The Washington Post reports on the riders of the "Rolling Thunder" group of bikers, who recently toured Washington D.C. This group of mainly Vietnam veterans has taken their annual Memorial Day ride every year for 17 years.
These Vietnam vets had some select words about John Kerry:
Although Bush never saw combat and Kerry is a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, many in the Rolling Thunder crowd demonstrated little affection for their brother-in-arms. As they rolled across the Memorial Bridge, around the Lincoln Memorial and down Constitution Avenue, bikers displayed signs reading “Stop Kerry” and “Vietnam Vets against Kerry.”
Nice dig on Bush from the Post as usual. I don’t think any of these vets would consider Kerry one of their "brothers-in-arms" — not after Kerry’s history working to aid and abet the NVA’s brutal conquest of South Vietnam and Cambodia.
In a written statement, Kerry’s campaign said, “Nobody has worked harder on veterans and POW-MIA issues than John Kerry.” The Kerry statement added that Bush is “misleading Rolling Thunder about his commitment to our veterans and military families.”
Translation — the Kerry campaign thinks that actual veterans aren’t smart enough to know what’s good for them. They need a Boston Brahmin who spend decades pissing on them, pushed aside concerns about POW-MIAs in Vietnam in order to pursue normalized relations with Hanoi, and has voted against giving those currently serving in Iraq the money they needed to complete the mission.
Bob Nowak, 52, a retired Navy man from Aroda, Va., who did two tours in Vietnam, said veterans such as himself despise Kerry for his decision to protest the war in the early 1970s.
Nowak remembers returning from Vietnam in 1973 aboard an aircraft carrier loaded with thousands of sailors in their dress whites. “As we passed under the Golden Gate Bridge, there were people waiting for us. And they threw garbage on us,” Nowak recalled. “That was about the time Kerry was throwing his [ribbons] away. It’s kind of hard to forget either of them.”
Indeed, those vets who had to endure the absolutely horrible treatment that was inflicted upon them by Kerry’s ilk will never forget those who threw away their honor along with their medals.
As much as Kerry wishes to claim that he represents the Vietnam veteran, those who served their country and did not come back home after four months to serve as the mouthpiece of the enemy and argue that the NVA would not slaughter millions — only a few short years later the killing fields of Vietnam and Cambodia were filled with millions dead and millions more dispossessed and sent scattered across the globe. Kerry is using his Vietnam service as a shield for criticism — only proving that patriotism truly is the last refuge of scoudrels.
