Ok from the first article first paragraph...maybe this is easier than I thought :0
"When Mr. Kerry pontificated at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Veterans Day, a group of veterans turned their backs on him and walked away. They remembered Mr. Kerry as the antiwar activist who testified before Congress during the war, accusing veterans of being war criminals."
Kerry did not accuse any verterans of warcrimes. He spoke as a representative of the "Winters Soldiers Investigation" which consisted of a group of over 150 honorably discharged and very highly decorated men. These men had met and discussed the war crimes that they all had comitted and sent John Kerry to speak to the Senate in order to make it clear to them what was truly going in in Vietnam. His actual speech makes that very clear.
Beginning of Kerry's Speech
I would simply like to speak in very general terms. I apologize if my statement is general because I received notification yesterday you would hear me and I am afraid because of the injunction I was up most of the night and haven't had a great deal of chance to prepare.
Winter soldier Investigation
I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, 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.
It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.
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 country side 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.
We call this investigation the "Winter Soldier Investigation." The term "Winter Soldier" is a play on words of Thomas Paine in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriot and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.
We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country; we could be quiet; we could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, no reds, and not redcoats but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out...
This is the most powerful part of a very impressive speech I believe.
We are also here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We are here to ask where are [secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, Robert S.] McNamara, [national security adviser in the Johnson administration, Walt Whitman] Rostow, [national security adviser in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, McGeorge] Bundy, [deputy secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, Roswell L.] Gilpatric and so many others. Where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war.
The link to the full speech is here.
http://www.c-span.org/2004vote/jkerrytestimony.aspOn the part about the renewed trade relations and his position against the bill. You are correct those points are true. Sen. Mccain was against them as well.
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_john_kerry2.htm