We had news this past week that John Kerry is undermining the United States once again, working with her enemies, this time the Iranian mullahs trying to salvage his deeply flawed Iran nuclear deal.

Kerry's notorious 2015 nuclear deal featured the transfer of billions of dollars (1.7 billion of it on pallets stacked with cash) to the world's leading exporter of Islamic terrorism. Iran's fanatical mullahs were essentially put on a pathway to acquire nuclear weapons at the end of 10 years.  What was even crazier about the deal is that compliance and inspections were to be handled by Iran itself.

As President Trump cancelled the deal and slammed Iran with further sanctions, Kerry has once again gone back to his arrogant old tricks -- meeting with the enemy in direct opposition to official American policy. He refuses to deny that told the Iranians to hang on until Trump leaves office, once again giving aid and comfort to a leading American enemy.

Yes, we have seen this movie before.

On April 23, 1971, a young US Navy reserve officer, John Kerry, who had been awarded three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star medal for service in Vietnam, appeared before the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations and described the American military. Via NPR:

"They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.. . . these are not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

A short time later, he and his group of protesters threw medals and service ribbons over a fence in front of the US Capitol. As CNN noted, "Kerry threw away the ribbons from his medals, along with the actual medals of two veterans who were not able to attend the ceremony, according to the candidate's Web site."  A few weeks following, he was arrested when he and other tried to disrupt a march to honor American POWs captured in Vietnam..

But that wasn't the worst of it. Turns out that as a reserve Navy officer, in direct violation of the Code of Military Justice, he traveled to Paris while Henry Kissinger was negotiating an end to the war with the Communists. He admitted, "I have been to Paris. I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and Provisional Revolutionary Government," the latter a South Vietnamese communist group with ties to the Viet Cong.  .

This was the same John Kerry who published a book that year entitled, The New Soldier, a large paperback (Collier Books. Library of Congress number 76-171990) about so-called veterans against the Vietnam War. He wrote,

"We are probably angriest about all that we were told about Vietnam and the mystical war against communism." He went on to say, "A new soldier has returned to America to a nation torn apart by the killing we were asked to do. . . .We will not quickly join those who march on Veteran's Day . . .We will not readily join the American Legion or the Veterans of Foreign Wars . . We will not take solace from the creation of monuments."

Kerry's group went as far as signing a "People's Peace Treaty" that was reportedly drafted in Communist East Germany in December 1970. The nine points were all taken from a list of Viet Cong conditions for ending the war. Kerry backed the treaty.

John Kerry is a man who has instinctively sided with America's enemies his entire career. He was one of the reasons America lost the war in Vietnam. But in the liberal state of Massachusetts, he went on to become lieutenant governor and a US Senator. With sweet justice, Kerry's vicious and malicious slander of American veterans and his disgusting behavior came back to haunt him when he "reported for duty" to run for president in 2004 with his Vietnam medals proudly displayed in his office.

An angry group of Vietnam veterans known as the Swift Boat Vets, some of whom served with him and knew him well, blew the whistle and actively campaigned against him. Summarized in the book "Unfit for Command," (Regnery Publishing, Library of Congress number ISBN-0-89526-017-4), Kerry essentially faked his three Purple Hearts and his Silver Star, which he received for shooting an unarmed Vietnamese villager in the back. (Page 85) The awards enabled him to leave Vietnam service after four months. Ironically, it was Kerry himself who admitted he was an unindicted war criminal. (page 155).

Kerry's candidacy raised a fundamental issue that the American people couldn't help but notice, "If you lack moral standards, you can't enforce the Uniform Code of Military Justice. If you've committed treason against your country, you can't be the commander in chief." (Reckless Disregard, Buzz Patterson, page 89. Library of Congress 0-89526-086-7)

Kerry never released his service records and for good reason. He left the Navy with a less than honorable discharge. He was ultimately issued an honorable discharge in 1978 on the orders of then President Jimmy Carter after Carter's notorious blanket pardon of the Vietnam-era draft dodgers, according to Military Magazine October 2014). 

Vietnam military leader Gen Giap wrote in his 1985 memoirs that if it weren't for the war protesters and the lack of American resolve, Hanoi would have surrendered to the United States. In other words, the liberals convinced the North Vietnamese that they could win. (Patterson, page 89.) Kerry was later featured as a friend in one of Hanoi's anti-American war museums.

Meanwhile, his anti-American bias never ceased.

In April 1985, a few months after taking his Senate seat, Kerry traveled to Nicaragua and cozied up to President Daniel Ortega, whose leftist Sandinista government had strong ties to Cuba and the Soviet Union and were rightfully accused of human rights abuses.

In 2005, Kerry returned to his old theme of slandering American troops when he falsely claimed U.S. forces were "terrorizing" the Iraqi people. He told Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, "There is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women…."

In 2006 at a Democratic campaign rally in California, Kerry told a group of college students, "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Kerry has long been an enemy of Israel and a friend of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its nuclear weapons development program. In 2017, he was accused of having an "acrid and obsessive" place in his heart for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel. He has blamed Israel for the rise of Islamic State and claims in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Islamic State's ideology "has nothing to do with Islam."

Earlier this year, the Jerusalem Post reported:

Former US secretary of state John Kerry met in London with a close associate of (Palestinian Authority) President Mahmoud Abbas, Hussein Agha, for a long and open conversation. ... Kerry told him to tell Abbas ... Trump will not remain in office for a long time. It was reported that Kerry said that within a year there was a good chance that Trump would not be in the White House.

After Kerry's most recent meetings with the Iranians as a private citizen, the president tweeted: "John Kerry had illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime, which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people. He told them to wait out the Trump Administration! Was he registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act?"

John Kerry had illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime, which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people. He told them to wait out the Trump Administration! Was he registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act? BAD!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 14, 2018

For the record, Article 3 of the US Constitution: "Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." The Logan Act (1 Stat. 613, 18 U.S.C. § 953, enacted January 30, 1799) is a United States federal law that criminalizes negotiation by unauthorized persons with foreign governments having a dispute with the United States

So here's the real question: Was there ever a more despicable American than John Kerry?

Frank Hawkins is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, Associated Press foreign correspondent, international businessman, senior newspaper company executive, founder and owner of several marketing companies, and published novelist.  He currently lives in retirement in North Carolina.