On 27 Aug 2004 03:38:18 GMT, Alex wrote:

Mark & Juanita wrote in
:

On 27 Aug 2004 00:40:22 GMT, otforme (Charlie Self)
wrote:

Mike Hide responds:

I love it, first your vaunted leader calls all Vietnam vets war
criminals, now you are trashing the national guard ,what next.

Read or listen to Kerry's testimony instead of the overblown BS from
Limbaugh and his ilk. Kerry never branded all Nam vets as war
criminals. His testimony came about a year, IIRC, after Wm. Calley's
trial and the massive rehashing of the My Lai massacre.


Are you listening to the same recordings as the rest of us? "I,
like
others participated in ... " He did brand all American soldiers as
war criminals, acting in violation of the Geneva convention.


You've made an elementary mistake: the phrase "I, like others" is
not the same thing as "all American soldiers".

See the difference, "others" vs. "all"??? "Others" is more than
one but not necessarily "all".

HTH


You are correct, I made an elementary mistake. I assumed that those
reading the quote above would have listened to, or read the transcripts of
Kerry's full testimony before congress and television interviews. For
those who apparently have not, let me help.

From Kerry's congressional testimony on June 6, 1971, Kerry's words:
"We established an American presence in most cases by showing the flag and
firing at sampans and villages along the banks. Those were our
instructions, but they seemed so out of line that we finally began to go
ashore, against our orders, and investigate the villages that were supposed
to be our targets. We discovered we were butchering a lot of innocent
people, and morale became so low among the officers on those 'swift boats'
that we were called back to Saigon for special instructions from Gen.
Abrams. He told us we were doing the right thing. He said our efforts would
help win the war in the long run. That's when I realized I could never
remain silent about the realities of the war in Vietnam." Note here, he is
implicating *all* of his Swift boat comrades, i.e. he is using WE.

Before the committee on foreign relations on April 22, 1971 he said that
American troops "...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..." and accused the U.S. military of committing war crimes "on a
day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of
command." Now, you can parse this however you want to, but his comments
had the implication (and were taken as such) that this was not just a "few"
or "several" bad soldiers who had done this, he left the implication that
this was a persistent, general, accepted practice up and down the chain of
command. Note that these comments were based upon the "Winter Soldier
Investigation", which Kerry helped moderate, that was later shown to be
pure fabrication and lies. In more full text:

"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."

-- John Kerry, testifying before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations,
April 22, 1971



In answer to a question from Crosby Noyes, Washington Evening Star on Meet
the Press

"There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes,
I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have
committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted
harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50 calibre machine guns, which we
were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people.
I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All
of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the
Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written
established policy by the government of the United States from the top
down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed
the free fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air
raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same
letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals."

-- John Kerry, on NBC's "Meet the Press" April 18, 1971

Again, not a few, not several, but "thousands" with approval up and down
the chain of command.

Again from his testimony before Congress:
"We are here in Washington also 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 also, the use of weapons, the hypocrisy in our taking
umbrage in 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, the killing of prisoners, accepted policy by many
units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is part and
parcel of everything."

Seems pretty all-encompassing there.