Whether you like it or not, John Kerry was not lying in 1971.

[Career Prole]

The new swiftboat vets smear stems from John Kerry's testimony before
the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, April 22, 1971.
This part in particular:

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.
http://www.c-span.org/2004vote/jkerrytestimony.asp

I've seen the opinion expressed by a few individuals in this forum that the atrocities as described were overstated. I beg to differ.
In October of 2003 a newspaper in Ohio, The Toledo Blade, published a 3-day investigative series on a group named Tiger Force which was formed in Vietnam.
That series won a Pulitzer prize.
Living members of Tiger Force were interviewed for the report, pages and pages of Army documents were pored over, and they even got Rummy to promise he'd reopen the investigation. Natch, he's forgotten.
As for the new swift boat liars ad who want to pretend this stuff didn't happen I offer the following from the award-winning Blade series "Buried Secrets, Brutal Truths".

"In June, Pvt. Sam Ybarra slit the throat of a prisoner with a hunting knife before scalping him - placing the scalp on the end of a rifle, soldiers said in sworn statements. Ybarra refused to talk to Army investigators about the case."
<snip>
"In June, an elderly man in black robes and believed to be a Buddhist monk was shot to death after he complained to soldiers about the treatment of villagers. A grenade was placed on his body to disguise him as an enemy soldier, platoon members told investigators.
That same month, Ybarra shot and killed a 15-year-old boy near the village of Duc Pho, reports state. He later told soldiers he shot the youth because he wanted the teenager's tennis shoes."
<snip>
"Former platoon medic Larry Cottingham told investigators: "There was a period when just about everyone had a necklace of ears."
Records show soldiers began another gruesome practice: Kicking out the teeth of dead civilians for their gold fillings."
<snip>
"Two partially blind men found wandering in the valley were escorted to a bend in the Song Ve River and shot to death, records show. Two villagers, including a teenager, were executed because they were not in relocation camps.
While approaching a rice paddy on July 28, platoon members opened fire on 10 elderly farmers."
<snip>
"During the rampage, the soldiers committed some of their most brutal atrocities, Army records show. A 13-year-old girl's throat was slashed after she was sexually assaulted, and a young mother was shot to death after soldiers torched her hut.
An unarmed teenager was shot in the back after a platoon sergeant ordered the youth to leave a village, and a baby was decapitated so that a soldier could remove a necklace."
<snip>
"We would go into villages and just shoot everybody. We didn't need an excuse. If they were there, they were dead."
While the Army substantiated 20 war crimes against 18 Tiger Force soldiers during their seven-month sweep across the Central Highlands, former soldiers described 11 more in recent interviews with The Blade, including:
Two elderly men killed during an unprovoked attack on a hamlet near Tam Ky. One was beheaded and the other, who was wounded, was shot by medic Barry Bowman in a "mercy killing," he said.
An elderly man shot to death by Private Colligan near Chu Lai when the soldier wanted to test a new 38-caliber handgun on a live target, Mr. Fischer said."
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031022/SRTIGERFORCE/110190168

Buried Secrets, Brutal Truths
© 2003 The Blade
Reprinted with permission of The Toledo Blade.

Note to mods...if you want to edit this down it is your right, but I do have an e-mail from the Toledo Blade on my computer at work giving me permission to use the Tiger Force series as long as I use the copyright statement and link to the article at The Blade.

This is an extensive and exhaustively researched series. Why it didn't receive more attention nationally than it did is anyone's guess. I would have figured that the "liberal media" would have ran it for a touchdown but they didn't. :shrug:
Kerry has at no time accused everyone who served of committing atrocities...only that atrocities were occurring regularly.
The atrocities which Kerry testified to happened. They're in Army records.
The cover-up all the way to Nixon which Kerry testified to is also fully documented.
There is ample testimony from living members of the unit on record in the series, with video links.
Case closed. It by God happened. If it hurts the feelings of some to consider it, get over it.

Verdict...the newest swift boat liars ad like the first is a lie.
Kerry truthfully testified.

[private_ryan]

1. I agree

but the truth doesn't matter. We don't want to hear the truth as "we defend our freedoms".

[Career Prole]

3. It's not so much the "defense" that bothers me.

It's the zealotry of the "defenders". :eyes:

[latebloomer]

2. All true

During the 1980s I worked at a VA drug addictions treatment unit counseling Vietnam vets and did a lot of reading on the subject. The atrocities were indeed widespread, and accounted for a good deal of the PTSD that we saw. The combination of the relatively young age and immaturity of the soldiers (19 was the average as opposed to 26 in WW II), the traumatic nature of their losses, and the fact that the enemy could be man, woman, child or supposed ally-- all contributed to the behavior.

The "swift boat liars" have a need to rewrite history because, understandably, they need to believe that "theirs was a noble cause." Not every soldier committed atrocities. But many, many did.

[Old and In the Way]

4. True.

The pro-VietNam warriors never really went away, they just avoided the subject as did the anti-VietNam side. A necessary byproduct of Kerry's campaign was to highlight his ability to show America he had the leadership skills and not cede the "war President" meme to AWOL. Of course, that strategy was bound to reopen old wounds and the Republicans were quite willing to exploit that hatred to use against Kerry.

Kerry is rather unique in that he was both an honorable participant in the war, but was able to understand the bigger picture that the war not winnable and would eventually consume this country if we didn't confront the injustice and end it.

[Career Prole]

5. Thank you for what you did in the eighties.

That help was necessary for so many.
I'd go so far to say that a large majority of those who served in Vietnam fought morally...or as morally as one can fight a war under those circumstances.
The atrocities weren't perpetrated by a majority but God there were too, too many. The ones who carried them out were already psychologically damaged, either from the war or they brought there sickness there with them, IMO. The atrocities didn't do near as much damage to those who committed them as they did to the "normal guys" who were forced to bear silent witness.
Kerry took the heat for all of them in '71. It was courageous of him.

[Seabiscuit]

6. You betcha

"the atrocities were indeed widespread".

My Lai was but a blip on the radar screen back then.

Kerry was just telling it like it was.

[Myrina]

7. Abu Ghraib, anyone ??

:shrug: There are photos less than a year old from Abu Ghraib that can attest to the fact that the atrocities Kerry related way back in 1971 has always been S.O.P. for some parts of the military.

How can anyone claim he's lying ??? :shrug:

...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 ... "

[desertalien]

8. Thank you

for posting this.
I've been wondering what has happened to the memories of my generation.
I'm shocked by the lack of outrage at the SBVFT
Have forgotten how horrible it was back then and how hard we fought to stop the war? Perhaps a lot of them are still apathetic. I admit it was easy to be after RFK was killed and McGovern lost to Nixon. Kerry is a true representative of who we were way back then and should be championed by all of us who remember.
Thanks for letting me rant.

[Career Prole]

10. You're very welcome, desertalien. Bookmark the Toledo Blade series

and use it whenever folks tell you it didn't happen.
That was pretty mild as rants go, by the way.:D
You'll get angrier with time.
Welcome to DU! :toast:

[Piperay]

9. The Swiftboat Liars are in

denial, they either participated in these atrocities themselves, knew and did nothing or knew but do not care, all they care about is proclaiming themselves heroes and defaming anyone who speaks the truth. :-(