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1. You have to believe John Kerry said that he himself committed all of the atrocities he described, not that he was speaking for other Vietnam Veterans Against the War who'd related their experiences at a meeting in Detroit. He was just in a confessional mood.
2. You have to believe that VVAW were the only soldiers who committed such crimes, or any other crimes, that went against Geneva Conventions, including free-fire zones (a crime John O'Neill admitted to on the Dick Cavett Show -- oops!).
3. You have to believe that no war crimes were committed by US soldiers, OR that even if they were it was only the soldiers' faults and not the government's, OR that even if crimes were committed and even if the government had some responsibility, veterans have no right to tell the truth to the government in order to hold them accountable. Damned troops!
4. You have to believe that many POWs were tortured with taunts about war crimes due solely to John Kerry's testimony, even though nobody asserted that until he ran for president, and those who assert it now are a small minority (who happen to support Bush, just coincidentally).
5. You have to believe the Vietcong captors were unaware of what was happening in the war under their noses, in their own villages, in a country about the size of New Mexico -- they needed POWs to tell them what was happening because they learned nothing from their fellow fighters when they returned from combat, they learned nothing from scenes they encountered after combat, they learned nothing from Vietnamese villagers, they had no cameras, etc., they were clueless.
6. You have to believe the Vietcong read about John Kerry's testimony back in Washington DC in the newspapers, or saw it on TV, and it was the first they'd ever heard of any atrocities whatsoever -- imagine their surprise!
7. You have to believe the Vietcong was infuriated by the idea that peace protestors in the US might actually succeed in ending the US occupation of their country, allowing their inevitable victory to occur. Why not prolong the fun?
8. You have to believe that if it hadn't been for the veterans' efforts to end the war, we could have withdrawn sooner and the communists would have said, "Okay South Vietnam, we'll leave you alone."
9. You have to believe the Vietcong needed specific external reasons to beat their prisoners, and without such reasons, they were much nicer.
10. You have to believe the Vietcong needed specific verbal confessions of war crimes from their prisoners for some reason -- perhaps as testimony in an impending lawsuit.
11. You have to believe there's no such thing as taunting prisoners for the sake of taunting the prisoners, simply to demoralize them, using whatever works -- there's got to be some other reason beyond just dominating and controlling them as if they were, well, prisoners or something. Especially in THAT polite war.
12. You have to believe that the prisoners should blame the abuse of their minds, bodies and spirits not on the war, not on the US government for continuing it, not on their captors for delivering it, not on themselves for succumbing to it as vulnerable human beings, but on their fellow veterans back home for working to end it.
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