SwiftVets.com

[Otis]

I read the transcript of the Kerry - O'Neil debate of 1971 and one thing that struck me was Kerry's insistence that Free Fire Zones and other US policies were war crimes that violated the Geneva Conventions.

[MR. CAVETT: Well, let's talk about that. Did you see war crimes committed and –

MR. KERRY: Well, I have often talked about this subject. I personally didn't see personal atrocities in the sense that I saw somebody cut a head off or something like that. However, I did take part in free fire zones and I did take part in harassment interdiction fire. I did take part in search-and-destroy missions in which the houses of noncombatants were burned to the ground. And all of these, I find out later on, these acts are contrary to the Hague and Geneva Conventions and to the laws of warfare. So in that sense, anybody who took part in those, if you carry out the applications of the Nuremberg principles, is in fact guilty. ]

Does anyone have any information on this statement? Are those things war crimes or was that part of the communist propaganda at the time?

Later on in the interview, talking about war crimes and Kerry basically accusing all Vietnam Vets of being war criminals, Kerry badgers O'Neil with the question "Did you take part in Free Fire Zones?" and O'Neil said "Of course." Kerry then says "Didn't you know that's a war crime?" or something like that.

So, I'm really curious about this Free Fire Zone = war crime stuff.

From the fact that the Senate didn't exactly convene any War Crimes tribunal based on Kerry's statements in order to get to the bottom of Free Fire Zone war crime policy I can only surmise that Kerry was grandstanding.

Does anyone know what the story is on this?

[JN173]

The quick and down answer is no!, free fire zone did not equal war crime.

The problem is the distortion that Kerry with the help of the MSM of the day made to the definition of the term.

Free fire zone orignally meant an area where additional political authorization was not required to conduct legitimate offensive or defensive operations. i.e. operations that met the requirements of the Geneva and Haque conventions. For US forces those requirements are set out in FM 27-10 which be can found at http://www.train.army.mil/ for those with Army affiliation.

Lewy in "America in Vietnam" does a good job of presenting the original presentation of the "Free Fire Zone". It clearly did not mean as Kerry said that you could "shoot at anything that moved".

"Unfit for Command" also has a good discussion of the Swifties' s understanding of the policy and how Kerry strayed strayed from it.
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A Grunt
2/503 173rd Airborne Brigade
RVN '65-'66