Next up: POWs blast Kerry in TV documentary

By Art Moore

As controversy over John Kerry’s Vietnam service holds center stage in the presidential campaign, a war veteran is about to release a television documentary with devastating testimony by former POWs of the demoralizing impact of the senators’ war-crimes accusations more than 30 years ago.

The production is scheduled to air in two weeks on the heels of a television ad by Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, which charges Kerry with betrayal for accusing them of war atrocities during his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971.

A source involved in the production, who said its makers are not prepared yet to release their names, told WorldNetDaily its title will be “Stolen Honor.”

The documentary has no official connection to the swiftboats group, the source said, but one of the POWs the film features is Paul Galanti, who appears in the group’s second ad, released this week.

Galanti, who spent more than six years in prison after being shot down south of Hanoi, says he first heard Kerry’s testimony in late 1971 when it was broadcast by his Vietnamese captors over the public address system in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton.”

Jerome Corsi, co-author of the swiftboat vets’ book, “Unfit for Command,” said he has seen some of the taped interviews used in the documentary.

“They are very, very powerful,” he told WND.

Corsi said the POWs in the new production tell how Kerry’s April 22, 1971, testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was “thrown in their faces.”

Corsi, noting the second half of his book focuses on Kerry’s antiwar activities, said he intends to work with all groups that want to tell that story.

Details about the new documentary are expected to be released later this week.

As WorldNetDaily reported, the swiftboat vets ad, playing in battleground states of Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin, already has come under fierce attack.

Kerry’s campaign called on President Bush to denounce the ads after filing a legal complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth produced inaccurate television ads in illegal coordination with the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Yesterday, Bush, without mentioning the swiftboat vets group, said he wanted all of the independent soft-money groups to stop their campaign ads.

The new ad begins with audio and photographs of Kerry charging Americans serving in Vietnam “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 … .”

In the 30-second TV spot, Galanti says Kerry “gave the enemy for free what I and many of my comrades in North Vietnam, in the prison camps, took torture to avoid saying. … It demoralized us.”

The Kerry campaign said the ad “takes Kerry’s testimony out of context, editing what he said to distort the facts.”

Kerry told Fox News in March he had no regrets about his service or his protest.

“Now, if some veterans still can’t accept that or they don’t like the fact that I stood up and spoke my mind, I respect them, that is their choice,” he said.

On Sunday, the Kerry campaign’s veterans organizer, John Hurley, said in an interview on Fox News Sunday that Kerry stands by his claims in 1971 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that U.S. soldiers in Vietnam regularly, and as a matter of official policy, committed war atrocities against innocent civilians.

He denied that Kerry had overstated the case against the war when he returned home as a spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

On Saturday, another former POW who appears in the swiftboat vets’ ad, retired Col. Ken Cordier, resigned as a volunteer from the Bush campaign’s veterans’ steering committee because of his participation with the swiftboat vets’ effort.

“Col. Cordier did not inform the campaign of his involvement in the advertisement,” the Bush campaign said in a statement. “Because of his involvement, Col. Cordier will no longer participate as a volunteer for Bush-Cheney ’04.”


If you’d like to sound off on this issue, please take part in the WorldNetDaily poll.


Related offer:

“Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry”


Related stories:

Kerry backs off
on medal claim

Kerry ’71 testimony caused POW ‘flashback’

Kerry stands by ’71 atrocities claim

O’Neill to Kerry: Sue me

Kerry supported by Viet comrade

Kerry asks FEC to stop vets’ ads

Kerry: Vets’ book should be withdrawn

Vets: Kerry ‘can’t deal with the truth’

Kerry’s ‘fraudulent’ report basis for military records

Kerry’s war journal contradicts medal claim?

Kerry damage control on Cambodia story

Kerry camp: Candidate ‘inaccurate’ on Cambodia

Kerry campaign refuses to clarify Cambodia story

John Kerry’s ‘self-inflicted’ Purple Heart, Bronze Star

Anti-Kerry cover altered on Barnes & Noble

Vets say Kerry made up Cambodia story

Vet denies retraction of Kerry war criticism

Book: Kerry took no enemy fire for medal

Dems press TV stations to shun vets’ ad

White House avoids criticism of Vets’ ad

Vets: Kerry lied to get Silver Star

Kerry’s Viet comrades call him a liar in TV ad

Kerry’s wounds self-inflicted?

Kerry flip-flop on war footage

Controversy over Kerry’s re-enacted war scenes

Anti-Kerry vets to sue candidate?

Kerry honored at communist museum

‘Kerry lied while good men died’

Vets to Kerry: Stop using photos

Vet: Officers told Kerry to leave Vietnam

Art Moore

Art Moore, co-author of the best-selling book "See Something, Say Nothing," entered the media world as a PR assistant for the Seattle Mariners and a correspondent covering pro and college sports for Associated Press Radio. He reported for a Chicago-area daily newspaper and was senior news writer for Christianity Today magazine and an editor for Worldwide Newsroom before joining WND shortly after 9/11. He earned a master's degree in communications from Wheaton College. Read more of Art Moore's articles here.