the real atrocity happened at home
whether one supports kerry, has no opinion about him or would prefer he be run thru a woodchipper, it is important the decison be made on the basis of accurate information.
i just finished reading a post in which kerry's testimony before the senate was reported as follows:
he told the senate that he or other soldiers “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 Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam.” So if Kerry doesn’t step down than that makes the Abu Ghraib guards at the very least, eligible to serve in the senate.
two people added subsequent comments indicating their disapproval of kerry based, in part, on that information.
that wouldnt be a problem if it was true...but its not.
here's what happened in real life when kerry testified before the senate foreign relations committee in 1971:
recounting a specific meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War called the "Winter Soldiers' Investigation," kerry told the committee "150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes." He said, "They told stories that at times they had raped, cut off ears," and committed other atrocities.
washington post editor-in-chief wesley pruden excerpted the quote out of context by elipsing the attribution to source. michael reagan picked up the quote and totally dropped the attribution. the la times compounded the error by indicating kerry had added the attribution after the fact.
hoaxed, inaccurately quoted or attributed statements are a staple of net discussion. believe what you want but dont expect what you believe to be real unless you take a few moments to check it yourself.
as a postcript, i was just reminded to quote the entire statement which follows:
Statement by John Kerry 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, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside 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.
We call this investigation the Winter Soldier Investigation. The term Winter Soldier is a play on words of Thomas Paine's in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriots and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough."