Kerry went from soldier to anti-war protester

[RamboLiberal]

Forgive me if this has been posted before. Newsmax is using this article from the Baltimore Sun to paint Kerry as a traitor to the soldiers who served in Vietnam.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/elections/bal-te.antiwar14feb14,1,1535166.story

On a spring day in 1971, a young Vietnam veteran with shaggy brown hair and clad in a khaki field jacket bedecked with battle ribbons sat before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and delivered riveting testimony.

"We had an investigation in which 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-by-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command," declared John Kerry, a 27-year-old Navy veteran.

"They told the stories 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, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan."

Kerry said more that day, much of it an impassioned argument for ending the war. But it was his words about alleged atrocities by Americans that infuriated, and bewildered, many fellow veterans of that long-ago conflict

[RobertSeattle]

1. Most real soldiers are anti-war

It's only the wannabe's who are "Pro" war.

[icymist]

8. They're not even wannabe soldiers, they're want you to be

soldiers while they make the money. This story makes me wonder about what kind of horrors we all might be hearing in a year or two from now about Iraq.

[fearnobush]

2. Doe's Newmax print that Nam was fought over a big Lie,

(Gulf of Tonkin non-inncodent). And Iraq, also fought over a Big lie. Any solder who smacks the face of our bullshitting gov't get my vote!

[indepat]

3. Combat is so horrific that it will dehumanize most people many who will

then do some of referenced. WWII had to be fought but most military ventures of the US post-WWII was primarily to remove someone who's politics weren't far enough to the right (or to stop the spread of the Red menace in its tracks before the domino effect sets in. Consequently, this nation has continuously been preparing large numbers of men (and now some women) to kill with efficiency using the most advanced weapons. We must defend our nation (that's) a given, but has this nation has been responsible for killing/maiming more people on their soil since WWII world war than possibly anyone in recorded history with the exception of Nazi Germany?

[non sociopath skin]

4. This appears to be the right's new attempted spin...

... that Kerry "betrayed" his Nam buddies by making common cause with the pinko war protestors.

The Chimp, of course, had no such dilemmas.

The Skin.

[MRDAWG]

5. The realW story...LINK..

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/0204a/16paulson.html

[Martin Eden]

6. Alleged atrocities?

I didn't feel like registering to read the entire article, but the first question that comes to my mind is, did the article try to deny these atrocities occurred?

From the history I've read, incidents like these did indeed happen.

And the young John Kerry, having emerged from that environment, was citing these atrocities not as accusation against his comrades, but as an indictment against the war that resulted in these atrocities and that put his fellow Americans into situations where they became instruments of such atrocity.

Those who would criticise the messenger for putting these unpleasant truths on public display are the same ones who send young men to commit atrocities in the first place.

The young John Kerry was doing everything he could to stop it, and for that he should be commended.

The position taken in the article is morally bankrupt.

[Mountainman]

7. So did I and most of my friends from Vietnam

One thing we all said was that when we get home we were going to tell the country what war was really like and to try to convince them to stop the killing and not use war as the means to settle problems.

We were pretty naive but our intentions were noble and not unpatriotic or traitorous.