This entry is in response to comments by Bob and YGB over at The Daily Pundit. Because of its length, I have put the entry here instead of Bill Quick's fine blog:
YGB and Bob
Just to make things clear. He went there to talk to the folks Kissinger was negotiating with.
But Kerry didn't negotiate, he came back and recommended to a US Senate committee that they accept the enemy's negotiation position (Madame Binh's 8 points) immediately, which is the same as advocating surrender. He also said that our troops would be guaranteed safe passage out of the country (a common practice with losing, humiliated armies).
When it was pointed out that we would lose our leverage for the return of the POWs, he said that the North Vietnamese, who up until that point were still arguing about the shape of the negotiating table, would return the POWs only when we set a date for that withdrawal.
In other words, he trusted the North Vietnamese to live up to their word, in spite of their many violations of previous agreements and their violations of the laws of war.
I would, therefore, submit that the most expedient means of getting out of South Vietnam would be for the President of the United States to declare a cease-fire, to stop this blind commitment to a dictatorial regime, the Thieu-Ky-Khiem regime, accept a coalition regime which would represent all the political forces of the country which is in fact what a representative government is supposed to do and which is in fact what this Government here in this country purports to do, and pull the troops out without losing one more American, and still further without losing the South Vietnamese.
This was part of the same "testimony" where he falsely painted Americans as monsters. Referring to the bogus (and now discredited) "Winter Soldier Investigation", where many of those testifying were not actually Vietnam Veterans, and where not a single charge could be corroborated by a Congressionally ordered investigation, even with grants of full immunity, he said:
I would like to talk, representing 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, 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, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.
They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape 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 country side 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.
Have you ever wondered where the myth of the deranged Vietnam Veteran came from? Kerry started it in this same statement with:
The country doesn't know it yet, but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in history; men who have returned with a sense of anger and a sense of betrayal which no one has yet grasped.
Since only 2.5 million even served in country, and a small percentage of them saw combat (as he well knew), this is a lie, but it haunted Vietnam Vets for decades as they were denied jobs and haunted ("Stolen Valor" Burkett and Whitley).
Another lie:We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever. By the time of his testimony, the Viet Cong (the supposed native movement) had been wiped out as a result of their truce breaking Tet Offensive and two subsequent offensives in 1968. By the time of his testimony, almost every anti-government fighter in South Vietnam was a North Vietnamese and all were controlled by the North Vietnamese including all members of the phoney PRG.
Then he gave this slander:We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.
Accepted coolly My Lai? Hardly. Destroying villages in order to save them? Good sound bite, but not true.
He slanders America as racist in this war, and in the same passage manages to betray either his willingness to lie about our strategy or his total lack of understanding of the strategy:We fought using weapons against "oriental human beings," with quotation marks around that. We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater or let us say a non-third-world people theater, and so we watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the high for the reoccupation by the North Vietnamese because we watched pride allow the most unimportant of battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point. And so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 881's and Fire Base 6's and so many others.
Another good sound bite, one designed to destroy the morale of our troops:We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to dies in Vietnam?
In a nice bit of ahistorical nonsense, but another emotional statement, he says:We are also here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We are here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatric and so many others. Where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded.
The answer to his question is those guys were not there because their candidate lost the 1968 election! And of course, Kerry knew that full well.