Carol is right. That testimony was based upon the "Winter Soldier" investigation. John Kerry did say that firing in so called free fire zones and some other acts he committed under orders were violations of the Geneva Convention but he never admitted and according to all reports never committed a war crime.

Sinsull I'd be quite prepared to give the man a break if he wasn't now campaigning as if he were some sort of hero. He is saying he is a strong leader. As the GUEST said, he apparantly is less a leader than your average fireman. He chose to wait at least seven minutes before he found out one detail about what was going on. I'm sorry to disagree with you but obviously the intelligent and prudent thing to do would have been to quietly excuse himself and to start immediately educating himself about what was going on in case he had to make a quick decision about a plane full of lives. He is saying that he is a strong leader when he patently is not.

He spent the time leading up to 9/11 focusing his attention on missile defense as his top national security priority. Even now he will not admit that mistake. Maybe one of the things he thought in those seven minutes was "Rummy told me it would be missiles!!"

After the attack, time and time again he blamed the attack on the wrong enemy. According to the timeline in "Plan of Attack" he was asking Richard Clarke to link the attack to Saddam BEFORE he even visited New York.

When he did visit New York, as much as that might have meant to the people who were in the city at the time, as you said, he did not do anything that Gore, Clinton or any other sitting President would have done in that situation.

One of the reasons Kerry won the Democratic nomination was because in Viet Nam he did prove himself to be a decisive leader in situations of grave threat. He's also proven to be thoughtful and diplomatic when he has to be. There are more attacks coming. If and when they do happen, I'll feel safer if Kerry is in charge than Bush.