I offer this sans comment: VIETNAM VETERANS AGAINST JOHN KERRY P.O. Box 246, Kinston, N.C. 28502 www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnkerry. org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 5, 2004 U.S. VETERANS & VIETNAMESE UNITE TO OPPOSE JOHN KERRY Contacts: Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry Mike Benge, former Vietnam POW - (703) 698-8256 Ted Sampley, Vietnam veteran - (252) 527-0442 Jerry Kiley, Vietnam Veteran- (845) 947-3058 Vietnamese Americans Against John Kerry Dan Tran, president of the Vietnam Human Rights Project - cell (281) 772-0510 Duc D. Tran, public relations - cell (856) 297-5585 work( 610) 407-8826 Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry (V.V.A.J.K.) today announced a national coalition with Vietnamese Americans for Human Rights in Vietnam. "We represent hundreds of thousand of American veterans who do not want to see John Kerry any where near the Oval Office," said Ted Sampley, founder of V.V.A.J.K, and a U.S. Army Green Beret and veteran of two combat tours in Vietnam. Said Sampley, "I have personally dealt with John Kerry on the issue of US POWs left behind in Vietnam. Kerry is not truthful and is not worthy of the support of US veterans. Many Vietnam vets have been duped into thinking Kerry is their friend. He is not. To us, he is ‘Hanoi John’" Dan Tran said speaking as a member of Vietnamese Americans Against John Kerry, "On behalf of tens of thousands of Vietnamese-Americans, we are determined to demonstrate against Senator Kerry all across this nation." Dan Tran, a NASA engineer and president of the Vietnam Human Rights Project, said, "John Kerry aided and abetted the communist government in Hanoi and has hindered any human rights progress in Vietnam." "John Kerry has fought harder for the Vietnamese communists than he fought against them in Vietnam," says Mike Benge, former civilian Viet Nam POW. "In the Senate, Kerry blocked Vietnam Human Rights (and religious freedom) Bill on behalf of Hanoi, while the Vietnamese communists continue to wage a war of repression against the non-communist Vietnamese and a war of genocide against our former allies the Montagnard ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands of Vietnam." The Coalition plans nationwide demonstrations against Kerry beginning with the New York and Massachusetts primaries. Coalition spokesman Mike Benge, a US POW in Vietnam for 5 years is available for interviews.
Is this the original, untouched document? If not, bolding and italicizing one line of text can hardly be considered "sans comment"...
If the whole VietNam/Cambodia/Laos thing wasn't such a tragedy, these guys would be as hilarious as the Birchers.
The great thing is that this press release is dated February 5. There has been virtually no mention of it over a week later. That shows you what kind of pull and influence this group will actually have. Nice try though, guys!
I love this, from their main page About this photograph Yeah, these guys are going to do some serious damage to Kerry.
Now if that's not a republican conspiracy, then I don't know what it is. John Kerry tongue-lashed George Bush 10 times better than Howard Dean in front of a TV camera. That makes atonement to his pre-war-post-war-waffling as far as I'm concerned. I have to give lots of credit to him. A slick democrative politician is still better than a slick republican one. Now out it comes of this vietnamveteransagainstjohnkerry *#*#*#*#.
http://nytimes.com/2004/02/13/politics/campaign/13VETS.html?hp the article talks about the pic (the one karl posted) and cited that it was 2 years before fonda went to vietnam, but the guy seemed to not to care
I wonder who is behind Rustikat.com (that's who owns the vietnamveteransagainstjohnkerry.org domain, based on a Network Solutions whois search). They're listed as being an ISP in Kinston, NC.
I love how they claim to speak for "thousands and thousands" of veterans yet have no mention of membership numbers or anything along those lines on their website. Just because you SAY you represent thousands doesn't make it true. Reminds me of another group here in Oregon who are dedicated to keeping our gas stations full service "One Million Oregonians Against Pumping Gas". They have a membership of like one guy.
A little info on Ted Sampley, who is named in the press release. This is from from Joe Conason at Salon. "And a key purveyor of this anti-Kerry propaganda is a former Green Beret named Ted Sampley, who has run a profitable business as a "POW/MIA advocate" from his home in North Carolina for most of the past two decades. Few remember that Sampley was critical to efforts to similarly smear Sen. John McCain, another war hero, when he ran for president against George W. Bush in 2000. Now Sampley has started an organization pointedly calling itself "Vietnam Veterans Against Kerry," which proclaims its determination to ruin Kerry's campaign."... ..."In 1992, Sampley wrote a long article that portrayed McCain as a "Manchurian candidate," who had betrayed America to the North Vietnamese and then enlisted as a secret Communist agent. But it wasn't until seven years later that the celebrated Navy pilot and ex-POW found out how much damage such smears could inflict. After McCain declared his presidential candidacy in 1999, Sampley revived the "Manchurian candidate" smear as a convenient weapon for the Senator's political enemies. Some of them, including the prominent conservative Paul Weyrich and Richard Mellon Scaife's Newsmax Web site, didn't hesitate to pick up the slimy stuff generated by Sampley. The fringe assault on McCain, amplified by the likes of Weyrich and talk radio, caused grave injury to his campaign during the pivotal South Carolina primary." For a preview of the sort of thing that might be thrown at Kerry, here's some of what Sampley has written about McCain: http://www.usvetdsp.com/mccainpg.htm
This is weird stuff. How screwy do you have to be to try to postion yourself as a vet working for vets who seems to hate guys who actually served? Now I suppose if Kerry had gotten his daddy to get him into the air national guard, and McCain had just gone to Canada, everything would be fine with this guy Sampley. It is odd.
John McCain calls Ted Sampley "one of the most despicable people I have ever had the misfortune to encounter." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/politics/campaign/14VET.html