Reply #57: I know you feel betrayed by what happened to Dean... [View All]

[Thistle42]

but listen to an "old lady" here. I am still a "newbie" or I would have started a thread of my own. Let me just say that I have been disallusioned like you way back in 1968; a time I would like to forget. I went to Vietnam via the Army Nurse Corps Program...the Army paid for your college education and you paid back the time when you graduated. Thus when the Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred, I was on a boat to the South China Sea late in 1965 and I served a year in Vietnam as a 23 year old girl as naive as they come. I took care of the wounded and the dying and I still carry the memories that are seared in my heart.

When I came back I felt like a piece of Jello...my country was in chaos and it only got worse each day. I worked for peace candidates and they were all assassinated or smeared by the left and the right.

That brings me up to 1972 and the Nixon/McGovern campaign...anyone read Frank Rich's column in the NYTimes today? My computer will not behave so that I can bring it up...but it is about Vietnam...all over again. Ron Kovic, like Max Cleland was spit on and called a traitor for speaking out against a war he once fought by the hawks. Things haven't changed much now, have they? Vietnam still is reverberating and has meaning.

Now, for my thoughts on Kerry and why I support him now after giving money to Dean, Kerry and Clark. I was angry with every Senator that voted for the Iraq war...EVERY ONE! But, I know that our country is such great peril today that we have to beat Bush with the best weapon we can. If it is a Kerry/Edwards team, then I am for it...or Kerry/Clark or Kerry/Dean. I admire Dennis Kucinich, but I thought from the first that he would not make it on the national stage against Bush. We cannot afford to be purists...idealists yes, but we must fight them. Corporations and the Miltary Industrial Complex are to be fought, but we can't win with Ralph or Howard, or Dennis.

I am fogiving Kerry for his Iraq war vote because my fears are so great for the future of our country. I may be too late as it is.

A Vietnam Nurse