In context, as I learned when I looked it up this morning, John Kerry’s 1971 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is even worse than the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth make it seem. (For Kerry’s testimony, click here. For the vets’ newest ad, click here:).

To quote:

[S]everal months ago in Detroit, we [Kerry’s antiwar organization] had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command….
They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

About which, two observations:

1. Before the Veterans for Truth forced them to report it, the ladies and gentlemen of the mainstream press had paid less attention to this statement than they paid to Dan Quayle’s misspelling of “potato.” If–which I do not believe for a moment–every other charge the Veterans for Truth have levelled against Kerry were to prove false, the Veterans would still have performed an immense national service.

2. At any time over the past year, John Kerry could have issued a statement that would have made the present, frenzied controversy all but inconceivable. “I am still proud of opposing the Vietnam War,” he might have said, “but I recognize that after returning from combat, and while still in my twenties, I made statements that were misjudged and intemperate. For any offense I may have caused–especially to my fellow veterans–I now wish to apologize.” Kerry wouldn’t do it. And he still won’t. What is he thinking?