February 18, 2004 - On April 22, 1971 John Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In his opening statement he said:

“[S]everal 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 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, not reds, and not redcoats 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, 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 us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart....”

Concluding his statement Kerry looked forward thirty years to “when the nation can look back proudly to a time when it turned from this war and the hate and fears driving us in Vietnam” That thirty years has passed. Last fall the Toledo Blade published its account of the 1971 secret Army investigation that found that the atrocities referred to in young Lt. Kerry’s testimony was true and was accurate. The Blade’s account of Tiger Force has sparked a renewed review of the investigation by the Army ending a thirty year cover-up.

Ironically the 33 years older John Kerry who was there and saw war with his own eyes; felt its sting on his own body; and is haunted by the memories of what he saw and what he did there is running for President against the Man Who Was Not There.

Ironically too America is embroiled in another war in which it can be said there is nothing in Iraq, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Iraq or Afghanistan by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which will tear this country apart.

When President Bush misled America into a unilateral preemptive war he loosed the tiger anew. When he declared Mission Accomplished he grasped it firmly by the tail. Through photo-op after photo-op he can’t let go. He is in that position because he never learned the lesson of Vietnam because he was the Man Who Was Not There.