quote:

Vietnam Vets File Lawsuit Against John Kerry by Michael P. Tremoglie Posted Oct 12, 2005 The former presidential candidate who, during his election campaign, proudly contrasted his military service during the Vietnam War with that of President Bush's National Guard service - and who once led an organization of Vietnam veterans protesting the war in Vietnam - is being sued by some Vietnam veterans. The Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation is a plaintiff along with Red, White, and Blue Productions, and Vietnam veteran turned journalist Carlton Sherwood, in a defamation action against current Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and Tony Podesta, who was Kerry's Pennsylvania campaign manager. The lawsuit, filed in Philadelphia, claims that Kerry and Podesta libeled, slandered, and caused financial harm to the plaintiffs as they sought to prevent the presentation of Sherwood's documentary movie Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal before the 2004 presidential election. The lawsuit states: Sherwood established plaintiff Red, White, and Blue productions an independent film company which produced the documentary Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal....This documentary tells the story of Kerry's involvement with the VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War) and his participation in the so-called "Winter Soldier" investigation...Stolen Honor also reports that...Kerry testified before the United States Senate that during the Winter Soldier investigation Vietnam veterans testified to war crimes...not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day to day basis with full awareness of officers at all levels of command...in fact the stories told by participants in the Winter Solider investigation were outrageous and slanderous falsehoods against Vietnam veterans...Stolen Honor accurately reported that Kerry's statements.. were lies concocted by antiwar activists...Kerry knew this testimony was false...Vietnam veterans including former POW's had been falsely tarred...Sherwood produced Stolen Honor to bring this otherwise ignored history to light ...and to explain the public sense of betrayal felt by many Vietnam veterans- particularly among former POW's - against Kerry and others who built their reputations slandering America's Vietnam veterans. The lawsuit continues by saying that the movie received its initial funding entirely from Pennsylvania veterans. It asserts that Stolen Honor points out Kerry's false allegations were used by the North Vietnamese to threaten and demoralize the approximately 700 POW's in North Vietnam. Stolen Honor told this history through interviews with some POW's including a Medal of Honor recipient and one who recounted how his interrogator went through Kerry's statements and told him that Kerry admitted he was a war criminal and deserved punishment. The lawsuit states that the plaintiffs had a contract with Sinclair Broadcasting to air the documentary and a contract with the Baederwood Theater of Abington, Pa., to show the movie. It further claims there was a coordinated conspiracy by, "defendants Kerry, Podesta and others acting in concert with and on behalf of Kerry, to discredit and silence Sherwood and Stolen Honor, through a campaign of knowing, deliberate, and malicious falsehoods about Sherwood and Stolen Honor and of illegitimate and malicious threats directed at Sinclair and Baederwood." The suit states these actions by Kerry et. al. caused Sinclair to show only portions of the movie and Baederwood to refuse to show it. This may be the first time in American history that a presidential candidate was sued for actions taken by him and his campaign during an election. It may also be the first time that an antiwar activist was sued, if only tangentially, for allegations made about American military personnel. Democrats did indeed respond vehemently to Stolen Honor. Sinclair, according to a contemporaneous Newsweek report, canceled their broadcast after being intimidated by Democrats. For example, a Democrat New York State Comptroller sent a letter to Sinclair criticizing the broadcast. The Comptroller was the sole trustee for the NY State Common Retirement Fund, which owned 250,000 shares of Sinclair stock. The Baederwood Theater received phone calls threatening boycotts if it showed the movie. Ominous phone calls were responsible for a suburban Philadelphia conference center canceling another presentation scheduled after Baederwood. Although the Kerry campaign denied any involvement with these efforts, an October 15, 2004 email from Podesta to Kerry activists called Carlton Sherwood a, "disgraced former journalist, right-wing propagandist and apologist for cult-leader Sun Myung Moon." Podesta urged Kerry workers to ".... take action ...against this garbage.... let the theater know that, as a member of the community, you object to ...this film ...they should not allow "Stolen Honor" to be shown on their screen." If this lawsuit accomplishes nothing else, it will be that the heroes of Vietnam are finally condemning the lies told about them during the war. If nothing else results from this, it will be that those who served their country meritoriously, despite great controversy, despite the adversity, those who truly deserve to be called the Greatest Generation, are once again serving their country by telling the truth about Vietnam.

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Originally posted by Shakka

Oh FFS, why the fuck are they going after Kerry with this? It wasn't his actions that resulted in Sinclair watering down these bogus piece of shit allegations on Kerry, some of which were discredited once Kerry signed his form 180:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/w...edical_records/

And others which were outright slanderous and false, such as these:

quote:

From Stolen Honor: CARLTON SHERWOOD (Stolen Honor producer): "Wait a second," I asked myself. "Did I hear that right?" Was I, or my fellow Marines, being accused of the same atrocities that John Kerry had committed? [...] To the average American combatant, having been branded by Kerry as a demon and a murderer, getting out of Vietnam alive was a high-risk adventure. RON WEBB (former POW): To have former military people actually come up and testify against our activities in Vietnam and to accuse us of being war criminals was devastating. JAMES WARNER (former POW): He [Kerry] was saying we had done these things. He was saying things that he knew to be false, and knew would harm us. That means he abandoned his comrades. As MMFA has repeatedly noted, in his 1971 Senate testimony, Kerry was simply relating the personal experiences of other Vietnam veterans who had come forward and told their stories; Kerry focused blame on the leaders at that time, not the soldiers, for the atrocities they claimed to have committed or witnessed. Stolen Honor falsely claims Kerry had secret meeting with North Vietnamese in Paris From Stolen Honor: SHERWOOD: Little did the American prisoners of war imagine that halfway around the world events were conspiring to make their precarious situation even more desperate: That an American Naval lieutenant, after a four-month tour of duty in Vietnam, was meeting secretly in an undisclosed location in Paris with a top enemy diplomat. A Swift Boat Vets attack ad released in September also claimed that Kerry "secretly met with enemy leaders in Paris." But as MMFA and The Washington Post noted at the time, the meeting was not a secret. Kerry spoke about his meeting with Nguyen Thi Binh (then-foreign minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government and a top negotiator at the Paris Peace talks) in his 1971 public testimony before the Senate. Stolen Honor seeks to discredit the Winter Soldier Investigation without evidence From Stolen Honor: SHERWOOD: [Kerry] was the spokesman for the so-called Vietnam Veterans Against the War, many of whom would later be discovered as frauds, men who had never set foot on the battlefield or left the comfort of the states, or ever served in uniform except in mock contempt of the military. Their lurid fantasies of butchery in Vietnam were seized upon by John Kerry to help him organize the so-called Winter Soldiers Investigation, the template he would use to brand all Vietnam veterans. Never mind many of the horror stories seemed made up on the spot. As MMFA has previously documented, conservative historian Guenter Lewy claimed in his 1978 book, America in Vietnam, that a Naval Investigative Service report about the Winter Soldier allegations had discredited many of the witnesses and accounts. But Naval Criminal Investigative Service public affairs specialist Paul O'Donnell could not confirm this report's existence, and Lewy himself admitted that "he does not recall if he saw a copy of the naval investigative report or was briefed on its contents." Apart from Lewy's allegations, an MMFA search uncovered no other evidence that any Winter Soldier witness was an impostor. Stolen Honor attempts to link Kerry to actress and prominent anti-war activist Jane Fonda From Stolen Honor: SHERWOOD: [T]his same Lieutenant [Kerry] had joined forces with Jane Fonda's anti-war efforts. As MMFA has documented, the frequently used right-wing tactic of seeking to link Kerry to Fonda has even involved the doctoring of a photograph to make it appear that Kerry stood alongside Fonda while speaking at an antiwar protest. In February, CNN noted that "Kerry aides said he did not support Fonda's trip to Vietnam," and that Fonda "said that she does not recall meeting Kerry during the antiwar movement." For her part, Fonda remarked: "Any attempts to link Kerry to me and make him look bad with that connection is completely false. We were at a rally for veterans at the same time. I spoke, Donald Sutherland spoke, John Kerry spoke at the end. I don't even think we shook hands." http://mediamatters.org/items/200410140001

Funny how the POWs for Truth just so happen to be the same group with members from the Smear Boaters. And just coincidentally, many of whom including Shitwood himself (producer) are right wing activists with close ties to Bush and this Adminstration:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200510060006

Anyone else seeing a trend here? Seems like when things are going bad for Bush, and no one denies that things are BAD for him right now, all of the sudden the smear comes slowly out of the woodworks. Hey, I'm not that crazy about Kerry myself, but this Smear Boat shit needs to be put to rest.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...