by Eyas on 10/28/07, 8:15 pm
Here's a few:
---- November 2005 Rep. Jack Murtha (D) "There was no firefight. There was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed those innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them. And they killed innocent civilians in cold blood. That is what the report is going to tell."
---- May 2004 Rep. John Murtha, (D) the problems in Iraq are due to a "lack of planning" by
Pentagon chiefs and "the direction has got be changed or it is unwinnable."
----August 2007, Barack Obama (D) "We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops that we are not just air raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there."
---- April 19,2007 Harry Reid (D)
"I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is
shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week,"
---- Dec. 6, 2005 John Kerry (D)
"And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children."
---- April 22, 1971, John Kerry
"I would like to say for the record, and also for the men behind me who are also wearing
the uniforms and their medals, that my sitting here is really symbolic. I am not here as
John Kerry. I am here as one member of the 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.
Winter soldier Investigation
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.
It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the
room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did.
They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.
They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape
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
country side 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 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, the fact that the crimes threaten it, no reds, and not redcoats but the crimes
which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.
Feelings of Men Coming Back from Vietnam
I would like to talk to you a little bit about what the result is of the feelings these men
carry with them after coming back from Vietnam. The country doesn't know it yet, but it has
created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and
to trade in violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in
history; men who have returned with a sense of anger and a sense of betrayal which no one
has yet grasped.
As a veteran and one who feels this anger, I would like to talk about it. We are angry
because we feel we have been used in the worst fashion by the administration of this
country.
In 1970 at West Point, Vice President Agnew said "some glamorize the criminal misfits of
society while our best men die in Asian rice paddies to preserve the freedom which most of
those misfits abuse" and this was used as a rallying point for our effort in Vietnam.
But for us, as boys in Asia, whom the country was supposed to support, his statement is a
terrible distortion from which we can only draw a very deep sense of revulsion. Hence the
anger of some of the men who are here in Washington today. It is a distortion because we in
no way consider ourselves the best men of this country, because those he calls misfits were
standing up for us in a way that nobody else in this country dated to, because so many who
have died would have returned to this country to join the misfits in their efforts to ask
for an immediate withdrawal from South Vietnam, because so many of those best men have
returned as quadriplegics and amputees, and they lie forgotten in Veterans' Administration
hospitals in this country which fly the flag which so many have chosen as their own personal
symbol. And we can not consider ourselves America's best men when we are ashamed of and
hated what we were called on to do in Southeast Asia.
In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing 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 use the height of
criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country
apart."
Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. -Abraham Lincoln
Every generation needs a new revolution. -Thomas Jefferson