Kerry On The Killing Fields...AGAIN!!
This IDIOT needs to keep his #$@#&(&^$# mouth shut.
In typical Kerry fashion, he acknowledges in his letter that it did happen, but faults us for taking what he said at face value and ignoring his unspoken nuances. We thought about responding, but instead we decided to let you have the last word. What follows is the text of Kerry's letter, interspersed with rebuttals from OpinionJournal readers:
Kerry: "James Taranto misinterpreted my words and misreads history (' "It Didn't Happen," ' July 26). I know the tragedy that followed a tragic war. John McCain and I led the effort to locate American POWs and ultimately normalize relations with Vietnam."
Peter Calabrese, Lewiston, N.Y.: "I have read Sen. McCain's account of your efforts to normalize relations and found them to be very Christian and perhaps the right thing to do, even though I think they got off too easy. However, although the government there has liberalized some things on an economic level because they figured out communism wouldn't work, they are still not a free society."
Kerry: "I traveled to Cambodia to help create a genocide tribunal to bring to justice the butchers of the killing fields."
Lewis Sckolnick, Lererett, Mass.: "If we prevent a genocide in Iraq, there will be no need for John Kerry to sit on another genocide tribunal."
Kerry: "But what did not happen was the region-wide war or immediate chaos predicted by many who believed we had to maintain our massive military presence in Vietnam. A brutal dictatorship consolidated power in Vietnam, the region's refugee crisis worsened, and two years after we left Vietnam, Cambodia's Khmer Rouge launched a genocide."
Lynn Cardarelli, Torrance, Calif.: "I heard Sen. Kerry's comment on tape. When bloodshed after we left Vietnam was brought up, he said that it didn't happen."
Bob White, Belle Chasse, La.: "All I can say is 'wow.' John Kerry is absolutely amazing. In one short two-sentence paragraph, he claims our military presence in Vietnam before the fall of South Vietnam was massive, and that the killing fields began two years later. In fact, our presence was minimal and the killing fields began within two months of the Democratic betrayal of South Vietnam and the welsh on our treaty-based agreements to continue funding."
Kerry: "Mr. Taranto mistakenly views the violence after 1973 as a direct result of our withdrawal. In fact, the violence arose from the conditions that led us to withdraw: a Vietnamese civil war we couldn't stop supported by a Cambodian insurgency we couldn't bomb into submission."
David Newton, Atlanta: "Civil war? I thought South Vietnam was attacked by the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong (a South Vietnamese insurgency supported by North Vietnam). I guess all those Russian missile batteries and Russian fighters were also purchased using funds from the superior North Vietnamese economy. I guess the Khmer Rouge just sprung up from internal divisions within Cambodia's society."
Kerry: "It's horrifying that so many South Vietnamese suffered. But, even accepting Mr. Taranto's estimate of 165,000 Vietnamese deaths--double that of most academic sources--this is a significant decrease from the preceding eight years when 450,000 civilians and 1.1 million soldiers were killed."
Peter Calabrese: "The problem is you count eight years' worth of casualties of war and compare them with the casualties immediately after the war. . . . Your brother Catholics there are still persecuted. Priests who speak out are still brutally tortured the way Sen. McCain was. So you have to keep the casualty count going in your calculations, and you need to debate fairly."
Betty Tolsma, Schertz, Texas: "Mr. Kerry needs to give academic sources for the civilian (450,000) and military (1.1 million) war deaths which he cites in his response to James Taranto's account of the post-Vietnam debacle."
Kerry: "We should not repeat the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq, but let's have an honest debate rather than a hysterical one. The agony of exiting a quagmire is that there are few certainties and no good options. That choice was created not by the advocates for changing course, but by the architects of a disastrous war."
Randy Watts, Rural Retreat, Va.: "Mr. Kerry exposes the illogical position of the leftist peaceniks on Iraq. No matter how many innocent civilians die because of their proposed U.S. 'cut and run,' it's not our fault. Blame it on the folks who started the war. Only the delusional left can advocate a course of action that can (and did in Vietnam and Cambodia) kill millions, and maintain that they are right because someone else is blamed for those deaths."
Will Anderson, Richmond, Va.: "While advocating an 'honest debate,' Mr. Kerry conveniently overlooks his own role in making Vietnam a quagmire. The North Vietnamese leaders knew that they did not have to win militarily if they could hold out long enough for antiwar propaganda to divide the American people. In this regard, Mr. Kerry surely exceeded Ho Chi Minh's expectations with his lurid, unsubstantiated tales of brutality by American soldiers. (Somehow the bland phrase 'advocates for changing course' fails to capture the recklessness and anti-American animus of much of the Vietnam antiwar movement.) Though he has never apologized for those defamatory statements, Mr. Kerry now has the nerve to call James Taranto 'hysterical' for pointing out the undeniable tragic consequences of our abandonment of the South Vietnamese people. If anything, Mr. Taranto was circumspect."
Peter Calabrese: "By the way, your invocation of the tired word quagmire indicates you too are still in the hysterical debate stage."
Dawn McCormick, Boca Raton, Fla.: "Sen. Kerry seems to overlook the fact that he himself was one of 'the architects of a disastrous war' by voting to send our troops to Iraq based on the same intelligence that President Bush had in 2002. Why does the senator always point the finger at others and not himself?"
And now, in ITS own words...(such a bafoon! and i am SOOOOO glad it AIN'T the CIC!!)
And I have an article here.
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