In a stark about-face, Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry is now denying that he ever accused
U.S. soldiers of committing war crimes in Vietnam, despite amply documented comments - some televised, others
delivered while under oath - in which he did exactly that.
Asked on Thursday whether he had accused his fellow soldiers of committing war crimes in Vietnam during his
April 1971 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry told CNN's Judy Woodruff:
"No, I was accusing American leaders of abandoning the troops. And if you read what I said, it is very clearly
an indictment of leadership. I said to the Senate, where is the leadership of our country? And it's the
leaders who are responsible, not the soldiers. I never said that."
However, a transcript of Kerry's April 22, 1971, testimony contains accusations that his brother soldiers
committed all manner of atrocities, charges he based on interviews of returning Vietnam vets earlier that year
at the Winter Soldier Investigation, an event Kerry organized with anti-American actress Jane Fonda.
Kerry told the Senate that Winter Soldier witnesses "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."
Speaking under oath, Kerry continued:
"They told stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires with 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."
A few days before his Senate testimony, Kerry gave the following account on NBC's "Meet the Press":
"There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of
atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones.
I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50 calibre machine guns, which we were granted and
ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the
burning of villages."
The future presidential candidate added:
"All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of
this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top
down."
Appearing on "The Dick Cavett Show" in July 1971, Kerry admitted that he'd never actually seen some of the
atrocities he testified about, but still maintained that U.S. soldiers fighting in Vietnam routinely violated
the Nuremberg Principles.
"I personally didn't see personal atrocities in the sense I saw somebody cut a head off or something like
that," he told Cavett. "However, I did take part in free-fire zones, I did take part in harassment and
interdiction fire, I did take part in search-and-destroy missions in which the houses of noncombatants were
burned to the ground."
Kerry continued:
"And all of these acts, I find out later on, are contrary to the Hague and Geneva conventions and to the laws
of warfare. So in that sense, anybody who took part in those, if you carry out the application of the
Nuremberg Principles, is in fact guilty."
CNN's Woodruff declined to confront Kerry with his previous comments accusing his brother soldiers of
committing war crimes in Vietnam.
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