N.O. Pundit

John Kerry, CIC, War Criminal

Is this obvious to everyone else but me?

First go to www.wintersoldier.com and read the opening paragraph:

On January 31, 1971, members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) met in a Detroit hotel to document war crimes that they had participated in or witnessed during their combat tours in Vietnam. During the next three days, more than 100 Vietnam veterans and 16 civilians gave anguished, emotional testimony describing hundreds of atrocities against innocent civilians in South Vietnam, including rape, arson, torture, murder, and the shelling or napalming of entire villages. The witnesses stated that these acts were being committed casually and routinely, under orders, as a matter of policy. [my emphasis]

Next, click on the "Complete John Kerry Testimony, 04/22/71" link to the left on the Winter Soldier homepage and read this (full PDF of testimony here):

Thank you very much, Senator Fulbright, Senator Javits, Senator Symington, Senator Pell. I would like say for the record, and also for the men behind me who are also wearing the uniforms and their medals, that my sitting here is really symbolic. I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one member of the group of 1,000, which is a small representation of a very much larger group of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to sit at this table they would be here and have the same kind of testimony.

I would simply like to speak in very general terms. I apologize if my statement is general because I received notification yesterday you would hear me and I am afraid because of the injunction I was up most of the night and haven't had a great deal of chance to prepare.

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, 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 Genghis 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 in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriot 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, the fact that the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not redcoats but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out. [again, my emphasis]

I attempted to highlight the paragraphs above in a manner that stresses that John Kerry is representing himself as fully complicit in war crimes. He is speaking not as a witness but as a knowing participant. It does not matter now that John Kerry may argue that he was speaking in hyperbole; it does not matter now that John Kerry may have lifted his atrocities directly from KGB propaganda. And it most assuredly does not matter now that John Kerry may attribute his testimony to youthful indiscretion. Youthful indiscretion is when you're caught deflating the tires on the old neighborhood crank's car. Youthful indiscretion is when you wake up in Florida, but you live in Colorado (dudes! thank God all my friends woke up in Florida too!). But youthful indiscretion cannot ever be to blame for accusing the Armed Forces of the United States of America of war crimes in sworn testimony before the United States Congress.

Finally, go here and watch the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth's second video, Sellout:

Ken Cordier: "... that was part of the torture, was to sign a statement that you had committed war crimes ..."

Paul Galanti: "... John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I and many of my comrades in North Vietnam in the prison camps took torture to avoid saying; it demoralized us ..."

And then it hit me. If the words of a junior officer in the Navy (Naval Reserve at the time of his testimony), wallowing in his 15 minutes of infamy, intoning with the pride and hubris of an arsonist, increased the torture, humiliation, and demoralization of American POWs in Vietnam, how would the (very same) words of a sitting president affect future American POWs (in Syria? Iran? North Korea? France!?).

In terms of scale of importance, everything else can be given a pass: the watery borders, the medal reports, the black OPS deliveries, the mistaken memories. But to elect a confessed war criminal as the next United States Commander in Chief simply cannot ever happen. The United States would suffer a blow to its global prestige and moral standing from which it would never recover.

Posted by nopundit at August 25, 2004 01:11 PM