Sidewinder wrote:Do you understand now why Kerry alienated American veterans during his campaign?
The only ones he alienated are (a) those who protest their innocence too much, and (b) those who weren't going to vote for him anyway. I have several Vietnam veterans in my family. None of them squealed like little bitches over the atrocities or the people who denounced them. The fact that someone who hears of war crimes shrieks "WHO? ME? How dare you call me a war criminal!" makes me suspicious as hell, as the recent Beauchamp case in Iraq shows clearly.
As for your claim about My Lai:
The My Lai Massacre was public knowledge in 1971, but Kerry's testimony stated, "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." Evidence that US military servicemen committed these atrocities on a day to day basis wasn't released until 2006.
The My Lai Massacre was well known by 1969, when it made the front page of the
New York Times:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/tr ... y_lai.html
Word of the atrocities did not reach the American public until November 1969, when journalist Seymour Hersh published a story detailing his conversations with a Vietnam veteran, Ron Ridenhour. Ridenhour learned of the events at My Lai from members of Charlie Company who had been there. Before speaking with Hersh, he had appealed to Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon to investigate the matter. The military investigation resulted in Calley's being charged with murder in September 1969 -- a full two months before the Hersh story hit the streets.
It was 1971 when the right-wingers turned Calley into a folk hero and Nixon commuted his sentence.
The Toledo Blade won the
Pulitzer Prize for Journalism because it had exposed numerous atrocities committed by Tiger Force Three in
2003. Before Kerry had even been nominated.
So all this posturing is no different from Mel Gibson's defense of his father who explains the disappearance of six million European Jews during WW2 by claiming they all moved to Sydney. It's dishonest, stupid and pathetic.