VIETNAM VETERANS FOR ACADEMIC REFORM
The University of Kansas Student Auxiliary
V.V.A.R.: Leading the student revolt on campus against speech codes, political correctness, multiculturalism, gender feminism, dormitory re-education, lying about Vietnam, and other instruments of academic oppression.
Leonard Magruder - Founder/President
Former professor of psychology - Suffolk College, N.Y.
Member: National Association of Scholars
CONTACT: Magruder44@aol.com - Phone: 785-312-9303
(Vietnam vet contact: General Carl Schnieder (ret.) Korea, Vietnam
dukesch@aol.com, 480-595-7668)
KERRY CANDIDACY TRIGGERS MULTIPLE VIETNAM VET PROTESTS - MASSIVE RALLY IN WASHINGTON, CONFERENCE ATTACK ON MEDIA AND UNIVERSITY ”MYTHS” IN BOSTON. MEANTIME MAGRUDER CAMPAIGN ROLLS ON TO TOPEKA.
by Leonard Magruder
July 26, 2004
An article in The Topeka Capital-Journal of May 11, 1986, was headlined, “Magruder Campaign for Vietnam Veterans Rolls On.” It described how Mr. Magruder was paying to show a film that PBS was boycotting because it showed how the national media lied about the Tet Offensive. “Paying to show the film in Topeka, Atlanta, New Orleans, Charlotte, Washington Chicago , and Lawrence.” This effort broke the boycott with 280 out of 314 stations showing the film. In a letter, June 13, 1986, General William Westmoreland wrote, “I congratulate you on your success in the showing of the AIM film on PBS stations around the country.”
On Monday, the day the Democrat Covention starts, Mr. Magruder in a new campaign will stand in front of the Topeka newspaper building carrying a large sign that says, “Stop the Media Cover-up for Kerry” and hand out material that shows polls from Vietnam veteran units all over the country proving that at least 75% of Vietnam veterans reject Kerry as Commander-in-Chief. Last week The Lawrence Journal-World refused to report on Magruder’s first protest. Magruder, who is President of Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform, stood for two hours in front of the paper’s offices while reporters and editors walked by, studiously ignoring him.
What Vietnam veterans have to say about one of their own, John Kerry, is of extreme importance. As much as these veterans would like to see a Vietnam vet
become president, they are putting the safety of the nation first, and warning the American public to stay away from Kerry. Said Mr. Magruder, “These polls show that those who know war best have reasons for rejecting Kerry as Commander-in-Chief. The American people need to hear what these reasons are. If I am rejected again in Topeka, the campaign then rolls on to Kansas City, and beyond, until I reach Washington and protest to Congress. Each cover-up by a newspaper will be noted in a press release that goes out to the whole nation.”
Mr. Magruder said today that Kerry had a lot of explaining to do, but that all the interviews with him so far by the mainstream media had been protective “baby talk”, none of them touching on Kerry’s real problem, his leftist agenda. Magruder, producer of a year-long weekly half-hour TV series, “The University Under Fire,” based on interviews with K.U. professors, said he challenged Kerry to do an interview with him, in which real questions would be asked, not Dan Rather “girlie man” stuff.
Magruder also said he has laid out the screenplay for a film on Kerry similar to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, which he said was worse than baby stuff. Maguder’s last documentary, How the Campus Lied About Vietnam is currently being shown at dozens of American universities. His new film will show events like Kerry’s efforts to go to Paris to avoid serving, doctors telling of the scratches that earned him a Purple heart, a running expose of Kerry lies to Congress in his ’71 testimony, beginning with “atrocity” charges that allied him with Jane Fonda, his marches under the flag of the Viet Cong, his meetings with the enemy in Paris, with Communist Ortega in Nicaragua, his speeches against Reagan’s efforts to save South America from Communism, his 1987 speech at Yale where he charged American soldiers again with endemic :atrocities” and called America’s leaders, “war criminals,” his speech in South Carolina in which he called the threat of terrorism “exaggerated,” his denial of a meeting in Kansas City where assassinations were discussed and the testimony of veterans who said he was there, his appalling voting record on national defense, the bizarre speech in which he said he would stop the war on terrorism and start a dialogue with the terrorists, and the statements he made recently that badly damaged the student pro-democracy movement in Iran. One vet will be quoted in the film as saying, “Do we really want a president who organized and led anti-war and anti-American protests and demonstrations under the flag of the enemy we were fighting?”
This and more will make Fahrenheit 9/11 look like a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
The Magruder claim of a cover-up was confirmed on May 4 at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth announced that 220 out of 229 Swift boat Vietnam veterans contacted (96%) had signed an open letter to Kerry challenging his fitness to serve as Commander-in-Chief. This is the unit Kerry served with in Vietnam. NBC, ABC, and the Associated Press, in a clear cover-up, all refused to report to the American people on the conference. Dan Rather mentioned it briefly on CBS Evening News but dismissed it as “allied with the Bush campaign.” A second confirmation of the Magruder data came when Talon News out of Washington, D.C., in a press release titled, “Veterans Deserting Kerry,” said, “Buried deep inside the internals of a CBS poll released Wednesday was a startling statistic: veterans prefer Bush over Kerry 54 to 41. Not surprisingly, coverage of the stunning poll result has been slim to none. ‘It’s buried in every poll that I have seen,’ said Bush-Cheney spokesman Scott Stanzel.”
Writers in a recent edition of The National Review wrote, “The media has brushed off the issue of Kerry’s past as irrelevant or a pointless ‘refighting’ of the Vietnam War. Syndicated talk show host Hugh Hewitt wrote, “The conventional wisdom floating downstream from Washington is that Senator Kerry’s anti-war radicalism following his return from Vietnam shouldn’t - and won’t- be an issue in November.”
The media elite deciding, once again, as they did in the matter of the Tet Offensive, what is best for us to know.
The top priority issue in this coming election is who will best protect America against terrorists, whom we know for a certainty will use nuclear devices if they have them. Kerry would be very weak on national security compared to President Bush. As J. Michael Waller of Insight/News recently said, “A trademark of the Kerry school of statecraft is making common cause with enemies of the United States - and allowing himself to be used by them - in order to win political battles at home.” The Center for Security Policy has rated Kerry among the worst when it comes to national security. In 1997 he scored exactly zero. Going by this, a vote for Kerry would appear to be suicide.
The significance of the Kerry candidacy is precisely that it is triggering a nationwide “refighting” of the Vietnam War as it has been represented (or misrepresented) over the years by leftists in the media and the university, primarily to protect those who would not serve. A large number of Vietnam veterans and others have organized a number of national conferences not only to challange Kerry statements but to go far beyond that to a critique of the foundational arguments of the anti-war movement. If successful, this will all but end the leftist stranglehold on the media and the university and lead to reform.
We are in contact with the leadership of at least three national conferences that will take place. The first, a gathering of scholars, many, Vietnam veterans, sponsored by the Radix Foundation at Simmons College in Boston during the days of the Democrat Convention: ”Examining the Myths of the Vietnam War” (sherman1@flash.net). The second, a massive rally of Vietnam vets against Kerry in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 12: “Kerry Lied...While Good Men Died.” (www.kerrylied.com.). And third, a scientific conference in Texas on the elements, including widespread lies by the anti-war movement, that contributed to the delayed stress syndrome that afflicted many Vietnam veterans ( a.hopewell@charter.net).
The most basic question regarding Kerry, said Mr. Magruder, a psychologist, “is whether he is capable of handling the terrorists. Does he even understand what that is all about. Has he studied Islam, the root of the problem? We have never heard him even mention the word.” Joe Mowbray, in a recent article in FrontPageMag.com, said, “In his speech announcing the selection of John Edwards as his VP pick, prehaps the most importnt news was what Kerry didn’t say. Not one mention of the enemy we are fighting, or how he plans to lead us in that fight. And not only did Kerry not mention Iraq, he didn’t even utter the words “al Quaeda” or “radical Islam.” His sole line relating to anything international suggests that Kerry would like to return to the failed foreign policy that helped create the world before 9/11. Kerry mostly talked about overcrowded schools, good-paying jobs, socialized health care, and too many prisons. All this is irrelevant if you lose the country.
For Bush to win this election all he has to do is publicly warn the terrorists of a new addition to the Bush Doctrine, a plan for instant, massive, terrifying retaliation on hundreds of known and suspected terrorist cells in every Muslim nation, with or without permission, in response to any attack on us. He would do this. Kerry would not. Therein you see the catastrophe the nation is headed for if Kerry wins. Without a threat of retaliation, announced in advance, a president would have to surrender the nation, for example, in the face of multiple nuclear devices in place.
Latest V.V.A.R. Presidential Poll - Vietnam vet Groups
(This is an ongoing poll. Please send any data to Magruder44@aol.com.)
Results as of July 20. 2004:
GROUPS WITH DATA
§ 6 Vietnam vets this weekend at HS reunion, all oppose Kerry. Dan Haney - 602nd Air Commando Sq. A1 pilot ‘67
§ Out of 45 Vietnam veterans... all say pooh on JFK...100%. powmiavets
§ Our heli-vets pol shows 160 against and 6 for Kerry. Ron Leonard, 25th Aviation Battalion
§ I know about 650 Vietnam vets and their attitude toward about Kerry is 100% negative. Dan Decker, TSgt. USAF (ret.)
§ I know thousands of vets.I would say the opinion is about 98% against Kerry. Tony Cartlidge-Vietnam Combat Marine, 1968
§ Of 27 Vietnam Veterans I know, including myself, not one is willing to vote for John Kerry. Charles Banto, USMC 1958-1974.
§ 100,000 e-mails, almost all veterans, around 100 to 1 against Kerry. Don Bendell, Special Forces, Vietnam, 1968-69, noted author
§ Out of 25 guys, 90% against Kerry. Mike - mleonardos
§ 240 vets, mostly Vietnam, 85% against Kerry. Tony Newcomb, Cpt.U.S.Army (ret.)
§ Of the more than 2500 veterans of all ranks who responded, 59 took umbrage with what I had to say (against Kerry). Mark A. Smith, former POW, Vietnam.
§ An ongoing poll, with names and comments at 11thcavnam.com is running 16 for Bush, 4 for Kerry (80% for Bush.)
§ 12 Vietnam vets, all of whom are against John Kerry. Vietnam vet, Tom Taylor
§ I’d make the numbers 80 to 20 against Kerry. Philip Topps, Cpt. Inf.(ret), 1st Inf. Div. 69-70
§ 100 against Kerry - 0 for him. Storrs Warinner- Vietnam veteran Bush 2115 (88%) - Kerry 275 (12%) - viperash50
§ A summary of individual votes sent in to V.V.A.R. is running 16 for Bush, 3 for Kerry.
GROUPS WITH NO DATA
§ Every vet we know is opposed to Kerry. Chuck and Mary Schantag, P.O.W. Network
§ Rangers are 100% against Kerry. NOATLMUS44 - President
§ Every veteran I’ve talked to is against Kerry. Major General Carl Schnieder (ret.), Air Force, Korea and Vietnam
§ I am anti-Kerry, as are most of my friends who are Vietnam veterans. Stud 369
§ I share the distrust I hear from my veteran colleagues. Peter McHugh, CW4 USA, 67-’68, ‘71-’72
§ I would say 90% of the military here (power plant) are against Kerry. P.Rein
§ 99.5% against Kerry - at www.paltalk.com
Commentary:
For 20 years our organization has worked towards the goal of a final repudiation by the American people of the leftist propaganda that media and campus institutionalized to justify not having served. That could happen as a result of these protests.
OF COURSE the media, and the university for that matter, do not want a “refighting” of the Vietnam War. For forty years they have successfully kept alive the anti-war version of “an imperialistic, immoral war of aggression against the people of South Vietnam attempting to unify their country,” the position of the campus ‘peace’ movement, and clearly the position of Kerry and his group, Vietnam Veterans Against the War. As Stephen Young recently wrote, “Our national recollection of the war matches that of the New Left.” Or was the war ‘for the freedom of the South Vietnamese against Communist aggression from North Vietnam,” the position of the government, the majority of the American people, and certain to be the position of those who sacrificed their lives. These positions are mutually incompatible. They cannot both be true at the same time. And the nation cannot remain forever in this state, not only of illogic, but untruth. Through the great number in recent years of more objective books, films, and testimonies, even testimonies from the enemy, there are now more than enough incontrovertible facts to end this conflict forever. That is what we believe our Vietnam veterans are going to insist happens before anyone gets to vote for Kerry, and when the American people realize what side Kerry was actually on, he could not possibly be elected president. It is one of the great twisted ironies of the Vietnam War that those who wouLd not serve were somehow the “moral heroes,” while those who risked their lives for freedom for others returned to rejection. Yet the anti-war movement rested almost entirely on lies. In the days ahead there is going to be a nationwide examination of those lies, the problem being Kerry says he is a hero for questioning the war, but we think that is hypocrisy, we think he was up to something else, something along the lines of what Jane Fonda was doing. If he should win, it will only be because the media hid from the American people who he is. There ought to be a bumper sticker, “Apologize First.” We would like every Vietnam veteran to think of some way he can help in this effort.
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Founder/President, V.V.A.R.
Phone: 785-312-9303
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