[MSM Hobbes]

In looking for more info related to the candidates, their positions, history, and other truths [ha! ], found the following... appologies if its been brought up elsewhere here, but was unable to find related posts.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/arti...7/164944.shtml
Kerry on the Record: Ties With Vietnam
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2004
Editor’s note: This is Part 3 in a series revealing the Democratic front-runner's track record on the important issues of the day.
Part 1: POWs and MIAs
Part 2: Defense

WASHINGTON – One of the issues sure to be dogging Democrat presidential front-runner John Kerry will be whether a member of his family improperly benefited from the senator’s leading role in “normalizing” relations between the U.S. and Vietnam.

Massachusetts' junior U.S. senator was rather summarily cleared of wrongdoing by the staff of the Senate Ethics Committee. But questions persist.

In the early 1990s, Kerry headed a Senate committee that was supposed to determine whatever became of American troops in the Vietnam War whose whereabouts were not recorded.

Under his leadership, the panel concluded there was “no evidence” that any Americans left behind in Vietnam were still alive. Some veterans groups and the vice chairman of Kerry’s committee dispute that claim.

A few weeks after the Senate panel’s hearings had concluded, according to Center for Public Integrity, Kerry’s participation in the committee became “controversial” when Hanoi announced that it had awarded a fat contract to Boston real estate firm Colliers International, then headed by the senator’s cousin Stuart Forbes.

Coincidence? And was there really “no evidence” that American fighting men left behind in Vietnam were alive? Experts who have examined the issue ridicule the former or vehemently reject the latter.

Taking the question of “no evidence” first:

'Plenty of Evidence'

“There was plenty of evidence,” said the vice chairman of the Kerry committee, Robert Smith, then a Republican U.S. senator from New Hampshire.

Smith, now seeking a U.S. Senate seat from Florida, declined to criticize Kerry directly, but agreed to be interviewed by NewsMax.com on “anything but presidential politics.”

He cited testimony by former Defense Secretaries Melvin Laird and James Schlessinger, as well as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Based on intelligence information and reliable eyewitness accounts, all believed that men were left behind and unaccounted for who might very well be alive.

“They [the North Vietnamese] captured them. They must have known what happened to them. If [the American prisoners] died, they [North Vietnamese] should have told us,” he said.

As for Hanoi’s awarding a contract to a firm headed by a Kerry relative, Senate Ethics Committee staff director and chief counsel Victor M. Baird acknowledged the Senate rules stipulated no senator shall aid in passing legislation whose “principal purpose” is to benefit “only” himself or a member of his family.

Nothing in the publicity on the contract “suggests that Senator Kerry had anything to do with the decision of the Vietnamese government to trade with Colliers International,” Baird stated in a letter to Ted Sampley, who now heads a group called Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry.

“When was the last time the Senate Ethics Committee did anything to their members?” scoffed John LeBoutillier, a former congressman who is a columnist for NewsMax.com.

“It’s a small world, isn’t it, when the cousin of the key senator who cleans up this [MIA] issue suddenly gets the contract? Now, what are the odds of that?” he asked.

LeBoutillier heads Skyhook 2 Project, dedicated to recovering living American POWs in Southeast Asia. During his congressional days, the Long Island, N.Y., Republican was a member of a Special House POW/MIA Task Force.

'Kerry Trashed the Evidence'

In an interview with NewsMax, he expressed disgust that Kerry and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., both Vietnam veterans, had “ignored the evidence” and made a bipartisan pitch to “normalize” relations with Hanoi.

“Kerry trashed the evidence. He wouldn’t hear of it,” added LeBoutillier.

Smith puts it this way: “We know they [North Vietnam] have answers, and I get sick and tired of these people saying we’ve gotten the fullest possible accounting. That’s just total garbage. We have not. Dead or alive, they still have information.”

In the letter washing his hands of the whole question of Kerry’s cousin benefiting from “normalization” with Hanoi, the Senate Ethics staff director wrote, “Absent some evidence of improper conduct or a violation of a rule or law,” the committee would not review the matter because “the final decision on a Senator’s public decisions is generally reserved for the voters.”

Interested parties interpret that as a way of saying the Ethics Committee’s level of curiosity will not lead to an investigation to determine if there has been “improper conduct or a violation of a rule of law.”

Thus, although we might never know, the senator’s quest for the White House will introduce the issue to a wider group of voters than those within the confines of Massachusetts.


Following from: http://www.warriorsfortruth.com/john-kerry-vietnam.html

Mike Benge, a former civilian Vietnam POW, says “John Kerry has fought harder for the Vietnamese communists than he fought against them in Vietnam.”

This is the aspect of Kerry’s record that the major media don’t want to touch. They are apparently intimidated by the medals he won while fighting for the U.S. side against the communists. But there are two groups determined to get the media to pay attention to what Kerry did after he returned from service. They want the public to know that Kerry came back to America, accused his fellow soldiers of atrocities, marched with those seeking a communist victory in Vietnam, and then ran a Senate committee that gave up hope of rescuing American POW/MIAs that were left behind after the war.

The groups are Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry and Vietnamese Americans Against John Kerry. The Vietnamese Americans are angry that Kerry promoted diplomatic relations with Hanoi while failing to promote human rights in Vietnam. They are not alone. One 30-year U.S. Army veteran wrote to us saying that he is “revolted” that the media are failing to reveal Kerry’s dark “secrets.” He calls Kerry the “War ‘Hero’ Traitor” because of how he turned against the war when his fellow soldiers were still fighting and dying on the battlefield.

POW/MIA researcher Roger Hall comments, “Now that it is fashionable for veterans to promote their military status publicly—now that it is popular to be a Vietnam Veteran—Senator Kerry touts his service and medals. But in the 1970s, when it became fashionable to protest the war, he chose that issue to begin his political career and appeared to throw his medals over the fence. Now he retrieves them to flash before our eyes to distract us from his devious ways.” Hall acknowledges that Kerry performed honorably in Vietnam. But he adds, “One brave moment does not outshine a devious and duplicitous person.”

He points to something that has been documented by the Center for Public Integrity, which is hardly a conservative group. It notes that Kerry ran a Senate committee “to investigate the possibility that U.S. prisoners of war and soldiers designated missing in action were still alive in Vietnam.”

But it notes that 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, then the CEO of Colliers, is Kerry’s cousin. For his part, Kerry decided there were no living American POW/MIA in Vietnam and the process of restoring diplomatic relations with Vietnam proceeded. Kerry later visited Hanoi to meet with its Communist rulers.

More info at:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=39892
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/arti...0/131219.shtml
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1071819/posts
and
http://www.openairwaves.org/bop2004/...ate.aspx?cid=4

However... most of the above links/info is not as unbiased as I'd like to see.

Any other views/thoughts/info on this?