Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, John Kerry said the United States "murdered" 200,000 people per year in Vietnam. Although he recently told the Boston Globe, through a spokesman, that this was an inappropriate word to have used, he declined to be interviewed about the comment and has never explained what he meant.
Last week, according to the Globe, Kerry found himself empathizing with a woman who accused Vice President Cheney of murdering people in Iraq. Reported the Globe: "And Kerry nodded as one audience member, 74-year-old Dorothy Sahadi, accused Vice President Dick Cheney of engineering an 'invasion' of Iraq to benefit Halliburton, the energy giant he once headed, then said of Cheney and Iraqis: 'How many has he murdered? He has murdered women, children, babies for nothing, just for the money in his pocket.' Kerry said he disagreed with some parts of Sahadi's remarks. 'But I know exactly where you're coming from. . . . I know where that anger comes from, I know where the frustration comes from.' Kerry spokesman David Wade said afterwards that Kerry disagreed with Sahadi's 'murdered' comment."
