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Originally Posted by irateplatypus
John Kerry before congress 1971:
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.
go back and read the whole thing if you like at: http://www.nationalreview.com/docume...0404231047.asp
The problem with Kerry's antiwar activities during Vietnam is this: he made this broad-based attack on his fellow soldiers when they were still in harm's way in vietnam. the quote was used as propaganda for the communist regime of north vietnam against our POWs. if kerry had witnessed these things in the war why did he not report them to the chain of command himself? as a future AF officer, I can tell you with some authority that the idea of keeping these things underwraps is CRIMINAL. so... either he witnessed these events and kept them from being reported (which is criminal) or he did not see them and reported hearsay before congress that was damaging to his comrades. that could be construed as libelous considering the severity of the charges.
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your own quote makes it absolutely clear that he was reporting to Congress what other vets had told them they had done. You may know about Air Force regs, but you demonstrate little knowledge about libel and slander.
Now he may have testified to things that were over the top, but are you seriously sitting here and saying that what he said, that soldiers told him that they had personally raped and mutilated Vietnamese and that highly decorated vets had testified to committing warcrimes, was not correct?
If you want to engage in revisionist history about that war, feel free. But you now need to "shut up" about Kerry accusing
all the soldiers of committing war crimes, because you haven't "put up." Your accusation was inaccurate and your own quote proves it--he constrained his testimony to the war crimes soldiers told him they had personally committed.
Now if soldiers in-country were hurt or harmed by those words, I do feel for them. As does John Kerry, of that I'm positive. It's a shame that testimony of some soldiers were used against others. Kerry felt he had a responsibility to tell Congress what was going on from his perspective and also to speak for those who weren't present at the hearing. I'm even sure that kerry would support your disagreement with his actions. But he would rightly be upset by you shoving words in his mouth that he never said, getting upset over those never said words, and then starting to question his record based on those never said words.
To sum it up:
I see your point if you claim that you feel Kerry is not a candidate you support because he testified against the Vietnam war. If you really feel that someone who did that is undeserving of the presidency, then all the power to you. But you demonstrate your ignorance or inability to use logic if you base that conclusion on red herrings, such as, that he testified that all soldiers were committing crimes, that they occurred the majority of the time, or that his statements were somehow responsible for POW's being tortured.
You should also know that, as stated earlier, I don't support kerry. My wife does, however, which is cool because she grew up extremely conservative and used to never even consider the other side of issues. I personally respect kerry for having the moxy to stand up for what he believed in at the time and testify against a war that he fought in. I can only imagine, from what I know about how we present our selfs to others and build our notions of justice and etc., how kerry must have felt when he mulled over what he was going to say. He fought in that war and must have had serious cognitive dissonance when he was figuring out his role in what he came to consider as neo-colonialism.
Now, how exactly does kerry's testimony concerning the fact that soldiers were telling him they were committing atrocities equate to someone 30 years later attacking his personal character? In fact, the most interesting part is that kerry placed the blame on their commanders, that the atrocities were natural outcomes of placing young men in inhumanely stressful situations and giving them orders to inflict whatever damage they could on the countryside. Dole, on the other hand, is saying what? that kerry didn't bleed enough to earn his respect? or what?
I've yet to see you post where kerry criticized the soldiers, but I have posted where kerry criticized the administration for their part in putting the soldiers in their untenable situation.