12 Questions About Vietnam For John Kerry

by John Hawkins | February 13, 2004 11:59 pm

John Kerry has been mocked[1] — and rightly so — for incessantly talking about Vietnam and comparing his service in Vietnam to Bush’s service in the National Guard.

But amazingly enough, today on the Don Imus show, John Kerry apparently grew tired of talking about the Vietnam era[2] for the first time — at least for a very short period of time — right after Don Imus asked Kerry about Jane Fonda =D….

“You know, we just move on. You know, we’re 30 years beyond that and I think people are interested in the future. I disagreed, like everyone else in America, with the choice she made at that point in time. I thought it was terrible.”

Now of course, if Bush would have been the one who had been protesting his own country after the Vietnam war, the press would be all over him like a cheap suit. But, since it’s Kerry, they’ve been giving him a free pass on what he did after the war.

However, if Kerry is going to try to tell Americans they can trust him as commander and chief based on what he did in the Vietnam era, I think he has a responsibility to answer some tough questions about his protesting days. If one is relevant, the other certainly is as well. Here are some questions I’d like to hear Kerry asked — and these are just for starters…

1) Did you and Jane Fonda once speak at a protest from the back of the same truck?
2) How much money did Jane Fonda give to Vietnam Veterans Against the War while you were leading the group?
3) When was the last time you spoke to Jane Fonda?
4) How many times would you estimate that you and Jane Fonda spoke at the same anti-war rallies?
5) Did you ever march in a rally where the flags of the Viet Cong were being flown?
6) Did you ever march at a rally where Communist groups were present during the Vietnam war?
7) When Vietnam Veterans Against the War was under your leadership, did some of its members wear “pro-communist graffitti” on their uniforms while they protested?
8) It has been said that Vietnam Veterans Against the War encouraged soldiers to desert during the war. Is that true?
9) Why did you allow people to believe that you threw your medals away for so long?
10) How does it make you feel to know that the Vietnamese read prisoners clippings about your group, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, in an attempt to break their will?
11) You once said, “War crimes in Vietnam are the rule, not the exception.” Do you still stand by that statement?
12) You once said, “To attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom . . . is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy.” Do you stand by that quote?

If the voters are going to be asked to vote for John Kerry because of his Vietnam experience, then even Democrats should be willing to admit that the American people deserve answers to these questions…