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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (45134)	8/26/2004 9:40:41 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Kerry Senate Testimony (1971): 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. Which one[s] was/were your relative[s]? Now if you want to say that 150 veterans of the Vietnam war were lying you can do that. jttmab

To: The Philosopher who wrote (45134)	8/26/2004 9:45:49 AM
From: jttmab	Respond to of 81568

Maybe your relatives are in here? Some atrocities by US forces have been documented beyond question. Kerry's 1971 testimony came less than one month after Army Lt. William Calley had been convicted in a highly publicized military trial of the murder of the murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai hamlet on March 16 1968, when upwards of 300 unarmed men, women and children were killed by the inexperienced soldiers of the Americal Division's Charley Company. And since Kerry testified, ample evidence of other atrocities has come to light: * Son Thang: In 1998, for example, Marine Corps veteran Gary D. Solis published the book Son Thang: An American War Crime describing the court-martial of four US Marines for the apparently unprovoked killing 16 women and children on the night of February 19, 1970 in a hamlet about 20 miles south of Danang. The four Marines testified that they were under orders by their patrol leader to shoot the villagers. A young Oliver North appeared as a character witness and helped acquit the leader of all charges, but three were convicted. * Tiger Force: The Toledo Blade won a Pulitzer Prize this year for a series published in October, 2003 reporting that atrocities were committed by an elite US Army "Tiger Force" unit that the Blade said killed unarmed civilians and children during a seven-month rampage in 1967. "Elderly farmers were shot as they toiled in the fields. Prisoners were tortured and executed - their ears and scalps severed for souvenirs. One soldier kicked out the teeth of executed civilians for their gold fillings," the Blade reported. "Investigators concluded that 18 soldiers committed war crimes ranging from murder and assault to dereliction of duty. But no one was charged." * "Hundreds" of others: In December 2003 The New York Times quoted Nicholas Turse, a doctoral candidate at Columbia University who has been studying government archives, as saying the records are filled with accounts of atrocities similar to those described by the Toledo Blade series. "I stumbled across the incidents The Blade reported," Turse was quoted as saying. "I read through that case a year, year and a half ago, and it really didn't stand out. There was nothing that made it stand out from anything else. That's the scary thing. It was just one of hundreds." * "Exact Same Stories": Keith Nolan, author of 10 published books on Vietnam, says he's heard many veterans describe atrocities just like those Kerry recounted from the Winter Soldier event. Nolan told FactCheck.org that since 1978 he's interviewed roughly 1,000 veterans in depth for his books, and spoken to thousands of others. "I have heard the exact same stories dozens if not hundreds of times over," he said. "Wars produce atrocities. Frustrating guerrilla wars produce a particularly horrific number of atrocities. That some individual soldiers and certain units responded with excessive brutality in Vietnam shouldn't really surprise anyone."

To: The Philosopher who wrote (45134)	8/26/2004 9:54:14 AM
From: jttmab	Respond to of 81568

Does the fact that some soldiers self-inflicted wounds make it justified on that basis alone to prove Kerry did it? I'm not sure what your last "it" refers to, but that's ok. All parties, include the Swift Vet agree that Kerry threw a grenade to destroy a supply of rice that all believed would be used to feed Viet Cong. [That would be "the enemy".] As a result of that grenade, Kerry was hit in the ass with a piece of shrapnel. This is a "self inflicted" wound. The criteria for awarding of the PH includes such an incident. If you have a problem with Kerry getting awarded a PH for that incident, your problem is with the criteria. jttmab