On Jul 3, 8:29*pm, "ScottW" wrote:
"Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!" wrote in ...
You've wailed about this speech a few times recently. Where are the
"really bad parts" IYO?
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Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement by John Kerry, 1971 to the
Senate Committee of Foreign Relations April 23, 1971
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,
This will do. Even Kerry no longer stands behind these
words which is the most telling condemnation of them all.
Or perhaps Kerry had talked with CIA operatives?
"The problem was, how do you find the people on the blacklist? It's
not like you had their address and telephone number. The normal
procedure would be to go into a village and just grab someone and say,
'Where's Nguyen so-and-so?' Half the time the people were so afraid
they would say anything. Then a Phoenix team would take the informant,
put a sandbag over his head, poke out two holes so he could see, put
commo wire around his neck like a long leash, and walk him through the
village and say, 'When we go by Nguyen's house scratch your head.'
Then that night Phoenix would come back, knock on the door, and say,
'April Fool, mother****er.' Whoever answered the door would get
wasted. As far as they were concerned whoever answered was a
Communist, including family members. Sometimes they'd come back to
camp with ears to prove that they killed people."
- Lieutenant Vincent Okamoto, intelligence-liaison officer for the
Phoenix Program for 2 months in 1968 and a recipient of the
Distinguished Service Cross. Wounded 3 times, he is the highest-
decorated Japanese-American veteran of the Vietnam War. He has served
as president of the Japanese American Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Committee and as a Los Angeles Superior Court judge.[3][4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program