April 22, 1971: Vietnam Vet Kerry calls out criminal war; September 1, 2013; Secretary Kerry calls for criminal war
Over 42 years ago a charismatic 27 year old Vietnam War vet gave one of the most riveting Congressional presentations ever before Sen. William Fulbright's Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Representing the Vietnam Veteran's Against the War (VVAW), Kerry, a decorated, twice wounded vet, gave impassioned witness to the utter futility of our senseless Vietnam War which had been claiming millions of lives since the 1950's when the US tried to succeed where the French had failed, preventing the inevitable unification of Vietnam under the North Vietnamese. Kerry looked the distinguished Senator Fulbright in the eye and uttered these immortal words that will forever reverberate in American history:
"How do ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? 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 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'."
This past Sunday, the 69 year old Kerry, who parlayed that 15 minutes of fame into a five decade career as prosecutor, state Lt. Governor, Senator, presidential candidate and now Secretary of State, shuttled between five news shows. He looked all 310 million of us in the eye and flat out lied about the need to bomb Syria and kill people as part of our taking sides in their horrendous civil war. In one of his most egregious comments he lumped Syrian President Assad in with Hitler and Saddam Hussein as the only three leaders who "used these weapons in time of war". Kerry conveniently excluded World War I, in which both sides used chemical weapons, and excluded all that phosphorus and depleted uranium we fouled Iraq with that will be maiming and killing Iraqi fetuses for generations to come. He also fluked the US enabling test in which Uncle Sam gave a pass to Saddam Hussein when he used chemical weapons on both Iranians and Iraqis in the 1980's, a time when he was our dear Middle East ally. He also omitted that the UN reports the likelihood the Syrian rebels used the nerve agent sarin against Syrian troops last spring. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22424188.
As an avid opponent of the Vietnam War from 1963, I still vividly recall Kerry's inspiring "who will be the last man to die" testimony in 1971. I was shocked and sickened by Kerry's coming full circle Sunday, to champion, not the end to a criminal war, but tragically, the call for another.
"How do ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? 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 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'."
This past Sunday, the 69 year old Kerry, who parlayed that 15 minutes of fame into a five decade career as prosecutor, state Lt. Governor, Senator, presidential candidate and now Secretary of State, shuttled between five news shows. He looked all 310 million of us in the eye and flat out lied about the need to bomb Syria and kill people as part of our taking sides in their horrendous civil war. In one of his most egregious comments he lumped Syrian President Assad in with Hitler and Saddam Hussein as the only three leaders who "used these weapons in time of war". Kerry conveniently excluded World War I, in which both sides used chemical weapons, and excluded all that phosphorus and depleted uranium we fouled Iraq with that will be maiming and killing Iraqi fetuses for generations to come. He also fluked the US enabling test in which Uncle Sam gave a pass to Saddam Hussein when he used chemical weapons on both Iranians and Iraqis in the 1980's, a time when he was our dear Middle East ally. He also omitted that the UN reports the likelihood the Syrian rebels used the nerve agent sarin against Syrian troops last spring. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22424188.
As an avid opponent of the Vietnam War from 1963, I still vividly recall Kerry's inspiring "who will be the last man to die" testimony in 1971. I was shocked and sickened by Kerry's coming full circle Sunday, to champion, not the end to a criminal war, but tragically, the call for another.
posted by Walt Zlotow at 6:47 PM
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