Le Sabot Post-Moderne

Wait just a darn minute here. I've heard this before and it has yet to make sense to me. Veterans, according to this article and news reports I've heard, say:

members of The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth released the letter criticizing Mr. Kerry's slanderous statements about alleged widespread atrocities by American soldiers during the war.

But our soliders DID commit atrocities, rapes, slaughters of entire villages, etc in VietNam, this is known, this is a fact. Or are American soldiers above this kind of behavior? For the answer to that, we have only to watch the news today. I wish they were, but they apparently are not. So veterans are hacked off at Kerry for... telling the truth? It may be unpleasant to hear, but it's not "slanderous" if it's true.

The actions of 7 (hell even 100)men, make up not even a fraction of a percent of our men and women serving in Iraq. Shame on you for thinking that this is the way American military personel act.

Autmom-

That's the whole point though -- the Winter Soldier Project was fraudulent, and even Kerry doesn't defend its accuracy now. Were atrocities committed in Vietnam? I'm sure they were, they are in every war. But that's very different than what Kerry said. Kerry said: "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."

This is simply a lie. He slandered an entire generation of soldiers who were fighting and dying for their country. His testimony was based on the Winter Soldier Project, which was exposed as fraudulent almost the minute it was released. Even Kerry no longer defends its veracity, though he has NEVER apologized for amplifying and spreading this slander.

The New York Times Book Review immediately reviewed the book that came out of the Project, "Conversations With Americans." The reviewer was himself against the war, but he savaged the book.

The Naval Investigative Service investigated the claims which Kerry used for his speech. As this source (one of several I came across) puts it: "Most of the grisly testimony was found to come from fake witnesses using the identity of real Vietnam veterans, some came from Vietnam veterans who had in fact never been in combat, and other witnesses refused to answer any questions despite commitments of immunity. Not a single atrocity was ever uncovered by military investigators or by independent efforts of many journalists looking for a story."

These troops who served with Kerry and are speaking out now have kept silent for years. It's only as he approaches being Commander in Chief that they've felt compelled to speak out about his slander. As one put it, they took extra casualties walking into villages with megaphones instead of machine guns. Their dead deserve better than Kerry's calumnies.

OK, I have not known the specifics of Kerry's claims. I only knew he spoke of atrocities. It would seem that even though the specific instances he spoke of turned out to be untrue, the fact is that it may have shed light on actual cases that wouldn't have been given attention otherwise. Perhaps?

And to Rong I say that of course I do not think the actions taken at Abu Ghraib are characteristic of the entire US military, far from it. But the fact is that when put in a position of power, SOME people will abuse it horribly, even if they never knew they possessed the capability to do such things before. And those SOME people have put our other soldiers, fine men and women acting honorably I'm sure, in grave danger. We cannot say, "Americans don't do such things," just because MOST Americans don't do such things. The very fact that SOME can, and SOME do, means that Americans are capable of commiting atrocities. And to the Iraqi on the street, indeed to the world, we all look the same. So I will not accept your shaming, thank you very much.

Further, this act goes way beyond a few soldiers. It was many soldiers over the course of nearly a year, and their superiors had either ordered it, encouraged it, or overlooked it. Their behavior was reported by impartial agencies such as the Red Cross, the reporting went up the chain of command up to Rumsfeld as far back as March and he admitted the other day he *had not yet read the report*! And if these pictures hadn't been on 60 Mintues, he still wouldn't have read the report and nothing would be being done about it. This conveys to me that we have a system that is not only insensitive to, but actually fosters violations of, such things as human rights. These soldiers had to have felt safe doing and taking pictures of such things. What does that tell you about the attitudes toward the Iraqis on the ground? I consider it an outgrowth of the patronizing, patriarchal approach Bush took toward "liberating" the Iraqis in the first place, his Messiah complex if you will. It's what happens when we go into any country, be it Iraq, Vietnam, or whatever, where we *don't understand the culture* and impose our own methods on the native people.