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   From: FlyaC750@IloveUSA.com   
      
   Mackubin Thomas Owens   
      
   Vetting the Vet Record   
   Is Kerry a proud war hero or angry antiwar protester?   
      
         John Kerry, we know, is running against John Kerry: his own voting   
   record. But there is another record that John Kerry is running against, and   
   this has to do with his very emergence as a Democratic politician: Kerry,   
   the proud Vietnam veteran vs. Kerry, the antiwar activist who accused his   
   fellow Vietnam veterans of the most heinous atrocities imaginable.   
      
         John Kerry not only served honorably in Vietnam, but also with   
   distinction, earning a Silver Star (America's third-highest award for   
   valor), a Bronze Star, and three awards of the Purple Heart for wounds   
   received in combat as a swift-boat commander. Kerry did not return from   
   Vietnam a radical antiwar activist. According to the indispensable Stolen   
   Valor, by H. G. "Jug" Burkett and Genna Whitley, "Friends said that when   
   Kerry first began talking about running for office, he was not visibly   
   agitated about the Vietnam War. 'I thought of him as a rather normal vet,' a   
   friend said to a reporter, 'glad to be out but not terribly uptight about   
   the war.' Another acquaintance who talked to Kerry about his political   
   ambitions called him a 'very charismatic fellow looking for a good issue.'"   
   Apparently, this good issue would be Vietnam.   
      
         Kerry hooked up with an organization called Vietnam Veterans Against   
   the War (VVAW). Two events cooked up by this group went a long way toward   
   cementing in the public mind the image of Vietnam as one big atrocity. The   
   first of these was the January 31, 1971, "Winter Soldier Investigation,"   
   organized by "the usual suspects" among antiwar celebrities such as Jane   
   Fonda, Dick Gregory, and Kennedy-assassination conspiracy theorist, Mark   
   Lane. Here, individuals purporting to be Vietnam veterans told horrible   
   stories of atrocities in Vietnam: using prisoners for target practice,   
   throwing them out of helicopters, cutting off the ears of dead Viet Cong   
   soldiers, burning villages, and gang-raping women as a matter of course.   
      
         The second event was "Dewey Canyon III," or what VVAW called a   
   "limited incursion into the country of Congress" in April of 1971. It was   
   during this VVAW "operation" that John Kerry first came to public attention.   
   The group marched on Congress to deliver petitions to Congress and then to   
   the White House. The highlight of this event occurred when veterans threw   
   their medals and ribbons over a fence in front of the Capitol, symbolizing a   
   rebuke to the government that they claimed had betrayed them. One of the   
   veterans flinging medals back in the face of his government was John Kerry,   
   although it turns out they were not his medals, but someone else's.   
      
         Several days later Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations   
   Committee. His speech, touted as a spontaneous rhetorical endeavor, was a   
   tour de force, convincing many Americans that their country had indeed waged   
   a merciless and immoral war in Vietnam. It was particularly powerful because   
   Kerry did not fit the antiwar-protester mold — he was no scruffy, wide-eyed   
   hippie. He was instead the best that America had to offer. He was, according   
   to Burkett and Whitley, the "All-American boy, mentally twisted by being   
   asked to do terrible things, then abandoned by his government."   
      
         Kerry began by referring to the Winter Soldiers Investigation in   
   Detroit. Here, he claimed, "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 their 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.   
      
      
         This is quite a bill of particulars to lay at the feet of the U.S.   
   military. He said in essence that his fellow veterans had committed   
   unparalleled war crimes in Vietnam as a matter of course, indeed, that it   
   was American policy to commit such atrocities.   
      
         In fact, the entire Winter Soldiers Investigation was a lie. It was   
   inspired by Mark Lane's 1970 book entitled Conversations with Americans,   
   which claimed to recount atrocity stories by Vietnam veterans. This book was   
   panned by James Reston Jr. and Neil Sheehan, not exactly known as supporters   
   of the Vietnam War. Sheehan in particular demonstrated that many of Lane's   
   "eye witnesses" either had never served in Vietnam or had not done so in the   
   capacity they claimed.   
      
         Nonetheless, Sen. Mark Hatfield inserted the transcript of the Winter   
   Soldier testimonies into the Congressional Record and asked the Commandant   
   of the Marine Corps to investigate the war crimes allegedly committed by   
   Marines. When the Naval Investigative Service attempted to interview the   
   so-called witnesses, most refused to cooperate, even after assurances that   
   they would not be questioned about atrocities they may have committed   
   personally. Those that did cooperate never provided details of actual crimes   
   to investigators. The NIS also discovered that some of the most grisly   
   testimony was given by fake witnesses who had appropriated the names of real   
   Vietnam veterans. Guenter Lewy tells the entire study in his book, America   
   in Vietnam.   
      
         Kerry's 1971 testimony includes every left-wing cliché about Vietnam   
   and the men who served there. It is part of the reason that even today,   
   people who are too young to remember Vietnam are predisposed to believe the   
   worst about the Vietnam War and those who fought it. This predisposition was   
   driven home by the fraudulent "Tailwind" episode some months ago.   
      
         The first cliché is that atrocities were widespread in Vietnam. But   
   this is nonsense. Atrocities did occur in Vietnam, but they were far from   
   widespread. Between 1965 and 1973, 201 soldiers and 77 Marines were   
   convicted of serious crimes against the Vietnamese. Of course, the fact that   
   many crimes, either in war or peace, go unreported, combined with the   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)