Les Jones

She thanked him for his service and immediately gave him and W (withdrawal) instead of an F.

Now THAT’S an obvious lie. As you pointed out a while back, all college professors, especially those in fields like anthropology, hate the military, hate America, and never would do something nice for a soldier.

Right. That’s what I said.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. Some of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War who testified before Congress had never served in the military, and fabricated military backgrounds to gain credibility.

Who?

Chris, Al Hubbard was one of them. See this Wall Street Journal piece:

A Kerry spokesman now distances the candidate from the word “murdered,” saying he “never suggested or believed and absolutely rejects the idea that the word applied to service of the American soldiers in Vietnam.” But as the New Hampshire Sunday News put it, if he wasn’t saying U.S. soldiers murdered 200,000 people a year, then who in the world could he have meant? The USO?

Mr. Kerry now says he was relying on the “highly documented and highly disturbing” stories he heard at a Detroit conference funded by Jane Fonda. The Naval Investigative Service later found that some of the most grisly testimony there was given by false witnesses.

Mr. Kerry’s memory on all of these issues is very fuzzy. At a Capitol Hill news conference this month he was asked if he thought his credibility had been affected by his close ties to Al Hubbard, a key player in the VVAW, who had appointed Mr. Kerry to the group’s leadership. He and Mr. Hubbard subsequently appeared together many times, including on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” It later turned out that Mr. Hubbard never served in Vietnam, was never wounded as he had claimed, and wasn’t the officer he claimed to have been. Mr. Kerry responded that he had not spoken to Mr. Hubbard since April 1971. But the New York Times places both men at an August 1971 VVAW fund-raising party in the Hamptons (on New York’s Long Island), and Mr. Musgrave, the veteran who claims the Kerry campaign pressured to change his story, says he recalls Mr. Kerry challenging Mr. Hubbard’s credentials at the November 1971 Kansas City meeting.

Also see this link and the book mentioned there:

“Many veterans believe these protests led to more American deaths, and to the enslavement of the people on whose behalf the protests were ostensibly being undertaken. But being a take-charge kind of guy, Mr. Kerry became a leader in the VVAW and even testified before Congress on the findings of the Investigation, which he accepted at face value.

“In his book ‘Stolen Valor,’ B.G. Burkett points out that Mr. Kerry liberally used phony veterans to testify to atrocities they could not possibly have committed. …

Mr. Kerry now says he was relying on the “highly documented and highly disturbing” stories he heard at a Detroit conference funded by Jane Fonda. The Naval Investigative Service later found that some of the most grisly testimony there was given by false witnesses.

This is incorrect. The Naval Investigative Service tried to interview some of the witnesses and they declined. This proves nothing.

As for Al Hubbard, he never testified before Congress. He didn’t even testify for the Winter Soldier Investigation (but he was on a steering committee).

Sorry, I mixed up Winter Soldier with Congressional hearings. They happened a few days apart, and Kerry repeated testimony from Winter Solider at the Congressional hearings.

Nonetheless, some of the people who testified at Winter Soldier were not veterans. Link

And in fact, some of witnesses did cooperate. In other cases, it could be shown without their cooperation that the witnesses were either not in the military, not the person they claimed to be, or not involved in the military role they claimed for themselves. (See links above.)

As far as Mark Lane and his “Conversations with Americans,” here’s a page about its inaccuracies. I have an interest in the Kennedy assassination, and Lane was one of the early pro-conspiracy guys. John McAdams has more about Lane at his JFK Web site.

I have covered Owens’ consistent misrepresentation of the WSI already. He uses Lane’s book as evidence that WSI was a “lie”, even though Lane’s book had nothing to do with WSI.

See this and this.

I will pose the same question to you that I pose to anyone claiming there was a fraud perpetrated in the WSI: The names and testimony are listed here. Who among them was a fraud, and where is your evidence?

If you’re not willing to accept the links I’ve sent you, what standard of evidence are you willing to accept?

Also, I’ll throw the evidence burden back at you: please provide evidence that all of the supposed veterans who testified at Winter Soldier were veterans who fought in Vietnam, attained the rank they claimed, and witnessed the atrocities they described in their testimony.

Vietnam Veterans Against the War is, after all, the same bunch that debated assassinating U.S. Congressmen to further their goals.

If you’re not willing to accept the links I’ve sent you, what standard of evidence are you willing to accept?

I think I just made that clear. The testimony is listed on the aforementioned URL. It lists the names. I would think that if one of the names listed was, in fact, a fraud in some way, that it would be pretty easy to prove. I’m open to the idea that perhaps someone was perpetrating a fraud. I just want a name. One name. Anyone! (This of course ignores the larger point that the testimony would stand on its own, despite a fraud or a misrepresentation. Denying the atrocities that occurred in Vietnam is sheer idiocy.)

Also, I’ll throw the evidence burden back at you: please provide evidence that all of the supposed veterans who testified at Winter Soldier were veterans who fought in Vietnam, attained the rank they claimed, and witnessed the atrocities they described in their testimony.

Well, if you’ll read the links I pasted, you’ll see the part where John Zutz claims that they checked the DD24s of every witness testifying.

But, further, you’re the one that said they lied, not me. The burden of proof is on you. Sorry.

So you concede that VVAW member Al Hubbard lied about his service, right? Your only disclaimer is that he didn’t actually testify at Winter Soldier.

I haven’t run across any concrete evidence of Al Hubbard’s service or lack thereof.

I do know that Kerry himself, in fact, has accused him of falsifying his record in the past, so it very may well be true.

My disclaimer that he didn’t actually testify is all that is required. You said “Some of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War who testified before Congress/Winter Soldier had never served in the military”.

I’m still waiting for documented proof that there was even one case of fraudulent testimony in the WSI, much less enough to discredit it (assuming that’s what you’re after).

Hubbard admitted he made up his service record. John Zutz admits Hubbard lied. Link

Still working on getting a name for you.

I emailed Owens, and this is the reply I got back:

I don’t have the names. The source I used was Lewy, p. 317. “But the most damaging finding [re the WSI, according to the Naval Investigative Service] consisted of the sworn statements of several veterans, corroborated by witnesses, that they had in fact not attended the
hearings in Detroit. One of them had never been to Detroit in all his life. He did not know, he stated, who might have used his name.” Lewy’s
source is: Office of the Director, Judge Advocate Division, Headquarters USMC, Winter Soldiers Investigation files.

I still like his posters. I’m a former Marine who can’t stand the neocon dicks in power now.

“I’m still waiting for documented proof that there was even one case of fraudulent testimony in the Winter Soldier Investigation, much less enough to discredit it (assuming that’s what you’re after).”

You won’t find proof, because it doesn’t exist. Phonies abounded during the early 70s, of course, but not among those that testified in Winter Soldier. Al Hubbard never testified, but critics won’t tell you that. Hubbard was just a co-organizer of the event.

As for the list of names of “phonies” extracted from books like “Stolen Valor” and Lewy’s “America in Vietnam” - not a single one of them ever testified at Winter Soldier. Every speaker at those hearings was required to bring their discharge papers. Every speaker was checked out by Nixon’s “plumbers,” since Nixon was desperate to shut them up or discredit them.

Read the testimonies for yourself - and use their search engine to verify if someone did or did not give testimony:
http://lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Winter_Soldier/WS_entry.html

Beware those that shout “Liar!” the loudest, for they are probably practicing their own deception.