http://www.620wtmj.com/620programs/charliesykes/weblog.asp
As stunning as his charges, Kerry insisted that the barbaric acts of American soldiers “were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.”
As evidence for his sweeping indictment of the American soldier in Vietnam, Kerry cited the testimony from the Winter Soldier Investigation. As Kerry explained: “The term Winter Soldier is a play on words of Thomas Paine's in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriots and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.”
The “Winter Soldier Investigation,” Mackubin Thomas Owens recently wrote in National Review Online, was, in fact “organized by the ‘usual suspects’ among antiwar celebrities such as Jane Fonda, Dick Gregory, and Kennedy-assassination conspiracy theorist, Mark Lane.” Owensis a professor of strategy and force planning at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. He led a Marine infantry platoon in Vietnam in 1968-1969. He notes that “Kerry's 1971 testimony includes every left-wing cliché about Vietnam and the men who served there.”
Even worse, much of what Kerry said turned out to be demonstrably false.
Owens writes: “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….
“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.”
http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vietnamcenter/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/lesson.htm
. Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi’s victory? A. It was essential to our strategy. Support for the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.
Q. [Why] did the Politburo pay attention to these visits? A. These people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize the will to win. While we need not attribute North Vietnam’s victory solely to domestic dissent in the U.S., we need to recognize that such dissent poses some unresolved issues. Clearly in a democracy, the government shouldn’t be able to mold public opinion. Dissent against an unwise or immoral war is a necessary part of democratic society. In some way, however, it must be possible to counter dissent which involves collaboration with the enemy. We must not allow the enemy to intervene in our domestic politics, even under the guise of dissent. However, this issue has yet to be satisfactorily resolved.
http://www.vietnamwar.com/Timeline69-75.htm (time line hard to read, because of the colors they use)
http://www.geocities.com/seavet72/AW/ws-kerry.htm
http://www.geocities.com/seavet72/LI/link-1.htm#AWP2-6