Mmm...torrential.

My father was in Vietnam and it was people like Senator Kerry that destroyed his good reputation when he got home. When he first got home, although he never fought the groundwar but the air and sea war, he was still ridiculed because of people like kerry. My father still has nightmeres of the horrors of war, he never actually saw the combat first hand yet he was the one who’s duty was to find sites to bomb, and just the knowledge of knowing he destroyed lives gives him nightmeres, yet when he got home he recieved redicule for doing his duty. For me the fight against Kerry is a personal thing. People dont understand that although people change, ideals like his dont, and so that is why I believe if he is elected our defense is ....ed

Thanks for the tip, Jim, can’t wait to finally watch this in its entirety.

I just finished watching the documentary. 
There is no rationalization for what Kerry did, but leave it up to a lib to find one.

How can people turn a blind eye to these actions.  (Ive been wondering this for months, other have for years).

Post Note:  I had previously downloaded the move an watched it, so dont try comparing my timestamp.

Note: someone has already sued this film for a similar thing to Moore’s tactics; the men who they showed while talking about how fraudulent the Winter Soldiers were really did participate in the military in Vietnam.

Other than that, good documentary.

Nevermind, just caught the end, sorta crap:

John Kerry losing will help Veterans forget the torture?  Maybe his winning would open the wound wider, but losing will not make it go away.

Also, Apocolypse Now had very little if all to do with Vietnam.

*hands out copies of the high school/college standard reading, Heart of Darkness*

By the way, I just think the end is crap, not the other parts.

Maybe if they were not as blatently obvious that the film is anti-Kerry?  Like, if the thing was more of a damnation of the Winter Soldier campaign and not just Kerry himself.

yeah, Platoon would have been a better choice.

Kerry was the lead on this shit and the whole POINT is to be anti-Kerry.  This is not a film about how vets were shat upon, this is a film about how KERRY did the shitting.

Also, Apocalypse was specifically about the story in Heart of Darkness set in the Vietnam war.  Don’t pretend it wasn’t.  And why did Coppola make that juxtaposition?  Because the horrors in “Heart” were being attributed in real life to American soldiers, as a matter of *policy*, courtesy of John Kerry.  It helped seat the story in “Heart” more solidly in the minds of the viewer.

BTW, I do not criticize Apocalypse for using that trick in a work of fiction.  The movie is fan-frigging-tastic.  However, let’s not pretend it had nothing to do with Vietnam.  That would be disingenuous.  Try Googling the phrase “My film IS Vietnam.” Coppola himself will tell you you are wrong.

was this the october surprise?

That would be great.

GWB: “Oh, by the way, do you Nam vets want to know who’s mainly responcible for how you were treated after the war?”

Just the way that Kerry pronounced “Jayne-Jiss Kahn” in that snooty Beacon Hill accent is enough to make me hate his guts.

I understand that the film was deliberately anti-Kerry, but I think it seems more like a 42 minute political ad than an actual documentary (same with Moore, though nothing he has creared would count as a documentary.)

You are correct about Apocalypse Now, sorry.  I just had a far-left teacher who I thought had taught me one true thing in English (she’s a white woman in favor of reparations, who admits that OJ was guilty but the fact that he was black justifies him getting off, seeing as how almost all rich white men escape judgement for their crimes every day).

Just watched it and am tempted to try to get my mom to watch. but i dont have time for lost causes. the only way the movie would change her mind is if kerry was revealed to be a closet republican. my mom is a religious pro-lifer who votes democrat every time! she is an enigma wrapped in a moore documentary. i’m sure she’ll defend kerry the same way she defends MM. “but his intentions were good!” Heard that before?

Anyway, no more excuses, Kerry supporters.  Watch the film.

I did as soon as I saw the link.  I’ll post a review in the forums momentarily, if there isn’t one already.

Kerry is fan-frigging-tastic and your english teacher is an fing moron.

SoulEata:

was this the october surprise?

I’m assuming it is.

I just watched it. And my reaction is confusion. How could someone be about furthering themself SO much, as to tarnish the reputation of so many men and women?

How? How can you live with all that guilt? Does the man feel any guilt at all? :/

Aww shoot, I paid 5 bucks to download it just the other day. I should have waited! Oh well, it went to a good cause… right?

I only get audio with the wmv (Media Player)...no video dammit.

Speaking of stolen honor what about the goose that john “elmer fudd” kerry had to shoot the other day to prove to everyone that he is “a normal everyday joe”

Man that was terrible. The music just made it so lame, I couldn’t take it seriously, who produced this crap?

Feel an inner hurt that no surgeon’s scapal could remove

haha, get bent

Maybe if they were not as blatently obvious that the film is anti-Kerry?

Um....sir? Megumi?

It is not the people of the Winter soldier group that are now seeking to be commander in cheif, it is John Kerry..*Try* to get that through your head.

For everyone else:

Folks, do me a favor and watch that documentary and tell me: Does John Kerry deserve to be the Commander of all of the Troops of the USA, the same troops he lied about and caused so much suffering to happen to? Can you understand why so many veterans are disgusted even by his nomination for the position?

If any of you people watch this film and still vote for this man, you are as bad as he is. You don’t deserve the freedom us veterans have sacrificed to secure for you. Yet you will enjoy it becasue better men and women than you have sacrificed for you and will continue to do so,despite your ignorance and malice. Shame on every one of you if you do. This issue goes way beyond any party lines and you should have enough respect for those who bleed in your stead to do the right thing.

This documentary will not go away. Good men and women will see it and NEVER want to serve under Kerry. If anything was ever going to bring about a draft, it is the idea that Kerry would be the commander in cheif.

Remember that.

the day they build a monument for Benedict Arnold in Washington D.C. is the day i vote for kerry

Hey Humpty, troll.

Why don’t you move along? You’re adding nothing to the conversation.

haha because I’m bored. I’ll give you guys that, there are plenty liberals that troll this site for a laugh. Cheers. On topic though, I enjoy documentry’s like that, if it was a real documentary it would be really interesting, obviously the anti-war movement in America had dire consequences for so many US troops held in captivity. The guy that was talking about seeing Jane Fonda outside the prison in North Vietnam was pretty amazing.

I have downloaded it, though i’m already voting bush..i’m just so worried kerry will win, i hope this does soem major damge..even a little could be the difference in this election.

has this swung anyone on this site?  i have never heard from this swinging voters on here, I’d be very interested to hear their opinion.

Does this movie make them lean to Bush?

Most people on here are staunch Bush or Kerry supporters and this movie is just brushed off in either direction.

I have watched the film, and, frankly, I am disappointed that people dedicated to holding Moore accountable for his tactics in making movies are failing to hold the same standard to this film, simply because they happen to agree with the content.

I think the film is full of exaggerations, slight-of-hand, and assertions with little evidence to back up its claims. As no doubt I am going to get wildly attacked over this post (!), I am a little annoyed that I don’t have more time to do research in advance.

The slight-of-hand... such as the Fonda/Kerry pic. Guilt by (visual) association, and gives the impression that Kerry supported Fonda’s trip at the time, which he most certainly did not. Also the claim that Kerry had a “secret” meeting in Paris, which was anything but, given that he spoke about the meeting in his public testimony. This should be Moorewatch’s bread-and-butter.

The exaggerations... lets start that at each and every opportunity it gets, the film spends long passages claiming Kerry’s testimony was accusing ALL vets of horrific actions. This is an exaggeration. I think it is fair to argue that Kerry’s testimony did damage to the image of Vietnam vets, and this film successfully argues this point. To this day Kerry has regretted that his language was more strong than it should have been.

BUT to argue Kerry was explicitly accusing ALL vets of these crimes is, itself, outrageous. In fact he was repeating (and made it clear at the time this was so) stories that had been told to him of other people’s experiences. Furthermore, he made his position clear that often he was holding superiors accountable for their tactics in warfare, not the individual soldiers. Lastly is the issue of truth - if these accusations were true (I’ll deal with this later), it would be unreasonable of the people interviewed to be angry at the testimony, simply because it wasn’t true in their cases.

The assertions with little evidence... Firstly is the assertion that many of the so-called Vietnam Veterans Against the War were discovered as frauds. No evidence at all (there may be evidence, but this film didn’t provide it).

Secondly is the assertion that Kerry’s testimony kept the POWs in Vietnam longer. I do not understand exactly how this conclusion is reached, but considering the comment was also made in the film that if the war had ended earlier (as the anti-war movement wished) then there would have been no further use for the POWs and they would have been murdered, I don’t understand how they can argue both ways. They accuse Kerry of both keeping them in jail longer by prolonging the war, and attempting to shorten the war leading to immediate deaths of POWs. I think this is unreasonable, but I’d be very open to someone explaining this one to me.

Thirdly, the film accuses Kerry’s testimony of contributing to the torture inflicted upon POWs, even though two of the film’s interviewees have said elsewhere that by the time Kerry testified in 1971, torture was no longer being used. This is not to say that Kerry’s words weren’t used in interrogation, but that’s not all the film says, and it’s creating a false impression.

Lastly, the film lacks in-depth analysis of whether Kerry’s testimony in and of itself was truthful. Were atrocities committed? The sum total of the evidence in this film was the say-so of a handful of veterans who were doubtless themselves perfectly innocent. Does this mean atrocities were not committed and Kerry was point-blank lying? Not according to FactCheck.org (an unbiased observer). Check out this article which discusses Kerry’s 1971 testimony. Sample text: “... since Kerry testified, ample evidence of other atrocities has come to light”.

The central message of the film (to my understanding) is this: Kerry’s testimony was damaging to POWs in Vietnam at the time, and all Vietnam veterans since. I understand this, and I understand that some may feel anger at what was an unfortunate, tragic state of affairs. But Kerry, it seems to me, was in an impossible position. He saw something that he thought was wrong, and he spoke up about it. To his mind (and he may have been wrong) the cessation of hostilities in Vietnam which is what he was working towards may have saved many, many lives. To argue that Kerry’s primary purpose in his actions was to further his own political career at the expense of POWs’ treatment is just as blinkered and partisan a picture of history than anything Moore has cobbled together.

I have posted the link on a few boards, trying to get the word spread around!

I love bittorrent, i just dled the movie in 13mins at 360kb/sec

Kuwashima, I thought it was a very interesting comment with many interesting points which I do hope will be taken into account

To his mind (and he may have been wrong) the cessation of hostilities in Vietnam which is what he was working towards may have saved many, many lives

At what expense? are you denying the fact that returning soldiers were treated like pariahs?
in the clips of kerry that i have seen, he speaks of the war crimes, which he contributed to, as though they were happening all over the place. he DID NOT just present a couple of examples, if so he should have said something like : in (insert vietnam city here) i witnessed rapings and pillagings by so and so. instead he uses this jessie jackson like rant, listing all the possible things the soldiers could of done to the vietnamese. that is not testimony, it is a damning rant by a man who decided he wanted to be president before he even went to war.

Furthermore, he made his position clear that often he was holding superiors accountable for their tactics in warfare, not the individual soldiers.

it must not have been clear enough, because i missed it.

Just a couple of random thoughts.

The sum total of the evidence in this film was the say-so of a handful of veterans who were doubtless themselves perfectly innocent. Does this mean atrocities were not committed and Kerry was point-blank lying?

No. This means that the only proof of atrocities are the testimony of people caught lying, repeatedly. And not just Kerry.

Or do we want to bring out the Dan Rather “proof is false, story is true” approach to facts?

And the “say-so of a handful of veterans”, which by the way includes the Swift Boat Vets & POW for truth (which are far more than a handful!), is damning evidence in civilized countries.

But Kerry, it seems to me, was in an impossible position. He saw something that he thought was wrong, and he spoke up about it.

That’s my problem, right there. He saw. Like his Cambodia mission, seared-seared in his mind? He has no credibility.

To his mind (and he may have been wrong) the cessation of hostilities in Vietnam which is what he was working towards may have saved many, many lives.

Go tell that to the people who have now had 30 years of communist domination.

Saved lives? Sure. As leaving Saddam be would have had.

Cool. Thanks, JimK, I’ve been wanting to see this.

kuwashima:
what you and factcheck.org fail to mention that there were vvaw members like excutive secretary Al Hubbard who lied about even being in Vietnam

Steve Pitkin another vvaw member admitted that he lied over 30 years ago about atrocities

go to wintersoldier.com and you can find steve pitkins story

Kuwashima,

You ask how the anti-war movement prolonged the veitnam war. Well, there have been plenty of documents by the veitcong releaced saying they would have given up, were it not for the anti war movement in america, and how much encuragemnt they were getting from them.

... I wonder if there’s a pattern going on today in Iraq with Michael Whore…

No. This means that the only proof of atrocities are the testimony of people caught lying, repeatedly. And not just Kerry.

Francesco, I’m sorry, but I’m just going to take the word of FactCheck.org and other military researchers and authors (see quote below) over your partisan assertion.

nuyorker, I agree that many in the Winter Solider Investigation may have been frauds, and that FactCheck omits this info. However, the none of the evidence for atrocities committed on the FactCheck article actually comes from Winter Soldier testimony… For those who didn’t make it to the bottom of the FactCheck article:

And since Kerry testified, ample evidence of other atrocities has come to light:

Son Thang: In 1998, for example, Marine Corps veteran Gary D. Solis published the book Son Thang: An American War Crime describing the court-martial of four US Marines for the apparently unprovoked killing 16 women and children on the night of February 19, 1970 in a hamlet about 20 miles south of Danang. The four Marines testified that they were under orders by their patrol leader to shoot the villagers. A young Oliver North appeared as a character witness and helped acquit the leader of all charges, but three were convicted.

Tiger Force: The Toledo Blade won a Pulitzer Prize this year for a series published in October, 2003 reporting that atrocities were committed by an elite US Army "Tiger Force” unit that the Blade said killed unarmed civilians and children during a seven-month rampage in 1967. “Elderly farmers were shot as they toiled in the fields. Prisoners were tortured and executed - their ears and scalps severed for souvenirs. One soldier kicked out the teeth of executed civilians for their gold fillings,” the Blade reported. “Investigators concluded that 18 soldiers committed war crimes ranging from murder and assault to dereliction of duty. But no one was charged.”

“Hundreds" of others: In December 2003 The New York Times quoted Nicholas Turse, a doctoral candidate at Columbia University who has been studying government archives, as saying the records are filled with accounts of atrocities similar to those described by the Toledo Blade series. “I stumbled across the incidents The Blade reported,” Turse was quoted as saying. “I read through that case a year, year and a half ago, and it really didn’t stand out. There was nothing that made it stand out from anything else. That’s the scary thing. It was just one of hundreds.”

"Exact Same Stories": Keith Nolan, author of 10 published books on Vietnam, says he’s heard many veterans describe atrocities just like those Kerry recounted from the Winter Soldier event. Nolan told FactCheck.org that since 1978 he’s interviewed roughly 1,000 veterans in depth for his books, and spoken to thousands of others. “I have heard the exact same stories dozens if not hundreds of times over," he said. "Wars produce atrocities. Frustrating guerrilla wars produce a particularly horrific number of atrocities. That some individual soldiers and certain units responded with excessive brutality in Vietnam shouldn’t really surprise anyone."

RepublicNinja, thanks, fair point that fills in the argument a little more. Any evidence you can point to for that...?

That was some powerful stuff. If that doesn’t change a few minds nothing will.

That was some powerful stuff. If that doesn’t change a few minds nothing will.

some people will never let a small thing like the truth influence them. They are called liberals.

People defending Kerry always refer to his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  When he provided that testimony he was very careful and cautious in his wording.

But bear in mind, it wasn’t just there that he slandered his fellow veterans.  He went on multiple television shows, magazine interviews, and every possible publicity event he could.  And what he said at those other events was more damning and damaging than his Senate Foreign Relations testimony.

He tried, judge, and convicted his fellow veterans in the court of public opinion.  He turned his countrymen against his band of brothers, in order to put himself in the public eye, to promote his first (and unsuccessful) run for senate.

Now 30 years later he calls himself a war hero in his run for presidency.  He wants to have it both ways.  That’s a kind of hypocrisy I just can’t support.  A blatant disregard for the soldier’s lives that he ruined.  The men who returned home to a demoralized country that considered them war criminals.  They suffered from depression, drug and alcohol addiction, and some turned to suicide.  Kerry was a major player in the events that lead to their treatment.

Kerry has no shame, no soul, he’s a politician through and through.  I’m not voting for Bush, but I’m SURE AS HELL not voting for Kerry.  I’d rather vote my conscience and be stuck with Bush for 4 more years.

People defending Kerry always refer to his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  When he provided that testimony he was very careful and cautious in his wording.

the way it is used in the film makes it a reasonable satrt of an discussion.

...war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

the vietnam war was a bloody and dirty one. you might excuse or defend this stuff, but you re not seriously trying to deny it?!?

Now 30 years later he calls himself a war hero in his run for presidency.  He wants to have it both ways.

surely you can be a war hero and critical about what you did (or war in genneral) at the same time. i can t see any contradiction here!

So let’s talk about atrocities… Like the VC booby-trapping American corpses with grenades and claymores, so when we tried to recover our dead, more of our troops died.  Let’s talk about the children running up to our soldiers with satchel charges.  Or the cleaning lady for the hotel that my parents were quartered in who brought down the neighboring building (also being used to quarter our troops) with C4 on the elevator cables.  She had been smuggling it in a pinch at a time.  When they caught her, there was a wad of C4 the size of a cantaloupe in my parents’ building.  Funny, you don’t hear about the inhuman things that our enemies did.  Only what our troops were accused of.

And so far as hearing the same stories over and over from hundreds of soldiers (or thousands), don’t you think that it’s possible that they were all repeating the stories that they heard?  Kinda like an urban legend… How many of us have a collective recollection of something that “happened” but never did?  Thousands of people claim to have owned a rocket firing Boba Fett, but that figure never made it to production.  Or how about the kid in the neighborhood who died from eating pop rocks and drinking soda?  Oh, and let’s not forget that Tommy Hilfiger is a racist who spewed forth a diatribe about his customers on Oprah.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there were some atrocities committed, but don’t you think that some of them were fish stories?  Kinda interesting that all of these people objected to these heinous crimes, but no one ever stepped forward and gave a name.  Or dates.  Or places.  If crimes were committed by individuals shouldn’t those crimes be investigated and those guilty punished?  All the winter soldiers did was put forth rumor and hearsay as fact.  The fucked up thing is because we don’t know the whos, whys or whens about it, it can’t be refuted.  Actually, it’s damn near impossible to prove a negative anyway.

But in the end, it was all of the vets who suffered because of John Kerry and his ilk. 

Sir Not Appearing In This Film

I just got finished watching it thanks to the torrent link...(7 or 8 hours, and thats on cable)
It really seemed to be two seperate thing entertwined. One was trying to just go through what the POWs went through, which without a doubt shouldn’t have happened, and it was really powerful to hear what they went through and how the anti-war movement in the U.S. hurt their morale and made it harder to endure.

The second part was Kerry, and that was the part that I thought was less convincing. What I seemed to notice, and maybe it was just me, was that they’d play something that Kerry had said, and then the naration would try to make what he said seem more extreme than it was, and that had a dishonest feel to it, to me.
I’m not saying he was in any way, shape, or form right in doing what he did, and the gall he has to have spoken out then and now try to use Vietnam as a reason he should be president is, to me, repulsive. But I think that the documentary would’ve been more honest if they’d let Kerry’s quotes speak for themselves rather than having to frame them with criticisms from the narration. I think it would’ve been a lot clearer message and would have seemed like the documentary on the whole had less of a bias if they’d let the veterans do the talking on that...their voices were more than powerful enough.

mechareaper, your father suffers from a guilty conscience. Veterans are all victims of war (on both sides.) Our parents teach us lies. They don’t mean to, of course, but they don’t want to face the fact that their parents told them lies, too.

The stories get passed down from generation to generation, like the Hatfields and the McCoys, like the Muslims and the Jews. You love your father and don’t want to think that he could be wrong after having carried this pain around inside of him for all these years.

Love him, don’t judge him, and try to teach him to do the same. Just as the Vietnamese weren’t really our enemy, neither was Kerry. Everybody fights back when they feel like they are being attacked. Because he hasn’t recognized it in himself, he cannot recognize it in others.

Nobody is to blame for how he feels, he brings it on himself. War robs the living.

Fear spreads across the battlefied, and makes the person you serve with an oasis of sanity. He is the only thing you don’t fear. For Kerry to challenge the war, he removed the only thing that some felt they could trust, a fellow soldier. That is why your father feels isolated and betrayed and angry. He wants an “attaboy” and a parade after his terrible ordeal. He doesn’t want to question why he was sent in the first place. He doesn’t care anymore. For him, the war is personal, not political.

But the war was a political choice. Kerry understood that, as did many others. The generation gap was real in the 60’s and 70’s. The young soldiers did what they were told and obeyed their parents counsel.

,,,but sometimes your parents are wrong.

I love my parents, but I don’t make the choices they make in the way they make them. I teach my kids something completely different than what I was taught.

And hopefully they will have the courage to recognize what I did wrong, too, when the time comes.

blinky,

Could you please clarify exactly how mechareaper’s father is lying?  I don’t understand your post at all.  Please explain.

Strike,

nothing blinky says can be explained.

Dear everyone: ignore blinky. He’s obviously a troll. A stupid troll at that, he’s not even trying to say something he believes, he’s just trying to piss people off.

Dear Blinky: go fuck yourself.

Dear Jim: Ban his ass.

please? judging from this post and the one above this post, I don’t think he’s going to be usefull in any conversation

Oh, and Blinky, go fuck yourself.

and by ‘post,’ I mean topic. as in: the veitnam topic, and the university topic

I personally seem satisfied for the most part in regards to the responses to Kuwashima’s first post (though for me to be convinced it would be cool to have some links that support the rebuttals).  The only thing left that wasn’t addressed at least to my satisfaction is the “secret” meeting in Paris.

I don’t understand how it being a secret or not would have increased the damage.  That said, why would the film say it was secret if it wasn’t?  Personally the fact that he participated, secret or not, makes my blood boil.  I couldn’t see any reason to vote for Kerry before watching Stolen Honor.  After watching it, that hasn’t changed.  Now I genuinely have contempt for him.

After watching that, I can’t possibly see how Janus Kerry even deserves to stay in this country, much less run for President. He is nothing but a soulless, narcissistic charlatan who will say and do anything that he thinks will allow him to advance in life, even if it means stabbing his brothers-in-arms in the back. One thing’s for sure… Kerry ain’t gettin’ my vote.