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Loose Canons

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John Hurley, chairman of Vietnam Veterans for Kerry, recently told the Washington Times that Kerry's protesting "saved more lives than not." To put it mildly, the POWs disagree. Collins said, "I was in the POW camp a year longer than I would have been but for this activity." Dick Vaughn said, "Kerry gave aid and comfort to the enemy by his actions after leaving the Navy. He said things that prolonged the war, caused more American servicemen to be killed, and in doing such he got POWs tortured even more than they were already....No contest in my mind. Kerry was a traitor."

Is this judgment of Kerry too harsh? Other than the POWs, perhaps the best judge of the protests' effect was General Vo Nguyen Giap, the commander of the North Vietnamese armed forces. In his article, "How We Won the War," Giap said:

John Kerry served well during the Vietnam War. Unfortunately for the POWs, he served the North Vietnamese better than he served those held in a brutal captivity.

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