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http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thom ... 0826.shtml

John O'Neill, whose recent book "Unfit for Command" is the centerpiece of the current criticisms of Kerry, began criticizing and debating John Kerry decades ago. Their best known confrontation was on the Dick Cavett show back in 1971.

If you get a chance to see re-runs of that debate, it is well worth watching. At the heart of the issues between the two men were Kerry's widely publicized charges that Americans fighting in Vietnam committed atrocities not only wholesale and on a daily basis, but that those atrocities were both condoned and directed by those at the highest levels of command.

O'Neill repeatedly attempted to get Kerry to cite any evidence for these sweeping and damning charges -- and Kerry repeatedly sidestepped those questions and went off to discuss what he chose to define as the "real" issues. Kerry had that suave, smug, and condescending air that too often passes for intelligence and knowledge.

Much the same air was apparent in Dick Cavett's question to both men as to whether they believed the "cliche" that there would be a "blood bath" if and when the Communists took over in Vietnam. Kerry downplayed that possibility.

However chic it was among the intelligentsia to dismiss the prospect of a Communist bloodbath as a mere "cliche" in 1971, more than a million Vietnamese fled for their lives when the Communists took over. In their desperation, these refugees put themselves and their children on boats that were never meant for the high seas and about one-fourth of them died, either from drowning or from pirates who terrorized, robbed, raped, and slaughtered them.

Meanwhile, back in Vietnam, the Communists created precisely the kind of bloodbath that anyone outside of the intelligentsia could have predicted. In Cambodia, the Communists killed at least one-fifth of the entire population. Against the background of that carnage, the smug condescension of Cavett and Kerry now look obscene.

There is no sign that John Kerry and those who think like him have learned anything from having been so tragically wrong about the Communists, including Vietnamese dictator Ho Chi Minh, whom Kerry likened to George Washington.











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