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 Schneider (ret.) Korea, Vietnam
dukesch@aol.com, 480-595-7668)
MEDIA BUILDING UP TO A DANGEROUS NEW TET OFFENSIVE-TYPE COVER-UP, OF VET AND MILITARY REJECTION OF KERRY
by Leonard Magruder
October 26, 2004
We begin with two new polls that confirm our claim that a large majority of the military oppose Kerry as Commander-in-Chief. We follow this with a few examples of the press releases, in chronological order, that we sent out over the last eight months since we started our polling in April, with short excerpts from each. The full articles, plus our updated Presidential Poll, can be seen at www.v-v-a-r.org. In ending, we reproduce two related, especially insightful articles on the issue and a final commentary before the election, ending our campaign.
Survey shows military favors Bush over Kerry
by George Edmonson
Cox News Service
WASHINGTON - Members of the military and their families overwhelmingly favor President Bush as commander in chief over his Democratic challenger John Kerry, according to an independent poll released Friday. The respondents named Bush over Kerry by 69 percent to 24 percent on who would be trusted more “to handle the responsibilities of commander in chief of the military.” And 67 percent approved of the way Bush is handling his job. The survey, part of the National Annenberg Election Survey, also showed military support for Bush consistently exceeding that of the country as a whole.
Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the Bush campaign, told reporters the poll results showed “the folks who know best, who obviously have the most concerns and the most interest, obviously, in decisions made by the president related to going to war, they support the president overwhelmingly.
(note: the predominantly leftist University of California-Berkeley campus took this Annenberg report very hard:
“It is reported the Military personnel trust and prefer Bush to Kerry. In that case, it would be wiser to get rid of the stupid, over-inflated army than have 4 more Bush years. I suppose the average soldier is rather stupid and couldn’t get a job elsewhere. They probably think they will go straight to Heaven if they die for Bush, U.S., Jesus and Big Daddy of Sky Ranch.”)
A 55-point chasm in military support for Kerry and Bush
Thursday, October 14, 2004
by Ross Mackenzie
published by TownHall.com
Oct. 11 editions of Military Times publications (Navy Times, Army Times, Marine Corps Times, Air Force Times) carried an astounding story not likely to get much coverage in the establishment press.
Staff writer Gordon Trowbridge wrote as follows:
“A Military Times survey of more than 4,000 readers indicates Bush leads Democratic Sen. John Kerry 73 percent to 18 percent in the voluntary survey of 4,165 active-duty, National Guard, and reserve subscribers.
The Military Times survey may be telling Kerry and the Democrats that a hefty military majority sees through the careful veneer of moderation to the deeply ingrained leftism that drives him. Kerry has been hostile to the military; probably since Yale - and certainly so since he returned from Vietnam, led peacenik demonstrations, decried the American military as reeking with war criminals, and first ran for Congress. His 20-year Senate record - marking him as the Senate’s most liberal member - is one of uninterrupted hostility to almost every military weapons system and almost every military enterprise proposed during that time.
The left detests the military, and the military knows it - and reciprocates, as the Military Times survey overwhelmingly testifies. Those in the military resent the prospect of risking their lives with Kerry as their commander in chief in a war he terms ‘wrong’ and ‘a grand diversion’ - with allies he terms ‘coerced and bribed.’”
A few V.V.A.R. press releases on this issue in chronological order since April, 2004:
MAINSTREAM MEDIA COVERING UP VIETNAM VET REJECTION OF KERRY AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
April 21, 2004
A poll on how Vietnam vets feel about Kerry as Commander-in-Chief would seem to be a natural. But, while we have polls on everything else, oddly a poll on this has never appeared. Last Saturday, Leonard Magruder, President of Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform decided to send out an appeal to all Vietnam veteran leaders on his mailing list to send him the resuts of any polls regardng Bush vs. Kerry.
Because this is not yet a “scientific” poll, only suggestive, nevertheless we are at this point willing to make what we consider a very conservative preliminary estimate and say that, based on the results we have received so far, at least two thirds of all Vietnam veterans in the country are opposed to the idea of Kerry becoming Commander-in-Chief. Vietnam veterans are a strong part of national leadership these days, held in high regard by the public. If the public becomes aware that these vets have serious misgivings about Kerry, that will have an impact. The mainstream media knows this and therefore we know this will be covered up.
THE ENEMY WE FACE - AND THE DANGER WITHIN, KERRY
April 26, 2004
Leonard Magruder, President of V.V.A.R., was interviewed last night on the half-hour Geoff Metcalf syndicated national radio talk show. Recent guests have included Pat Buchanan, Bernard Goldberg, David Horowitz, Bill O’Reilly, and John Stossel. He spoke about the cover-up of his poll of Vietnam vets. In a second radio interview on WRUF, Gainsville, Magruder told students at the University of Florida:
“A four- star general has told us that this is the greatest threat we have ever faced in our entire history. Our veterans, in particular our Vietnam veterans, know that, and apparently believe Kerry would be weak on terrorists, as our polls show them at least 75% against Kerry as Commander-in-Chief.
STORY OF VIETNAM VETERAN OPPOSITION TO KERRY BREAKS THROUGH MASSIVE MEDIA ASSAULT ON DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
May 3, 2004
Magruder said today that a poll he has been putting together from vet groups all over the country, showing strong opposition by Vietnam veterans to Kerry, had received some attention in Insight Magazine Online even as the mainstream media continued to cover up the story.
Collectively the trend is very clear and dramatic. With results in from 32 vet organizations it now appears that at least 80% of all Vietnam vets are opposed to Kerry. Failure to report on this opinion, coming from those best in a position to help the public judge Kerry’s fitness to be Commander-in-Chief, constitutes an extreme attack by the media on the democratic process.
The Magruder finding was strongly reinforced Tuesday night when a group of veterans representing 200 out of 226 who had served in the same unit as Kerry in Vietnam held a press conference in Washington, D.C. and denounced Kerry as “unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.” NBC, ABC, and the Associated Press all refused to tell the American people about the conference. Dan Rather of CBS Evening News mentioned the event briefly but dismissed the group as “allied with the Republicans.”
MEDIA TELLS VIETNAM VETS TO GET LOST. EDITORS AND REPORTERS OF “THE LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD” WALK RIGHT ON BY AS MAGRUDER PROTESTS COVER-UP FOR KERRY.
June 2, 2004
Magruder held a protest today in front of the news offices of The Journal -World in Lawrence, Kansas, carrying a large sign that read “Stop the Media Cover-up for Kerry.” He said CBS was covering up a poll they just did that confirmed his findings.
Newsmax.com, June 1, 2004, ‘Veterans Deserting Kerry”
A CBS News poll released this week contained some devastating news for the Kerry campaign. After months of touting his military record and his combat heroism, the Massachusetts Democrat is losing the veteran’s vote to President Bush by a landslide. Buried deep inside the internals of a CBS poll released Wednesday was this stunning statistic- veterans prefer Bush over Kerry by a whopping 13 points, 54 to 41. Not surprisingly, coverage of the poll result has been slim to none. Said Bush-Cheney spokesman Scott Stanzel to Steve Malzberg of WABC Radio, “It’s buried in every poll that I’ve seen.”
“That is the issue,” said Mr. Magruder. “The mainstream media is cheating to help Kerry”
“TOPEKA CAPITAL-JOURNAL” JOINS “LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD” BY IGNORING MAGRUDER’S SECOND PROTEST AGAINST MEDIA BIAS. ISSUE AIRED IN ONE-HOUR COLORADO BROADCAST.
July 4, 2004
The Media Research Center today sent out an article titled, “Major Media Biased to Help Kerry.”
“New surveys have found that public perception of media credibility has fallen and that by three-to-one, more see major networks and newspapers as “biased to help Kerry” over Bush. A Rasmussen poll found that many more see ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC as biased in favor of Kerry over Bush with CBS seen “as the most biased.” 37% believe the CBS network news team is “trying to help the Kerry campaign” compared to just 10 percent who believe that CBS is trying to help Bush. 35% see The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post as biased to help Kerry while only 7% see these as biased towards Bush.”
Mr. Magruder discussed this whole issue, including the cover-up by two newspapers in Kansas, on a one-hour program over radio station KHNC in Golden, Colorado, which reaches from Pueblo, through Denver, to Casper, Wyoming, and is heard worldwide on The American Freedom Network.
MAGRUDER DEFEATING MEDIA COVER-UP OF TOP NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUES AS ALL NORTH CAROLINA HEARS ABOUT VIETNAM VET REJECTION OF KERRY
July 16, 2004
Last week, major Kansas newspapers joined with The Lawrence Journal-World in an effort to cover up the story about Leonard Magruder’s protest at the Lawrence newspaper.
Radio host Bill Fishburne of North Carolina’s strongest radio station, WWNC, hearing about the Lawrence incident invited Magruder to tell his story on his half-hour show last Sunday, reaching not only the people of North Carolina but those in parts of adjacent states. They heard him discuss two top stories related to national security being covered up by the mainstream media: the massive evidence that Vietnam vets reject Kerry as Commander-in-Chief, and the absolute necessity of adding a new element to the Bush Doctrine, of a conditional nature, “If you do that - we will do this,” involving massive, terrifying, retaliation on terrorist enclaves in all Muslim countries, with or without permission.
KERRY CANDIDACY TRIGGERS MULTIPLE VIETNAM VET PROTESTS - MASSIVE RALLY IN WASHINGTON, CONFERENCE ATTACKS MEDIA AND UNIVERSITY “MYTHS” IN BOSTON.
July 26, 2004
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. Furthermore, his characteristic preference for negotiation, diplomacy and internationalism, his inclination to appease, would prove disastrous in the war against terror.”
Talk show host Hugh Hewitt wrote recently, “The conventional wisdom floating downstream from Washington is that Senator Kerry’s anti-war radicalism following his return from service in Vietnam shouldn’t, and won’t be an issue in November.” They wish. Translation: We better make sure that doesn’t come up - we lied, too.
Stephen Young wrote recently, “Our national recollection of the war matches that of the New Left.” That is the problem. The media wants to keep it that way. The media declared long ago that the debate over Vietnam was closed, that the New Left, the war protestors, and people like Kerry, had won, and that there would be no further discussion. And for three decades they have hidden the fact that America doesn’t agree. The nation cannot live with this any longer.
VET GROUP OFFERS FREE NEW FILM FOR TV - SHOWS NEGATIVE IMPACT OF KERRY, WAR PROTESTORS, ON VETS
SPECIAL FORCES JOIN THE PROTEST
Sept. 10, 2004
To help in the debate over Kerry’s role in demoralizing both veterans and the public during the ‘70’s, I am offering a free copy of my new film, Vietnam Vets Condemn War Protestors - Like Kerry, to any vet or vet group, or any TV station person, that can get the film on local Public Access TV. Based on 62 interviews with Vietnam vets there was only time for 12 in the film, but all 62 of those interviewed agreed about the damage done to them by antiwar groups such as Kerry’s Vietnam Veterans Against the War. For a free copy e-mail Magruder44@aol.com, or call 785-312-9303.
Isn’t it obvious that Vietnam veterans would very much like to see one of their own become President? Isn’t it also obvious that if 80% are against one of their own becoming president that they must know of a very good reason? In trying to warn America to reject Kerry, are these veterans not making a second sacrifice for the sake of their country, inasmuch as they would like to see a Vietnam veteran become president? Is not the media, which betrayed their sacrifices in Vietnam, now betraying them a second time, not allowing them to be heard?
Now Special Forces Vietnam veterans have sent a large petition to Kerry in solidarity with the Swift Boat veterans stating that Kerry is “unfit to be our Commander-in-Chief or to lead our nation as President. We call upon the American people to reject his effort.”
Two important new articles on the issues:
Wednesday, October 13 2004 -- by Gil Spencer
The Delaware County Times (Penn.)
The Comfort Inn in Philadelphia is no Four Seasons, but it’s a whole lot better than the Hanoi Hilton where Mike Cronin spent six years of his life. The Hanoi Hilton is the name American prisoners of war in Vietnam gave the prison where they were held, interrogated and tortured by their jailers. Cronin, a Navy pilot, was one of those prisoners. So were Jim Warner and Ken Cordier. They all came in to Philadelphia Sunday night to get ready for a press conference they had planned for the next morning to talk about their beef with John Kerry.
Cronin is one of many POWs who is supporting the effort to get the story out about the effect of Kerry’s Vietnam-era actions on his fellow combatants. But it’s a story that few mainstream media outlets have been very willing to report. When thousands of veterans gathered in Washington, D.C., a few weeks ago to express their disdain for Kerry’s candidacy, it went lightly covered nationally. Why is the mainstream press downplaying if not ignoring this outraged group of veterans? These guys have a theory. It’s because the old media was complicit in the same anti-Vietnam War movement that John Kerry helped lead when he returned from his four-month tour of duty. Papers like the New York Times and networks like CBS bought and perpetuated the myth of Vietnam veterans as drug-addled and crazed losers. And they continue to have a stake in sustaining that myth. The media’s version of that war is now the country’s official version and they don’t want it changed. Now along come men like Jim Warner, Ken Cordier, Congressional Medal of Honor Winner Leo Thorsness, and hundreds, thousands of others, to say they got it wrong. And that nobody got it more wrong than John Kerry.
It was John Kerry who made his Vietnam service the central argument at the Democratic Convention that he could be trusted to be America’s commander-in-chief. These men beg to disagree. Their service and sacrifice demands we, at least, give them a fair hearing.
The Media for Kerry
Diana West
Published October 22, 2004
The Washington Times
“Absolutely,” most reporters want John Kerry to win the election, declares Newsweek’s Evan Thomas. Which is a chilling thought, but also a golden opportunity. It means that a vote for Bush-Cheney is not only a vote against Kerry-Edwards, but also a vote against Kerry-Edwards-CBS-CNN-New York Times. Are you incensed over Dan Rather’s crude attempt to influence the presidential election with a sheaf of pathetic forgeries? Appalled by “Nightline’s” Ted Koppel for using dictatorship-dictated sources in communist Vietnam to contradict the testimonies of decorated American veterans? Outraged by ABC’s head-office directive to its reporters to go easier on John Kerry than George W. Bush. The fact is, never before have mainstream media organizations sunk so deep in the tank for a Democratic ticket. The election is days away, but vital questions about Mr. Kerry remain not just unanswered in mainstream media outlets, but unasked. This is evidence of the efficiency with which the media have embraced the role of Democratic star-maker, not newsmaker. Here we are, on the brink, possibly, of electing a self-confessed war criminal to the Oval Office -- a man who, as an American officer, parlayed with the enemy, and... nothing. No questions, no stories. No thoughts, no curiosity. We contemplate a new wartime leader whose political epiphany -- the famous Christmas in Cambodia, “seared, seared” into Mr. Kerry’s memory -- never happened. Questions, stories in the mainstream media? Not a one. We consider trusting our very lives to a man who has consistently hewed to the wrong side of history, favoring appeasement and disarmament over democratic principle and strength, but we know nothing of his current thinking on those old positions.
How, for instance, does this American presidential candidate explain his place of honor in a Vietnamese war museum dedicated to an American defeat? Does Mr. Kerry believe the anti-war movement in which he figured so prominently bears any moral responsibility for the mass brutality -- executions, re-education camps, boat people -- that marked Hanoi’s victory? Indeed, does Mr. Kerry still believe North Vietnam “liberated” South Vietnam, and that the conflict itself was not a front in the Cold War? This glaring failure makes a mockery of the media. It leaves us gasping for facts. It also explains the volcanic eruption of alternative sources of campaign information like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the newsies of the blogosphere, and a slew of independent ads and documentaries, including “Stolen Honor.” Such activity has injected vital blasts of oxygen into otherwise stilted coverage.
I remember well the veritable news blackout on the Swift Boat vets when they first assembled last spring in downtown Washington. The Associated Press didn’t even send a correspondent, calling the group’s press conference “old news” before it happened.
Whatever the final tally on Election Day, we, the people, need to take a good hard look at the mainstream media scorecard the day after.
Final remarks in ending our only partially successful campaign, before the election:
After the election will be too late. Think of the recrimmination when the people finally find out, if Kerry were to win the election, what the media hid from them: the hostility of the military, the assassination plot in Kansas City, the request for a deference to study in Paris, the plan to stay off-shore in the Navy out of harm’s way, the anti-war sentiments at Yale even before joining, the exposure of his attack on the military in The New Soldier, the truth about his Naval Reserve Status, the trouble with his discharge, being hidden by his refusal to release his military papers, his meetings with the enemy in Paris, his meetings with Communist dictator Ortega, the lies in his ‘71 Senate testimony, his advocacy of a Communist peace proposal - a surrender on enemy terms, his slander of troops even as they were fighting and dying in the field, the use of his speeches to torture POW’s, his 20-year- long neglect of the military in Congress. Imagine the sense of national betrayal and the instant loss of confidence in the Presidency, when all this is told to all Americans, not just those few who read about it on the Internet, the overall growing despair as the nation realizes how the media fooled them.
We need to do all we can to get this issue into the mainstream media now. It is not our imagination, as you can see in all the other complaints by other organizations above. This is shaping up as a repeat of 1968, when the media lied to the nation concerning the outcome of the Tet Offensive. The media refers to this often repeated charge as a “right-wing fantsy,” but in our 1984 appeal to Congress for an investigation following the Westmoreland trial we were able to give Congress documentation from twenty some histories and commentaries on the war (see “Vietnam and the Media” at www.v-v-a-r.org). Noted journalist Peter Braestrup summed up the betrayal in his 2 vol. work, Big Story:
“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 major crisis abroad - cannot be counted upon as a triumph for American journalism… and it could happen again.” (Big Story - 2 vols. - Peter Braestrup)
It is happening again.
In times of crisis, as in the case of the Vietnam War, and now in the case of the Iraq War and Kerry, the media tend to act as an unelected counter-government, believing that only they know what is best for the country (see CBS insider Bernard Goldberg- Arrogance: Saving America From the Media Elite). But what they are really doing is once again robbing the American people of the ability to make critical judgments about their most vital security interests in a time of war.
There are two issues here of absolutely vital importance to the nation. First, the media is withholding from the public documented evidence that veterans and the armed forces by a significant majority reject Kerry as Commander-in-Chief, and second, that what this means is that if Kerry wins there will be a paralyzing tension between the armed forces and the Commander-in-Chief in a time of war. This we absolutely cannot have. We therefore urge everyone to join us in this fight in any way you can until the headline “Veterans, Military, Overwhelmingly Reject Kerry as Commander-in-Chief” appears on the front page of every major newspaper in the country.
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Founder/President, V.V.A.R.
Phone: 785-312-9303
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