John Kerry - Statement 1971 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Vietnam (transcript and audio) J ohn K erry. night and haven’t had a great deal of chance to prepare. Kerry, who is mentioning in every other sentence that he is a Vietnam Vet, is very silent about his speech to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations April 23, 1971, when he vehemently spoke out against the Vietnam War, as member of "Vietnam Vets Against the … We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by our flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. war. America. That means 1 out of How do you ask a man to be the last man But the problem of It is a distortion because we in no way consider ourselves the best men of this country; because those he calls misfits were standing up for us in a way that nobody else in this country dared to; because so many who have died would have returned to this country to join the misfits in their efforts to ask for an immediate withdrawal from South Vietnam; because so many of those best men have returned as quadriplegics and amputees--and they lie forgotten in Veterans Administration Hospitals in this country which fly the flag which so many have chosen as their own personal symbol--and we cannot consider ourselves America's best men when we are ashamed of and hated for what we were called on to do in Southeast Asia. John Kerry is the speaker giving this speech. Another young man just died in a New York VA hospital the other day. I know that all of you have As a veteran, and one who statement was clipped. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism, and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong. We watched the United I served in 1966 and 1967 on my first tour of duty in Vietnam on Swift boats, and I did my second tour in '68 and '69, involved with John Kerry in the last 2 1/2 months of my tour. Some 27 percent have tried, and they try because they come a poster in this country with a picture of also we found that the Vietnamese, whom we had enthusiastically These men have left all the casualties and redcoats but the crimes which we’re committing are what threaten it; Where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? Called "The Eloquence of Protest " it was edited by Harrison E. Salisbury, and published by Houghton Mifflin. unemployed in this country are veterans of this war. accepted the idea that the war is winding down, at least for /* arleftcolumnnew */ The country seems to have lied -- lain down Story January 28, 2004. freedoms which those misfits abuse. Remarks John Kerry Secretary of State Ho Chi Minh University of Technology and Education Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam January 13, 2017 SECRETARY KERRY: President Dung, thank you very, very much for that introduction. And of those many others. so many others. "My name is Steve Gardner. experiences in Vietnam. Conventions and using that as justification for Xin Chao Viet Nam. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit carry with them after coming back from Vietnam. we cannot say that we’ve made a mistake. has to be taken." not trying. The Marines say they never John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American politician who is the 68th and current United States Secretary of State. says, “That’s fine. We do not need their testimony. But all that they have They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. same thing that was done to my people," -- and he stopped. And this was used as a rallying On April 23, 1971, a young Vietnam veteran named John Kerry spoke on behalf of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War before the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations. our flag, as blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. veterans 33 percent of the unemployed are black. We learned the meaning We are probably much more angry than that, but I don't want to go into the foreign policy aspects because I am outclassed here. 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