Veterans Have Reason to Question Kerry
After reading your Aug. 18 letters regarding Sen. John F. Kerry’s war record, I feel as a Vietnam veteran I should respond. The reasons that veterans are angry with Kerry are very simple and easy to understand. First, they are not happy with his three superficial wounds that allowed him to leave Vietnam after a mere four months.
Kerry’s outlandish testimony about his fellow veterans [after he returned from Vietnam] to a Senate panel in 1971 left most veterans with a very bad taste in their mouths. His branding of his fellow veterans as war criminals was a boldface lie that he has never retracted. Veterans have no quarrel with Kerry’s antiwar stance after he returned from the war. But we do feel he forever betrayed our honor with his politically motivated grandstanding before the Senate.
For him to be using his Vietnam service now, and for political reasons only, is disingenuous and arrogant.
And we’re not attacking “one of our own.” Kerry left us a long time ago.
Charles Reilly
Manhattan Beach
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