.
Neil Sheehan, certainly not a proponent of the war in Viet Nam by any stretch, characterized what was going on at that time quite well. Sheehan destroyed the credibility of Mark Lane’s book “Conversations with Americans” by revealing most of the “veterans” who’s “atrocities” Lane quoted hadn’t been in combat or even in Vietnam in many cases :
”This kind of reasoning," Sheehan wrote, "amounts to a new McCarthyism, this time from the left. Any accusation, any innuendo, any rumor, is repeated and published as truth."[BG}
It was, however, Lane’s book which inspired the “Winter Solder investigation”. The major organizers of the so-called “investigation” staged in Detroit in 1971 included Jane Fonda, Dick Gregory, Phil Ochs, Graham Nash, David Crosby, Tom Hayden, Daniel Berrigan actor Donald Sutherland and activist lawyer and writer Mark Lane - the same guy who’d already been revealed as a fake. Also deeply involved in the organization of the event was the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) which included John Kerry who was on the VVAW Executive committee.
Kerry hooked up with an organization called Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Two events cooked up by this group went a long way toward cementing in the public mind the image of Vietnam as one big atrocity. The first of these was the January 31, 1971, "Winter Soldier Investigation," organized by "the usual suspects" among antiwar celebrities such as Jane Fonda, Dick Gregory, and Kennedy-assassination conspiracy theorist, Mark Lane. Here, individuals purporting to be Vietnam veterans told horrible stories of atrocities in Vietnam: using prisoners for target practice, throwing them out of helicopters, cutting off the ears of dead Viet Cong soldiers, burning villages, and gang-raping women as a matter of course.
To reveal the depth of dishonesty present, Al Hubbard, one of the founders of the VVAW and its Executive Secretary, claimed to be an Air Force pilot, wounded in Viet Nam. In fact, Hubbard was never an officer, never wounded and never in Viet Nam. VVAW members Elton Mazione, John Laboon, Eddie Swetz and Kenneth Van Lesser all claimed to have been a part of the Phoenix program in Viet Nam where they routinely killed children and removed body parts as a part of their duty. They were shown to have never been in the Phoenix program nor had they ever been in Viet Nam. And the list of more frauds later found within the organization is mind-boggling.
Kerry lied to you, and knew perfectly well you'd swallow anything he said immediately, unquestioningly, and unthinkingly -- because you're nothing more than a useful idiot.
one at that.