Wow. Can I ask what you thought when you saw it?
I can't believe they have footage of the actual event. My disbelief is based on my notion that toting around a film camera in the jungle during a war has got to be awkward. But seems to me I recall mentions that Kerry would film things in Vietnam. And because some of that footage didn't turn out well he sometimes had to do "reanactments". So I'm supposing this could be the real thing.
If it's a reenactment I guess the defense will probably be that Kerry was simply trying to visually demonstrate some of the atrocities he saw in Vietnam.
No. Kerry performed reenactments of events and "battles" he personally was involved in. So, as I said above, and this bears repeating, if this film exists and it is a reencactment that means that John Kerry burned down a village, didn't get it on tape, then found ANOTHER village to burn down to film!
Even then I couldn't understand why anyone would make a big deal out of it. It was common knowledge. Diem instituted the policy way back before we ever got involved. We just carried on with it. There were relocation camps, so what? That was my attitude then. After villagers -- whom we suspected of supporting North Vietnamese forces -- were relocated, we destroyed the huts, the tunnels, the crops, etc., everything, to keep that stuff out of Viet Cong hands. It was a legitimate strategy, imo.
However, people WERE NOT slaughtered wholesale like Kerry implied; i.e., it WAS NOT DONE IN THE MANNER OF GHENGIS KHAN. The Mongol hordes killed everyone and everything if they couldn't take it with them.
I knew we weren't doing ANYTHING in the manner of Ghengis Khan, no matter how much leftist propaganda I had soaked up. In fact, Kerry's Senate testimony definitely played a role in getting me back on the right track (though it took forever). I KNEW he was lying. Those were gut-wrenching times, let me tell 'ya. (Though I think it might be worse today.)