Disturbing Article on Kerry and MIAs

[agitpropagent9]

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0408/schanberg.php

"Senator John Kerry, a decorated battle veteran, was courageous as a navy lieutenant in the Vietnam War. But he was not so courageous more than two decades later, when he covered up voluminous evidence that a significant number of live American prisoners—perhaps hundreds—were never acknowledged or returned after the war-ending treaty was signed in January 1973.

The Massachusetts senator, now seeking the presidency, carried out this subterfuge a little over a decade ago— shredding documents, suppressing testimony, and sanitizing the committee's final report—when he was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on P.O.W./ M.I.A. Affairs."

[NewYorkerfromMass]

1. BS. And John McCain will back Kerry up.

This shit is propoganda alright Mr. agitprop!

[molly]

3. JEEZ - they won't stop at anything will they?

[MsDemeander]

4. Who brought up Viet Nam in the first place?

If Kerry is going to run on his Viet Nam record then his record needs to be be out in the open to make an informed decision. If he has nothing to hide then bring it on.

[molly]

13. Are you admitting that you want us to

BRING IT ON!

:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick:

[MsDemeander]

20. Are you putting words in my mouth?

:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick:

[molly]

25. So be it!

[Leilani]

51. They pulled this crap on McCain

in 2000.

He has already released a statement backing John Kerry on this issue.

[MoonRiver]

39. agitprop(aganda) for * perchance?

Just asking. :shrug:

[molly]

2. Who is Sydney H. Schanberg and where did he get

his information?

[agitpropagent9]

5. yeah he's a radical right-winger

http://www.newpaltz.edu/ottaway/schanberg.html

[EXE619K]

7. Sydney Schanberg....

of the "Killing Fields" fame?

[regnaD kciN]

58. That's right...

...one of the most respected and distinguished journalists in America, and an unquestioned liberal. This isn't a Faux smear piece. If Schanberg's writing about it, it's serious stuff.

[Scairp]

8. You don't know who Schanberg is??

Wow. He is a well-known journalist and is best remembered for "The Killing Fields". He won a Pulitzer and used to write for the NYT.

[hedda_foil]

10. He explains for himself.

I was drawn to the P.O.W. issue because of my reporting years for The New York Times during the Vietnam War, where I came to believe that our soldiers were being misled and disserved by our government. After the war, military people who knew me and others who knew my work brought me information about live sightings of P.O.W.'s still in captivity and other evidence about their existence. When the Kerry committee was announced (I was by then a columnist at Newsday), I thought the senator—having himself become disillusioned about the Vietnam War, and eventually an advocate against it—might really be committed to digging out the truth. This was wishful thinking.

-----------

There's more, though, that doesn't appear in this article, damning though it is.

Colliers Vietnam contract - Chameleon Senator"
John Kerry: The Chameleon Senator
By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch
October-December 1996 Issue
http://www.usvetdsp.com/story10.htm

<major snip>

Sydney H. Schanberg, associate editor and columnist for New York Newsday and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist veteran of the Indochina War whose book, The Death and Life of Dith Pran, became the subject of the Academy Award-winning film The Killing Fields, chronicled some of Kerry's more blatant pro-Hanoi biases in several of his columns.

<snip>

In December of 1992, not long after Kerry was quoted in the world press stating "President Bush should reward Vietnam within a month for its increased cooperation in accounting for American MIAs," Vietnam announced it had granted Colliers International, based in Boston, Massachusetts, a contract worth billions designating Colliers International as the exclusive real estate agent representing Vietnam.

That deal alone put Colliers in a position to make tens of millions of dollars on the rush to upgrade Vietnam's ports, railroads, highways, government buildings, etc. C. Stewart Forbes, Chief Executive Officer of Colliers International, is Kerry's cousin. Kerry was portrayed in The New Yorker as a proud Vietnam veteran and "war hero" who, as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, dared to take on and defeat the "mendacious POW lobby."

In its 1993 final report, the Select Committee determined that live U.S. prisoners of war were left behind in the hands of the Vietnamese after the end of the war. The committee also claimed it found no "compelling" evidence proving the POWs remain alive today. Kerry's committee stopped there without answering three of the most profound questions of the entire Senate POW/MIA investigation: What happened to those U.S. prisoners of war who the Select Committee said were alive and in the hands of the Vietnamese but not released at the end of the war? If they are dead, where are their remains? Who is responsible for their deaths?

---------------

[KC21304]

24. We know all about Sampley. Sorry, you just lost my attention.

[regnaD kciN]

59. Nice way to try and duck the issue...

Sampley is irrelevant to this issue. Schanberg's story is definitely not.

[KC21304]

6. I would say a better word is disturbed.

[WiseMen]

9. Guess Flood Gates are open on anti-Kerry slime

[DuctapeFatwa]

12. If you support him, defend his actions. Won't that be more effective

than simply calling names?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

26. Kind of difficult to defend his actions based on this article since

the author offers no corroboration of his side of the story. The Village Voice is fast becoming the right wing hit piece from the left...first the article about Clark, then the article about Sharpton..now this..

They must be trying to steal Counterpunch's audience away.

[AP]

27. This article, much like the MIA-POW movement was BS manipulation

by RW'ers, and I hope Kerry supporters are honest enough to say the same thing about equivalent criticisms of Edwards.

[DuctapeFatwa]

31. Which of his corroboration is not factual? The Village Voice was hailed

as the fount of all truth a couple of weeks ago when they were all up in Sharpton's personnel choices.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

33. Read my posts on the matter. I didn't buy it then and I don't buy it now

[DuctapeFatwa]

34. So you disagree with Kerry that normalization was more important?

And I was not singling you out re voice on Sharpton, just remarking on an amusing phenomenon. I will take your word for it that you were not among those building shrines to it in your home 2 weeks ago.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

46. I wasn't and the author makes a number of unsubstantiated claims

and accusations in the article and uses the art of persuation far more than the art of reference and bibliography or documentation of his accusations such as in this paragraph:

Kerry denied back then that he disguised his real goal, contending that he supported normalization only as a way to learn more about the missing men. But almost nothing has emerged about these prisoners since diplomatic and economic relations were restored in 1995, and thus it would appear—as most realists expected—that Kerry's explanation was hollow. He has also denied in the past the allegations of a cover-up, either by the Pentagon or himself. Asked for comment on this article, the Kerry campaign sent a quote from the senator: "In the end, I think what we can take pride in is that we put together the most significant, most thorough, most exhaustive accounting for missing and former P.O.W.'s in the history of human warfare."

[The Magistrate]

50. Indeed, Ma'am

That first sentence is a masterpiece of art which, when disentangled, amounts to a claim that denial of accusation is an assertion of its truth. A question, is your goal to normalize relations for profit? is answered, no, my goal is to account for missing men, and this is turned by the form of the sentence somehow into a declaration that the goal was indeed to normalize relations for profit. That little information about missing men has emerged in subsequent years is no real surprise; the fact is, no one knows what happened to them, and that is perfectly normal in war, even war fought in well settled areas. There are still un-identified corpses discovered in quantity in Europe from the Great War as farmers plow and construction proceeds, in areas that were settled then, and have remained settled continuously since. The idea that all missing U.S. soldiers in Viet Nam will ever be accounted for is nonsense, and the idea that all, or even many, missing men were prisoners kept by the North Vietnamese is merely a cruel hoax. The comment from Sen. Kerry's campaign is perfectly accurate; that investigation was indeed the most exhaustive such attempt in the history of warfare, and that it fell short of perfection ought not to surprise or discomfit anyone.

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"

[WitchWay]

40. Better us now than Rove in August.

Isn't that the excuse some have made for the Dean/Osama ad?
A train wreck in the making?

[regnaD kciN]

61. Yep, you can always count on the Village Voice...

...to promulgate right-wing propaganda. NOT!

[Scott Lee]

67. It didn't bug you when Dean was the target

So suck it up. There's a lot more a comin'.

[AP]

11. I suspect Kerry's on the right side of this issue. The MIA movement

was drivien by right wingers who were trying to invent reasons for America not to do the right thing in Vietnam long after the war ended. The Vietnemese bent over backwards to help the US try to find MIAs and the right wingers still pretended they were hiding something.

As I said, it was just an excuse for the right wing to deny compensation or, at the very least, some kind of acknowledgement that the US fucked up that country bad.

One thing about American imperialism does is that it likes to cast America as the victim when we fuck up, and this is another example of that.

[DuctapeFatwa]

16. Well, yes, a difference of opinion. The families of the MIA's and Kerry

simply have different views of what constitutes "the right thing."

[AP]

17. The families were manipulated by right wingers with goals other than

finding MIAs.

And if Kerry is being accused of shredding evidence by these people, I'm more inclined to believe Kerry, and believe that they are lying.

[DuctapeFatwa]

32. Oh, they didn't really want their sons back, they were just manipulated

by right wingers. I see. Thanks for clearing that up.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

43. Rather, they were given false hopes

and had their emotions manipulated for political purposes.

There are MIAs from World War II whose cases have never been resolved.

Do you supposed the Germans are still holding them in secret camps?

[AP]

62. ...by extreme right winger looking to make a buck and push America to the

right, and who had little interest doing much else.

[seventhson]

71. I'd be inclined to believe it if Kerry's family didn't reap a BILLION $$$

Contract for real estate and harbor development in Hanoi.

A Billion'll buy you a lotta lying space.

The betrayal on the human rights issue troubles me too.

Remember the Vietnamese Actor who was imprisoned for acting in Mel Gibson's "We were Soldier's" film? Because he portrayed the Vietnames in a poor light? That sucked and was indicative of the rights which Kerry certified as okay. NOT!!!

If they do that what other rights (like the indigenous natives who helped the US) are being shat upon?

The money thing bugs me most. How much, if anything, does Kerry get from this deal.

Does he have invetments in the company???

We should find out. Teresa? Does she?

It matters.

[regnaD kciN]

63. While you're right about one matter...

...that the right wing seized on the P.O.W. issue in the '80s to tar Democrats with the "soft on communism" label, it is indeed worrying that an article substantiating their claims now comes from the pen of a respected liberal journalist. It's awfully hard to argue with any credibility that Syd Schanberg is a right-wing water-carrier.

[mikehiggins]

68. This issue did a lot to cost Bush-One the 92 election

It is not something that will go away of its own power. Kerry really should address this issue in a hurry, or this article from the Village Voice will be making the rounds asap.

Not that I'm a big fan of the author. He did a pretty serious number on Clark during the primaries.

[madrchsod]

14. he is against anyone

who was in the army,it seems. he`s not to pleased with Clark. the whole MIA thing was contaminated by Reagan and his crew...

[KC21304]

28. I noticed that too. He has written articles critical of Clark.

Guess he is figuring on a Kerry/Clark ticket.

[KurtNilsen]

15. I don't know what to think.

Doesn't sound very good.

[JailForBush]

18. Wow, that's a creepy picture - makes me think "Skull and Crossbones"

I'm not a regular Village Voice reader, but I thought it was a fairly liberal publication. But the Google ads at the top of the page suggest it's more right-wing.

This is an interesting article, though. It reminds me of the U.S. airman that was abandoned in Iraq long before George W. Bush's illegal invasion. Speaking of which, has Team Exxon learned anything about his fate? I don't recall hearing anything about it.

As a matter of fact, I think that deserves a new thread...

[Eloriel]

42. Google ad -- you mean the "John Kerry for President" ad??

or the "Discount Vietnam Hotels" (kind of ironic, that)?

Those are what is showing on my screen.

[AP]

19. I rank this up with that NYT article which quotes an insurance corp lawyer

who crticizes Edwards.

Why are right wing organizations trying so hard to drive a wedge in the left?

Oh, I know why.

[Scairp]

21. Here's an unflattering article about Schanberg

http://zena.secureforum.com/znet/chomsky/sld/sld-3-03.html

[Nederland]

29. An unflattering article about Schanberg

...written by Chomsky?

What a surprise. :eyes:

[Indiana Democrat]

22. Oh GREAT! Now we have conspiracy CRAP against US!!

It's bad enough when the kooks run around claiming the pukes are the dark masters of the universe, but do we REALLY need to smear one of our own with this garbage???

[Gman]

23. Absolute Horseshit

this is an extremely vicious smear attempt.

[Mick Knox]

30. McCain was a POW....

that kinda settles it for me as right wing tripe... Why would a former POW support bailing on POW's... this story is bs...

[Leilani]

53. This same crowd smeared McCain in 2000

That's when I knew how dirty Bush & Co were.

McCain spent 5 1/2 yrs as a POW, & they used this crap, & now they're pulling it on Kerry.

[mikehiggins]

69. The Village Voice is a BushCo newspaper? I didn't know that. n/t

[w4rma]

35. Shredding copies and not rocking the boat. Are those the author's points?

That's *copies*, not originals.

And I already knew that Kerry isn't a rock the boat type of politician.

[The Magistrate]

36. This Article Is Swill, Mr. Agent

There is no convincing evidence of prisoners left behind; there are only wet dreams of right wing zealots, and the tragic grief of families of missing men, combined into wicked brew in which the former ghouls exploit the latter sufferers for monetary and political gain.

"Kill one, warn one hundred."

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"

[seventhson]

37. More Disturbing Info about Kerry. the MIA's and Vietnam Real Estate Deals

From the Center for Public Integrity:

Excerpt:

In 1991 the Senate created the Select Senate Committee on POW/MIA Affairs to investigate the possibility that U.S. prisoners of war and soldiers designated missing in action were still alive in Vietnam. Acting as chairman, Kerry helped persuade the group to vote unanimously that no American servicemen still remained in Vietnam. In doing so, he helped begin the process of normalizing U.S.-Vietnamese relations.

But Kerry's participation in the Committee became controversial in December 1992 when Hanoi announced that it had awarded Colliers International, a Boston-based real estate company, an exclusive deal to develop its commercial real estate potentially worth billions. Stuart Forbes, the CEO of Colliers, is Kerry's cousin.






http://www.bop2004.org/bop2004/candidate.aspx?cid=4

[molly]

38. Why don't you just go work for the opposition?

[seventhson]

44. I am the opposition to the Skull and Bonesmen; Edwards, Kucinich, Dean

any of them is a better nominee than Kerry.


I'd take Nader over Kerry if he had a chance.

But this is a story which deserves to be told.

A little research on Collier International and you begin to feel like you need a shower:

They are all about developing real estate in totalitarian type places and making tons of money with cheap labor etc..

JFKerry opened the door for them in Vietnam worth billions when he said there were no MIA's or POW's left alive.

There are a lot of MIS/POW familes who are really pissed about Kerry's involvement in getting Vietnam certifed as MIA-free

[incapsulated]

41. Oh, god, not this again

I remember these hearings well. They were so frought with emotion it was difficult to take or to make head or tails of. I do remember there was a lot of extreme but understandable reaching going on to believe just about any testimony from anyone who "saw" or "knew" something on the part of the families and vets, who believe they are still there to this day.

Stuff about Kerry shredding documents and his cousin's deal is new to me though.

It is also true that this is not the first "hit piece" on the candidates in the Voice, but to a certain extent, that's what they've always done.

I just don't know. *sigh*

[seventhson]

45. Know ! Know the truth. It'll set you free. Vote Edwards, Kucinich or Dean

not J. Forbes Kerry

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

47. Shredding COPIES of documents not the actual documents

[incapsulated]

48. Did he say that in the article?

That they were copies? I'm not being sarcastic or anything, I just want to know where you got that.

[incapsulated]

49. Nevermind, here is the text:

He gave orders to his committee staff to shred crucial intelligence documents. The shredding stopped only when some intelligence staffers staged a protest. Some wrote internal memos calling for a criminal investigation. One such memo—from John F. McCreary, a lawyer and staff intelligence analyst—reported that the committee's chief counsel, J. William Codinha, a longtime Kerry friend, "ridiculed the staff members" and said, "Who's the injured party?" When staffers cited "the 2,494 families of the unaccounted-for U.S. servicemen, among others," the McCreary memo continued, Codinha said: "Who's going to tell them? It's classified."

Kerry defended the shredding by saying the documents weren't originals, only copies—but the staff's fear was that with the destruction of the copies, the information would never get into the public domain, which it didn't. Kerry had promised the staff that all documents acquired and prepared by the committee would be turned over to the National Archives at the committee's expiration. This didn't happen. Both the staff and independent researchers reported that many critical documents were withheld.

*edit* Once again, this article is one-sided so it's hard for me to make up my mind about it, without hearing the other side of the story. I know how that game is played.

 
 

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

52. Yes...notice how he goes on and says "but the staff's fear"

in an attempt to justify the accusation regardless and never cleans up which it is..the actual documents or copies of the documents.

[incapsulated]

54. Well, the point is

that the documents never got into the public domain. Now, he states that Kerry had "promised the staff" that he would hand them over. What staff? When? And what are the positions of those that "protested" by writing internal memos?

This sort of information is the kind I hate, because it can be twisted to make a prosecution without real evidence purely through inference and suggestion. "Some staffers" said or did, I hate that shit.

I'm not saying Kerry is innocent or guilty, but this article is so biased I cannot tell.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

55. Exactly..void of adequate corroboration but enough to make

another great conspiracy theory.

[Eloriel]

56. This'll play well with those Vietnam vets

[bigtree]

57. Only the ones who are inclined to believe folks are still alive there.

There may still be remains to recover there though. You have to understand that folks there are more than happy to recover and turn over whatever evidence they find, for a price. There is great poverty there.

Some will use the tragedy of these MIA's and POW's for some political purpose or another, but the fact remains that their committee was the most extensive accounting to date. Anyone who can do better can step right up.

Here's a fairly balanced article:

Weighing the Evidence on POWs-By Robert S. Dudney, Executive Editor Air Force Magazine, July 1993

The Kerry panel noted that, immediately after Operation Homecoming, the White House expected Vietnam to swiftly account for the missing but was stonewalled. Debriefings of returning POWs cleared up some cases, but not all. The panel reported that seventy Americans were carried on the books as POWs for some time after the end of Operation Homecoming. Today, the Pentagon says it knows that forty-two of these individuals died prior to the exchange; Vietnam repatriated their remains. As for the others, said the committee, their fates "continue unknown to this day."

The committee thought it fair to ask whether US officials knowingly abandoned some POWs. "The answer to that question is clearly no," concluded the report. It explained that, given the evidence with which they had to work, "American officials did not have certain knowledge that any specific prisoner or prisoners were being left behind."

However, the committee said it was also fair to raise yet another question: Were the Americans who were expected to return, as a group, simply "shunted aside" and given short shrift by the government and American people, who should have pressed harder to find out what happened to them? "The answer to that question is essentially yes," said the senators.

The Kerry panel concluded that lingering frustration with the war, Watergate, and other crises pushed the MIA question out of mind, where it stayed until the trail of evidence grew very cold. The senators argued that the White House figuratively lowered its voice on the issue and that, eventually, the POW/MIA operation became "a bureaucratic backwater."

http://www.afa.org/magazine/perspectives/vietnam/0793pow.html

[anarchy1999]

60. If we come up with this info now, what will happen when........

The Bush regime lets loose with all their fury?

Rove, et al.

Trouble coming soon.

[Cheswick2.0]

64. And Kerry's cousin gets all the new development contracts in Viet Nam

surprise surprise...

[seventhson]

65. NOT

a surprise, that is

[Scott Lee]

66. kickeroo

[oasis]

70. Right. For posts #46 and 50 (n/t)

[seventhson]

72. And one for #71 above

too