From Notra Trulock:
"Kerry now says he is proud of his service in Vietnam and that the country should “celebrate the nobility of young Americans” who were willing to die for their country. But as Owens notes, Kerry told a very different story in his now famous appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971. Kerry was one of the stars of a march by disaffected veterans on Washington; it was during this march that Kerry threw somebody’s medals and ribbons over a Capitol Hill fence.
Kerry horrified members of the Committee with tales of atrocities committed by GI’s in Vietnam. Rape, murder, torture, baby killings, burnt and destroyed villages – all the particulars of the anti-war movement’s bill of indictment of American servicemen in that war. Kerry told them that these crimes were not isolated occurrences, but were committed almost daily. Kerry’s testimony was so powerful that he continues to be cited as an authority on American atrocities in Vietnam. As AIM has reported, in December 2003, an article in the New York Times cited Kerry’s 1971 appearance as proof of the Times’ assertion that such atrocities were commonplace.
Except, as Owens points out, much of that testimony was based on lies told by men who either had never served in Vietnam or had no involvement in the tales they told. As recounted in B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley’s Stolen Valor, much of the so called “eyewitness” testimony cited by Kerry was thoroughly debunked by none other than the Times’ own Vietnam correspondent Neil Sheehan. To Sheehan, all this represented a “new McCarthyism – this time from the left. Any accusation, any innuendo, any rumor is repeated and published as truth.”
http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2004/02/13.htmlEven some of these bogus Vietnam vets found Kerry too phony for them:
"And there are others, this time within the antiwar movement itself, who also viewed Kerry as a fake. When he returned to the United States in April 1969 he was still a U.S. Navy officer and not protesting the war, though it was a time of many demonstrations. He first became involved in the antiwar movement that October after his sister Peggy, who was working for a radical group organizing a 250,000-strong Washington antiwar protest, contacted Kerry to ask if he could provide a plane and fly an activist around New York state to deliver speeches. He could, and he reportedly flew the plane himself to get a look at the burgeoning movement.
Soon afterward, in January 1971, Kerry attended a series of hearings of the radical VVAW in Detroit. He did not speak at the event, which received limited press coverage. He is said to have wanted a larger platform, the top role. It was here again that Kerry was labeled an opportunist, this time by radical members of the VVAW. He was not an organizer, yet he was seeking to become the spokesman and coordinator. He was called a power-grabbing elitist who generated internal friction within the group.
But some members also believed that Kerry - intelligent, clean-cut and college-educated - would be an especially effective representative for a group being labeled as hippies, traitors or communists. He also was seen as able to raise big money, which he did.
Within five months of becoming its leader, Kerry says he quit the VVAW to focus on a new organization that emphasized veterans' benefits. Others say he was told to leave."
http://www.insightmag.com/news/2003/09/16/Politics/The-Many.Faces.Of.John.Kerry.part.1-455076.shtml