What an interesting idea John Kerry has about war crimes. The actual perpetrators are innocent!
WOODRUFF: Two other very quick things, Senator. One is, it's been reported that, well you're aware of this, Vietnam veterans upset with the fact that when you came back from the war, you went to Capitol Hill, and you testified in so many words against the kinds of things that U.S. soldiers were doing over there...KERRY: Yes, I did.
WOODRUFF: To the Vietnamese.
KERRY: Yes, I did.
WOODRUFF: They are saying, in effect, you were accusing American troops of war crimes.
KERRY: No, I was accusing American leaders of abandoning the troops. And if you read what I said, it is very clearly an indictment of leadership. I said to the Senate, where is the leadership of our country? And it's the leaders who are responsible, not the soldiers. I never said that. I've always fought for the soldiers. In fact, not only did we oppose the war, but we proudly stood up and fought for the additions to the GI Bill so that vets would be able to use it. We fought for the V.A. Hospitals. I wrote the Agent Orange legislation with Tom Daschle. I helped with the post-Vietnam stress syndrome outreach centers.
I'm proud of the record of fighting for soldiers and for veterans. And the fact is if we want to redebate the war on Vietnam in 2004, I'm ready for that. It was a mistake, and I'm proud of having stood up and shared with America my perceptions of what was happening.
This is nonsense and historical revisionism of the worst sort. Fortunately, Kerry's actual testimony is available:
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.
The FBI has a special section to catch teenage concentration camp guards who did things like this and far less. They are pursued decades later with a justified ferocity. If these american war criminals exist and they are judged not to have committed crimes because they were not even following orders, but violating official policy while being condoned by their command structure, the only decent thing to do would be to shut down the Office of Special Investigations.
But Kerry won't follow up and do this. He won't do it because it would eviscerate his jewish support and cost him workers, money, and votes in some key areas. But his idea of war crime justice requires him to either have war crimes trials for nazis and americans who committed acts that were just as bad or to close the book on such things and make a mockery of the bipartisan 'never again' commitment the US has had for decades.
Posted by TMLutas at February 21, 2004 01:13 PM