NVA in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia: Laos
© John Puzzo 29 November 2008
Sources:
I. Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, Country Studies/Area Handbook Program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Army. Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office.
II. http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/lima/laos1962.htm
III. http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/lima/laos1954.htm
IV. http://www.geocities.com/pentagon/2527/jhviet.html
V. http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/world/A0859186.html
VI. http://countrystudies.us/laos/
VII. http://countrystudies.us/laos/14.htm
VIII. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9058717/Pathet-Lao
IX. Communist Party of Vietnam: http://www.cpv.org.vn/english/archives/details.asp?topic=14&subtopic=99&leader_topic=42&id=BT2750372918
X. Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe column, April 30, 2000
XI. No More Vietnam’s,” Richard Milhous Nixon, Arbor House;1985
XII. Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992, by Jane Hamilton-Merritt; Indiana University Press; 1993.
The Lao People’s Revolutionary Party that now controls Laos is a Marxist-Leninist party patterned after the Vietnamese Communist Party and was strongly influenced by the Soviet Union and the USSR's Communist Party. It practices Marxism Leninism, as does Viet Nam. Since 1975, it has monopolized political power in Laos. The policy-making organs are the politburo and the central committee.
Ho Chi Minh was a hard-line Bolshevik Dictator. Communism and the Leninist principle that Communist nations should subordinate their interests to those of international Communism dictated Ho Chi Minh’s entire life and give the lie to the oft repeated but false claim that he was a nationalist first and a Communist second. Many years after his death, his party, the Communist Party, admitted the true nature of Ho Chi Minh:
“…from his youth to the last minute of his life, President Ho Chi Minh devoted his life to the revolutionary cause of our people and to the people of the world (emph. added). He … creatively applied Marxism-Leninism …for the Vietnamese revolution… to realize the lofty ideas of socialism and communism…To constantly enhance pure internationalist sentiments…and unity in the socialist camp…on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism and make a contribution to the world revolution.”(Updated on 5/27/2003 at 20:15; citation date: 26 November 2008: Communist Party of Vietnam Online Newspaper Citation Reference: http://www.cpv.org.vn/english/archives/details.asp?topic=14&subtopic=99&leader_topic=42&id=BT2750372918
Ho Chi Minh was a founding member of the French Communist Party (1920) and a member of the fourth (1922) and fifth (1923) Communist Internationals – the COMINTERN - and held rank and salary in the Soviet system (see: Le Van Tien, “The Disintegration of the Vietnamese Communist Movement and Its Consequences.” Thoi Su Magazine, February, March, and April, 1995).
The COMINTERN's priority was exporting the Revolution, specifically the export of subversion, terror, and the employment of murder and assassination against selected opponents and informers by paramilitary wings (terror networks), tactics that would destabilize target nations and make them vulnerable to takeover. The COMINTERN was thoroughly infused with secret informers and intelligence operatives working under the Party.
Cannibalistic:
By 1943, 133 out of 492 Comintern staff members became Party victims. Many were convinced to relocate to the Soviet Union where they were liquidated. During WW II, more than a thousand were betrayed by the International Socialists (Communists) to the National Socialists (Nazi’s). The leaders of the Indian, Korean, Mexican, Iranian and Turkish Communist parties were simply executed where they were.
COMINTERN member, Ho Chi Minh, on the cover of ‘Time’ magazine three times as ‘Man of the Year’ in 1954, 1965, and 1975, employed similar tactics and turned the whole of SE Asia into a cavern of slaughter: "Better 10 innocent deaths than one enemy survivor," was a both a philosophy and a means to an end for Ho Chi Minh and the Communist Party.
"Hundreds of thousands of North Vietnamese were killed as 'class enemies' and 'counterrevolutionaries.' During Hanoi's brief occupation of Hue in 1968, Tet Offensive, thousands of citizens -- priests, doctors, bureaucrats -- were butchered.
“It was not to satisfy some imperial craving that America went to war in Vietnam.
“It went to save the South from murder."
Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe columnist, April 30, 2000
After organizing his political cadre and network of couriers, organizers, agents and spies into the Indochina Communist Party, Ho Chi Minh commenced formation of a military apparatus throughout SE Asia in the 1930’s. Although not well known, the ICP played a significant role in the attempt to overthrow the Lao monarchy in 1932.
By February 1951 the ICP had formed separate revolutionary front parties for Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, implementing Hanoi’s strategy of making revolution on "one battlefield."
Whether revolution is ‘war’ that is waged on a battlefield is arguable. Certainly ‘the Revolution’ waged in SE Asia began and continues with attacks on civilians by the Revolutionary parties and the military forces they field.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail, a clandestine supply route, extended from the Soviet Union and China through North Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia to service the communist terror network of increasingly conventional armed forces, which has never ceased their predations against civilians continuing today as they do against the Montagnard and Hmong.
As the NVA occupied more and more territory in these sovereign nations, terror and atrocity against the civilian populations became progressively more severe with locals pressed into service as laborers, soldiers, and sex slaves.
Communist-style terrorism as it was practiced by Ho Chi Minh and the NVA, like that of the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea before it, is the model and method of revolution and population control used by all modern totalitarian dictatorships.
This terror was practiced throughout SE Asia. Characteristically, statistics are more available for Viet Nam, but illustrative of what occurred in Laos and Cambodia as well as in Viet Nam, dominated first by the Indochina Communist Party and then by the NVA, proxy army for international Communism:
“From 1957 to 1973, the National Liberation Front death squads assassinated 36,725 South Vietnamese and abducted another 58,499 and focused on leaders at the village level and on anyone who improved the lives of the peasants such as medical personnel, social workers, and schoolteachers.”[See: Nixon] No More Vietnams by Richard Nixon]
New waves of Vietnamese Communist political and military agents infiltrated Laos between 1946 and 1947, beginning with 500-700 personnel. That figure grew to approximately 7,000 agents between 1950 and 1951. By 1953, 17,000 Vietnamese were in Laos, organizing the revolution even as the Geneva Accords were in the process of formulation.
By the closing months of WWII, the nucleus of one full division was in place and others were in service along the Vietnamese border with Laos. One full division, the 335th NVA, occupied portions of Laos in violation of international law.
By 1951, the NVA could field 5 full infantry divisions of between 10,000 - 15,000 soldiers each, with artillery, AA, and support units.
Two months after the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina, the North Vietnamese established ‘Group 100’ on the Laotian Border near the Thanh Hoa-Houaphan region of Ban Namèo. This unit provided arms, cadre, and war matériel to support pro-Hanoi Pathet Lao forces.
In a major diplomatic affront to Communism and affirmation of its sovereignty and liberty, Laos angered Communists in China and Hanoi by admitting diplomats from free Taipei and Saigon in the summer of 1958.
In retaliation, the North Vietnamese Army, armed and equipped by China and the Soviet Union, occupied the Xépôn District of Laos, an area strategically located near the DMZ between North and South Vietnam. Hanoi claimed the villages as Vietnamese territory and organized the Laotian Popular Front in the same way that they created the National Liberation Front – the Viet Cong, in South Viet Nam.
Laos immediately protested these intrigues and open belligerency. With no ability to match an experienced army that had invaded its territory, Laos hoped for a greater degree of United States support.
By July 1959 Laos ordered the arrest of Lao Popular Front insurgents and North Vietnamese regular army units immediately launched operations along the Laotian border. NVA forces led the attacks, crushed the inexperienced and poorly equipped Laotian army, and turned defeated areas over to Pathet Lao forces, which remained in place as the Vietnamese withdrew.
This tactic had the advantage of concealing Hanoi’s use of their army against a sovereign nation. Due to their characteristic brutality against civilians, mere rumors of North Vietnamese Army presence spread terror across the Laotian landscape.
War waged by Atrocity throughout SE Asia
In Viet Nam, Newsweek magazine for May 15, 1967 reported, "…over the past decade the Viet Cong have murdered, mutilated and otherwise brutalized tens of thousands of Vietnamese civilians. And far from attempting to conceal their atrocities, the guerrillas have performed them in the most ostentatious fashion possible."
In September 1959, North Vietnamese Army ‘Group 959’ began operations with a major effort to expand Pathet Lao forces. As Communist military planners widened the war and moved against the government of Laos, they created NVA ‘Group 959’ to move supplies to the Pathet Lao. North Vietnam and Lao Communist parties together established ‘Group 959,’ headquartered at Hanoi but with local command and support units stationed just inside the Laotian border.
‘Group 959’ "served the ‘(Lao) Military Commission’ and ‘Supreme Command of the Lao People's Liberation Army,’ distributed money and Vietnamese war matériel to fuel the Laotian revolution, and commanded Vietnamese personnel operating in Laos in violation of the 1954 Geneva Conference that prohibited interference in the internal affairs of Laos, specific language that had been written into the Geneva Accords as a result of Hanoi’s open belligerence against Laos.
In their long term strategy to dominate all of SE Asia, NVA planners outlined a role for Laotian communists and Pathet Lao forces as architects of the revolution in Laos and to support NVA operations against South Viet Nam.
Hanoi opened the first tracks of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in mid-1959 through the rugged mountain jungles of Xépôn district.
‘Group 559’ of the North Vietnamese Army was originally a transportation and logistical unit was established to move troops, weapons, and matériel to Vietcong and NVA units into northern and western South Vietnam. By 1960, the Soviet Union was openly airlifting supplies to the NVA and Pathet Lao in Laos.
By 1963, the force level of ‘Group 559’grew to 24,000 troops and included six motorized transport battalions plus engineering, anti-aircraft, and infantry units to provide security forces.
The Hanoi Regime went so far as to declare the trail system and its base areas inside Laos and Cambodia a North Vietnamese ‘Military Region,’ with staff reporting directly to the Military Affairs Party Committee and the General Staff of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Hanoi.
By 1965, not less than three subordinate commands were created for the supply corridors that ran through Laos. The NVA 316th Division was moved to Laos to shield their base areas and supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
As Giap and the central planners of Hanoi’s junta readied their forces for the 1972 Easter Offensive, they felt the need to protect their Western flank and sanctuaries in Laos which would play key roles in the massive but doomed offensive against South Viet Nam.
Accordingly, between December 1971 and April 1972, twenty North Vietnamese independent maneuver battalions engaged a much smaller force of 10,000 Hmong Special Guerrilla Units and Royal Lao Army defenders.
The Hmong SGU’s halted an attack of Soviet T-34 tanks against the airfield at Longtiang with well placed land mines and individual action, and together with Royal Lao Army forces, drove off a stunned NVA.
Both sides experienced heavy losses, but the NVA was startled by the tenacity of the Hmong and Royal Lao forces, a shock they would feel more acutely in the months ahead as the ARVN, with US Airpower, threw back 22 full NVA divisions back across the DMZ and to their sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia. It remains the most significant defeat of the North Vietnamese Army in it’s entire history.
US POW’s in Laos.
Apart from their wanton use of atrocity against the innocent, no issue more describes the hubris, arrogance, illegitimacy, and dishonor of communist regimes than their treatment of POW’s, and this holds special significance for the US POW’s held in Laos, from which no US POW ever returned.
Under Chapter II, Article 5 of the Vientiane Agreement, the communists in control of Laos were obligated to repatriate all persons held captive, regardless of nationality.
The Pathet Lao held a number of United States citizens captured by them or the North Vietnamese in Laos, but they neither provided lists of those who had fallen into their hands nor adhered to international conventions on treatment of POWs. The US Department of Defense listed 555 Americans as unaccounted for, either as POWs, missing in action (MIA) or killed in action/body not recovered, in Laos.
Five days prior to the signing of the Vientiane Agreement, the Pathet Lao delegate in Vientiane told the editor of the Vientiane newspaper ‘Xat Lao’ (The Lao Nation) that the Pathet Lao leadership had a detailed accounting of United States prisoners and the locations where they were being held and that they would be released after the cease-fire. He added: "If they were captured in Laos, they will be returned in Laos."
On the day the Vientiane Agreement was signed, the United States obtained confirmation of those statements and requested further details but was informed that the release of eight prisoners in Hanoi, whose names had previously been given to the US by the North Vietnamese in Paris, had been held in North Vietnam for some time, not Laos.
Later the Pathet Lao told the United States embassy that this fulfilled their POW release obligations. The North Vietnamese did not respond to requests for clarification of the discrepancy between the number of POWs and MIAs carried by the Department of Defense and the small number of POWs released.
Official Department of Defense figures list 13 American POW’s captured by Pathet Lao as having been turned over to the NVA and released in 1973. http://www.miafacts.org/laos.htm#captured%20in%20laos
The Vientiane Agreement was signed on September 14, 1973. The only United States citizen released by the Pathet Lao in Laos in accordance with these provisions was a civilian pilot captured after the cease-fire. In the ensuing years, the Communists would calmly inform visiting United States officials and families of POW/MIAs that they knew nothing about the fate of United States POWs and MIAs in Laos.
The end of Laos as a free nation.
For fifteen years the Hmong Special Guerilla Units of General Vang Pao conducted successful operations against the NVA and punished Hanoi and its proxy army, the Pathet Lao. But on March 27, 1975, North Vietnamese-Pathet Lao forces launched a strong attack against Vang Pao's Hmong defenders and this time there would be no support. The Hmong were being abandoned and the Pathet Lao vowed to "wipe them out.”
Vang Pao requested evacuation for his soldiers and their families to safe haven in Thailand but the CIA offered to evacuate only the families of key officers. Vang Pao requested an airlift for 5,000.
Facing an ultimatum, Vang Pao and twelve Hmong leaders signed a treaty on May 10 reminding the United States of the pledges made to them and agreed to leave Laos and never return. In the next days a motley collection of planes piloted by United States volunteers, Hmong, and Lao flew out a few hundred Hmong. With great sadness, Vang Pao left on May 14, 1975.
His people still in Laos are hunted yet by the Communists. Other Lao remained to be judged by communist ideologues now in power in Laos, and the familiar gulag was called up out of the darkness to throw its shadow over Laos and its people.
Prisoners were force to build their own prison camps – ‘Seminar Camps,’ similar to the re-education camps of the Vietnamese. “Reactionaries,” “Saboteurs,” and “Subversives,” described the inmates, some of whom survived 15 years of depravation. Even the Buddhist monks were spied on and intimidated.
How bad would it get? “As 1975 drew to a close, 11 year old Xiong Pao Xe, who, six months earlier had been taken by the Pathet Lao to be trained, received a real gun and an assignment. “The P.L. gave each of us a gun-something like a Soviet-made machine gun-and ordered us back to our villages to kill our parents…” (Quoted in Tragic Mountains; Hamilton-Merritt, p. 376. (Note: The boy used the AK-47 instead against the Pathet Lao)
A worse fate: Hunted Like animals:
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2008
Hmong: After the War, The Killing
Review of "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS,” a Documentary by REBECCA SOMMER
Question: What do you call it when a war is over but the killing goes on?
Answer: Communism
The advent of Communism has ushered in things the world had never seen before the Bolsheviks took over Russia in 1917 and instituted the 'Soviet.' Since then, the bloodletting has not ceased.
Hitler is a piker when compared to Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro...all Communists and purveyors of the greatest violence the world has seen.
Nazism passed away at the end of WWII. Communism, the other side of the socialist coin, persists, its brutality undiminished, its thirst for blood unquenched, its march toward world revolution refueled, replenished, and strengthened by integration with the world’s economies and therefore remains unopposed to devour its new victims.
Socialist Fascism/Nazism took a fraction of the lives that Socialist Communism has consumed and continues to swallow (see: 'Death By Government,' by Rudy Hummel, U. of Hawaii, and, 'The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression,' authored by several scholars and edited by Stéphane Courtois.).
This documentary by Rebecca Sommer is witness to the ongoing reality of Communism. It provides details of a largely unknown war against civilians, a genocidal war waged against the Hmong Lao by Communist Laotian and Vietnamese military forces. These forest dwelling Hmong live their entire lives running and hiding from the Communists in the remote mountains of Laos.
Every day since 1975, Communist forces have carried out their aggressions against this largely unarmed, defenseless, simple, and abjectly poor people who remain in the forests because to venture out is to invite rape, murder, and death by execution, torture, and dismemberment, the typical tools of Communist repression. Once employed against the host population, this parasitic form of government relies on the calculus of fear inspired by such atrocities to do whatever it wants.
Many Hmong fought the communists during the Viet Nam War and retreated back into the inaccessible mountains of Laos after the U.S. pulled out of SE Asia in 1975, the war supposedly over with a Communist victory.
With no one left to fight, the Communists only promised - and delivered- a bloodbath and the 'peace of the cell, the shackle, and the grave’ to those whom they defeated: the people of SE Asia. Communism demands human sacrifice.
The Hmong became targets of persecution and retaliation by Communist forces because they fought against them. Whether or not they had sided with America is almost irrelevant, as the North Vietnamese Army, on its relentless (by 1975) 30 year march to revolution and the domination of all Indochina, would have swallowed them up anyway. The NVA, proxy army of Communism, meant to have Laos, and Cambodia, and Viet Nam and deliver the populations of those countries into the Revolutionary furnace.
While most Lao-Hmong were re-integrated into their country after 1975, many other Hmong faced the Vietnamese and Laotian gulag of persecution, enslavement, and execution after they surrendered. Those who remained in the jungle with well justified fears are forced to starve and bring children into a terrifying, uncertain world.
Transgressions against the Hmong by the Lao Communist authorities and Vietnamese soldiers have persisted over a span of more than thirty years since 1975. So have the reports of such abuse, only to fall on deaf ears. Where is the UN?
A generation after the Viet Nam War supposedly ended the only free Laotians – the Hmong, hide from their own government and from the NVA who had turned Laos into their sanctuary and supply depot during the war. These little groups of families are attacked with military weapons - aircraft, artillery, chemical weapons, and by ground forces that shoot them and place land mines around their meager food sources.
The Hmong are chased through the jungles like wild animals and killed when caught by Laotian and Vietnamese soldiers. The women, even very young girls, are raped and often mutilated and killed when the soldiers are done with them.
The Hmong understand that those who surrender face an uncertain fate. Therefore, with no options and mostly for their children only the most desperate drizzle out of the jungle. Knowing the fate of others who have been lured by false promises, the desperation must be very great for them to leave their jungle hiding places, many never to be seen again after surrendering to Communist forces and bureaucrats.
The Hmong are also used as targets by communist forces in SE Asia who train their armies and air force by conducting military exercises against them. Facing this genocide, many try to escape to neighboring Thailand as refugees, but the Thai have begun forcibly returning them to a hostile Communist government where their fate is much at question.
This documentary by Rebecca Sommer is a story of human rights violations on a scale and intensity that is hard to imagine for those who live comfortable, secure lives. But it must be told, and "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS” tells it, in the words of the victims themselves.
Even the 'Diary of Anne Frank' was not told with more poignancy, sadness, and fear.
Where is the UN? Where are the Jews, who say, "Never again?"
Filmmaker Rebecca Sommer traveled in 2005 and 2006 to the Hmong refugee camp of Ban Huay Nam Khao, Petchabun, in Thailand, where she focused on the Hmong Lao who fled military aggressions against them in their beloved homeland, the beautiful Laotian mountains.
The testimony of these Hmong refugees, with footage filmed by the Hmong themselves who carried digital camcorders back to the danger zones inside of Laos reveals the human face of contemporary genocide.
These 'human rights violations' occur daily in the remote mountains of Laos, where the gentle Hmong, marked for extinction by the Communists who hate them, are ‘Hunted like Animals.’
Never again?
For more information and to obtain copies of the film, contact:
sommerfilms@gmail.com
LABELS: COMMUNISM, GENOCIDE, HMONG, HO CHI MINH, HO CHI MINH TRAIL, LAOS, NVA, PATHET LAO, VIET NAM WAR
WARNING
Nom Chomsky, a presenter on one of the videos, is a bifurcated, anti-American, twisted intellectual who never seems to offer criticisms against communists, communism, or socialism. He is brilliant, dangerous to liberty, and to be regarded with highest suspicion.
See: ‘Hmong’ on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJnUaH6_-cc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzpyC-KtU1I&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcxo8BwwURU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcxo8BwwURU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-yEvi_3aB0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-yEvi_3aB0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqQPU2YdZFk&feature=related
Documentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4fVWoZydWs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtW08-HrGPI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqQPU2YdZFk&feature=related
Hunted like animals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1xngfvVN6k&feature=related
Evicted from Thailand
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfdYWL0yd1M&feature=related
Profaned
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB-nrE2mcJI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJHerGolvR0&feature=related
Showing posts with label Ho Chi Minh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ho Chi Minh. Show all posts
Monday, December 1, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Hmong: After the War, The Killing
Hmong in Laos: After the War, The Killing
Review of "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS,” a Documentary by REBECCA SOMMER
JANUARY 2008:
Question: What do you call it when a war is over but the killing goes on?
Answer: Communism
The advent of Communism has ushered in things the world had never seen before the Bolsheviks took over Russia in 1917 and instituted the 'Soviet.'
Since then, the bloodletting has not ceased.
Hitler is a piker when compared to Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro...all Communists and purveyors of the greatest violence the world has seen.
Nazism passed away at the end of WWII. Communism, the other side of the socialist coin, persists, its brutality undiminished, its thirst for blood unquenched, its march toward world revolution refueled, replenished, and strengthened by integration with the world’s economies and therefore remains unopposed to devour its new victims.
Socialist Fascism/Nazism took a fraction of the lives that Socialist Communism has consumed and continues to swallow (see: 'Death By Government,' by Rudy Hummel, U. of Hawaii, and, 'The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression,' authored by several scholars and edited by Stéphane Courtois.).
This documentary by Rebecca Sommers is witness to the ongoing reality of Communism. It provides details of a largely unknown war against civilians, a genocidal war waged against the Hmong Lao by Communist Laotian and Vietnamese military forces. These forest dwelling Hmong live their entire lives running and hiding from the Communists in the remote mountains of Laos.
Every day since 1975, Communist forces have carried out their aggressions against this largely unarmed, defenseless, simple, and abjectly poor people who remain in the forests because to venture out is to invite rape, murder, and death by execution, torture, and dismemberment, the typical tools of Communist repression. Once employed against the host population, this parasitic form of government can rely on the calculus of fear inspired by such atrocities to do whatever it wants.
Many Hmong fought the communists during the Viet Nam War and retreated back into the inaccessible mountains of Laos after the U.S. pulled out of SE Asia in 1975, the war supposedly over with a Communist victory.
Never ones to practice magnanimity towards vanquished foes, Communists only promise - and deliver- the bloodbath and the 'peace of the cell, the shackle, and the grave’ to those whom they defeat. Communism demands human sacrifice.
The Hmong became targets of persecution and retaliation by Communist forces because they fought as soldiers against them. Whether or not they sided with America is almost irrelevant, as the NVA, on its relentless, 30 year march (by 1975) to revolution and the domination of all IndoChina, would have swallowed them up anyway. The NVA, proxy army of Communism, meant to have Laos, and Cambodia, and Viet Nam and deliver the populations of those countries into the Revolutionary furnace.
While most Lao-Hmong were re-integrated into their country after 1975, many other Hmong faced the Vietnamese and Laotion gulag, of persecution, enslavement, and execution after they surrendered. Those who remained in the jungle with well justified fears are forced to starve and bring children into an uncertain world.
Transgressions against the Hmong by the Lao Communist authorities and Vietnamese soldiers have persisted over a span of more than thirty years since 1975. So have the reports of such abuse, only to fall on deaf ears.
A generation after the Viet Nam War supposedly ended the free Hmong hide from those who use every opportunity to attack their little groups of families with military weapons that include aircraft, artillery, chemical weapons, and ground forces.
They are chased like wild animals and killed when caught by Laotian and Vietnamese soldiers. The women, even very young girls, are raped and often mutilated and killed when the soldiers are done with them.
They understand that those who surrender face an uncertain fate. Therefore, with no options and mostly for their children, only the most desperate drizzle out of the jungle. Many simply disappear. Knowing the fate of those who have been lured by false promises, the desperation must be very great for them to leave their jungle hiding places...never to be seen again after surrendering to Communist forces and bureaucrats.
The Hmong are also used as targets by communist forces in SE Asia who train their armies by conducting military exercises against them.
Facing this genocide, many escape to neighboring Thailand as refugees.
This documentary by Rebecca Sommers is a story of human rights violations on a scale and intensity that is hard to imagine for those who live comfortable, secure lives. But it must be told, and "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS” tells it, in the words of the victims themselves.
Even the 'Diary of Anne Frank' was not told with more poignancy, sadness, and fear.
Where are the Jews, who say, "Never again?"
Filmmaker Rebecca Sommers traveled in 2005 and 2006 to the Hmong refugee camp of Ban Huay Nam Khao, Petchabun, in Thailand, where she focused on the Hmong Lao who fled military aggressions against them in their beloved homeland, the beautiful Laotian mountains.
The testimony of these Hmong refugees, with footage filmed by the Hmong themselves who carried digital camcorders back to the danger zones inside of Laos, is woven into the documentary like a tapestry and reveals the human face of contemporary genocide.
These 'human rights violations' occur daily in the remote mountains of Laos, where the gentle Hmong, marked for extinction by the Communists who hate them, are Hunted like Animals. Where is the UN?
Never again?
For more information and to obtain copies of the film, contact:
sommerfilms@gmail.com
Review of "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS,” a Documentary by REBECCA SOMMER
JANUARY 2008:
Question: What do you call it when a war is over but the killing goes on?
Answer: Communism
The advent of Communism has ushered in things the world had never seen before the Bolsheviks took over Russia in 1917 and instituted the 'Soviet.'
Since then, the bloodletting has not ceased.
Hitler is a piker when compared to Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro...all Communists and purveyors of the greatest violence the world has seen.
Nazism passed away at the end of WWII. Communism, the other side of the socialist coin, persists, its brutality undiminished, its thirst for blood unquenched, its march toward world revolution refueled, replenished, and strengthened by integration with the world’s economies and therefore remains unopposed to devour its new victims.
Socialist Fascism/Nazism took a fraction of the lives that Socialist Communism has consumed and continues to swallow (see: 'Death By Government,' by Rudy Hummel, U. of Hawaii, and, 'The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression,' authored by several scholars and edited by Stéphane Courtois.).
This documentary by Rebecca Sommers is witness to the ongoing reality of Communism. It provides details of a largely unknown war against civilians, a genocidal war waged against the Hmong Lao by Communist Laotian and Vietnamese military forces. These forest dwelling Hmong live their entire lives running and hiding from the Communists in the remote mountains of Laos.
Every day since 1975, Communist forces have carried out their aggressions against this largely unarmed, defenseless, simple, and abjectly poor people who remain in the forests because to venture out is to invite rape, murder, and death by execution, torture, and dismemberment, the typical tools of Communist repression. Once employed against the host population, this parasitic form of government can rely on the calculus of fear inspired by such atrocities to do whatever it wants.
Many Hmong fought the communists during the Viet Nam War and retreated back into the inaccessible mountains of Laos after the U.S. pulled out of SE Asia in 1975, the war supposedly over with a Communist victory.
Never ones to practice magnanimity towards vanquished foes, Communists only promise - and deliver- the bloodbath and the 'peace of the cell, the shackle, and the grave’ to those whom they defeat. Communism demands human sacrifice.
The Hmong became targets of persecution and retaliation by Communist forces because they fought as soldiers against them. Whether or not they sided with America is almost irrelevant, as the NVA, on its relentless, 30 year march (by 1975) to revolution and the domination of all IndoChina, would have swallowed them up anyway. The NVA, proxy army of Communism, meant to have Laos, and Cambodia, and Viet Nam and deliver the populations of those countries into the Revolutionary furnace.
While most Lao-Hmong were re-integrated into their country after 1975, many other Hmong faced the Vietnamese and Laotion gulag, of persecution, enslavement, and execution after they surrendered. Those who remained in the jungle with well justified fears are forced to starve and bring children into an uncertain world.
Transgressions against the Hmong by the Lao Communist authorities and Vietnamese soldiers have persisted over a span of more than thirty years since 1975. So have the reports of such abuse, only to fall on deaf ears.
A generation after the Viet Nam War supposedly ended the free Hmong hide from those who use every opportunity to attack their little groups of families with military weapons that include aircraft, artillery, chemical weapons, and ground forces.
They are chased like wild animals and killed when caught by Laotian and Vietnamese soldiers. The women, even very young girls, are raped and often mutilated and killed when the soldiers are done with them.
They understand that those who surrender face an uncertain fate. Therefore, with no options and mostly for their children, only the most desperate drizzle out of the jungle. Many simply disappear. Knowing the fate of those who have been lured by false promises, the desperation must be very great for them to leave their jungle hiding places...never to be seen again after surrendering to Communist forces and bureaucrats.
The Hmong are also used as targets by communist forces in SE Asia who train their armies by conducting military exercises against them.
Facing this genocide, many escape to neighboring Thailand as refugees.
This documentary by Rebecca Sommers is a story of human rights violations on a scale and intensity that is hard to imagine for those who live comfortable, secure lives. But it must be told, and "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS” tells it, in the words of the victims themselves.
Even the 'Diary of Anne Frank' was not told with more poignancy, sadness, and fear.
Where are the Jews, who say, "Never again?"
Filmmaker Rebecca Sommers traveled in 2005 and 2006 to the Hmong refugee camp of Ban Huay Nam Khao, Petchabun, in Thailand, where she focused on the Hmong Lao who fled military aggressions against them in their beloved homeland, the beautiful Laotian mountains.
The testimony of these Hmong refugees, with footage filmed by the Hmong themselves who carried digital camcorders back to the danger zones inside of Laos, is woven into the documentary like a tapestry and reveals the human face of contemporary genocide.
These 'human rights violations' occur daily in the remote mountains of Laos, where the gentle Hmong, marked for extinction by the Communists who hate them, are Hunted like Animals. Where is the UN?
Never again?
For more information and to obtain copies of the film, contact:
sommerfilms@gmail.com
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
How the Viet nam Veterans Against the War Morphed into the Viet Nam Veterans of America
The Vietnam Veterans of America: the ‘VVA.’ – would never have survived without the help of Jane Fonda and, of all people, Bruce Springsteen:
John Kerry, co-founder of the Vietnam Veterans of America with Bobby Muller, the organization that has a wreath decorating Ho Chi Minh’s grave.
Below, See: Michael Kranish; kranish@globe.com;© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company:
“… Bobby Muller, the paraplegic Vietnam Vet…inspired the Bruce Springsteen hit, 'Born in the U.S.A.,’ is a close friend of John Kerry…
Rock star Bruce Springsteen helped save the fledgling VVA, which was struggling for cash because the organization never drew large numbers of Vietnam Vets to its membership. …In fact, Bruce Springsteen and Jane Fonda in many ways made possible the success of the Vietnam Veterans of America. The VVA was dying on the vine – Springsteen performed benefit concerts for the VVA, which, of course was originally called the Vietnam Veterans Against the War…
Bobby Muller, “My favorite Vietnam War movie is, ‘Platoon.’ [It's also Hanoi's favorite movie.]
“Both Kerry and Muller were presumed to be future stars when they became officers and served in Vietnam. Both returned with purple hearts and hero status and joined the antiwar movement…Their parallel lives continued as both went to law school -- Muller to Hofstra, Kerry to Boston College…in 1978, they co-founded (with two others) Vietnam Veterans of America...
“Like Kerry (Muller also went to Vietnam as a college graduate in 1968. Muller was 23 years old.), Muller became an outspoken opponent of the war, appearing at rallies and on national television shows, but with the added bona fide of being a paraplegic.
Muller also contributed a chapter to Kerry's 1971 antiwar trashing of the Vietnam War and the veteran, ''The New Soldier.'' ''As far as I'm concerned, Bobby Muller is one of the great heroes of the veterans' efforts in the country,'' Kerry says.
“But, In December 1981, a few months after Springsteen's benefit concert, Muller went to Hanoi as part of his campaign to get the United States to normalize relations with Vietnam.
Bobby Muller, with financial backing from Jane Fonda and Bruce Springsteen, was able to travel to Hanoi where he laid a wreath on [the VVA’s] behalf at the mausoleum of communist leader Ho Chi Minh. A card with said: ''With Respect, Vietnam Veterans of America.''
“The visit ''caused a firestorm back here in the States,'' recalled John Terzano, who was with Muller on the trip and is now vice president of the Vietnam Veterans Foundation. Some veterans called Muller a traitor who should be tried for treason.
But Muller thinks he was just ahead of his time; this was long before Kerry returned to Vietnam [and advocated the same thing] and 14 years before President Clinton normalized relations.
[In an NPR interview, Muller said: “The process of normalization with Vietnam was dealt a tremendous setback by President Reagan in focusing on our war dead and casting in political terms the issue of accounting for the missing…”
In the same interview, Muller, speaking about Sen. John McCain, said,
“…(McCain) was the only person that I recommended (emphasis added) to the Vietnamse not be given a visa to visit their country. The reason I suggested he not be granted the visa was because he was so angry towards the Vietnamese because of his wartime experience.” So Booby Muller has some juice with the Hanoi Politburo...
…Senator McCain was a POW - in lengthy periods of solitary confinement - by the North Vietnamese Army, for 7 years. He was physically and psychologically tortured, and like other PO’s, kept on a starvation diet.
Bobby Muller, (friend of John Kerry and Jane Fonda)…apparently carried some weight with the Hanoi government. His statements indicate that Hanoi sought the VVA leader’s opinion on which Americans should and who shouldn’t be allowed to travel to that communist country.
Additional comments by Muller in this NPR interview:
[it was] “…the veterans that had gone into the villages and killed the women and children;” and,
“…Our organization grew out of the Vietnam veteran movement in the late 70’s…” (the VVAW).”
The VVA and its 1981 offshoot, the Vietnam Veterans Foundation, were more stable financially because of the Springsteen concert.
''Without Bruce Springsteen, there would be no Vietnam veteran’s movement,'' Muller often says. (Today Muller heads only the foundation, which is separate from the VVA.)
“Three-fourths of the foundation's $13 million budget comes from the US government.
[Muller today is concerned about the US involvement in Iraq – and Kerry is busy back-peddling on his Senate votes about the war.]
''This is Vietnam all over again,'' said Muller.”
Michael Kranish can be reached at kranish@globe.com;© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
Curious “Facts” (but mostly untrue) reported in “Glossary of Vietnam War Terms, from the, “Vietnam Era Educational Center, a part of the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans' Memorial Foundation, an offshoot of the VVA:
VVA: Vietnam Veterans of America. … was founded in the late 1970s by Bobby Muller, Jim Pechin, and other former VVAW activists [John Kerry, not mentioned in the ‘glossary,’ is one of the VVA’s four founding officers.);
“the Vietnam Veterans of America has grown to become the nation's largest organization of Vietnam Veterans…
Fact: the VVA has never grown much above 30,000, and at least half of that are ‘honorary members’ who never served in Vietnam or even in the military…while the AMerican Legion and the VFW each had over half a million Viet Nam Vets.
VVAW -the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. This was an antiwar organization formed in the mid-1960s. Its membership peaked at approximately 20,000 members, including 2,500 on active duty in Vietnam, in 1971. Fact: A completely implausible number…
Kerry as Senator, and things Viet Nam: Atrocity by Parliamentary Procedure
Washington Times, LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, December 6, 2002:
“Senator Kerry lobbied for renewed trade relations with Hanoi. At the same time, his cousin, C. Stewart Forbes, chief executive for Colliers International, assisted in brokering a $905 million deal to develop a deep-sea port at Vung Tau, Vietnam — a not-so-odd coincidence.
“…in the ‘Inside Politics’ column of Nov. 14 (Nation), historian Douglas Brinkley is writing Mr. Kerry's biography.
Hopefully, he'll include the senator's latest ignominious feat: preventing the Vietnam Human Rights Act (HR2833) from coming to a vote in the Senate, claiming human rights would deteriorate as a result.
His actions sent a clear signal to Hanoi that Congress cares little about the human rights for which so many Americans fought and died.
“The State Department ranked Vietnam among the 10 regimes worldwide least tolerant of religious freedom. Recently, 354 churches of the Montagnards, a Christian ethnic minority, were forcibly disbanded, and by mid-October, more than 50 Christian pastors and elders had been arrested in Dak Lak province alone.
“On Oct. 29, the Vietnamese secret police executed three Montagnard’s by lethal injection simply for protesting religious repression. The communists are conducting a pogrom against the Montagnards, forcing Christians to drink a mixture of goat's blood and alcohol and renounce Christianity.
“Thousands have been killed or imprisoned or have just "disappeared." The Montagnards lost one-half of their adult male population fighting for the United States, and without them, there might be thousands more American ****s on that somber black granite wall at the Vietnam memorial.
“Mr. Kerry lobbied for renewed trade relations with Hanoi. At the same time, his cousin C. Stewart Forbes, chief executive for Colliers International, assisted in brokering a $905 million deal to develop a deep-sea port at Vung Tau, Vietnam. — An odd coincidence?
“Thousands have been killed or imprisoned or have just "disappeared." The Montagnards lost one-half of their adult male population fighting for the United States, and without them, there might be thousands more American ****s on that somber black granite wall at the Vietnam memorial. (by, Mike Benge) (http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnkerry.com/ker_beng_wt.htm
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On Labor Day weekend 1970, Kerry - then a rising star with Vietnam Veteran Against the War - teamed up with Janer Fonda as the two headlined an ugly anti-war in rally in Valley Forge, Pa., railing against U.S. policy in Southeast Asia from the back of the same flatbed truck.
The photo shows "Hanoi Jane" listening raptly as speakers denounced American soldiers for committing "genocide" in Vietnam and accusing the U.S. of "international racism."
Three rows behind 'Hanoi Jane" sits a man who bears a striking resemblance to the Democratic presidential front-runner. According to Corbis Images, which owns the image, the photo was taken at the same 1970 Valley Forge protest that turned Sen. Kerry into an anti-war star.
Douglas Brinkley's biography, "Tour of Duty" chronicles Kerry's exploits at Valley Forge, where he reportedly followed Fonda onto the back of that pick-up truck to deliver his own diatribe against the war in Vietnam.
"We are here because we above all others have earned the right to criticize the war on Southeast Asia," Kerry shouted into the microphone, as Fonda and the crowd cheered wildly.
"By the time [Kerry] hopped off that pick-up truck to thunderous applause," writes Brinkley, "he was the new leader of the VVAW by popular default."
The Massachusetts Democrat's speech also cemented his alliance with Fonda, and the two traveled to Detroit to organize a January 1971 event they called the "Winter Soldier Investigation."
At a Detroit motel, Kerry and Fonda assembled a myriad of disgruntled witnesses claiming to be Vietnam vets, each with his own story of American atrocities. According to Jug Burkett, whose landmark Vietnam war history "Stolen Valor" chronicles some of Kerry's anti-war misadventures, Fonda played a key role at the Detroit event.
"There's no doubt that Jane Fonda financed the Winter Soldier hearings," Burkett told NewsMax on Monday. He said that several of the witnesses who testified at the protest's "hearings" later turned out to be complete impostors.
The event prompted "Hanoi Jane" to "adopt" Kerry's group "as her leading cause," writes Brinkley.
True Love Blooms:
It was at Kerry's Winter Soldier protest that the anti-American actress met her future husband, Students for a Democratic Society radical Tom Hayden! The next year Fonda was off to Hanoi, where she mounted an anti-aircraft battery and pretended to shoot down American pilots.
Of Kerry, Burkett told NewsMax, "Any Vietnam veteran who knows what Kerry did after he came home from Vietnam is definitely not a fan of John Kerry."
Saturday, Feb. 28, 2004 1:04 PM EST - 'Hanoi Jane' Speaks Out for Kerry – Again
For the second time in a month, "Hanoi Jane" Fonda has stepped forward to defend Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry, saying she had nothing to do with an April 1971 Vietnam war protest he organized in Washington, D.C. that made Kerry a nationally recognized leader of the anti-war movement.
"I think Kerry made a big effort not to have me invited to participate in that," Fonda told the New York Times this week, in quotes the paper published on Saturday. "I think he wanted the organization to distance itself from me, that I was too radical or something," she claimed.
Fonda did not explain why, if Kerry felt compromised by her role in his group, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he allowed her to bankroll VVAW activities during the period he was organizing the Washington, D.C. protest.
Just four months before that event - which Kerry's group dubbed "Operation Dewey Canyon III" - Fonda had become the group's leading fundraiser.
According to Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley, she had "adopted" the VVAW as "her leading cause."
Fonda and Kerry did collaborate on two previous events, the "Winter Soldier Investigation," held in Detroit two months before "Dewey Canyon," and "Operation RAW," a Sept. 1970 protest in Valley Forge, Penn., where both the anti-American actress and the Navy veteran were featured speakers.
After NewsMax.com published a photo of Kerry and Fonda sitting near each other at "Operation RAW," the controversial actress said she didn't remember meeting Kerry.
But after the Valley Forge event, the Fonda and Kerry shared leading roles organizing VVAW protests, with Fonda acting as the group's Honorary National Coordinator and Kerry holding the title of National Coordinator.
Biographer Brinkley has also cast doubt on Fonda's denials, telling WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg earlier this month that the two had indeed met at "Winter Soldier."
Kerry's spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter described Fonda and Kerry as “mere acquaintances” at the time, but declined to further detail their relationship.
While Fonda is nowhere to be seen in photos chronicling the April 1971 protest, one snapshot from the event captures Kerry onstage with an equally controversial character, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who would later follow Fonda to North Vietnam in a bid to undermine the U.S. war effort.
The Clark photo appears in Kerry's book, "The New Soldier," which all but disappeared from bookstores after a political opponent used it to defeat him in his first bid for Congress the next year.
Fonda sounded somewhat wounded by Kerry's decision not to include her in the Washington, D.C. protest, complaining to the Times,
"I went to North Vietnam in July of 1972, so it was not even 'Hanoi Jane' yet."
But she admitted that her anti-American image, even before she sided with America's enemy during wartime, could compromise Kerry's clean-cut image.
"I was still considered a lightning rod and radical," she said. "He knew that they had to get the attention of Congress, and he didn't want any unnecessary baggage to come with them."
Fonda blamed conservative Kerry opponents for ginning up new interest in her anti-war activities. (So sorry, Jane…you will have that VC flag tattooed on your forehead until it turns to dust with the rest of your rotting carcass.)
"These are wounds that take a long time to heal, and they're wounds that the right wing, in my opinion, doesn't really want to heal," she told the Times. She said attempts to tarnish Kerry by reporting on their relationship would have little impact.
"I think most of the people who are going to vote for Bush were never going to vote for Kerry anyway," she said. "And the other people aren't going to be affected by this, 'Oh, he was connected to Hanoi Jane.' "
Kerry's presidential campaign has declined to respond to NewsMax's requests for VVAW financial records from the time Fonda was the group's chief financial backer.
During his war protest days in the early 1970s, Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry once denounced the United States of America as "the real criminal" in the Vietnam War.
In comments first reported by the New York Times 33 years ago, Kerry condemned the entire country as "criminal" during a 1971 demonstration on Wall Street, a few weeks after the trial of Lt. William Calley.
"Guilty as Lieutenant Calley may have been of the actual act of murder, the verdict does not single out the real criminal ... the United States of America,"
railed the future Democratic presidential hopeful those many years ago. The damning comment was unearthed by the Baltimore Sun, which reprinted Kerry's outburst in its Saturday edition exactly as quoted above.
The Sun also revisited other anti-war comments by Kerry that have yet to receive significant exposure, including remarks Kerry uttered on NBC's "Meet the Press" a few weeks after the Wall Street protest.
"I committed the same kinds of atrocities as thousands of others," he told the network, "in that I shot in free-fire zones, fired .50-caliber machine bullets, used harass-and-interdiction fire, joined in search-and-destroy missions and burned villages."
(Though NBC has the Kerry interview on tape, it has so far declined to rebroadcast his revealing comments.)
The Sun also obtained reactions from two of Kerry's Swift Boat mates in Vietnam, who told the paper they were deeply disturbed by his anti-war activities. Kerry crewman James Wasser said he was "absolutely upset" over his former commanding officer's claims that the U.S. committed wartime atrocities as a matter of course.
Saying he recalled no such war crimes, Wasser said of Kerry, "I felt betrayed."
Shipmate Bill Zaladonis was also offended by Kerry's claims.
"I didn't like the idea [of Kerry condemning his fellow servicemen]," he told the Sun. "I certainly didn't believe that all Vietnam veterans were baby-killing women rapers. Most people I know agree with me - they didn't see it."
While Wasser and Zaladonis remain troubled by Kerry's anti-war past, they're split over whether they intend to support him for president. "I'm still studying it," Zaldonis told the Sun, while Wasser occasionally campaigns for the Massachusetts Democrat.
When Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry teamed up with 'Hanoi' Jane Fonda and actor Donald Sutherland for a September 1970 anti-Vietnam War protest at Valley Forge, Pa., he was joining the same cast that Fonda had assembled earlier that year for her "F*** the Army" tour – a kind of reverse USO tour designed to undermine the morale of U.S. soldiers fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
Kerry suggested that he had no idea how radical Fonda would eventually become, telling radio host Don Imus that he thought her decision to turn against her country by traveling to Hanoi 18 months after Valley Forge was "terrible."
But by the time Kerry agreed to follow the anti-American actress and Donald Sutherland onto the same stage 34 years ago, Fonda's anti-military road show was already well known to both soldiers stationed in Vietnam and those who had returned home.
In "Winter Soldier: An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War," author Richard Stacewicz notes that when Fonda and Kerry addressed the Valley Forge rally – as depicted in the now infamous photo published by NewsMax on Monday – Fonda's military-bashing credentials were already well-established. So, Kerry lied when he said he “…had no idea…” how radical Fonda was.
"Fonda was becoming very well known at that point for her support of the GI movement. She and Donald Sutherland had been going around to GI bases for a while with the FTA show ["F *** the Army," a spoof of USO shows that was performed just outside bases]," writes Stacewicz.
Fonda's role is confirmed in the Vietnam veterans history "Stolen Valor," by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley. "Fonda was involved in an organization called F.T.A., which we all knew stood for 'F--k the Army,'" Burkett, a Vietnam veteran himself, reports.
Though both Fonda and Kerry are now both claiming their contact was minimal at Valley Forge and afterward, in fact, while the Massachusetts Democrat served as the VVAW's leading spokesman under the title "National Coordinator," Fonda was named the group's "Honorary National Coordinator," according to two histories of the VVAW, Andrew Hunt's "The Turning" and Gerald Nicosia's "Home to War."
With her celebrity drawing power, Fonda became Kerry's leading fund-raiser at the VVAW, traveling the country to tout the group's mission to expose so-called U.S. war crimes in Vietnam.
The effort culminated in the next Kerry-Fonda collaboration, the "Winter Soldier Investigation," which Jane Fonda financed and where Kerry and other members of the VVAW tried to elicit the most gruesome testimony possible from combat veterans, many of whom later turned out to be complete impostors (the records of most of the others could not be verified).
Al Hubbard, VVAW's executive secretary, was also one of the principal organizers of the Winter Soldier event. His supposed combat heroism had earned him mythical status within the organization, writes author Hunt. He and Kerry would later go on to appear side-by side on NBC's "Meet the Press" to denounce the war.
But as "Stolen Valor" author Burkett explained to the Wall Street Journal last month, his research showed that Hubbard had grossly inflated his combat credentials. "Hubbard claimed to be an Air Force pilot who was wounded in Vietnam. Truth: Hubbard was never a pilot, never an officer, never wounded and never assigned to Vietnam," said Burkett.
Hubbard is also featured prominently in Kerry's 1971 book about the group's April 1971 Washington, D.C., protest, "The New Soldier," where he and Kerry appear in a photo together on the same stage as Ramsey Clark.
John Kerry, co-founder of the Vietnam Veterans of America with Bobby Muller, the organization that has a wreath decorating Ho Chi Minh’s grave.
Below, See: Michael Kranish; kranish@globe.com;© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company:
“… Bobby Muller, the paraplegic Vietnam Vet…inspired the Bruce Springsteen hit, 'Born in the U.S.A.,’ is a close friend of John Kerry…
Rock star Bruce Springsteen helped save the fledgling VVA, which was struggling for cash because the organization never drew large numbers of Vietnam Vets to its membership. …In fact, Bruce Springsteen and Jane Fonda in many ways made possible the success of the Vietnam Veterans of America. The VVA was dying on the vine – Springsteen performed benefit concerts for the VVA, which, of course was originally called the Vietnam Veterans Against the War…
Bobby Muller, “My favorite Vietnam War movie is, ‘Platoon.’ [It's also Hanoi's favorite movie.]
“Both Kerry and Muller were presumed to be future stars when they became officers and served in Vietnam. Both returned with purple hearts and hero status and joined the antiwar movement…Their parallel lives continued as both went to law school -- Muller to Hofstra, Kerry to Boston College…in 1978, they co-founded (with two others) Vietnam Veterans of America...
“Like Kerry (Muller also went to Vietnam as a college graduate in 1968. Muller was 23 years old.), Muller became an outspoken opponent of the war, appearing at rallies and on national television shows, but with the added bona fide of being a paraplegic.
Muller also contributed a chapter to Kerry's 1971 antiwar trashing of the Vietnam War and the veteran, ''The New Soldier.'' ''As far as I'm concerned, Bobby Muller is one of the great heroes of the veterans' efforts in the country,'' Kerry says.
“But, In December 1981, a few months after Springsteen's benefit concert, Muller went to Hanoi as part of his campaign to get the United States to normalize relations with Vietnam.
Bobby Muller, with financial backing from Jane Fonda and Bruce Springsteen, was able to travel to Hanoi where he laid a wreath on [the VVA’s] behalf at the mausoleum of communist leader Ho Chi Minh. A card with said: ''With Respect, Vietnam Veterans of America.''
“The visit ''caused a firestorm back here in the States,'' recalled John Terzano, who was with Muller on the trip and is now vice president of the Vietnam Veterans Foundation. Some veterans called Muller a traitor who should be tried for treason.
But Muller thinks he was just ahead of his time; this was long before Kerry returned to Vietnam [and advocated the same thing] and 14 years before President Clinton normalized relations.
[In an NPR interview, Muller said: “The process of normalization with Vietnam was dealt a tremendous setback by President Reagan in focusing on our war dead and casting in political terms the issue of accounting for the missing…”
In the same interview, Muller, speaking about Sen. John McCain, said,
“…(McCain) was the only person that I recommended (emphasis added) to the Vietnamse not be given a visa to visit their country. The reason I suggested he not be granted the visa was because he was so angry towards the Vietnamese because of his wartime experience.” So Booby Muller has some juice with the Hanoi Politburo...
…Senator McCain was a POW - in lengthy periods of solitary confinement - by the North Vietnamese Army, for 7 years. He was physically and psychologically tortured, and like other PO’s, kept on a starvation diet.
Bobby Muller, (friend of John Kerry and Jane Fonda)…apparently carried some weight with the Hanoi government. His statements indicate that Hanoi sought the VVA leader’s opinion on which Americans should and who shouldn’t be allowed to travel to that communist country.
Additional comments by Muller in this NPR interview:
[it was] “…the veterans that had gone into the villages and killed the women and children;” and,
“…Our organization grew out of the Vietnam veteran movement in the late 70’s…” (the VVAW).”
The VVA and its 1981 offshoot, the Vietnam Veterans Foundation, were more stable financially because of the Springsteen concert.
''Without Bruce Springsteen, there would be no Vietnam veteran’s movement,'' Muller often says. (Today Muller heads only the foundation, which is separate from the VVA.)
“Three-fourths of the foundation's $13 million budget comes from the US government.
[Muller today is concerned about the US involvement in Iraq – and Kerry is busy back-peddling on his Senate votes about the war.]
''This is Vietnam all over again,'' said Muller.”
Michael Kranish can be reached at kranish@globe.com;© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
Curious “Facts” (but mostly untrue) reported in “Glossary of Vietnam War Terms, from the, “Vietnam Era Educational Center, a part of the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans' Memorial Foundation, an offshoot of the VVA:
VVA: Vietnam Veterans of America. … was founded in the late 1970s by Bobby Muller, Jim Pechin, and other former VVAW activists [John Kerry, not mentioned in the ‘glossary,’ is one of the VVA’s four founding officers.);
“the Vietnam Veterans of America has grown to become the nation's largest organization of Vietnam Veterans…
Fact: the VVA has never grown much above 30,000, and at least half of that are ‘honorary members’ who never served in Vietnam or even in the military…while the AMerican Legion and the VFW each had over half a million Viet Nam Vets.
VVAW -the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. This was an antiwar organization formed in the mid-1960s. Its membership peaked at approximately 20,000 members, including 2,500 on active duty in Vietnam, in 1971. Fact: A completely implausible number…
Kerry as Senator, and things Viet Nam: Atrocity by Parliamentary Procedure
Washington Times, LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, December 6, 2002:
“Senator Kerry lobbied for renewed trade relations with Hanoi. At the same time, his cousin, C. Stewart Forbes, chief executive for Colliers International, assisted in brokering a $905 million deal to develop a deep-sea port at Vung Tau, Vietnam — a not-so-odd coincidence.
“…in the ‘Inside Politics’ column of Nov. 14 (Nation), historian Douglas Brinkley is writing Mr. Kerry's biography.
Hopefully, he'll include the senator's latest ignominious feat: preventing the Vietnam Human Rights Act (HR2833) from coming to a vote in the Senate, claiming human rights would deteriorate as a result.
His actions sent a clear signal to Hanoi that Congress cares little about the human rights for which so many Americans fought and died.
“The State Department ranked Vietnam among the 10 regimes worldwide least tolerant of religious freedom. Recently, 354 churches of the Montagnards, a Christian ethnic minority, were forcibly disbanded, and by mid-October, more than 50 Christian pastors and elders had been arrested in Dak Lak province alone.
“On Oct. 29, the Vietnamese secret police executed three Montagnard’s by lethal injection simply for protesting religious repression. The communists are conducting a pogrom against the Montagnards, forcing Christians to drink a mixture of goat's blood and alcohol and renounce Christianity.
“Thousands have been killed or imprisoned or have just "disappeared." The Montagnards lost one-half of their adult male population fighting for the United States, and without them, there might be thousands more American ****s on that somber black granite wall at the Vietnam memorial.
“Mr. Kerry lobbied for renewed trade relations with Hanoi. At the same time, his cousin C. Stewart Forbes, chief executive for Colliers International, assisted in brokering a $905 million deal to develop a deep-sea port at Vung Tau, Vietnam. — An odd coincidence?
“Thousands have been killed or imprisoned or have just "disappeared." The Montagnards lost one-half of their adult male population fighting for the United States, and without them, there might be thousands more American ****s on that somber black granite wall at the Vietnam memorial. (by, Mike Benge) (http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnkerry.com/ker_beng_wt.htm
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
On Labor Day weekend 1970, Kerry - then a rising star with Vietnam Veteran Against the War - teamed up with Janer Fonda as the two headlined an ugly anti-war in rally in Valley Forge, Pa., railing against U.S. policy in Southeast Asia from the back of the same flatbed truck.
The photo shows "Hanoi Jane" listening raptly as speakers denounced American soldiers for committing "genocide" in Vietnam and accusing the U.S. of "international racism."
Three rows behind 'Hanoi Jane" sits a man who bears a striking resemblance to the Democratic presidential front-runner. According to Corbis Images, which owns the image, the photo was taken at the same 1970 Valley Forge protest that turned Sen. Kerry into an anti-war star.
Douglas Brinkley's biography, "Tour of Duty" chronicles Kerry's exploits at Valley Forge, where he reportedly followed Fonda onto the back of that pick-up truck to deliver his own diatribe against the war in Vietnam.
"We are here because we above all others have earned the right to criticize the war on Southeast Asia," Kerry shouted into the microphone, as Fonda and the crowd cheered wildly.
"By the time [Kerry] hopped off that pick-up truck to thunderous applause," writes Brinkley, "he was the new leader of the VVAW by popular default."
The Massachusetts Democrat's speech also cemented his alliance with Fonda, and the two traveled to Detroit to organize a January 1971 event they called the "Winter Soldier Investigation."
At a Detroit motel, Kerry and Fonda assembled a myriad of disgruntled witnesses claiming to be Vietnam vets, each with his own story of American atrocities. According to Jug Burkett, whose landmark Vietnam war history "Stolen Valor" chronicles some of Kerry's anti-war misadventures, Fonda played a key role at the Detroit event.
"There's no doubt that Jane Fonda financed the Winter Soldier hearings," Burkett told NewsMax on Monday. He said that several of the witnesses who testified at the protest's "hearings" later turned out to be complete impostors.
The event prompted "Hanoi Jane" to "adopt" Kerry's group "as her leading cause," writes Brinkley.
True Love Blooms:
It was at Kerry's Winter Soldier protest that the anti-American actress met her future husband, Students for a Democratic Society radical Tom Hayden! The next year Fonda was off to Hanoi, where she mounted an anti-aircraft battery and pretended to shoot down American pilots.
Of Kerry, Burkett told NewsMax, "Any Vietnam veteran who knows what Kerry did after he came home from Vietnam is definitely not a fan of John Kerry."
Saturday, Feb. 28, 2004 1:04 PM EST - 'Hanoi Jane' Speaks Out for Kerry – Again
For the second time in a month, "Hanoi Jane" Fonda has stepped forward to defend Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry, saying she had nothing to do with an April 1971 Vietnam war protest he organized in Washington, D.C. that made Kerry a nationally recognized leader of the anti-war movement.
"I think Kerry made a big effort not to have me invited to participate in that," Fonda told the New York Times this week, in quotes the paper published on Saturday. "I think he wanted the organization to distance itself from me, that I was too radical or something," she claimed.
Fonda did not explain why, if Kerry felt compromised by her role in his group, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he allowed her to bankroll VVAW activities during the period he was organizing the Washington, D.C. protest.
Just four months before that event - which Kerry's group dubbed "Operation Dewey Canyon III" - Fonda had become the group's leading fundraiser.
According to Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley, she had "adopted" the VVAW as "her leading cause."
Fonda and Kerry did collaborate on two previous events, the "Winter Soldier Investigation," held in Detroit two months before "Dewey Canyon," and "Operation RAW," a Sept. 1970 protest in Valley Forge, Penn., where both the anti-American actress and the Navy veteran were featured speakers.
After NewsMax.com published a photo of Kerry and Fonda sitting near each other at "Operation RAW," the controversial actress said she didn't remember meeting Kerry.
But after the Valley Forge event, the Fonda and Kerry shared leading roles organizing VVAW protests, with Fonda acting as the group's Honorary National Coordinator and Kerry holding the title of National Coordinator.
Biographer Brinkley has also cast doubt on Fonda's denials, telling WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg earlier this month that the two had indeed met at "Winter Soldier."
Kerry's spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter described Fonda and Kerry as “mere acquaintances” at the time, but declined to further detail their relationship.
While Fonda is nowhere to be seen in photos chronicling the April 1971 protest, one snapshot from the event captures Kerry onstage with an equally controversial character, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who would later follow Fonda to North Vietnam in a bid to undermine the U.S. war effort.
The Clark photo appears in Kerry's book, "The New Soldier," which all but disappeared from bookstores after a political opponent used it to defeat him in his first bid for Congress the next year.
Fonda sounded somewhat wounded by Kerry's decision not to include her in the Washington, D.C. protest, complaining to the Times,
"I went to North Vietnam in July of 1972, so it was not even 'Hanoi Jane' yet."
But she admitted that her anti-American image, even before she sided with America's enemy during wartime, could compromise Kerry's clean-cut image.
"I was still considered a lightning rod and radical," she said. "He knew that they had to get the attention of Congress, and he didn't want any unnecessary baggage to come with them."
Fonda blamed conservative Kerry opponents for ginning up new interest in her anti-war activities. (So sorry, Jane…you will have that VC flag tattooed on your forehead until it turns to dust with the rest of your rotting carcass.)
"These are wounds that take a long time to heal, and they're wounds that the right wing, in my opinion, doesn't really want to heal," she told the Times. She said attempts to tarnish Kerry by reporting on their relationship would have little impact.
"I think most of the people who are going to vote for Bush were never going to vote for Kerry anyway," she said. "And the other people aren't going to be affected by this, 'Oh, he was connected to Hanoi Jane.' "
Kerry's presidential campaign has declined to respond to NewsMax's requests for VVAW financial records from the time Fonda was the group's chief financial backer.
During his war protest days in the early 1970s, Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry once denounced the United States of America as "the real criminal" in the Vietnam War.
In comments first reported by the New York Times 33 years ago, Kerry condemned the entire country as "criminal" during a 1971 demonstration on Wall Street, a few weeks after the trial of Lt. William Calley.
"Guilty as Lieutenant Calley may have been of the actual act of murder, the verdict does not single out the real criminal ... the United States of America,"
railed the future Democratic presidential hopeful those many years ago. The damning comment was unearthed by the Baltimore Sun, which reprinted Kerry's outburst in its Saturday edition exactly as quoted above.
The Sun also revisited other anti-war comments by Kerry that have yet to receive significant exposure, including remarks Kerry uttered on NBC's "Meet the Press" a few weeks after the Wall Street protest.
"I committed the same kinds of atrocities as thousands of others," he told the network, "in that I shot in free-fire zones, fired .50-caliber machine bullets, used harass-and-interdiction fire, joined in search-and-destroy missions and burned villages."
(Though NBC has the Kerry interview on tape, it has so far declined to rebroadcast his revealing comments.)
The Sun also obtained reactions from two of Kerry's Swift Boat mates in Vietnam, who told the paper they were deeply disturbed by his anti-war activities. Kerry crewman James Wasser said he was "absolutely upset" over his former commanding officer's claims that the U.S. committed wartime atrocities as a matter of course.
Saying he recalled no such war crimes, Wasser said of Kerry, "I felt betrayed."
Shipmate Bill Zaladonis was also offended by Kerry's claims.
"I didn't like the idea [of Kerry condemning his fellow servicemen]," he told the Sun. "I certainly didn't believe that all Vietnam veterans were baby-killing women rapers. Most people I know agree with me - they didn't see it."
While Wasser and Zaladonis remain troubled by Kerry's anti-war past, they're split over whether they intend to support him for president. "I'm still studying it," Zaldonis told the Sun, while Wasser occasionally campaigns for the Massachusetts Democrat.
When Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry teamed up with 'Hanoi' Jane Fonda and actor Donald Sutherland for a September 1970 anti-Vietnam War protest at Valley Forge, Pa., he was joining the same cast that Fonda had assembled earlier that year for her "F*** the Army" tour – a kind of reverse USO tour designed to undermine the morale of U.S. soldiers fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
Kerry suggested that he had no idea how radical Fonda would eventually become, telling radio host Don Imus that he thought her decision to turn against her country by traveling to Hanoi 18 months after Valley Forge was "terrible."
But by the time Kerry agreed to follow the anti-American actress and Donald Sutherland onto the same stage 34 years ago, Fonda's anti-military road show was already well known to both soldiers stationed in Vietnam and those who had returned home.
In "Winter Soldier: An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War," author Richard Stacewicz notes that when Fonda and Kerry addressed the Valley Forge rally – as depicted in the now infamous photo published by NewsMax on Monday – Fonda's military-bashing credentials were already well-established. So, Kerry lied when he said he “…had no idea…” how radical Fonda was.
"Fonda was becoming very well known at that point for her support of the GI movement. She and Donald Sutherland had been going around to GI bases for a while with the FTA show ["F *** the Army," a spoof of USO shows that was performed just outside bases]," writes Stacewicz.
Fonda's role is confirmed in the Vietnam veterans history "Stolen Valor," by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley. "Fonda was involved in an organization called F.T.A., which we all knew stood for 'F--k the Army,'" Burkett, a Vietnam veteran himself, reports.
Though both Fonda and Kerry are now both claiming their contact was minimal at Valley Forge and afterward, in fact, while the Massachusetts Democrat served as the VVAW's leading spokesman under the title "National Coordinator," Fonda was named the group's "Honorary National Coordinator," according to two histories of the VVAW, Andrew Hunt's "The Turning" and Gerald Nicosia's "Home to War."
With her celebrity drawing power, Fonda became Kerry's leading fund-raiser at the VVAW, traveling the country to tout the group's mission to expose so-called U.S. war crimes in Vietnam.
The effort culminated in the next Kerry-Fonda collaboration, the "Winter Soldier Investigation," which Jane Fonda financed and where Kerry and other members of the VVAW tried to elicit the most gruesome testimony possible from combat veterans, many of whom later turned out to be complete impostors (the records of most of the others could not be verified).
Al Hubbard, VVAW's executive secretary, was also one of the principal organizers of the Winter Soldier event. His supposed combat heroism had earned him mythical status within the organization, writes author Hunt. He and Kerry would later go on to appear side-by side on NBC's "Meet the Press" to denounce the war.
But as "Stolen Valor" author Burkett explained to the Wall Street Journal last month, his research showed that Hubbard had grossly inflated his combat credentials. "Hubbard claimed to be an Air Force pilot who was wounded in Vietnam. Truth: Hubbard was never a pilot, never an officer, never wounded and never assigned to Vietnam," said Burkett.
Hubbard is also featured prominently in Kerry's 1971 book about the group's April 1971 Washington, D.C., protest, "The New Soldier," where he and Kerry appear in a photo together on the same stage as Ramsey Clark.
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