John Kerry testimony, 1971

Here is a more comprehensive look at John Kerry's Senate testimony in 1971 (all quotes in the current round of Swift Boat Vet ads are pulled from this excerpt):

"...I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one member of the group of 1,000 which is a small representation of a very much larger group of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to sit at this table they would be here and have the same kind of testimony....

I would like to talk, representing 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, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

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, 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 in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriot and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.

We who have come here to Washington have come here because we f eel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country; we could be quiet; we could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not redcoats but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out."

The "money quotes" are toward the top ("raped, cut off ears", etc.), but clearly Kerry is recounting testimony from the 150 soldiers they interviewed. What exactly should Kerry have said? The point of his testimony was to question the morality of America's involvement in Vietnam.

What does this mean for, say, Abu Ghraib? Has everyone who has conducted the investigation betrayed our troops? Do we stand behind troops, no matter what war crimes are perpetrated? Do we excuse commanding officers who stand by and let it occur? I realize that many lessons were learned from Vietnam, chief among them that we must support our troops both abroad and when they come home. But I don't think that extends to turning a blind eye to criminal conduct. And I wonder how much longer the U.S. would have stuck it out in Vietnam if people like Kerry had not spoken out.