In his April 22, 1971, testimony, Kerry related the personal experiences of other Vietnam veterans who conveyed their personal experiences and focused blame on the leaders at that time -- not the soldiers -- for the atrocities they claimed to have committed or witnessed:
KERRY: I would like to talk, representing all those veterans [VVAW members], and say that several months ago in Detroit, we 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.
[...]
KERRY: They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape 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. [Media Matters, 10/23/04]
Factcheck.Org: "Since Kerry Testified, Ample Evidence Of Other Atrocities Has Come To Light."
A 2004 Factcheck.org piece found "ample evidence" to support Kerry's 1971 congressional testimony on the atrocities of the Vietnam War:
Some atrocities by US forces have been documented beyond question. Kerry's 1971 testimony came less than one month after Army Lt. William Calley had been convicted in a highly publicized military trial of the murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai hamlet on March 16 1968, when upwards of 300 unarmed men, women and children were killed by the inexperienced soldiers of the Americal Division's Charley Company. And since Kerry testified, ample evidence of other atrocities has come to light. [Factcheck.org, 11/8/04]
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