On January 31, 1971, members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) met in a Detroit hotel to discuss war crimes they claimed to have 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.
In April, the VVAW stormed Washington in a week-long protest. At its height, spokesman John Kerry went before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to accuse the United States military of committing massive numbers of war crimes in Vietnam. The appearance launched Kerry's political career. The charges he made shocked and sickened a nation, changed the course of a war and stained the reputation of the American military for decades.
But the mass murder of civilians was never American policy in Vietnam. War crimes were the exception, not the rule. And the Winter Soldier tribunal itself -- which John Kerry had helped moderate -- turned out to be "packed with pretenders and liars."
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Recently discovered enemy documents from 1971 show that Vietnamese communists guided the American antiwar movement via meetings between the communist delegations to the Paris Peace talks and American antiwar activists. John Kerry and the VVAW were working toward the exact goals set forth in the communist directives.
Read about it in John Kerry and the VVAW: Hanoi's American Puppets? by Dr. Jerome Corsi and Scott Swett.
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In Yesterday's Lies: Steve Pitkin and the Winter Soldiers, Scott Swett tells the story of a former VVAW member and participant in the Winter Soldier Investigation who has now filed an affidavit stating that John Kerry and others pressured him to give false testimony about American atrocities in Vietnam.
In the smash best-seller Unfit for Command, John O'Neill presents eyewitness accounts from Kerry's fellow Swift sailors that demolish his tales of combat heroism, while Dr. Jerry Corsi draws on the WinterSoldier.com research and other new material to expose Kerry's radical activities as a leader of the VVAW.
John Kerry's photograph hangs in the War Protestors Hall of the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City -- an indication of the value the Vietnamese communists place on Kerry's support of their efforts during the Vietnam War.
See Kerry Museum Photo Documented for additional information on the Kerry war museum story.
The Viet Nam News also remembers Kerry in this propaganda article featuring his claim that war crimes were American policy in Vietnam.
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