SwiftVets.com

[Mary Ann Parker]

Excerpts from Kerry's testimony.
http://www.c-span.org/2004vote/jkerrytestimony.asp

Please note trips references.
This is not edited well. I just wanted to grab a few nuggets to demonstrate
how important it is to read and reread a document for full import.
Visit the testimony and read it for context.
These excerpts are to focus on the references to his travel.
He was already connected, and busy.
I am convinced of it and will rejoice when we put that
documented timeline together.
There is more, but you get the idea.
Mary Ann

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The CHAIRMAN. Do you support or do you have any particular views about any one of them you wish to give the committee?

Mr. KERRY. My feeling, Senator, is undoubtedly this Congress, and I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but I do not believe that this Congress will, in fact, end the war as we would like to, which is immediately and unilaterally and, therefore, if I were to speak I would say we would set a date and the date obviously would be the earliest possible date.

But I woUld like to say, in answering that, that I do not believe it is necessary to stall any longer.

I have been to Paris.

I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government and of all eight of Madam Binh's points it has been stated time and time again, and was stated by Senator Vance Hartke when he returned from Paris, and it has been stated by many other officials of this Government, if the United States were to set a date for withdrawal the prisoners of war would be returned.

I think this negates very clearly the argument of the President that we have to maintain a presence in Vietnam, to use as a negotiating block for the return of those prisoners. The setting of a date will accomplish that.
As to the argument concerning the danger to our troops were we to withdraw or state that we would, they have also said many times in conjunction with that statement that all of our troops, the moment we set a date, Will be given safe conduct out of Vietnam. The only other important point is that we allow the South Vietnamese people to determine their own future and that ostensibly is what we have been fighting for, anyway.
I would, therefore, submit that the most expedient means of getting out of South Vietnam would be for the President of the United States to declare a cease-fire, to stop this blind commitment to a dictatorial regime, the Thieu-Ky-Khiem regime, accept a coalition regime which would represent all the political forces of the country which is in fact what a representative government is supposed to do and which is in fact what this Government here in this country purports to do, and pull the troops out without losing one more American, and still further without losing the South Vietnamese.

The CHAIRMAN. It did not drag on. They didn't continue to fight. They stopped the fighting by agreement when they went to Geneva and all the countries then directly involved participated in that agreement.
I don't wish to press you on the details. It is for the committee to determine the best means, but you have given most eloquently the reasons why we should proceed as early as we can. That is, of course, the purpose of the hearing.

Mr. KERRY. Senator, if I may interject, I think that what we are trying to say is we do have a method.

We believe we do have a plan, and that plan is that if this body were by some means either to permit a special referendum in this country so that the country itself might decide and therefore avoid this recrimination which people constantly refer to or if they couldn't do that, at least do it through immediate legislation which would state there would be an immediate ceasefire and we would be willing to undertake negotiations for a coalition government.

But at the present moment that is not going to happen, so we are talking about men continuing to die for nothing and I think there is a tremendous moral question here which the Congress of the United States is ignoring.

The CHAIRMAN. The Congress cannot directly under our system negotiate a cease-fire or anything of this kind. Under our constitutional system we can advise the President. We have to persuade the President of the urgency of taking this action. Now we have certain ways in which to proceed. We can, of course, express ourselves in a resolution or we can pass an act which directly affects appropriations which is the most concrete positive way the Congress can express itself.
But Congress has no capacity under our system to go out and negotiate a cease-fire. We have to persuade the Executive to do this for the country.

EXTRAORDINARY RESPONSE DEMANDED BY EXTRAORDINARY QUESTION

Mr. KERRY. Mr. Chairman, I realize that full well as a study of political science.

I realize that we cannot negotiate treaties
and I realize (that even my visits in Paris,) precedents had been set by Senator McCarthy and others, in a sense are on the borderline of private individuals negotiating, et cetera.

I understand these things. But what I am saying is that I believe that there is a mood in this country which I know you are aware of and you have been one of the strongest critics of this war for the longest time. But I think if we can talk in this legislative body about filibustering for porkbarrel programs, then we should start now to talk about filibustering for the saving of lives and of our country. [Applause.]
And this, Mr. Chairman, is what we are trying to convey.
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Senator SYMINGTON. There has been considerable criticism of the war's reporting by the press and news media. What are your thoughts on that?

Mr. KERRY. On that I could definitely comment. I think the press has been extremely negligent in reporting. At one point and at the same time they have not been able to report because the Government of this country has not allowed them to.

I went to Saigon to try to report.
We were running missions in the Mekong Delta. We were running raids through these rivers on an operation called Sealord and we thought it was absurd.
We didn't have helicopter cover often. We seldom had jet aircraft cover. We were out of artillery range.

We would go in with two quarter-inch aluminium hull boats and get shot at and never secure territory or anything except to quote Admiral Zumwalt to show the American flag and prove to the Vietcong they don't own the rivers.
We found they did own them with 60 percent casualties and we thought this was absurd.

I went to Saigon, and told this to a member of the news bureau there
and I said, "Look, you have got to tell the American people this story."

The response was, "Well, I can't write that kind of thing. I can't criticize that much because if I do I would lose my accreditation, and we have to be very careful about just how much we say and when."

We are holding a press conference today, as a matter of fact, at the National Press Building - it might be going on at this minute - in which public information officers who are members of our group, and former Army reporters, are going to testify to direct orders of censorship in which they had to take out certain pictures, phrases they couldn't use and so on down the line and, in fact, the information they gave newsmen and directions they gave newsmen when an operation was going on when the military didn't want the press informed on what was going on they would offer them transportation to go someplace else, there is something else happened and they would fly a guy 55 miles from where the operation was. So the war has not been reported correctly.
I know from a reporter of Time - showed the massacre of 150 Cambodians, these were South Vietnamese troops that did it, but there were American advisors present and he couldn't even get other newsmen to get it out let alone his own magazine, which doesn't need to be named here. So it is a terrible problem, and I think that really it is a question of the Government allowing free ideas to be exchanged and if it is going to fight a war then fight it correctly. The only people who can prevent My Lais are the press and if there is something to hide perhaps we shouldn be there in the first place

http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/staticpages/index.php?page=othermedals
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