posted on September 9, 2004 09:16:57 PM new
> The following is what scandalizes the "Swiftboat for Truth" bunch. If you have time to read it, it is worthwhile to give an insight into John Kerry's character.
> This sounds like it could be written today.
> And this is supposed to make Kerry a bad guy?
> We have truly lost our compass.
>
> Modern History Sourcebook:
> Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement, 1971
> Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement by John Kerry, 1971 to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations April 23, 1971
> I would like to talk on behalf of 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. These were 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 and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.
> They told stories that at times 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 Ghengis 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.
> We call this investigation the Winter Soldier Investigation. The term Winter Soldier is a play on words of Thomas Paine's in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriots and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.
> We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country, we could be quiet, we could hold our silence, we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out....
> In our opinion and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.
> We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.
> We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American.
>
> We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.
> We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.
> We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals.
> We watched the United States falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against "oriental human beings." We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater. We watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the hill for reoccupation by the North Vietnamese. We watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point, and so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 81s and Fire Base 6s, and so many others.
> Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese.
> Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."
> We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?....We are here in Washington to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country - the question of racism which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions such as the use of weapons; the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel of everything.
> An American Indian friend of mine who lives in the Indian Nation of Alcatraz put it to me very succinctly. He told me how as a boy on an Indian reservation he had watched television and he used to cheer the cowboys when they came in and shot the Indians, and then suddenly one day he stopped in Vietnam and he said, "my God, I am doing to these people the very same thing that was done to my people," and he stopped. And that is what we are trying to say, that we think this thing has to end.
> We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We're here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The marines say they never even leave their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They've left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this country....
>
> We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped away their memories of us. But all that they have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission - to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more. And more. And so when thirty years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.
> This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history.
> Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use of the Sourcebook.
posted on September 9, 2004 09:37:05 PM new
Kerry was only over there for 4 months. Now in that 4 months did he see all that or did he after he collected his 4 purple hearts, silver star he decided to be against the war. Oh I forgot his early out.
The problem was the Vietnamese were putting those statements by Kerry over the radio so that the POW's could hear him. Now those POW's are going to speak out.
posted on September 9, 2004 09:42:26 PM new
I agree....the statements by our POWs are going to show kerry's true character to the people....just what lengths he went to in joinging the anti-war side when he was unsuccessful at getting elected. kerry decided since there was much disagreement about the war...he join the other side and use it for his own political advantage [his career in getting elected].
He's a disgrace to his country. And people are going to see that real soon.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"One thing is for sure: the extremists have faith in our weakness. And the weaker we are, the more they will come after us." --Tony Blair
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"The War on Terror will not be won until America is united. And as long as Democrats target the Bush administration -- not the terrorists -- as the enemy, we are in trouble." --Oliver North
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Those are only two reasons why we need to:
posted on September 9, 2004 09:47:14 PM new
And we all know the true character of Bush, the coward who got out of going to Vietnam!
Too chickenship! Spineless. Drug addicted. Alcohol addicted. Lie addicted.
posted on September 9, 2004 10:01:01 PM new
taken from Boston.com
As Kerry runs for president, he is finding that many of his statements and activities over the last 33 years are drawing new attention.
Last year, the Globe published White House transcripts of discussions about Kerry by President Nixon in the Oval Office. More recently, the Los Angeles Times focused on FBI surveillance reports, obtained by historian Gerald Nicosia, in which the FBI monitored meetings of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a group that Kerry led in 1971.
Indeed, there may be a tie between Kerry's statement before the Senate committee and the interest of the FBI in his activities. One FBI report provided to the Globe by Nicosia shows that the government was monitoring whether Kerry planned to go to Paris again. Kerry was "planning to travel to Paris, France . . . for talks with North Vietnamese peace delegation," said the report, dated Nov. 11, 1971.
Kerry's Senate testimony spans about six pages in the committee publication, but the lesser-known question-and-answer session was another 24 pages.
-------------
reading the FULL 6 pages + the addittion 24 [question and answer session] might give a different prospective too.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"One thing is for sure: the extremists have faith in our weakness. And the weaker we are, the more they will come after us." --Tony Blair
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"The War on Terror will not be won until America is united. And as long as Democrats target the Bush administration -- not the terrorists -- as the enemy, we are in trouble." --Oliver North
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Those are only two reasons why we need to:
posted on September 9, 2004 10:03:37 PM new
Just some more Right wing BS.
I don't care.
Linda, why don't you keep C&Ping some more of what the communists have to say...you know, the people you side with.
posted on September 9, 2004 10:06:34 PM new
And we all know the true character of Bush, the coward who got out of going to Vietnam!
Too chickenship! Spineless. Drug addicted. Alcohol addicted. Lie addicted.
posted on September 9, 2004 10:42:59 PM new
If kerry saw all that he claimed to have seen, why didn't he film it with his little 8mm camera. If he did see it and waited 2 years before reporting it he should have beem courts martialed. As a officer he was duty bound to report such crimes.
Also kerry's group of 150 has been proven to have been comprised of wanna be soldiers (those never in the military), soldiers that never were in Vietnam and others that kerry browbeat into giving false testimony.
posted on September 9, 2004 11:21:41 PM new
You will notice that in his speech he kept saying "we," not "I." As he was acting as a spokesman, it is obvious that he is referring to info reported by others as wellas himself and is passing that info on.
____________________
"Bad temper is its own scourge. Few things are more bitter than to feel bitter. A man's venom poisons himself more than his victim." --Charles Buxton
posted on September 10, 2004 06:11:45 AM new
So you would be a spokesperson for something you didn't believe in bunni?
kerry those words make him a traitor to his fellow veterans, how anyone can say otherwise shows their lack of serving and actual support of our military...
