Two memorable images dominate perceptions of John Kerry. The first of them, taken from the Fulbright hearings, in April, 1971, shows a lanky twenty-seven-year-old Navy veteran, hair below his ears, medals pinned to his military fatigues, testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about alleged war crimes and atrocities carried out by his fellow soldiers in Southeast Asia. The second image, less flattering to Kerry, emerged during his abortive 2004 Presidential campaign, and it showed him windsurfing off Nantucket. Now, there is a third image: a somber, gray-haired Secretary of State standing behind a podium and talking about rows of Syrian children “lying side by side, sprawled on a hospital floor, all of them dead from Assad’s gas and surrounded by parents and grandparents who had suffered the same fate.”
Kerry’s task was to present to the public the case for bombing Syria. He did it without apology and with some passion, combining specific details about the August 21st attack in Ghouta, an area east of Damascus, with sweeping claims about the nature of the Syrian regime:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/08/john-kerrys-case-for-bombing-syria.html
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