The Boston Globe reports today that in a little-noticed 24-page question and answer session following his 1971 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry “asserted that 200,000 Vietnamese per year were being ‘murdered by the United States of America.'” He also said that “he had gone to Paris and ‘talked with both delegations at the peace talks’ and met with communist representatives.”
Asked about the term “murdered,” Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan replied that “Senator Kerry used a word he deems inappropriate.”
Meehan said Kerry “never suggested or believed and absolutely rejects the idea that the word applied to service of the American soldiers in Vietnam.” Meehan then declined to say to whom Kerry was referring when he said that the United States had murdered the Vietnamese; Kerry declined to be interviewed about the matter.
UPDATE [3/27]
Be sure to see ELC’s comment, the first one attached to this post, and also see his own post, here, about Kerry and the POWs.
Lots of Kerry’s testimony has been little noticed. For instance, it seems to me that he implies it makes little difference whether one lives in a democracy, or under communism, or under “benevolent” dictatorship: “I think that politically, historically, the one thing that people try to do, that society is structured on as a whole, is an attempt to satisfy their felt needs, and you can satisfy those needs with almost any kind of political structure, giving it one name or the other. In this name it is democratic; in others it is communism; in others it is benevolent dictatorship. As long as those needs are satisfied, that structure will exist.” But which does he fault? Why, American democracy, of course: “But when you start to neglect those needs, people will start to demand a new structure, and that, to me, is the only threat that this country faces now, because we are not responding to the needs and we are not responding to them because we work on these old cold-war precepts and because we have not woken up to realizing what is happening in the United States of America.” Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think it would require extreme prejudice, or willful ignorance or stupidity, to come away from a reading of Kerry’s testimony without the words “communist sympathizer” running through one’s mind. (Quotations from pages 195-6.)
Maybe when he used the word “murdered” he had in mind
1. covert American ops which resulted in Vietnamese deaths, not necessarily enemy deaths
2. unauthorized killing by American servicemen, also referred to as slaughter.
I have two people very close to me who still suffer horrendous guilt and experience nightmares about what they did in ‘Nam. Remember Sgt. Calley?
ELC: Amazing stuff. Why haven’t I seen that quoted in the press. (Don’t answer that….)
Sarah: Maybe. It’s hard to tell what’s in Kerry’s mind. But 200,000 per year?
Remember Sgt. Calley?
Actually, no. However, I do remember a Lt. Calley.
Having a little problem getting your facts straight Sarah? It is interesting that you would attempt to defend John Kerry by calling American solders killers. Do you really believe that the evil United States went into Viet Nam with the purpose of slaughtering the people. Wasn’t it lucky for the South Vietnamese that the North Vietnamese prevailed? Didn’t you just love the way the South Vietnamese welcomed their liberators with open arms?
Boat people, what boat people?
Of course the U.S. went to Vietnam for the purpose of slaughtering people. What ever it would take to keep those dominos from falling. And even though the U.S. turned tail and ran, just as in Fallujah, the dominos didn’t fall, did they?