Op/Ed - New York Post
THE SLANDER THAT MADE JOHN KERRY A STAR
Fri Apr 23, 2:15 AM ET
Thirty-three years ago today, a young, unknown political activist named
John F. Kerry sat down before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
and
unleashed a bitter verbal broadside against the war in Vietnam - and,
with
particularly harsh invective, against the young Americans who were
fighting
it.
Kerry charged that U.S. soldiers routinely committed the most gruesome
of
atrocities - "not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a
day-to-day
basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."
The allegations electrified Washington - and made Kerry a national
celebrity.
But the charges were slanderous lies.
"John Kerry 1971 testimony slandered an entire generation of soldiers,"
writes military historian Mackubin Thomas Owens, who led a Marine
infantry
platoon into combat in Vietnam.
"He said in essence that his fellow veterans had committed unparalleled
war
crimes in Vietnam as a matter of course - indeed, that it was American
policy to commit such atrocities," Owens writes.
The libel served Kerry well, though.
The better part of a half-century has passed; the nation is once again
at
war - and the junior senator from Massachusetts now stands as the
presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.
Surely it is no coincidence that now - after all these years - John F.
Kerry is trying to rewrite the dialogue that attended his first moments
in
the national spotlight.
On "Meet the Press" last weekend, Kerry maintained that while his
"words
were honest," they were nonetheless "a little bit over the top."
No regrets.
No contrition.
And, certainly, no apology.
"A little bit over the top"?
Well, here's what the then-national spokesman for Vietnam Veterans
Against
the War had to say on April 23, 1971:
"[U.S. servicemen] 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 Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun,
poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South
Vietnam."
Indeed, he charged, "[Americans] are more guilty than any other body of
violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free-fire zones,
harassment interdiction fire, search-and-destroy missions, the
bombings,
the torture of prisoners - all accepted policy by many units in South
Vietnam."
Did these things really happen the way John Kerry said they did -
routinely, as a matter of national policy?
In Oliver Stone movies, maybe.
Yes, some American soldiers committed atrocities. (Though even those
crimes
paled in comparison to those repeatedly perpetrated by the Vietcong, as
an
integral part of a decades-long terror campaign meant to coerce South
Vietnamese support for the Communist side.)
But even as harsh a critic of U.S. policy as Daniel Ellsberg, the man
who
leaked the Pentagon (news - web sites) Papers, has said that the men
involved in the war's most notorious event, the My Lai massacre, knew
that
the killing there was "out of the ordinary. That is why [the soldiers]
tried to hide the event."
But that's not what John Kerry told the Senate.
Kerry agreed with Jane Fonda, who declared - during a protest at which
Kerry was the featured speaker - that "My Lai was not an isolated
incident
but rather a way of life for many of our military."
Kerry, to be entirely fair, didn't actually fashion his charges from
whole
cloth.
He took them from accounts included in the "Winter Soldier
Investigation,"
a fabrication purportedly based on testimony from, in Kerry's words,
"over
150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans."
That was odious nonsense.
"Winter Soldier" was, in fact, a set-up organized by a JFK-conspiracy
theorist, the fabulist Mark Lane.
And it was quickly exposed as a lie by journalists James Reston and
Neil
Sheehan - themselves harsh critics of U.S. policy - who discovered that
many of its supposed eyewitnesses never even served in Vietnam.
To date, John Kerry has never disavowed the Winter Soldier
Investigation -
or apologized for his role in propagating its notorious falsehoods.
Kerry has tried to explain away his slanderous charges by suggesting
they
were spontaneous - prompted by the heat of his anger over the war.
But it is now known that Kerry's speech was in fact carefully crafted
by
Adam Walinsky, a one-time Robert Kennedy aide and speechwriter - who
also
coached Kerry in how to deliver it for maximum emotional impact.
That is, for utmost political effect.
John Kerry, you see, had carefully planned a political career - and
decided
to use the war as his signature issue.
The year before he appeared before Congress, he'd entered a
congressional
race in Massachusetts. And he would exploit his sudden notoriety to
move up
the electoral ladder until he reached the Senate in 1985.
There are many ironies in Kerry's career, not the least of which being
the
fact that he's now running for president as the champion of the very
same
warriors he so viciously slandered 33 years ago.
Sen. Kerry can't bring himself to apologize for calling the men he
purports
to represent war criminals.
But he doesn't hesitate to hit them up for money.
"Most Americans are not familiar with John Kerry's Vietnam record,"
reads a
current campaign solicitation that complains about "the Bush smear
campaign
in the press."
"Help us fight back by contributing [money]. And if you're a veteran .
. .
join Veterans for Kerry right now."
Not so fast.
As Mackubin Thomas Owens wrote in National Review, "What Kerry did
after
leaving the Navy constituted a breach of trust with his fellow veterans
-
because, to protest the war, he cast aspersions upon their conduct."
Insists Owens: "He should apologize."
Indeed he should.
THE SLANDER THAT MADE JOHN KERRY A STAR
Fri Apr 23, 2:15 AM ET
Thirty-three years ago today, a young, unknown political activist named
John F. Kerry sat down before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
and
unleashed a bitter verbal broadside against the war in Vietnam - and,
with
particularly harsh invective, against the young Americans who were
fighting
it.
Kerry charged that U.S. soldiers routinely committed the most gruesome
of
atrocities - "not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a
day-to-day
basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."
The allegations electrified Washington - and made Kerry a national
celebrity.
But the charges were slanderous lies.
"John Kerry 1971 testimony slandered an entire generation of soldiers,"
writes military historian Mackubin Thomas Owens, who led a Marine
infantry
platoon into combat in Vietnam.
"He said in essence that his fellow veterans had committed unparalleled
war
crimes in Vietnam as a matter of course - indeed, that it was American
policy to commit such atrocities," Owens writes.
The libel served Kerry well, though.
The better part of a half-century has passed; the nation is once again
at
war - and the junior senator from Massachusetts now stands as the
presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.
Surely it is no coincidence that now - after all these years - John F.
Kerry is trying to rewrite the dialogue that attended his first moments
in
the national spotlight.
On "Meet the Press" last weekend, Kerry maintained that while his
"words
were honest," they were nonetheless "a little bit over the top."
No regrets.
No contrition.
And, certainly, no apology.
"A little bit over the top"?
Well, here's what the then-national spokesman for Vietnam Veterans
Against
the War had to say on April 23, 1971:
"[U.S. servicemen] 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 Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun,
poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South
Vietnam."
Indeed, he charged, "[Americans] are more guilty than any other body of
violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free-fire zones,
harassment interdiction fire, search-and-destroy missions, the
bombings,
the torture of prisoners - all accepted policy by many units in South
Vietnam."
Did these things really happen the way John Kerry said they did -
routinely, as a matter of national policy?
In Oliver Stone movies, maybe.
Yes, some American soldiers committed atrocities. (Though even those
crimes
paled in comparison to those repeatedly perpetrated by the Vietcong, as
an
integral part of a decades-long terror campaign meant to coerce South
Vietnamese support for the Communist side.)
But even as harsh a critic of U.S. policy as Daniel Ellsberg, the man
who
leaked the Pentagon (news - web sites) Papers, has said that the men
involved in the war's most notorious event, the My Lai massacre, knew
that
the killing there was "out of the ordinary. That is why [the soldiers]
tried to hide the event."
But that's not what John Kerry told the Senate.
Kerry agreed with Jane Fonda, who declared - during a protest at which
Kerry was the featured speaker - that "My Lai was not an isolated
incident
but rather a way of life for many of our military."
Kerry, to be entirely fair, didn't actually fashion his charges from
whole
cloth.
He took them from accounts included in the "Winter Soldier
Investigation,"
a fabrication purportedly based on testimony from, in Kerry's words,
"over
150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans."
That was odious nonsense.
"Winter Soldier" was, in fact, a set-up organized by a JFK-conspiracy
theorist, the fabulist Mark Lane.
And it was quickly exposed as a lie by journalists James Reston and
Neil
Sheehan - themselves harsh critics of U.S. policy - who discovered that
many of its supposed eyewitnesses never even served in Vietnam.
To date, John Kerry has never disavowed the Winter Soldier
Investigation -
or apologized for his role in propagating its notorious falsehoods.
Kerry has tried to explain away his slanderous charges by suggesting
they
were spontaneous - prompted by the heat of his anger over the war.
But it is now known that Kerry's speech was in fact carefully crafted
by
Adam Walinsky, a one-time Robert Kennedy aide and speechwriter - who
also
coached Kerry in how to deliver it for maximum emotional impact.
That is, for utmost political effect.
John Kerry, you see, had carefully planned a political career - and
decided
to use the war as his signature issue.
The year before he appeared before Congress, he'd entered a
congressional
race in Massachusetts. And he would exploit his sudden notoriety to
move up
the electoral ladder until he reached the Senate in 1985.
There are many ironies in Kerry's career, not the least of which being
the
fact that he's now running for president as the champion of the very
same
warriors he so viciously slandered 33 years ago.
Sen. Kerry can't bring himself to apologize for calling the men he
purports
to represent war criminals.
But he doesn't hesitate to hit them up for money.
"Most Americans are not familiar with John Kerry's Vietnam record,"
reads a
current campaign solicitation that complains about "the Bush smear
campaign
in the press."
"Help us fight back by contributing [money]. And if you're a veteran .
. .
join Veterans for Kerry right now."
Not so fast.
As Mackubin Thomas Owens wrote in National Review, "What Kerry did
after
leaving the Navy constituted a breach of trust with his fellow veterans
-
because, to protest the war, he cast aspersions upon their conduct."
Insists Owens: "He should apologize."
Indeed he should.
