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Kerry Knows Whereof He Speaks


Secretary of State John Kerry has released a statement on the use of chemical weapons on civilians in Bashir Assad’s Syria:

"What we saw in Syria last week should shock the conscience of the world," said Kerry. "It defies any code of morality. Let me be clear: The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity. By any standard, it is inexcusable. And despite the excuses and equivocations that some have manufactured, it is undeniable."


Mr. Kerry has been down this road before. After Mr. Kerry returned from Vietnam, he joined the anti-Vietnam war brigade. Speaking of “The Winter Soldiers,” a group of 150 anti-Vietnam war veterans like himself that met and conducted “an investigation” several months before his testimony, Mr. Kerry told the U.S Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971:

“They re-lived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do. They told the stories of times they had personally raped, cut off the ears, cut off heads, taped from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, raised villages in a 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 ravages of war and the normal and particular ravages which is done by the power of this country…”

These were “not isolated incidents,’ Mr. Kerry told the committee, “but crimes committees on a day to day basis, with a full awareness of officers at all levels of command.”

Mr. Kerry’s condemnation of Mr. Assad’s crimes against humanity was less explicit, though equally impassioned.


These were heady days. A few months after, Mr. Kerry had unburdened himself, Jane Fonda submitted to an interview. Here she is remonstrating with an anti-communist from the audience.



Most recently, having retired from sitting on North Vietnamese tanks, Ms. Fonda has played Nancy Regan in Lee Daniels' The Butler.

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