Kerry in a 1971 Interview Admitting He Committed Atrocities

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The same way you construct huge butt pyramids in prison torture rooms, it is all the same small handful of bad apples.
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[adios]

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I'm my posts I never claimed that he didn't do this. My suggestion was that he did not "dishonor" or "betray" (the words used in the SBVFT ad) his fellow veterans. If you look at the meaning of what he was trying to convey and not just particular sentences, he we trying to stand up for veterans

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Many Viet Nam vets feel he did though rightly or wrongly. I think my statement somewhere where I stated a reconciliation was in order would an appropriate action. A reconciliation implies rectifying a misunderstanding to me so I see a lot of upside for Kerry in doing this.

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can't argue with that, but I'm not sure why it matters.

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Here's why it matters. Kerry has promoted his service in Viet Nam and many believe that he did a disservice to those who served in Nam. Kerry has made his service in Viet Nam an issue. It's opening up a lot of old wounds. I'm guessing that you didn't live through that era or where old enough to have a lot of recollections about it. I don't have a lot of time today to debate this but maybe tonight I can post more on it. Basically the Viet Nam war provided a very difficult choice for millions of it's young male citizens and when they returned home they weren't greeted with open arms let's say. In fact they were scorned in many places for doing what they felt was their civic duty.

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But that does not give them the right to distort his record and his words. If their beef is so legitimate, they should not have to do that.

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What distortions are we talking about here?

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Denial in which way Sam? I basically agree with your points but I'd be interested to know what you mean by being in denial in this case. Personally my take is that many Viet Nam vets were put in some untenable situations. The draft was unfair IMO, the rationale for the war was vague IMO, and at first when the war was more popular there was a lot of pressure put on draftees to fulfill their civic duty. In 1966 IMO this was the state of affairs when Kerry enlisted. I remember Mohammid Ali (spelling) coming out I believe in 1967 and stating that "he didn't have anything against no Viet Cong" or some such and how he was criticised for this statement in many places creating a fire storm so to speak with it. Three years later the political climate had changed a lot to asking the question, "Why do we have something against these Viet Cong?" I saw a recent interview with Tommy Franks and he basically acknowledged that atrocities occured. We've got Mai Lai, we've got B-52 carpet bombing, we've got Agent Orange and Napalm. Then in this atmosphere we have Viet Nam vets coming home who more or less felt they performed their civic duties and they were thought of as "baby killers" in many places. IMO the Vets weren't greeted with open arms when they returned. I could get into this alot more but don't have the time now. I can understand how there would be some Vets that are sore putting aside whether or not their anger at Kerry is justified. IMO Kerry is hiding from his Viet Nam experience and I think there's a lot of political upside in not doing that.

[sam h]

Adios,

I think we basically agree about the war. The people who were sent over there by and large thought they were doing the right thing and, as you said, were put into untenable situations by the military and civilian command.

I just think we should call a spade and spade and acknowledge that what those untenable situations often amounted to were the committment of war-time atrocities. Now there were probably a small percentage of GIs who really did just act like animals, for whatever reason just needing the justification to do terrible things. But most GIs were probably very similar to Kerry - scared and bewildered and put into spots where they ended up killing civilians or given duties by their superiors that, in their nature, involved fairly indiscriminate slaughter.

I think its terrible that these veterans got demonized as baby-killers, since they were victims too in this terrible war.

But I also think that its morally irresponsible to go to the other extreme and say that the war itself did not involve routine atrocities and maintain that, en toto, what we did over there was not misguided and reprehensible.

I think that was basically Kerry's point in 1971 - not that the veterans were to blame, but that the war itself was wrong and that we were slaughtering innocents by the thousands if not millions for dubious ends. The whole gist of Vietnam Veterans Against the War was to say "We were participants, but we are also victims, because we didn't sign up to do the stuff we did."

When I talk about denial, it is because I think that many people in America still will not accept that Vietnam was not a righteous affair and basically showed America at its worst. And I think that all Kerry's shifty flip-flopping about the war essentially stems from the fact that to denounce Vietnam for him - to just go out and say that we did a terrible thing and have to come to terms with it - would be political suicide.

However, it is a pickle that he's entered into voluntarily by playing up his own service with the whole "I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty" schtick.

[Rooster71]

If Kerry would have lied and said there were never any atrocities committed by anyone, would that be satisfactory? Kerry went to Vietnam and when he came back he thought about what had occurred and decided to speak out about it. Why is that such a problem?

Too bad we can't find some 1971 statements from George W., we could find all sorts of minor things to nitpick. Of course you can't find any statements from Bush from that time period because there wouldn't be any reason to give statements on drinking, partying and being a general screw-up.