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The "John Kerry's gratuitous references to Vietnam" thread

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by basso, Feb 26, 2004.

  1. Woofer

    Woofer Member

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    It's because if they bring up Vietnam and Cheney...

    Edwards was too young to serve unless he got drafted/wanted to enlist in 1971 I believe.
     
  2. basso

    basso Member
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    edwards is 51, so born in 52? 18 or 19 in 1971 then.
     
  3. Troy McClure

    Troy McClure Member

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    Edwards is 50 , born june,10, 1953. June, 10, 1971 he turned 18.
     
  4. Woofer

    Woofer Member

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    John Kerry killed at least one man. This man was an eyewitness.

    http://www.jsonline.com/news/gen/feb04/207249.asp

    Veteran tells how Kerry risked life for crew
    By DAN EGAN
    degan@journalsentinel.com
    Posted: Feb. 12, 2004
    Del Sandusky was a little skeptical when he first met John Kerry in Vietnam's Mekong Delta back in the late 1960s.


    The enlisted sailor thought that Kerry, the new commander of his crew's swift boat, might have been on a hunt for personal glory. Kerry was, after all, a Yale graduate who had majored in political science.

    "But we learned in the first couple of patrols - this is a very brave man," Sandusky told a group of veterans Thursday at VFW Post 2903 on Milwaukee's south side.

    Sandusky, an Illinois resident who appears in a widely viewed television ad for Kerry and is traveling the region stumping for his old comrade, said Kerry regularly risked his own life to save those of his crew.

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    Kerry... so he could chase down and kill ...
     
  5. ZRB

    ZRB Member

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    Looks like the conservatives are starting to get a little desperate.
     
  6. basso

    basso Member
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    yes, it does, doesn't it:

    http://www.sgtstryker.com/weblog/archives/004300.php

    --
    Why I Wouldn't Vote For John Kerry
    By: Sgt. Mom

    I wasn't out of high school by the time Nixon ended American involvement in the Vietnam War, and everyone heaved a sigh of deep relief and crossed their fingers, hoping that North Vietnam would keep its' word… and that we wouldn't have to put too much into keeping South Vietnam fairly stable and fairly free. My home towns of Sunland and Tujunga, remote suburbs of Los Angeles, blended so seamlessly together I think only the post office bureaucrats could have said with certainty where the dividing line between them ran. In the 1960ies, before completion of the 210 Freeway, it was even more remote than now, a blue collar and redneck bastion of the white working class. The telephone book used to include the residents' professions: they ran to things like truck driver, salesman, police officer, mechanic, plumber, hospital orderly; their children who went for higher education gravitated to the community colleges and the state universities. (Which actually offered a pretty good education, without the cachet---or the expense of the "good colleges") In other words, it was the kind of town where it was much more likely for a young man to be drafted--- or volunteer--- for military service in the Vietnam War than it would for him to protest against it, for all the talk there was of some kind of ragged commune up in the canyon called the Hippie Hog Farm.

    A website memorial page lists eleven names of young men from Sunland and Tujunga, killed in Vietnam in the late 1960ies, most in their twenties, all but two of them draftees. Only one was an officer, only one had a Hispanic name. Those who came home safely slipped back into their lives, many of them doing college on the GI Bill just as their fathers had done before them. Of what they had seen and done, they did not talk overmuch--- a young man named Charlie, who sat next to me in a fascinating junior division history class murmured to me one day that he was just out of the Marines, and was afraid he would forget himself and scorch the ears of the class with some standard Marine language. When the lecturing professor outlined the necessity of balancing the primary sources on any particular historic event, since witnesses always had a bias to keep in consideration, Charlie chimed in with a quite brutally graphic account of fudging body counts, by way of adding real-life evidence to that proposition, which pretty well finished off any farther discussion of the topic.

    The war, after all, was over--- even the various investigations and courts martial resulting from the My Lai massacre had only been completed a year or so before. It and similar atrocities were old friends to the front pages, although curiously, things like the massacre of thousands in the city of Hue at the same time never seemed to excite the same sympathies and untiring inquiries. On the whole, the war had been a bad thing, and now it was over; we had done our not-very-successful best, as ham-fisted and criticized as it had been.

    In a remarkably short time, the whole war went down the memory hole until one morning I was sitting at breakfast in the kitchen of the Hilltop house, reading the newspaper, with page after page of pictures of frantic people. People cramming around the iron fence of the American Embassy in Saigon, reaching desperately through the bars, people standing shoulder to shoulder in tiny boats, barely afloat as they waited to be rescued, people trampling others to get into a departing aircraft, a straggling line of people going up a ladder to a rooftop, where a man handed them into a helicopter. Pictures of desperate people with bundles, carrying their children, of babies strapped two and three into the seats of aircraft evacuating them to safety, of helicopters being thrown off the deck of an aircraft carrier, to make room for three more, hovering just overhead and crammed with people who had trusted us, depended on us.

    "I can't stand to look at this," I finally said to Mom. "Isn't there anything we can do? With the church, or something?"<br />
    "Talk to Pastor Earl, "Mom suggested. "He might have some ideas." Pastor Earl was a colonel in the Air Force Reserves, so we assumed he might be up on matters of great import and policy. It turned out there was some sort of meeting at another church in North Hollywood to discuss that very matter, to which I was sent by Pastor Earl, driving nervously across the Valley in the very old Plymouth station wagon. My junior-year finals were all over, and I had the time… and my time, all that summer was taken up with refugees. Our congregation was small, but willing; eventually, we clubbed together with some other congregations and the Lions and Rotary club, and sponsored number of Vietnamese refugees: three small families, and three single men. I worked with all sorts of people, taking on all sorts of jobs; unpaid social worker, writer of begging articles for the local newspaper, advocate, driver, teacher of English, an organizer of resources and people, feeling a very great responsibility for these people and laying awake at night worrying about Kiet and Nguyen, the Trans and their family, all of them. They were good people, who had deserved better from us.

    Maybe, we could get it right on this try, but if we did (and I say we did) it wasn't with the help of people like Jane Fonda, and John Kerry. It wasn't enough to slime people like Charlie and other veterans with accusations of wall to wall atrocities, it wasn't enough to render further assistance to South Vietnam politically untouchable after 1972, when it came to taking responsibility for the people whom their actions drove into the refugee camps (or the re-education camps, or the killing fields), they were nowhere to be seen. They had moved on, leaving other people to sort out the wreckage and the misery. People, you can make bad decisions--- god knows, I've made a few--- but the people I respect take responsibility when the bad decision has bad consequences.

    And that is why I despise Senator Kerry, and Jane Fonda, and Noam Chomsky, and Robert MacNamera, too. They walked away and left other people to clean up the mess.

    Thanks, folks. Couldn't have done it without you
     
  7. Woofer

    Woofer Member

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    It's freaking hilarious that you consider that anonymous blog to be a rebuttal.

    But Kerry did disobey orders

    http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/p...d=3&ei=5062&en=30110cc30f54a615&ex=1078203600
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    Defying Orders

    There was another incident for which Mr. Kerry received no medals — he acted against orders — but which the crew members and the other swift boat skippers remember .
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    "He did something I wouldn't do...
    ," said Mr. Barker, whose boat accompanied Mr. Kerry's on that mission.
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  8. FranchiseBlade

    Supporting Member

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    All that piece by Sgt Mom proves is that the author of it doesn't understand John Kerry's role in the anti-war movement, and that trying to slander Kerry by associating him with Jane Fonda's anti-war activites have worked on this poor uninformed person.
     
  9. basso

    basso Member
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    this came via email this morning. i'm sure it'll piss some of you off, but it's pretty funny i think.

    [​IMG]
     
  10. MacBeth

    MacBeth Member

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    Hillarious. Most of the points are non-sequitors, but rip-roaring funny, if you go for that 'Repetition of senseless, predictable rhetoric' style of humour so overlooked by the liikes of Pryor, Williams, Bruce et al.
     
  11. basso

    basso Member
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    it does make for a pretty compelling contrast with W though. would one rather have a president who has the courage of his convictions, or one who has the convictions of his contributors?
     
  12. rimrocker

    rimrocker Member

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    Now this is classic comedy.
     
  13. MacBeth

    MacBeth Member

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    Basso, I donlt question that you buy Bush lines hook line and sinker. I am not among those who think you are disingenous.


    But I am amazed that you cite this stuff as fact the way you do. To an objective observer, it calls your discernment into question.


    As an example, right off the bat:


    "I call myself a war hero."


    Well, actually, no. His medals do that for him. Medals based on actions, not speeches. Whether or not his actions gain him any political currency is another issue, but I can certainly understand why a Bush supporter would not want it to be a key point to the electorate.

    But to many, the fact that this man went and fought for his country, rather than for a friend of the family's political campaigh speeks highly of someone with courage of his convictions. You may disagree...but increasingly I find little merit in your positions, as they increasingly are so credible of the GOP position, irrespective of fact.

    And then add the caveat: The same man who went and fought, and fought braveley and well in the jungles of southeast Asia later speaks out against certain aspects of the war...and you call this a man lacking courage? Ironically people who support the current war, when confronted with people who say it is an unjust war, respond with some sort of ad hominem about " I wonder what the soldiers fighting over there would say to that?" Just got one of these yesterday, in fact. As spurrious as this argument is, the obvious inference is that soldiers fighting in a war might have a slightly better perspective on it's right or wrongess than, say, a National Guard pilot in Alabama.

    But when a soldier who did fight in a war, and who acquited himself with disctinction speaks out against a war we later admit to have been a disaster, people will try and spin this into a contradiction with his convictions?!!?!? He was there...he didn;t duck it, and later, having been there, said it was wrong. What in the hell do you find inconsistent with that? It would have been more consistent to get Daddy to get you out of the war entirely? He had the connections, he could have done it. He didn't.

    Or does the fact that he went and fought when his country asked him to somehow disqualify him from criticizing the war!?!?!? That is inconsistent!?!?!? Basso...are you seriously buying this drivel?

    Somethimes I hope that the positions that you and others take are so ridiculus that, having had a mirror held up to it, you will take a second look, and maybe have a secod thought. How can anyone short of an idiot buy this stuff? If I am wrong, and you are merely another T_J spewing rhetoric without convition, than yay for you. But if you believe this stuff....



    Wow.
     
  14. basso

    basso Member
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    Macbeth,

    You have a way of twisting a simple set of statements/facts around into a brand new arguement that the original poster never made, then you proceed to strike down this invented arguement point-by-point as if this proves something about the initial post/poster. Straw man will never prove anything to me.

    I am on record many times over as saying JFK deserves our respect and praise for his actions in Vietnam. Whether his actions subsequently, both his anti-war actions and his record in the massachusettes state government or the US congress do as well is a subject for legitimate debate. to suggest, as you do and as he does, the the fact he served in vietnam somehow shields him from all subsequest criticism is ridiculous. it is this suggestion that i object too, and kerry makes it over and over. he also speaks constantly about his service, rather than letting his medals do the talking for him. moreover, he and the democratic party have made vietnam the issue it is in this race. rather than making the election a referendum on the war in iraq, they have attempted to make it a referendum on service in vietnam. I will say it once again, in all caps, JOHN KERRY DESERVES OUR RESPECT AND PRAISE FOR HIS HEROISM IN VIETNAM. but he will not deserve my vote until he comes up with a coherent policy of dealing with the threat from international islamic terrorism. Outsourcing US security to the UN is simply not an option I can support. I'm sorry if that sounds like parroting the GOP line, but there's a reason many americans are uneasy about JFK Part Deux.
     
  15. El_Conquistador

    El_Conquistador King of the D&D, The Legend, #1 Ranking

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    Why do I sense that MacBeth is reading this *obviously accurate* depiction of his entire existence here and thinking that it is ludicrous?

    Very nice articulation of his style, basso.
     
  16. RocketMan Tex

    RocketMan Tex Member

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    Or how about a convicted criminal who, in 3 years, has taken more $$$ from special interests than any President in history!

    "Courage of his Convictions"????

    Give me a freaking break!
     
  17. B-Bob

    B-Bob "94-year-old self-described dreamer"
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    It's one thing for some of you to quote basso, but do all of you have to quote him? Just think.

    If 18 of you hadn't quoted that amazing post, I never would have had to read someone actually having a brain fart powerful enough to say W isn't on the leash of his contributors.

    Back to the nice thread topic though, I can contribute! In California yesterday, Kerry had the bad judgment to appear with Gray Davis. :D Davis said he is "ready to enlist" in Kerry's army or some such. So, basically, Eddie Haskell has referenced Kerry's service now. Not good!
     
  18. MacBeth

    MacBeth Member

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    You, not I, are the one changing stances here:


    You post an advertisement which states, as it's opening line: " I call myself a war hero...but I called my fellow soldiers war criminals."

    And you followed that up by asking
    , thereby clearly implying that JFK lacks the courage of his convictions, and following along the line of this ad which purports inconsistencis.

    Now, where, exactly, did I divert the course of your argument by saying that nothing in this example, at all, calls the courage of JFK's convictions into question, let alone in comparison with Bush, as you tried to maintain?


    Pretty damn clear, and I am dissapointed at this, latest, attempt at an avoidance of fact rather than an argument based on same. Maybe they're right when they say you're just another T_J. That would be sad.
     
  19. basso

    basso Member
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    the inconsistencies are not "purported," they are facts. is not inconsistency one hallmark of someone who does not have the courage of his convictions? kerry's campaign is based solely onthe concept that he's a war hero and W's not. Kerry's every position is a reaction to W. show me one original thoughtful statement kerry has made this entire campaign season, one that isn't a reaction to something W or Dean or JE said or did, and perhaps we can begin to discuss his convictions.

    Examples of W's political courage:

    -invaded iraq at enormous political cost. is staying the course and sheparding a fragile state to democracy, perhaps at the cost of his reelection.

    -proposed controversial immigration policy, alienating much of the right wing of the repulican party, with no off-setting gains from the left.

    -supports constitutional amendment to define marriage for heteros on a national level, while leaving the states to offer civil unions if they wish. pissed off at least half the country, while the remaining half is split between the dubious and the fanatic.

    PLEASE, offer me a similar, post 1972 example of Mons. Kerry's political courage.
     
  20. Woofer

    Woofer Member

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    You changed the data after the fact for the first example. They thought there would be zero political cost from Iraq - they got Congress to buy their lies and the polling indicated they fooled a large majority of the American public until overwhelming factual evidence from Iraq indicated the Bushies lied about almost everything about Iraq.

    The last two are classic Republican tactics for dividing the country as much as possible. He has got *nothing* to lose, by offending a small proportion of his base - there is no third party candidate speaking for stop immigration now or rabid right wing fundamentalists. The words constitutional marriage/homosexual ban is pretty much the same the Bushie I pulled with the flag burning amendment. He can always blame the fact that it didn't eliminate civil unions on Congress and say he got something enshrined in the constitution. The right wing understands the outreach for the Latinos, they also understand the bill would likely not pass so he gets it both ways, he can say he was trying, but not get the changes to pass. He either does this or makes a policy that sounds good but the execution is horrible.
     

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