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Kerry stands by '71 atrocities claim Campaign official insists Democrat was right about war
World Net Daily ^ | 8/23/04

Posted on 08/23/2004 5:23:09 AM PDT by mcar

WASHINGTON – John Kerry stands by his claims in 1971 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that U.S. soldiers in Vietnam regularly, and as a matter of official policy, committed war atrocities against innocent civilians, according to a top campaign official.

John Hurley, national director of Veterans for Kerry, denied on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, that Kerry had overstated the case against the war when he returned home as a spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

A new ad by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth targets Kerry's comments in 1971 as giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

"John Kerry testified in 1971 to atrocities being committed in Vietnam," said Hurley. "So also, the Toledo Blade has won a Pulitzer prize this year for the reporting on atrocities in Vietnam. General Tommy Franks has said John Kerry spoke the truth when he testified in 1971. The My Lai massacre was a fact of life back then. What they have done (in this ad) is they've taken a piece of John Kerry's testimony, left out the part that says he was reporting, repeating the testimony that was given in Detroit at the Winter Soldier hearings, and presented it as his. And that's wrong."

Kerry, however, was the national spokesman for the group that conducted the widely discredited investigation. He was also an active participant in the hearings, not just a reporter taking notes. In 1971, Kerry also implicated himself in the commission of war crimes and atrocities.

In fact, Kerry began his testimony to the committee stating that he was representing all those veterans who participated in the hearings.

"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," he told the committee.

Kerry went on to explain: "They told the 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."

Kerry added: "The country doesn't know it yet, but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in history; men who have returned with a sense of anger and a sense of betrayal which no one has yet grasped."

Yesterday, Hurly agreed with the testimony and said Kerry stands behind it.

"Absolutely," Hurley said. "He's a leader. He came back, and he spoke the truth."

Asked repeatedly by Wallace if Kerry had overstated what happened in his testimony in 1971, Hurley emphatically said no.

"John Kerry says that he regrets the use of the language that may have offended some people," Hurley said. "He is not -- he stands behind the facts of his testimony. He stands behind the facts that atrocities were being committed in Vietnam."

In fact, some of those presenting horror stories at the Jane Fonda-sponsored Winter Soldier Investigation in Detroit had misrepresented themselves as Vietnam War vets – even using the names of other veterans who did not attend the hearings. Several veterans provided sworn affidavits that others spoke in their names.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 1971; election; goodbye; johnhurley; kerry; swiftboatveterans; vvaw
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To: mcar

Shoring up his base, the VC and the Hollywood crowd.


21 posted on 08/23/2004 5:39:28 AM PDT by ProudVet77 (Kerry is Toast du Francai')
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To: mcar

When Hurley first appeared on O'Reilly's "The Factor" a couple of weeks ago, he clearly stated that it was JOHN KERRY'S BOAT THAT HIT THE MINE! Yet no one has followed up on that claim! Hurley is so full of hate that he can't even see straight...


22 posted on 08/23/2004 5:40:03 AM PDT by TommyDale
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To: mcar

Yeah - the Vietnam War Veteran Generation were all war criminals guilty of acting like Genghis Khan and pulverizing a suffering people. Now onto the hangings.


23 posted on 08/23/2004 5:42:13 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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To: IamConservative
found it interesting in the Swifties Ad that Kerry pronounces Genghis incorrectly - or at least differently than I have ever heard it pronounced.

I read that Kerry used the French pronunciation, but I don't know if the person who wrote that was kidding or for real.

24 posted on 08/23/2004 5:42:33 AM PDT by randita
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To: mcar

I don't understand the problem with the ad. John Kerry said those things, and some people are explaining how his testimony made them feel.

If Kerry wants to counter the ad, let him run ads showing the entire quote so that everyone can see "the context" from which he was speaking.

Or, he can also allow someone to reprint The New Soldier so people can really get an in-depth look at Kerry's leadership in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.


25 posted on 08/23/2004 5:43:08 AM PDT by VisualizeSmallerGovernment (Question Liberal Authority)
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To: IamConservative

"Pretty good indication someone wrote the speech for him...."

Adam Walinsky?


26 posted on 08/23/2004 5:43:39 AM PDT by Bahbah
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To: mcar

Wonder how many 'atrocities' Kerry would have found during the French n Indian War
The Revolutionary War, The War of 1812, The American Civil War, World Wars I and II, and Korea

Naturally during the Vietnam War he never reported any of these 'so called' war crimes of our enemies...

He seems to always take the enemies side of reality....

Pretty much makes him....an more an allie of our enemies...more than a regular American

This alone should automatically disqualify him for citizenship in America..never mind running for the office of POTUS

Would be like hiring The Boston Strangler for a the job of massage therapist at cheerleading camp.

imo


27 posted on 08/23/2004 5:43:44 AM PDT by joesnuffy (Moderate Islam Is For Dilettantes)
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To: mcar

If he says he lied in '71, he's toast.

If he says he told the truth in '71, he's toast.

Pass the butter, folks.

It's time for Lurch Toast.


28 posted on 08/23/2004 5:43:51 AM PDT by samtheman (www.georgewbush.com)
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To: randita

"I read that Kerry used the French pronunciation...."

Yes, he did.


29 posted on 08/23/2004 5:46:10 AM PDT by Bahbah
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To: mcar

RUSSERT: "You committed atrocities."

KERRY: "Where did all that dark hair go, Tim? That's what I want to know."

- Meet the Press, April 2004.


30 posted on 08/23/2004 5:46:19 AM PDT by VisualizeSmallerGovernment (Question Liberal Authority)
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To: VisualizeSmallerGovernment

Regnery Publishing has offered to reprint "The New Soldier" for free and Kerry's declined. What a coward.


31 posted on 08/23/2004 5:46:20 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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To: boxerblues

Sounds like Tommy Franks is admitting to something himself. Least he could have done is take names and report the crimes later on ~ guess he thought his career was more important at the time.


32 posted on 08/23/2004 5:47:22 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: joesnuffy
Wonder how many 'atrocities' Kerry would have found during the French n Indian War The Revolutionary War, The War of 1812, The American Civil War, World Wars I and II, and Korea

If John Kerry had been president in 1941, he would probably have claimed that the soldiers at Pearl Harbor were war criminals since they fired back at the Japanese planes before Congress had declared war.

33 posted on 08/23/2004 5:49:35 AM PDT by John Thornton
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To: TommyDale

The story keeps changing with these guys.

The new story seems to be:

The lead boat of three on the left side of the river, hit a mine and was disabled. The two other boats on the left side of the river immediatly went to aid and protect the hit boat.

Kerry, on the right side of the river, went on ahead and then claims that he was hit by a different mine (or something) (but apparently it did not disable his boat as he continued in the same direction for some time).

Kerry then realized that someone had fallen overboard, and he returned to pick him up.

It would be interesting to see the damage reports on Kerry's boat.


34 posted on 08/23/2004 5:51:42 AM PDT by sd-joe (Bush has power, while Kerry has only ambition)
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To: IamConservative

Kerry was actually trying to pronounce it like they do in Mongolia. He still got it wrong, however. It pronounced Chingas phonetically.


35 posted on 08/23/2004 5:53:33 AM PDT by numberonepal (Whatever happened to freedom, liberty, and capitalism?)
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To: mcar

"We will not quickly join those who march on Veterans' Day waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the 'greater glory of the United States.' We will not accept the rhetoric. We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars-in fact, we will find it hard to join anything at all and when we do, we will demand relevancy such as other organizations have recently been unable to provide. We will not take solace from the creation of monuments or the naming of parks after a select few of the thousands of dead Americans and Vietnamese. We will not uphold traditions which decorously memorialize that which was base and grim."

--John F'ing Kerry


36 posted on 08/23/2004 5:53:53 AM PDT by Samwise (John Kerry is a pseudo-French elitist, ketchup-swigging gigolo, wannabe-hero, billionaire doofus.)
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To: mcar

If I recall, Franks said atrocities occur in all wars. But this is not what Kerry has claimed. He testified in 1971 that such horrors were official POLICY, that it was officially sanctioned by the chain of command. That is a blatant lie and a slander. Kerry had the same mindset then as CBS had when it released the photos of abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghrab, making the same leap in logic--suggesting that the abuse was widespread, was officially sanctioned, and that it most certainly went up the chain of command. The media, in fact, is pulling the same wool over the public's eyes concerning Iraq as it did regarding Vietnam--undermining the national will and subverting efforts to establish a successful democracy in the region.


37 posted on 08/23/2004 5:54:14 AM PDT by ultima ratio
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To: goldstategop
Regnery Publishing has offered to reprint "The New Soldier" for free and Kerry's declined.

I guarantee that if Bush wrote that book, every man, woman and child would have 10 copies by now. "The people have a right to know!"

38 posted on 08/23/2004 5:55:39 AM PDT by VisualizeSmallerGovernment (Question Liberal Authority)
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To: Grut
There is a big difference between an individual soldier committing war crimes (Calley) and an government policy that orders/encourages soldiers to commit war crimes. Kerry didn't just accuse his fellow soldiers. He indicted the entire United States Government. Also, Kerry's lies helped to bring down President Nixon. The Cambodia tale was used; it was actually one article of impeachment.
39 posted on 08/23/2004 5:57:16 AM PDT by nyconse
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To: sd-joe

That's exactly why Kerry will NEVER release his records. They don't back up his ever changing stories.


40 posted on 08/23/2004 5:57:44 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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