Analysis: John Kerry's Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

On April 22, 1971, John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee not only about some of his own experiences as a soldier in Vietnam, but also about the experiences of some of his fellow soldiers. Representing the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), Kerry provided a veteran's antiwar perspective on the war and thus brought greater attention to this viewpoint. Kerry's testimony focused in large part on the experiences of soldiers who had testified a month earlier during the “Winter Soldier” investigations. According to these accounts, many American soldiers either witnessed or participated in war crimes against the Vietnamese, including murder, rape, and torture. While government officials claimed that the United States needed to be in Vietnam to protect the Vietnamese from communism, in reality, according to Kerry, their presence brought death and hardship to the Vietnamese and pain and guilt to American soldiers. He concluded that the only way to ease the pain and suffering of the Vietnamese and American soldiers was to end the war and pull American troops out of Vietnam.