Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[wstera2]

"I heard the testimony and none of it was false"

Read it & weep. Then admit you were completely wrong.

CITIZEN KERRY

....This particular article, explains how much of the
supposed atrocities were pure theatre.....

....all those horrific accounts of rape, torture, arson
and slaughter that the VVAW had recorded in Detroit seemed
to evaporate once the real investigation demanded by
Senator Hatfield began. As recounted in Guenter Lewy's
1978 book “America in Vietnam,” few witnesses agreed to
talk with military investigators, even after being assured
that they would not be asked about their own crimes. Many
of those who did permit interviews turned out never to
have been in combat. Some of the most gruesome claims came
from men who were imposters using the names of real
Vietnam veterans. One Marine who had been in combat
eventually told investigators that a member of the Nation
of Islam had helped prepare his statement, and admitted
that he had never witnessed any of the atrocities he had
testified to in Detroit. In the end, the Navy was unable
to verify any of the hundreds of war crimes alleged by the
Winter Soldier Investigation. Neither has anyone else
during the 33 years since, including journalists,
historians, and military and Congressional investigators.....

http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=20089797

....He became an antiwar activist. Sure, lots of Americans
ended up opposing the Vietnam War, but Kerry did so by
becoming the respectable face of Vietnam Veterans Against
the War, a group whose stock in trade was accusations that
American servicemen had committed war crimes. These claims
came in the form of "confessions" from men, some of whom
turned out not even to be veterans--and Kerry repeated
them in sworn testimony before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee in April 1971.....

http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=20073837


Of much greater import is Kerry's eloquent Winter Soldier
testimony before Congress in 1971, which launched his
political career. Kerry based his testimony on the statements
of about 150 supposedly highly-decorated veterans at the
Winter Soldier Rally in Detroit, who made claims of
committing horrible atrocities in Vietnam. He told Congress
that the U.S. "murdered over 200,000 Vietnamese per year," a
statement which the present Kerry campaign has gone to great
lengths to distance itself from.

The Detroit claims were duly investigated and found
wanting. It turned out that most of the claimants were
phonies who had never been in the military. Some used
stolen names of actual veterans; others refused to comply
with investigators. So Kerry tarred his fellow vets as war
criminals based on trumped up, unsubstantiated charges, in
order to thrust his name into the spotlight.

http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=20050213

.....John Kerry was given a chance to take this course last Sunday by Tim Russert on Meet the Press, but the presidential candidate refused to seize it. Instead, Kerry tried to have matters both ways: He distanced himself from his 1971 statements regarding atrocities in the Vietnam War while insisting that his charges were essentially accurate.

It so happens, however, that they were not accurate or
even remotely close to accurate, and the fact that Kerry
still won't repudiate what he said means it remains a
serious issue......

.....Kerry spoke at length before the committee, and his
testimony is full of such lurid claims......

Russert: "But, senator, when you testified before the
Senate, you talked about some of the hearings you had
observed at the Winter Soldiers meeting and you said that
people had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads,
taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and
on and on. A lot of those stories have been discredited,
and in hindsight was your testimony . . ."

Kerry: "Actually, a lot of them have been documented."

Russert: "So you stand by that?"

Kerry: "A lot of those stories have been documented. Have
some been discredited? Sure they have, Tim......

In other words, Kerry believes his language in 1971 was "a
little bit excessive," "a little bit over the top," and
might have been phrased "more artfully." But on the other
hand his statements were "honest," he's "proud" of his
position at that time and he's "not going to walk away"
from his fundamental thesis regarding the grotesque nature
of U.S. conduct. Indeed, "a lot of those stories have been
documented."

Actually, many of the atrocity stories that Kerry and many
others peddled in the early '70s were discredited even at
the time by such journalists as Neil Sheehan, James Reston
and William Overend. Others were eventually debunked in
such books as America in Vietnam, by well-known historian
Guenter Lewy (1978) and Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam
Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and History, by B.G.
Burkett and Glenna Whitley (1998).....

As Lewy points out, for example, when the Naval Investigative Service tried to probe allegations made at the Winter Soldier Investigation, "many of the veterans, though assured that they would not be questioned about atrocities they might have committed personally, refused to be interviewed. One of the active members of the VVAW told investigators that the leadership had directed the entire membership not to cooperate with military authorities."

"One of the stories told and retold was that of prisoners pushed out of helicopters in order to scare others into talking," Lewy writes. "It is, of course, possible that some American interrogators engaged in this criminal practice, though not a single instance has been confirmed . . . But the most damaging finding consisted of the sworn statements of several veterans, corroborated by witnesses, that they had in fact not attended the hearing in Detroit. One of them had never been to Detroit in all his life. He did not know, he stated, who might have used his name."

Lewy does not deny that "incidents similar to some of those described at the VVAW hearing" occurred. They do in every war, and Lewy carefully discusses a number of them. "We know that hamlets were destroyed, prisoners tortured, and corpses mutilated," he writes, "Yet these incidents either (as in the destruction of hamlets) did not violate the law of war or took place in breach of existing regulations. In either case, they were not, as alleged, part of a 'criminal policy.' The VVAW's use of fake witnesses and the failure to cooperate with military authorities and to provide crucial details of the incidents further cast serious doubt on the professed desire to serve the causes of justice and humanity."

And he adds: "Most soldiers in Vietnam did not kill prisoners or intentionally shoot unarmed villagers. Violations of the law of war in this regard were committed by individuals in violation of existing policy. With the exception of rare cases, no orders were issued to commit atrocities . . ."

http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=20065808

Kerry-Linked Anti-War Group Can't Bury Deceit

....While many former Vietnam veterans support the
candidacy of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry,
there is no sign of the man who appeared with Kerry on a
nationally televised news program in 1971 to allege
widespread atrocities by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam.

That man, Al Hubbard, remains out of the spotlight,
perhaps because the war record he touted in directing a
prominent anti-war group that included Kerry, was
fabricated. Hubbard's deceit, which he later admitted.....

...Meet the Press host Lawrence Spivak introduced Hubbard
as a former decorated Air Force captain who had spent two
years in Vietnam and was wounded in the process.....

....Hubbard's falsehoods were not confined to his military
rank, Overend told CNSNews.com . Hubbard "had no record of
any service in Vietnam ..." Overend said.....

....B. G. Burkett, author of Stolen Valor and a military
researcher, told CNSNews.com that Hubbard's type of deceit
was widespread among people associated with VVAW.

Burkett's book documents false testimonies and reveals
that many of the men who worked with VVAW and other anti-
war groups who had alleged war atrocities during the
Vietnam War had either lied about their background or had
claims that were unverifiable.

According to Burkett, the Pentagon investigated the VVAW's
Winter Soldier allegations and discovered that some of the
U.S. Marines listed by VVAW as having testified in Detroit,
"could prove that they had never been in Detroit and did
not testify at that event."

Burkett is critical of Kerry for never having addressed
the issue of whether VVAW and the anti-war movement relied
on impostors or phony servicemen. "He presented this
ragtag bunch of bums as your standard honorably discharged
Vietnam vet and I think nothing could be further from the
truth. They weren't," Burkett said.....