[secretagent]

"I would like to talk on behalf of 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. These were 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 and the feelings of the men
who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute
horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

"They told stories that 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 Ghengis 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.

"We call this investigation the Winter Soldier Investigation."

-- John Kerry, testifying before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations,
April 23, 1971

[VadeRetro]

Thanks for that. He didn't misrepresent where he got the charges.

However, I hadn't realized until this thread that he was originally skeptical, especially since when he was before the Senate FRC he tried to reinforce the hearsay testimony with recollections from his own service.

So he came out of Vietnam believing that most soldiers served honorably, went to one anti-war rally, flipped, and within months was selling the new line to the Senate. Hmmmm. A vision of the future.