NEVER TOO LATE TO SPREAD THE TRUTH....
Michael Benge spent 11 years in Viet Nam, over five
years as a Prisoner of War-1968-73. While serving as a civilian Foreign
Service Officer, he was captured in South Viet Nam by the North Vietnamese and
held in numerous camps in South Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, and North Viet Nam. He
spent 27 months in solitary confinement and one year in a "black box." For
efforts in rescuing several Americans prior to capture, he received the State
Department's highest award for heroism and a second one for valor.
"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue
it steadily." --George Washington
An
Open letter to Vietnamese-Americans, Vietnam and other Veterans concerning the
upcoming 2004 elections:
From Mike Benge, Former VN POW, '68-'73
Many
people including Vietnamese-Americans, Vietnam and other Veterans and others,
especially the younger generation, know very little about the Vietnam War. Even
the Vietnam Veterans by and large knew little more than a microcosm of what was
going on other than their little part of "Hell." Almost everyone
has seen the picture of the South Vietnamese General summarily executing a Viet
Cong, but was never told that this VC was part of a special assassination unit
that had just finished cutting off the legs of the dependents, wives and
children, in the police barracks just down the street, who smeared on the wall
in blood: this is what happens to American imperialist collaborators. All to
many know little more than what they may have seen mis-portrayed in movies such
as "Apocalypse Now" or editorialized in TV portrayals or books, even
school text books, that are often more fiction than fact.
Few know the real Senator John Kerry who is aspiring to be President....
During the Easter Campaign in 1972, after American combat troops had pulled out
of Vietnam, the Army of South Vietnam fought gallantly against the North
Vietnamese communist army, defeating them in battle, and driving them in defeat
back to North Vietnam and their sanctuaries in Laos. However, because of
John Kerry's appalling testimony before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations
Committee in April 1971 in which he falsely charged that all U.S. troops in
Vietnam were war criminals, Senator Ted Kennedy was able to persuade the Senate
to cut off all future funding for Vietnam. Therefore, there was no money to
purchase ammunition, bombs or parts to repair any equipment necessary to
continue the war and ward off the North Vietnamese army that led to the fall of
Vietnam to the communists in 1975.
Kerry
was spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), and largely based
his testimony on fabrications by VVAW members who had either not been in the
military, or if they had been had not been in Vietnam, or if they had been in
Vietnam had never been in combat. John Kerry also stated that the Vietnamese
people didn't care if they lived under democracy or communism, and they would
probably be better off under communism. He went on to say that if the
communists took over Vietnam, at most, only a few hundred South Vietnamese would
be killed.
The North Vietnamese communist government (NVG) signed the Geneva Conventions on
the Treatment of Prisoners of War in 1957, yet it grossly violated all
provisions of the Convention by starving, torturing and murdering not only
American military POWs, but civilians as well. The communists also committed the
same atrocities against thousands of South Vietnamese POWs, as well as any
third-country allies who happened to fall in their clutches.
[I know this from first hand experience having been a civilian POW of Hanoi for
5 years, including spending time in "tiger cages" and in their less
than luxurious prisons in Hanoi including Hoa Lo prison - the Hole of Fire, aka
the Hanoi Hilton.]
When the communist North Vietnamese retreated after being defeated in the battle
for Hue that ended Feb. 24, 1968, they took with them over 3,500 South
Vietnamese POWs, soldiers, civil servants as well as their wives and children,
including three German Doctors working at the University of Hue. All were
systematically murdered and buried - 20 to 40 bodies to a grave. The bodies
showed clear evidence of atrocity killings: groups of bodies tied together, each
with hands wired or tied with bamboo strips behind backs, rags stuffed in mouths
or plastic bags tied over their heads, with many of the bodies contorted but
without wounds (indicating being buried alive).
Right after my capture during the TET Offensive in 1968, North Vietnamese
officers, in order to impress me of their seriousness, staged a "kangaroo
court," a mock trial, in a leper colony, where they had 15 Montagnard
ethnic minority teenagers, with their hands wired behind them, kneeling on a
bamboo platform, accusing them of being counter-revolutionaries. Communist
cadres were dispersed among the lepers and when asked by the officer staging the
trial what should be done with them, the cadre began shouting, "Kill them!
Kill them!" The lepers afraid for their lives were urged by the cadres
to join in the condemnation, a freak-out show that would make Francis Ford
Coppula proud - then a NVA officer walked up behind them, executing a coup de
grace, shooting each teenager in the back of the head.
Probably less than 100 people remember, and less than a dozen saw the pictures
of, what happened when the North Vietnamese soldiers overran a Stieng ethnic
minority village in Tay Ninh Province in 1967 and systematically fried the men,
women, children and babes in arms with flame throwers -- turning the entire
village into charred corpses.
Apparently the North Vietnamese atrocities made no impact on the mind or
conscience of Senator John Kerry, for he made no agonized outcry. He never led
demonstrations at North Vietnamese embassies or consulates. No, instead,
John Kerry led demonstrations in Washington, DC, marching under the Viet Cong
flag, and regurgitated falsehoods before the Senate Foreign Relations, and
betrayed his "band of brothers" calling them all "war
criminals." And, John Kerry dishonored those dead Americans whose
names are on that cold black granite wall in Washington, DC - The Vietnam
Memorial - who died fighting for freedom and democracy for the Vietnamese
people.
John Kerry testified that American Servicemen in Vietnam committed atrocities,
reminiscent of Genghis Khan, and the acts were "not isolated incidents but
crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at
all levels of command." Who Kerry was describing was the Vietnamese
communists, not American soldiers. On April 18, 1971, Kerry appeared on
NBC's "Meet the Press" stating "Yes, yes, I committed the same
kind of atrocities." Whether this was a mea culpa by Kerry, only he
knows.
Instead of punishment for war crimes, through the intense advocacy efforts of
presidential hopeful John Kerry, the communist killers and torturers were
rewarded with favorable diplomatic and trade relations that have allowed them to
line their pockets with gold and fatten their offshore bank accounts from
ill-gotten gains. As a Senator, John Kerry has fought harder for the Vietnamese
communists since his return than he ever did against them during his short four
months in Vietnam as a Swift Boat commander. In 2001, Kerry single-handed
prevented the Vietnam Human Rights Act from going to the floor of the Senate for
a democratic up or down vote after passing the House 410-1.
John Kerry gave aid-and-comfort to the enemy, and his actions after coming back
from Vietnam prolonged the war instead of shortening it, causing the unnecessary
deaths of over 2 million Vietnamese and 3 million Cambodians, and hundreds of
thousands Laotians.
General Vo Nguyen Giap, the North Vietnamese general, the architect of the
military campaign that finally drove the U.S. out of South Vietnam in 1975, is
cited as crediting Presidential aspirant John Kerry and his VVAW with helping
them achieve victory. In Giap's 1985 memoir about the war, he wrote that if
it weren't for organizations like Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War,
Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S." Giap was quoted as saying,
"What we still don't understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of
Hanoi. You had us on the ropes. If you had pressed us a little harder,
just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender! It was the same at
the battles of TET. You defeated us! We knew it, and we thought you knew
it. But, we were elated to notice the media were definitely helping us.
They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields.
Yes, we were ready to surrender. You had won!" John Kerry's
picture hangs in the Vietnamese communist's war museum (formerly called the War
Crimes Museum) in Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City), in which he is
immortalized in tribute to aiding the communists in winning the war.
America went to war in Vietnam for the right reasons, fighting for freedom and
democracy for the Vietnamese people and history has proven this fact. However,
because of the likes of John Kerry, the United States abandoned the Vietnamese
people to the brutal fascist Vietnamese communists. In his campaign, John
Forbes Kerry heralds his military record as a badge of honor in his campaign;
only after coming home, he desecrated it -- That's not what a hero does. John
Forbes Kerry does not deserve the respect of Veterans, nor their vote, or the
vote of Vietnamese Americans who value honor over deceit. Don't let the
United States once again betray the Vietnamese people by electing John Kerry.
Subj: Re: An open letter to Vietnam from a former American POW
Date: 10/31/2004 2:24:59 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: BENGE<>@aol.com
To: Poet Linh D Vo
Linh: Of course I remember you and your book of lovely poems. How could I ever forget you and your moving and heartfelt poems. Hope that you are well and life if treating you good. Regards, Mike.
In a message dated 10/31/2004 1:19:30 PM Pacific Standard Time, PoetLinhDVo@cs.com writes:
An open letter to Vietnam from a former American POW
www.gratitude.org/an_open_letter_to_vietnam.htm
Dear Papa-san Mike Benge,
I am "the boy in the poem" who wrote "Dear Daddy."
I am honored to have met you at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Hope that you have been touched by the poems of love and gratitude that have been blessed by my Papas-san on The Wall, 58,000-plus.
With love and respect,
Linh Duy Vo
© Copyright by Linh Duy Vo. All rights reserved.