Editorial Blasts Kerry

Editorial Blasts Kerry

Kerry once claimed that 200,000 Vietnamese per year were murdered by the United States. Now he says that's not right. Read the Union Leader's take on it.

‘Murdering’ troops?

What could Kerry have meant?




BACK IN 1971, John Kerry said that 200,000 Vietnamese a year were “murdered by the United States of America.” Now he says he didn’t mean “murdered” and wasn’t referring to U.S. soldiers. Well then, what in the world did he mean?

After accessing transcripts of testimony Kerry gave to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, The Boston Globe reported Kerry’s “murdered” comment last Thursday. The paper also reported that Kerry claimed to have flown to Paris and “talked with both delegations at the peace talks,” clearly giving the impression that he was in some way involved in the Paris peace negotiations.

Now Kerry says his Paris trip was a private affair with his wife, and he only met the Vietnamese for a few minutes. But back in 1971 he wanted people to think the trip was of some significance. The claim is reminiscent of Kerry’s more recent boasts that he has talked with world leaders who want Bush out of office and that he had a close friend in Massachusetts who heard on good authority that Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped. Kerry has a habit of claiming that he is privy to inside information, then backing off when questioned about such boasts.

But back to his charge that the United States was murdering 200,000 Vietnamese a year. Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan told the Globe that Kerry “never suggested or believed and absolutely rejects the idea that the word applied to service of the American soldiers in Vietnam.” If he wasn’t referring to the United States military, then who in the world could he have meant? The USO?

Either the 1971 John Kerry was lying, or the 2004 John Kerry is lying — or both. We think both.