Kerry's Winter Soldier Fraud

[DKW 86 7,440]

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Echoing the talking points of the North Vietnamese leadership, Kerry labeled the Vietnam conflict "a civil war" and called the South Vietnamese government "a corrupt dictatorial regime." He said that the besieged South Vietnamese “only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages.“ Kerry called racism "rampant in the military," claimed that "blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties," and accused America of placing "a cheapness on the lives of Orientals."

Kerry described the Winter Soldier event in Detroit as “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.” The veterans, said Kerry, “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.” He accused America of being "more guilty than any other body of violations of [the] Geneva Conventions; in the use of free-fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search-and-destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, the killing of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam." Kerry referred to war criminal Lt. William Calley as "a man who followed orders and who interpreted those orders no differently than hundreds of other men in Vietnam," and concluded by calling on his fellow veterans to "conquer the hate and the fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more."

Most of Kerry's remarks before the committee were published later in 1971 in the book "The New Soldier," credited to “John Kerry and Vietnam Veterans Against The War.” The book also included a timeline and photographs of the march on D.C. and excerpts from the Winter Soldier testimony. A documentary of the Detroit event was later released as "Winter Soldier," winning awards at the Cannes and Berlin film festivals.

Whether in print, on film, before microphones or on the street, the efforts of Kerry and the VVAW focused on a single objective: to convince the public that America’s military was committing vast numbers of atrocities in Vietnam; that they did so casually and routinely, as a matter of policy.

And they succeeded. Many American soldiers returned home from the war to find they were spat upon in the streets, reviled as baby-killers, and treated as pariahs by former friends. For decades the standard media image of a Vietnam veteran -- murderous, addicted, and too damaged psychologically to cope with civilian life -- was taken directly from the dark canvas painted by John Kerry and the VVAW in 1971.

But strangely, 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.

[Ranger12 46]

David, you keep finding 'em and we'll keep reading them and passing them along.