Author(s): Patrick Healy
Boston Globe Staff
Date: February 1, 2004 Page: A1 Section: National/Foreign
COLUMBIA, S. C. - Johnny James is already envisioning the day as a landmark in American history: On Jan. 20, 2005, the president-elect, John F. Kerry, is the first veteran to serve in Vietnam to take the oath of office, delivering the inaugural address at the US Capitol near where he once threw his military ribbons in a trash bin as an antiwar protester.
"John could reach out to all 8 million Vietnam-era veterans and our families, touching every corner of America, and say to us on behalf of the United States, finally, `Welcome home, brother, job well done!' " said James, who served in the Army's 25th Infantry in 1969 and1970 and who came here to hear Kerry speak Friday. "As a vet who spoke out against the war, he'd be uniquely positioned to start a healing process on Vietnam like none that's ever been done in America." Another Vietnam warrior who is closely following Kerry's career, Ted Sampley, has a different vision: that of scores of veterans stalking the Massachusetts senator on the campaign trail this winter, telling voters of the former Navy lieutenant's "disgraceful record" after he ended his Vietnam service in 1969.
"If Kerry wins the South Carolina primary on Tuesday, we'll be coming after him," said Sampley, a POW advocate who is organizing opponents to Kerry through a new website, Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry, and who was rebuked by Kerry a decade ago for alleging that Senator John McCain was brainwashed by Communists while a prisoner in Hanoi. "We will do what is politically necessary to stop John Kerry and draw attention to the hypocrisy of his campaign."
James and Sampley are footsoldiers in two opposing camps of veterans that are waging their own quiet battle over Kerry's presidential bid, which received a huge boost last mont h in Iowa and New Hampshire from his "Veterans' Brigade" that helped sway thousands of former servicemen and women to back one of their own for the Democratic nomination.
Kerry is counting on Democrats like James to help him continue his winning streak in Tuesday's primaries in South Carolina (where more than 400,000 veterans live), Missouri (with more than 500,000), and other key states that vote this winter. Both his pollsters and his friend McCain, the Arizona Republican who ran for president in 2000, have told him that organizing military families could make a huge difference to winning both the nomination and Election Day. Republican pollster Celinda Lake also concluded last fall that veterans and their relatives would be a swing voting bloc in 2004.
The public outpouring of veterans supporting Kerry - flocking from 29 states to New Hampshire last month - has tended to drown out critics like Sampley: Kerry's former swift boat crewmen who served with him in t he Mekong Delta have testified to his character in television commercials and at campaign stops for months, while the opposition has been represented mostly on the Internet and newspaper opinion pages.
In both Iowa and New Hampshire, and now in South Carolina, dozens of veterans made daily phone calls on Kerry's behalf to tens of thousands of veterans who have been identified by tax records. In the Granite State, roughly 60 percent of World War II veterans and 55 percent of Vietnam veterans who were undecided voters said they would support Kerry after they were telephoned by fellow veterans, according to John Hurley, national director of Veterans for Kerry, which counts 9,000 members. "A call from a campaign worker to a voter is like a telemarketing call, but a call from a veteran to a veteran is like a call from a friend," Hurley said.
Kerry himself mentions veterans in almost every speech, and holds forums with veterans almost every week - including one here Friday and in Oklahoma City yesterday. He pledges to improve their health care, protect their benefits, and challenge President Bush, often saying that "the first definition of patriotism is keeping faith with those who wore the uniform of our country."
As much as these gray-haired comrades have boosted Kerry's candidacy - including, he hopes, in the South, where conservative Democrats may need reasons to support a Yankee - Sampley forsees a legion of 3,000 veterans, culled from his mailing lists, calling out Kerry on his postwar record.
According to e-mail postings and articles on the growing number of websites denouncing Kerry, the deepest anger at the front-runner comes from his role leading Vietnam Veterans Against the War in demonstrations in the early `70s, including a Washington protest where he tossed his ribbons into the trash but held onto his medals. His descriptions of US soldiers committing rape, torture, and other atrocities in Vietnam, during his famous spee ch in April 1971 to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also drew condemnation. More recently, he and McCain were pilloried by some veterans' groups for ending POW investigations in Vietnam and helping to normalize US-Vietnam relations in the mid-1990s.
"I as a Vietnam veteran will do my utmost to see that JF Kerry is never elected," one veteran wrote in an e-mail Friday to a list on Sampley's website. A Marine wrote: Kerry "did go and he did participate in combat. He earned the right to speak out. But he still won't get my vote."
On Thursday, Terry L. Garlock, a decorated Cobra helicopter pilot in Vietnam, wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Kerry's antiwar protests were comparable to actress Jane Fonda's infamous visit to Hanoi in 1972, and warned readers about "the dark side of Kerry's war record."
"Kerry's public actions encouraged our enemy at a time they were killing America's sons," Garlock wrote. "Many Vietnam veterans have taken noti ce, and many of us will vigorously oppose Kerry's election to any office."
Hurley said yesterday that most anti-Kerry veterans fall into two groups: Republicans who favor President Bush, and "extremists" who have dogged Kerry for years over his antiwar stand and his work with McCain to normalize US-Vietnam relations and account for POWs.
The depth of animosity between Kerry's supporters and hard-line critics is nowhere clearer than on Sampley's website, which features a photo of Kerry testifying before the Senate in 1971 that has been manipulated to show a Viet Cong flag hanging in the background. Sampley called it a "political cartoon," but Hurley said: "While there are certainly vets who oppose John Kerry, a doctored photo reflects the tenor of these people."
The role of veterans - and, indeed, the specter of Vietnam - has become enormously consequential in this race for Kerry, who, although he avoids discussing his memories of the war, has skillfu lly made his service there a central theme in his campaign.
Veterans figured prominently in the two most important days of Kerry's winning Iowa campaign. Six days before the caucuses, Kerry attended a gathering of veterans alongside the four Bolanos brothers of El Paso, who all served at once in Vietnam; they aired a documentary about Kerry's ties to his swift boat men - who are now campaigning for Kerry - and Rick Bolanos spoke of how their father taught them to respect the "passionate patriotism" of men like Kerry. Then, two days before Iowans voted, a former Green Beret named Jim Rassmann flew from Oregon to Iowa for his first reunion with Kerry in 34 years, sharing with the world the story of how an injured Kerry rescued him from the Bay Hap River while under fire, earning a Bronze Star.
Iowa voters gave Rassmann ovations at Kerry events, but the scene of the two men hugging - with Rassmann in tears - unnerved some veterans like Mike Benge, a former Marine who went t o Vietnam as a USAID officer and was held hostage from 1968 to 1973. Benge, an ally of Sampley and a US environmental forestry officer, said he felt that Kerry had ended inquiries into POWs hastily in the 1990s and had "betrayed" current troops in Iraq by voting against Bush's $87 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan operations. (Kerry has said he strongly supports the troops but wanted part of the money to come from rolling back GOP-backed tax cuts.)
"You shouldn't do anything that appears like you're pulling the rug out from under our troops," Benge said. "It's just like what he did in his protests in the `70s when we had troops fighting over there."
Hurley and other Kerry advisers say veterans will shrug off such attacks. Hurley said that the Kerry campaign was contacting 10,000 veterans who are regular Democratic voters and another 20,000 who vote less regularly.
"When John Kerry wins the nomination and then wins the White House, veterans are going to be seen as a huge part of his success," Hurley said.
Patrick Healy can be reached at phealy@globe.com.