and decide, but on the surface it sounds pretty innocuous.

[tandot]

4. So, trying to find out what happened to Vietnam Vets declared POW/MIA

in a bi-partisan way with John McCain is a bad thing?

Vietnam War, Peace Pivotal in Kerry's Life

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50479-2004Jan2?language=printer
<SNIP>

Bob Wallace, now executive director of the Veterans of Foreign Wars' Washington office, was among the veterans who returned to Vietnam in July 1991, when the United States was allowed to open a U.S. office for POW/MIA affairs in Hanoi.

"It came about because of John Kerry," Wallace said. "We had breakfast, and he said that the Vietnamese would welcome a trip from the veterans organizations. We firmly believed that if we wanted to make our point about the POWs and MIAs, we had to do it face to face. He was the catalyst."

<SNIP>



And why would that be an ammunition for Bush? Because Kerry cares about what happened to his fellow soldiers who were fighting with him in Vietnam and never made it home? Because it would point out that Bush never served in Vietnam and never had to look death in the eye?

[markus]

5. No, this undermines their attacks in the vets community.

This is a *good* thing.

[tandot]

6. would you mind explaining your concerns about this story or was this

just another desperate hit-and-run attack?

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. I hardly see how accusations against Cheney and Kerry

are going to be used by the Bush camp - especially as the accusation is more specifically against Cheney - that he withheld information that the Nixon administration, in which he was serving, left POWs behind in Vietnam to be executed. The lesser accusation against Kerry is that he took Cheney's word that the Department of Defense was cooperating; and perhaps that he decided that the POWs would have been executed in the many years since 1973, and so it was better to normalise relations with Vietnam.

So put your mind at rest; the Bush election team is hardly going to accuse their vice-president of leaving American POWs to be executed, and then covering this up years later.

However, some people might try to use this as a way of demoralising Kerry supporters - to pretend there's no real difference between Kerry and the Bush regime. Don't accept that. Whenever you see someone saying so, tell them they're full of shit.

[On the Road]

8. Ross Perot Brought Up The POW Issue, Too

His point was that the Nixon adminstration had reported X number of POWs during the war, but after the treaty was signed, they suddenly declared that there were none. If they were serious about the original number, they lied about the lack of POWs afterwards. As I understand it, that's the issue.