Spin this.
(From the Winter Warrior speech Kerry made to Congress)
...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 ravages of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
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Questioned about these scurrilous accusations during the last presidential campaign, Kerry dismissed them as being "exaggerations" which could be explained by youthful exuberance and idealism.
Exaggerations....or lies? Kerry was challenged to produce affadavits from this vast body of veterans to back up these statements...and never produced a single one.
Some have accused him of using this testimony for the furtherance of his own political career.
So...when he makes a statement like the one he made recently about "you're intelligent and educated or you're in Iraq" many are disinclined to offer him any slack.
