My dad was a veteran. He served in the Pacific as an Army Air Force Officer on General MacArthur’s Staff during World War Two. When the Air Force separated from the Army, my dad went with the Air Force. He had little tolerance for haters that blamed our troops for a war most hated fighting, and even less for self-hating veterans that turned on their own.

It doesn't stand for the mistreatment of women, minorities, LGBT or our most vulnerable citizens who are handicapped. We don't have 'religious' police that roam the street looking for women who are walking alone or improperly dressed according to their standards. We don't imprison someone because that criticise politician. We don't throw people off of buildings or drown them in cages for being LGBT.

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.

We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel 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, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out....

In our opinion and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.

We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.

We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American.

We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.

We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.

We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals.

We watched the United States falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against "oriental human beings." We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater. We watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the hill for reoccupation by the North Vietnamese. We watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point, and so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 81s and Fire Base 6s, and so many others.

Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese.

Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."

We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?....We are here in Washington to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country - the question of racism which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions such as the use of weapons; the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel of everything.

An American Indian friend of mine who lives in the Indian Nation of Alcatraz put it to me very succinctly. He told me how as a boy on an Indian reservation he had watched television and he used to cheer the cowboys when they came in and shot the Indians, and then suddenly one day he stopped in Vietnam and he said, "my God, I am doing to these people the very same thing that was done to my people," and he stopped. And that is what we are trying to say, that we think this thing has to end.

We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We're here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The marines say they never even leave their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They've left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this country....

We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped away their memories of us. But all that they have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission - to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more. And more. And so when thirty years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.

Enough is Enough: Vietnam veterans have not forgotten John Kerry | 2012 | By Robert E. Macdonald

“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.” Thus John Kerry began his testimony before the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations on April 23, 1971.

Kerry had returned home from Vietnam a highly decorated officer (as opposed to enlisted men, who serve on the same battlefields but arrive home with far fewer decorations). His goal was to get into politics by running for office and following the footsteps of his hero, John F. Kennedy.

But in 1971 the “fruit salad” (rows of colorful military ribbons and medals) adorning one’s uniform had now became a liability. Unlike during World War II and Korea, where this type of display identified a person as a warrior and patriot, these decorations now identified one as a war criminal, baby killer and psychopath. These accusations were leveled at law-abiding, selfless, patriotic young men (and women) by those trying to defend their lack of intestinal fortitude.

Faced with the reality that his hopes were fading fast, Kerry did what every upcoming savvy politician would do: he joined the spineless “America is Evil” crowd, turning against his fellow vets. Right or wrong be damned; it was about getting elected.

Kerry then turned to the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. This group had been founded in 1967 by six veterans. It included Al Hubbard, who had served in the Air Force and had lied about being in Vietnam, and Jan Barry, who was a radio mechanic in Vietnam prior to the 1965 troop buildup.

On January 31, 1971 the Winter Soldier investigations began in Detroit. Its major organizers included Jane Fonda, Dick Gregory, Phil Ochs, Graham Nash, David Crosby and Donald Sutherland. Taking place over four days in a hotel room, testimony of war crimes routinely committed against the Vietnamese people by United States military personnel was taken from “Vietnam veterans.”

Years later it turned out that many of these “Vietnam veterans” had served in Vietnam in other than combat positions, such as clerks and supply personnel. Others had served in the military, but not in Vietnam. Still others had never served in the military.

Missing in the testimony was the slaughter of thousands of Vietnamese civilians by the North Vietnamese Communists and their allies in the south, the Vietcong. This was done with the blessing of “Uncle Ho” (Ho Chi Mihn) and celebrated by the anti-war movement on the streets of America. But—like today—why let facts ruin a good story?

When testifying before Congress, Kerry was the face the anti-war movement wanted to project. Unlike the bearded, long-haired, rumpled-clothed, violent veterans seen every night on TV, Kerry possessed the all-American Ozzie and Harriet look. He was articulate and educated. So well educated that he was unable to testify off the cuff—but still relied on a speech written for him by Adam Walinsky, a speech writer for Robert Kennedy.

Before Congress and the world, Kerry lied about the actions of the men and women that had served honorably in Vietnam, sentencing them to years of scorn by many in the public. But, thank God, his betrayal has propelled him to an elected position in our country.

Just prior to his Congressional testimony, Kerry in early April 1971 participated in Dewey Canyon III, a day-long protest against the Vietnam War held in Washington, D.C. It ended with protestors throwing ribbons and medals over the Capitol fence. Apparently, Kerry could not come to throw his medals away. So he threw medals not belonging to him over the fence.

For years, Vietnam veterans have suffered in silence. Their treatment by the press and public lead many toward suicide, drug and alcohol addiction, violent and sometimes fatal behavior towards their families and the public. In recent years the public’s attitude towards Vietnam veterans has changed. But Vietnam veterans’ attitudes toward Kerry have not.

Many Vietnam veterans have more hatred towards Kerry than Jane Fonda. Should Kerry—who equated Vietnam veterans’ actions to those of Ghengis Khan—become Secretary of State, this will be the final intentional nail in a coffin that has been filling up since 1965.

To all you Tea Party members and Republicans who stayed home during the last election: it is your hand pounding in that final nail.

The Pueblo was attacked and taken illegally by the North Korean forces on January 23, 1968 while in International Waters. Not designated to engage the enemy, it was an electronic survellience vessel of the same type used by the Soviets off of our coasts. One American was killed; eighty-two were captured, beaten and held for eleven months. The crew was finally released on December 23, 1968. The ship was never returned and is treated like a trophy by the North Koreans.

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