Kerry lies. Here's what he said about the Swift operations to the Washington Star on June 6, 1971:
"We established an American presence in most cases by showing the flag and firing at sampans and villages along the banks. Those were our instructions, but they seemed so out of line that we finally began to go ashore, against our orders, and investigate the villages that were supposed to be our targets. We discovered we were butchering a lot of innocent people, and morale became so low among the officers on those 'swift boats' that we were called back to Saigon for special instructions from Gen. Abrams. He told us we were doing the right thing. He said our efforts would help win the war in the long run. That's when I realized I could never remain silent about the realities of the war in Vietnam."
excellent find/
I don't understand, is he giving this press conferrence via phone? What's going on? A little help for the TVless please!
"We established an American presence in most cases by showing the flag and firing at sampans and villages along the banks. Those were our instructions, but they seemed so out of line that we finally began to go ashore, against our orders, and investigate the villages that were supposed to be our targets. We discovered we were butchering a lot of innocent people, and morale became so low among the officers on those 'swift boats' that we were called back to Saigon for special instructions from Gen. Abrams. He told us we were doing the right thing. He said our efforts would help win the war in the long run. That's when I realized I could never remain silent about the realities of the war in Vietnam."
I don't remember any of this from his convention speech.
I'm curious about a couple of things: was he "ordered" to shoot up villiages indiscriminently, or was he ordered to destroy villages that harbored Vietcong?
What became of the radar and fishing boat incident? Wasn't there some policy about warning fishing boats away from the PCs?