Every Single Commanding Officer of Kerry Says He is UNFIT TO LEAD

I never knew Electoral Votes could talk, let alone be poll subjects.

 

Christian influence is one thing.

Christian influence over policy and programs is another.

 

"Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid." HH

Would you get over the Forbes thing? Only right wing whackos care, most people who will vote in November wont even know who the Forbes are. Your polls can be nullified by the CNN polls that had all the battle ground states tied, or leaning in favor of Kerry. The race is close , polls are conflicting, people are named Forbes, get over it.

 

EVERY SINGLE WAR POLICY OF GW BUSH says he is UNFIT TO LEAD

All the war policies of President George Bush have come together and unamimously said that he is unfit to be commander-in-chief.

Initially in Afghanistan the policies appeared to support Bush, but after pulling resources from unfinished business there, things appeared to change.

It then appeared that rationale for war in Iraq was false, bad intel, exaggerated etc. Then the president refused to submit advanced budgets for the war in Iraq. Then the Iraq operations did not fund themselves as the administration had said. Then the troops weren't treated as liberators by an entire nation, and were instead attacked regularly. Bush rationale for the war changed to liberating people and spreading democracy. That appeared to go wrong when Bush implanted Chalabi into the presidency of the Iraqi governing council, wouldn't allow direct elections, and the U.S. has been found to regularly use torture on the Iraqis.

With all these failures the policies agreed unanimously that Bush was unfit to be commander-in-chief and lead out nation at such a critical point.

 

If they weren't all Republicans, I might find it "particularly damning."

 

This is an interesting development. I'll look forward to seeing the actual announcement and the responses. My problem would be that W has already proven to me that he is unfit to lead. It might make me feel that my vote for Kerry will be the lesser of two evils instead of simply a positive change for the country.

At least Kerry has commanding officers to make such a claim. This problem couldn't happen to W, since he dodged the war.

As far as Kerry's anti-war actions after his return... HE WAS RIGHT. Viet-Nam was a disaster.

So I question the motives of these guys. Are they pissed off about something? I'd need to know.

 

No? Name one that isn't.

 

I think it's to your credit, and I don't say that merely as a Bush critic. It's very difficult in our culture currently to see the nobility in simply reviewing evidence and thinking for yourself. Both "sides," in the end, seem bent on discouraging independent thought.

RocketFan, I'll go on to say this. (Those who've seen this sentiment before, please pardon me). I'm a liberal, and I admit it freely. I've applauded Bush's policies at times, but mostly I just don't agree with many of his moves. Forget all of that.

My father is a conservative, 70-yr-old veteran (Korea). He voted for GWB as governor and president. What has changed his mind and led him to say he will *not* vote for GWB again is what several posts have mentioned in this thread.

Being Christian is a wonderful thing, particularly if it informs your interactions with the humans around you. However, saying you answer to a "higher father" when you launch a controversial (and perhaps completely unnecessary) war and claiming that you are bringing "god's gift" to the middle east is to say you will sacrifice reason and human dialogue for the belief that God is talking directly to you. I don't believe Christ would ever ask us to turn our brains off. I believe Christ would chide us if we abandon compassion and careful thinking for a fantasy of "divine guidance" in difficult situations.

If my preacher claims God speaks to him, that's one thing. But for the most powerful person in the world to express divine leadership and *selectively* wage war against a country that is predominantly of a different religion? My father, a Christian, claims that such stated priorities will make our president seem like just another crazed religious leader to most people in the middle east, if not most people on the planet. Furthermore, my Dad simply does not trust someone who claims to know God's will better than he does, particularly when that person's actions do not usually reflect the teachings of Christ.

Finally, I really believe our nation needs a president on a mission for the nation, in all its religious beliefs, instead of a mission for our Christian God. I believe our nation needs someone who can evaluate information and evidence at all times, even when that information conflicts with an assumed mission from God.

 

I'm surprised it took 2 pages for someone to state the obvious.

I love how all the Bush lackies use the same language: particularly damning, troubling, very telling, etc.

 

Is this a serious question? Benefit of the doubt:

While I do not disavow the possibility of the existence of a God, nor even that a particular religion's version of God could be more accurate than another's, I do dispute the role that that God and/pr belief in that God should play in the formulation of our foreign policy. Moreover, I find the subjectivity of any one person's interpretation what what the divinity is directly telling him/her to do, irrespective of the existence of that divinity, to be an incredibly perilous foundation for decisions of national security, foreign relations, the economy, etc.

I would have assumed this was obvious, given the argument against Middle Eastern theocracies so prevelant on your side of the fence. I suppose I was, as usual, unerstimating the We're Right So We Can Do What No One Else Is Allowed To Do...

 

Look, I'm not an enthusiastic Kerry Supporter. My attitude can best be summed up by a placard I saw recently-

Kerry- Because he sucks less.

Though I might revise that to "Because he sucks a LOT less.


All that said, I will be VERY surprised if this letter amounts to more than a bunch of former officers who disagree with Kerry's active opposition to the war after he came home.

 

Yes, you are ( surprise) misinterpreting my posts. I have argued, in here, in defense of religion many times. When we sent over prechers etc. to the Middle East, and they were baptising, I argued with those who called it an absolute wrong. Ask anyone in here, with any objectivity, ask MadMax, who is Christian, etc., whether I have ever shown any "disdain" for God's influence in people's lives so long as it isn't the basis for policy.

And , as a matter of fact, read the thread I started recently wherein I said, in capital letters, mind you, that I had been dead wrong because I had previously never really thought that Bush/Cheney were ideologically motivated, let alone under the impression that they were enaged in some sort of Crusade. That pretty much tells you how "repeated" my attacks of Bush's religion have been.

But, now that he's said that that is, in fact, how he sees it, you're damned right I have a problem with it. Not it's influence on his life, but on our foreign policy, which is a serious problem.

You know what, though...I doubt this is even something that you've even thought before. I doubt this is a genuine mistake. I suspect that this is just you, doing your "thing", whatever that is...

 

What this entire issue boils down to is that some people will never forgive Viet Nam war protesters. I can understand that. I met a Viet Nam vet in a bar the other night. I thanked him for his service and he said I was thirty years late. (I didn't bother to point out I could hardly have thanked him when I was five.) And I totally understand that. Those people were sent to hell and they returned to a different hell. This guy, by the way, is voting Kerry. He thinks Bush doesn't understand war and Kerry does and the fact that Kerry protested the war is a little bit of a raw subject for him, but he understands it because he hated that war. Even so, he didn't like coming home to a country that bashed him for doing what he was ordered to do.

It's not an easy subject for those who were involved. Some vets of that war are never going to forgive Kerry for being among those who protested the war. And some are going to be eternally grateful to him for it. As someone who was not involved in that war, or even old enough to have a personal experience with it, I won't pretend to have strong emotions about it (unlike some others here). But Kerry's opposition to that war is my favorite thing about him. I think it was the last example of him taking a strong, principled stand.

I also think that war was a horrible mistake, as do most Americans now. So the question is this: do we disqualify candidates who protested a war that is now widely considered to have been ill-conceived and unjust? Some veterans will, understandably. And (I think) just as many veterans will appreciate Kerry's protesting. Most of the people who fought in Viet Nam hated that war. The difference of opinion as to the right way to have dealt with that back then is understandable. But if Kerry and other veterans against the war hadn't protested back then, it might not have ended as soon as it did. And more Americans might have died in a wrong war.

I don't like Kerry because I think he's been a political coward over his years in the Senate, but his political bravery way back then will make it a little easier for me to vote for him.

 

Batman...agreed. As with most things, we've reduced the Nam issue to something digestable within a minute or two.

What we have taken from Nam is: Failing to support the troops during a war is wrong, and it makes us lose.

That may be true, to a degre, and important to a degree, but it's not a coverall. Yes, troops in general, were turned on because of the actions of some. And that was wrong.

But it is just as wrong to say that the troops who were doing the wrong things shouldn't have been pointed out or criticized because our reaction was unfair to soldiers as a whole.

And it's sure as hell wrong to say that, because eome feel we lost Nam because of lack of support, therefore we should automatically support every war without question for fear of losing it.