Think you're missing my point here. I really don't believe that Kerry's actions or any single person's outspoken rhetoric about the war back then amounted to a hill of beans compared to the huge collective voices of the country and the world at that time. The North Vietnamese didn't need the testimony of John Kerry or the antics of Jane Fonda to rationalize their abuse of prisoners or their continuation of the war. The people that were torturing people then did so because they wanted to. They were bloodthirsty, war-hardened punks that got their rocks off brutalizing other human beings. They would've terrorized and killed no matter what was going on in the US.

We are incapable of winning any war where the the distinction of enemy and friendly civilian is so blurred. Are you guys seriously saying that war was winnable and if so within what timeframe from the time Kerry was making his speech? 1 year, 2, 5? How many more POW's would've fallen into enemy hands in those years? Those guys already in the camps were toast and to infer that tapes of Kerry's speech made their lives harder is absolute folly. It's an unbelievable miracle any of them came out at all. Sure seems to me that withdrawing from there with our tail between our legs is possibly the only thing that saved their asses. Bottom line is that nobody knows that. I don't and you can't either unless you have some deal with Robert that grants you all-knowing status.

Kerry's a bozo in my mind. Keep that clear when you jump my crap like you do but I won't hold him to some super-human standard either.