Kerry’s Testimony

Text of John F. Kerry's testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 22, 1971.

I would like to say for the record, and also for the men behind me who are also wearing the uniforms and their medals, that my sitting here is really symbolic. I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one member of the group of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to sit at this table they would be here and have the same kind of testimony.
I would simply like to speak in very general terms. I apologize if my statement is general because I received notification yesterday you would hear me and I am afraid because of the injunction I was up most of the night and haven't had a great deal of chance to prepare.
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.
It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.
They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape 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 country side 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.

It is still damning, taken in context.

Since some ( LA Times article) are saying that the latest SwiftVet ad takes Kerry's words out of context,

The LA Times is just repeating the DemocRAT "talking points", i.e. Kerry was just reading what others had said, etc., etc..

The fact is that Kerry was the spokesman. He repeated the comments of others and, since he didn't state otherwise, he agreed with them. AND, it was he who spoke before the Senate and it was his name that was forever attached to the charges and it was his name that the North Vietnamese used on the POW's.

Kerry is guilty!

all his medal sitations should have been signed by the same Sec of the Navy, yet 1 is signed by Sec of the Navy Lehman...who was not Sec of the Navy until a decade later.

Both the Bronze and Silver Star citation letters exist in multiple forms, and both have versions signed by Lehman. Best analysis is that the more recent citation letters accompanied replacement medals (asked for, and obtained, after Kerry was elected to the Senate).

In his field of in-theater lies and anti-war actions, "did" or "did not" throw his own medals over the White House fence is one of the smaller issues. Even if he won't admit that he got replacement medals, it's pretty clear that he did.

To show further how his testimony was not "taken out of context" all you have to do is read the transcript of his appearance on Meet the Press .

MEET THE PRESS, April 18, 1971
MR. KERRY (Vietnam Veterans Against the War): There are all kinds of atrocities and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free-fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.

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