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)
UPDATE ON DATA PLUS NEW NATIONAL POLLS
MEDIA COVER-UP FOR KERRY A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY. MAGRUDER PROTEST NOW GOES TO TOPEKA, KANSAS CITY AND POINTS EAST.
WHAT MEDIA BIGOTRY FEELS LIKE
by Leonard Magruder
August 10, 2004
Monday, beginning at one o’clock I walked up and down for two hours before the news office of The Lawrence Journal-World carrying a very large sign that said on both sides, “Stop the Media Cover-up for Kerry.” I was ready to hand out copies of a press release telling of the issue, but nobody wanted one. Editors and reporters just walked on by, studiously avoiding the protest and the issue. It was surreal. The Kerry cover-up in action.
What is wrong with our media? Here is a fully documented issue, on an issue of great importance to the American people, based on reports from dozens of Vietnam vet groups, and they treat you like you are an idiot. That is what it is like dealing with the media bigots. Goldberg (Arrogance: Rescuing America from the Media Elites) has it right, arrogance, from media elites who won’t listen, leaving the good people of America in the dark. Once again, as in the case of Vietnam, the media is robbing the American people of the ability to make critical judgements about their most vital security interests in a time of war.
The issue is, and the data was all there in the press release, that the media is covering up the fact that a significant majority of Vietnam veterans, those people who know about war, say that Kerry is unfit to be Commander-in-Chief. This is obviously something the American people need to hear in this hour of deadly crisis.
Our claim of a cover-up was strongly reinforced recently 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.
NBC, ABC, and the Associated Press 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.” Swift Boat Veterans for Truth responded by stating,”These men are neither pawns nor shills, they deserve better than to be ignored and maligned by media organizations increasingly difficult to distinguish from the Kerry campaign itself.”
We currently are reporting data from 28 Vietnam vet groups showing an estimated 80% rejection of Kerry as Commander-in-Chief. There has been no group that favored him.
A second confirmation of the Magruder data came from Talon News out of Washington, in a press release titled, “Veterans Deserting Kerry.” “After months of touting his military record and his combat heroism, the Massassachusetts Democrat is losing the veterans’s vote to President Bush by a landslide. Buried deep inside the internals of a CBS poll released Wednesday was this startling statistic: veterans prefer Bush over Kerry by a whopping 13 points. 54 to 41. Not surprisingly, coverage of the stunning poll result has been slim to none. Said Buch-Cheney spokesman Scott Stanzel, ‘It’s buried in every poll that I have seen.’”
That is the issue. The mainstream media is cheating to help Kerry.
MORE CONFIRMATION JUST IN:
Subj: CBS Poll: Kerry Still Losing Vet Vote to Bush
Date: 07/29/2004 12:27:30 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Military veterans still aren’t buying into Sen. John Kerry’s campaign sales pitch that his service in Vietnam qualifies him to be Commander-in-Chief. The latest CBS News poll, taken on the eve of the Democratic Convention, but never mentioned in formal news reports, shows that the combined veterans of all wars back President Bush over Kerry, 47 to 41 percent.
Kerry’s fellow Vietnam veterans were not surveyed independently. But anecdotal evidence suggests that most veterans of that era still harbor deep resentments against Kerry because of anti-war protests where he trashed his comrades in arms as war criminals and was involved in projects with Jane Fonda. If the presidential challenger doesn’t top Bush in the veterans catagory by the end of the Democratic Convention, it’s sure to be a huge political embarrassment.”
FOLLOWING THE CONVENTION, HE STILL DOESN’T TOP BUSH
“A new poll by the national organization Rasmussen Reports, taken after the Democratic Convention, shows that Bush holds a 23% lead among veterans, but those with no military service favor Kerry by 10 points.”
Stop and think about what this means. Those with knowledge about war strongly prefer Bush over Kerry as Commander-in-Chief. An honest national media would investigate this finding and tell the American people why these veterans believe this. It also means that the much larger group of those with no military experience to judge the matter believe that Kerry would be better. In their ignorance of what makes a good Commander-in-Chief, because the media is covering up the issue, they could make Kerry , the less able of the two men, Commander-in-Chief. This would place the country in much greater danger that it would be in under Bush. It would be like voting for McClelland, who threw away victory after Gettysburg, over General Grant, who won the Civil War. The media, blindfolding America, directing it towards the abyss.
THE V.V.A.R. POLL
(for updates go to Latest Presidential Poll at v-v-a-r.org. This poll is ongoing. Send us data from your group.)
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 -2 tours in Vietnam
§ 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 85%-95% 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, Holder, Distinguished Service Cross
§ 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
§ A summary of individual votes sent in to V.V.A.R. is running 12 for Bush, 3 for Kerry
§ 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- F-4 pilot Ubon 67-68
§ 17th Annual Reunion - out of 55 vets all against Kerry - Bob Griffin - 101st Abn. Div. Vietnam 1968-69
§ 99 for Bush - 1 for Kerry - Don Martin., USA, combat aviation
§ Vets - union factory workers- 170 for Bush - 73 for kerry -Tony Newcomb, Veterans Leadership program
§ All the vets I know (50 or so) have no use for Kerry -John Morrill- Vietnam veteran
§ 200 on the net for Bush, 1 for Kerry - flyc54@bellsouth.net
§ members, 151` for Bush, 6 for Kerry - Kenneth Roberts
§ All the vets I know, probably 50, have no use for Kerry - John Morrill - Vietnam veteran
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 - General Carl Snyder (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
The psychology by which the media cannot allow the public to find out that the majority of Vietnam veterans oppose Kerry is elementary. Most Vietnam vets agree they fought for the freedom of the South Vietnamese against Communist aggression from the North. The media, the campus, and those like Kerry and Fonda fell for Hanoi’s propaganda that it was an imperialistic, immoral war of aggression by the U.S. against people in South Vietnam attempting to unify their country. And they are apparently willing to risk the nation rather than admit they are wrong. (For an expose of the Big Lie of the anti-war movement, see “Kerry Too Naive-Part 1” at v-v-a-r.org)
Writers in a recent edition of The National Review said, “the media has brushed off the issue of Kerry’s past as irrelevant or a pointless ‘refighting’ of the Vietnam War. I have news for the media. The growing turmoil surrounding the Kerry candidacy is precisely because it is triggering a nationwide ‘refighting’ of the Vietnam War as it has been represented (or misrepresented) over the years by the media and the university, primarily to protect those who would not serve as well as philosophical agendas. As Stephen Young wrote recently, ‘Our national recollection of the war matches that of the New Left.’ The nation cannot live with this any longer. It poses a catastrophic threat to the nation because it keeps the public from seeing, as most veterans can see, that Kerry is Unfit to Command, the title of a new book about Kerry written by veterans. It keeps the public from understanding what Kerry really said in his 1971 testimony to Congress.”
Even as Kerry was speaking at Fleet Hall in Boston, only a few blocks away, at Simmons College, a conference, “Examining the Myths of the Vietnam War” was going on with nationally recognized experts on the war commenting, along with other issues, on the following statements of the anti-war movement (below), once posted on their website, many of which are still embraced by the media, the campus, and Kerry:
First, here is their opening statement:
“The Kerry Presidential Campaign has brought attention to the Vietnam War and re-opened the debate in a national spotlight. Having been fairly quiet for several decades, this forum is being offered as an opportunity to give voice to those of us who feel that the history of our war is being mis-portrayed by a culture that prefers to victimize the veteran rather than acknowledge that they themselves were in the wrong. “
1. It is not true that the Vietnam War was a civil war.
2. It is not true that Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist first and a Communist second.
3. It is not true that he had the support of the majority of the people in Vietnam, North and South.
4. It is not true that Ngo Dinh Diem was a puppet of the French colonialists
5. It is not true that the National Liberation Front was a revolutionary movement independent of North Vietnam.
6. It is not true that the Viet Cong won the hearts and minds of villagers through humanitarian policies.
7. It is not true that the Geneva Declarations of 1954 legally bound Diem’s government and the United States to unify the two halves of Vietnam through elections.
8. It is not true that most American soldiers were addicted to drugs, guilt-ridden, about their role in the war, and deliberately used cruel and inhumane tactics (Kerry’s “atrocities”).
9. It is not true that American blacks constituted a disproportionate number of the combat casualties.
10. It is not true that the United States lost the war militarily.
11. It is not true that the Communist Tet offensive of 1968 was a military defeat for the United States.
12. It is not true that it was a calculated policy of the United States to bomb civilian targets in North Vietnam.
13. It is not true that the percentage of civilian deaths in the Vietnam War was higher than in other wars.
14. It is not true that American POW’s were treated humanely by the North Vietnamese.
15. It is not true that the press coverage of the Vietnam War was ‘fair and balanced.’
16. It is not true that the antiwar demonstrations in the United States shortened the war.
17. It is not true that the domino theory has been proven false.
18. It is not true that life is better in Indochina now that the United States is gone.
19. It is not true that the teaching of the Vietnam War is free from political bias.
Now stop and think about what THIS means. It means that even as Kerry was extolling his “hero status” in Vietnam at the Convention, almost next door many of the nation’s top historians and military experts were exposing as error many of the statements Kerry made in his 1971 testimony to Congress and later as leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In what sense “against the war”? As a leftist, or as many would say, at minimum very naive about Communism, sharing many of the same views as Jane Fonda and her friends. As one Vietnam vet wrote recently, “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 is the whole issue surrounding Kerry. Is he a patriot or is he someting else? This is the queston the media is desperately trying to keep under cover.
The collected media next door at the Convention knew this national conference was going on but never metioned it to the American people. Further proof of how the media is protecting Kerry.
All of the above myths have long been exposed in the new, more objective histories and films. (see “Silent Victory” at SilentVictory.com) But media and universities still cling to these myths because to face the truth would threaten both their philosophical agendas and their decisions in the 60’s. But we are under no obligation to indulge their little anxieties with the whole nation now at risk. Truth comes first.
(For two articles on V.V.A.R. clashes with profs at K.U. over lying about Vietnam, see “Students Told About Lies” in v-v-a-r.org archive)
Many remember what Peter Braestrup said in ending Big Stor, his 2-volume analysis of the media reporting on Vietnam:
“Rarely has contemporary crisis journalism turned out, in retrospect, to have veered so widely from reality. Essentially, the dominant themes of the words and film from Vietnam added up to a portrait of defeat for the allies. Historians, on the contrary, have concluded that the Tet Offensive resulted in a severe military/political setback for Hanoi in the South. To have portrayed such a setback for one side as a defeat for the other- in a major crisis abroad - cannot be counted upon as a triumph for American journalism...and it could happen again.”
We think it is happening again. In times of crisis the media elites, arrogant, as Bernard Goldberg showed, act as a counter-government, believing they know what is best for the countrry. And they have decided that Kerry is best for the country, precisely because he “spoke out against the war,” that is, endorsed their own leftist version of the war. And they are working hard to keep the American people from knowing what Kerry really believed about Vietnam, and Communism.
One big problem is that in their arrogance the media, and academics refuse to discuss the issues. As a student organization at the University of Kansas we receive e-mail letters, almost all positive, from people all over the U.S.and the rest of the world. Yet in four years we have never received a comment about an article from an academic at K.U. other than dozens of “Take me off your list” or “Don’t send me that crap.” And the school paper has never published an article of ours. America, knowing that the media and the university are placing the nation in mortal danger, is rising up in protest, knowing that if Kerry wins, this totalitarian mentality will come to power everywhere. Therefore, I will continue my campaign against the media. I will take my sign to Topeka and parade it at the newspaper there. If that fails, I will take it to Kansas City. If that fails I will just keep going. Somebody is going to put this story on the newswire. This media cover-up for Kerry is going to fail.
Be sure to attend the massive rally by “Vietnam Vets for the Truth” in Washington on Sept. 12. Their theme: “Kerry Lied...While Good Men Died.”
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Founder/President, V.V.A.R.
Phone: 785-312-9303
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