one more time... the context of Kerry's 1971 statements....

this is an excerpt of his speech starting two paragraphs before the bit used in the new swift boat vets ad.



I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape 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 country side 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.

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All he is doing is RECOUNTING stories other vets had told about crimes THEY THEMSELVES had committed. So what is all this outrage against him about? Why do they feel "betrayed?"

Do they hate the fact that we are not Stalinist Russia? Do they hate the fact that we live in an open society, that we are country that seeks the truth and is accountable for our own actions?

Perhaps these people who were so offended by Kerry's 1971 testimony should move to a country where you can not speak out against the government because they obviously hate democracy and our freedoms. Perhaps they would enjoy a nation where the military is beyond criticism and inquiry.

I don't know where they're pulling that statement from but, even assuming it's accurate, to say that any of his anti-war statements were personal indictments against them strains credulity beyond the breaking point.

http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/staticpages/index.php?page=20040503214623700

O'NEILL: .....There's quite a difference between coming back to this country and putting on a sack and saying, confessing, "I committed war crimes" and running for the Congress of the United States from Massachusetts and saying, "Well, all three million of us committed war crimes," and I suggest that that's the question that Mr. Kerry and I should be talking about because that's precisely and exactly what he said.

MR. CAVETT: Well, let's talk about that. Did you see war crimes committed and –

MR. KERRY: Well, I have often talked about this subject. I personally didn't see personal atrocities in the sense that I saw somebody cut a head off or something like that. However, I did take part in free fire zones and I did take part in harassment interdiction fire. I did take part in search-and-destroy missions in which the houses of noncombatants were burned to the ground. And all of these, I find out later on, these acts are contrary to the Hague and Geneva Conventions and to the laws of warfare. So in that sense, anybody who took part in those, if you carry out the applications of the Nuremberg principles, is in fact guilty.

But we're not trying to find war criminals. That's not our purpose. It never has been.

I think that's what they would like. A country where criticizing the military just never happens.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

for the anti-military feeling that greeted them when they returned home, and for the failure of the war and its unpopularity.

You'll also notice in that ad they've slowed down the sound, making Kerry's young voice sound lower, more drawn out and more sinister.

that Kerry won awards that he shouldn't have??? It's like, they want it both ways. The military was wrong to award the medals to Kerry, but was right in how they fought that war.

That's why this argument is stupid.

All you have to do is scratch yourself and complain about it, and -- voila! You get a purple heart.

All you have to do is write an exaggerated after-action report, and -- voila! You get a bronze or silver star.

If it's that easy, that trivializes EVERY soldier's purple hearts and medals.