As far as Ted Sampley being a GOP henchman.....not hardly. He just seems to have a narrow focus on the POW/MIA/Vietnam issue and anybody that takes a position contrary to him gets blasted.
Just a note... I do recall how Bush slammed McCain in the press before the presidential run. But the difference here is: We already know what type of President Bush is. And that's a big DISadvantage for Bush; his current record. So mud slinging doesn't work as well as it would if you didn't know beforehand what type of President a candidate would become.
Okay let me see if I got this now ..... Someone says Vietnam veterans have united against John Kerry ,and posts a ridiculous website for proof. I call the creator of that site a henchman for degrading the service of both John McCain and John Kerry , for what seems like the sole purpose of helping George W. Bush get elected. Henchman basically means someone who follows, whether it be politically or otherwise. They follow a person of "high rank". George W. Bush was clearly the favorite of the GOP in 2000 against John McCain, and of course would be against John Kerry or any other Democratic nominee. Ted Sampley attacks candidates who oppose George W. Bush (never attacking them BEFORE they our his (likely) opponent mind you) therefore he is George W. Bush FOLLOWER, therefore he could be considered a HENCHMAN. George W. Bush is the President of the UNited States, and the leader of his party , therefore Ted Sampley = GOP henchman. Whether he will be in the first row at the head of the republican national convention is another story. I never said he was a member of the REpublican establishment,or the right hand man of Bush . Maybe you got the wrong idea in my post. So..... You're calling me out on an argument of what seems like semantics, and I am calling someone else out on posting a moronic, disrespectful website. It seems to me like a had a better case than you did. But I would appreciate it if you did keep an eye out on my posts, because I know a make a lot of errors. Keep me updated on the latest findings. thanks
Your earlier post: Now in regards to Sampley being a GOP henchman and only out to get Senator McCain...... Ted Sampley bashing Jesse Helms: <a HREF="http://www.usvetdsp.com/story45.htm">The Metamorphosis of Arch Conservative Jesse Helms</a> I never thought of Helms as a Democrat. If you have documentation to prove that he is a Democrat....please provide it. <hr color=red> Ted Sampley bashing Colin Powell: <a HREF="http://www.usvetdsp.com/story13.htm">Colin Powell: Not the Man You Think</a> I have read it twice and can't find any kind words for Republicans from Sampley and the story covers Powell from Vietnam to serving in the Bush (I) Administration. That includes Powell's interactions with people in the Nixon & Reagan Administrations. Ted Sampley taking some shots at Bush (I): <a HREF=http://www.usvetdsp.com/story46.htm">George Bush Parachutes Again to Exorcise Demons of Past Betrayal </a> Quite a few Republicans mentioned in those two articles. <hr color=red> This article mentions that Sampley has been active against McCain and Kerry for quite some time....probably the early 1990's, pre Bush (II) which you contend is what motivated Sampley to attack Mccain in the past and now Kerry. <a HREF="http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/politics/election/opinions/v-print/story/918739p-4971123c.html">ANALYSIS: Kerry proves a complex potential candidate</a> <i>.....Other veterans cannot forgive Kerry for his protest days when he tossed medals - they were not his own - over a police barricade outside the Capitol in 1971. "I don't see how he can take any position that we must support the troops on the battlefield," said Ted Sampley, 56, of Kinston, N.C. Sampley, who did two combat tours in Vietnam, has been a longtime critic of Kerry's protests and his work as co-chairman of the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. Kerry and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a former prisoner of war, became convinced in the early 1990s that some men may have been left alive in Vietnam but probably had died since. Sampley argues Vietnam should have been compelled to account for the fates of those captured but never returned....... </i> <hr color=red> Here is an article (somewhat documented) about Sampley: <a HREF="http://www.miafacts.org/prankster.htm">"The Merry Prankster:"Ted Sampley in Action</a> <hr color=red> Here is another article about POW-MIA and it has quite a bit about Sampley: <a HREF="http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/archives/cover/2001/print_cover0112.html">WALL MART</a> <i>.......Sampley grew up on a tobacco farm not far from here and joined the Army in 1963 at age 17. As a member of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, he was one of the first conventional Army combat soldiers assigned to Vietnam. He spent seven years as a Green Beret studying Viet Cong tactics and later commanded a company. He saw two years of heavy combat in Vietnam and earned four bronze stars, according to official records. Sampley returned to North Carolina in 1974, opened a pottery store, took some college courses, and generally floundered. He visited the Wall in 1982. "That's when I discovered the POW/MIA issue," says Sampley. "I got energized. When I met others in my situation, I started to think about all these forgotten men." Soon he started to frame his life in terms of a battle against the government, the status quo, and even some fellow POW/MIA activists. He started to challenge all three. "Once I started slinging and people started slinging back, I couldn't ever stop," says Sampley. "When you start with a cause, it's like stepping in quicksand." Sampley took over the Last Firebase (then called Homecoming II) in 1986. The same year, he began "truth litigation," a series of lawsuits seeking the release of U.S. government information on alleged live sightings of POWs. Sampley took a theatrical approach to civil disobedience. In 1987, he led a group of activists who attempted to deliver hundreds of "care packages" to the Laotian Embassy in D.C. Containing food and medicine, each of the packages was addressed to one of the U.S. servicemen listed as missing in Laos. The following year, he led a group of activists all the way to Thailand's Mekong River, where they illegally entered Laos to hand out leaflets advertising a $2.5 million reward offer for the return of missing U.S. servicemen. Laotian authorities captured two members of Sampley's group and held them for more than six weeks. The stunt attracted international publicity. <b> Sampley has also stirred controversy with his newspaper. As publisher, editor, and primary reporter for the Dispatch, Sampley has targeted all sorts of sacred cows. In December 1992, for example, Sampley published an article attacking Arizona Sen. John McCain, a former Vietnam POW and one of the nation's most respected war heroes, for his efforts to improve U.S. diplomatic relations with Vietnam. The article, "John McCain: The Manchurian Candidate," speculated that McCain had been brainwashed by his Communist captors. The article led to trouble. When Sampley tried to deliver a copy of the paper to McCain's office, one of the senator's aides confronted him. Tempers flared, and the two came to blows. Senate security had to break up the scuffle. Sampley later received an assault conviction and a restraining order prohibiting him from going near McCain and his aides. "That was a mistake," says Sampley. He still stands by his theory on McCain, though. </b> Upstairs at the Dispatch building, the tour continues. Sampley takes me down a long hallway to the "Biography Room." The dingy room almost sags under the weight of a half-dozen enormous file cabinets; all of them are stuffed with files on virtually every soldier who went missing during Vietnam. Many of the oversized folders contain declassified documents, press clippings, and correspondence between family members and the Last Firebase. For each soldier, there's a lengthy synopsis of where he was stationed, which comrades he served with, the date he was last seen, and so on. "We built this ourselves," says Sampley, knocking on a metal shelf. "It's the most comprehensive collection in the country." The room is kind of a mess. Half-empty soda bottles mingle on tables with faded copies of CIA reports and Freedom of Information Act requests. Yet it was in this unlikely setting that Sampley pieced together a mystery that made national headlines. The story began in May of 1972, when Air Force pilot Michael Blassie's plane was shot down about 60 miles north of Saigon. Six months later, South Vietnamese troops found a set of six bones near the crash site, along with two ID cards and other personal effects belonging to Blassie. The Department of Defense initially classified the remains as "believed to be" those of Blassie but changed its ruling after available forensic tests seemed to contradict the circumstantial evidence. In 1984, amid pressure to add a set of remains from the Vietnam War to the Tomb of the Unknowns, the Pentagon interred the same set of bones, which had been deemed unidentifiable, in Arlington National Cemetery. Ten years later, Sampley, using evidence he had gathered himself, theorized that the remains were, in fact, Blassie's. In a 1994 Dispatch article, Sampley challenged the government to use DNA tests to identify the remains. The challenge went unheeded until the mainstream press legitimized Sampley's claims: In January 1998, The CBS Evening News not only reported that the identity of the Vietnam War's unknown soldier was almost certainly known but also suggested that the government had interred the remains despite this knowledge. Later that year, tests proved that the bones were indeed Blassie's. The incident rekindled many activists' longstanding suspicions of the government. And it reaffirmed Sampley's faith in his mission. Rewarding moments like that, Sampley says, are what keep him going, not money. Sampley says he draws no salary from the Last Firebase. He supports himself through his printing and other business ventures. He lives in a ramshackle two-bedroom house that sits beside a highway. "You know, sometimes I think if I'd stayed in construction, I'd be doing pretty well right now," Sampley says. He's vowed to keep the Last Firebase running, however. He's just not sure what to do next. There are no rallies or hearings or lawsuits on the horizon. "For now," says Sampley, "all we can do is keep the POW/MIA flag flying up on the Mall." It's over breakfast the following morning that Sampley gives the clearest hint about why he continues to pursue the POW/MIA fight. He's seated over a plate of eggs and bacon at a joint called King's Barbecue when he starts describing his activism as a natural response to having been in battle. "When I came back from the war, I had trouble with authority figures," he explains. "I had a lot of anger. When I heard people talking about how it was time to get over the war, I thought, How? When you've seen human beings all around you reduced to rotting flesh, you can't just flip a switch and turn things off." ........</i> <hr color=red> ......and finally <a HREF="http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/02/01/as_campaign_heats_up_veterans_taking_sides/">As campaign heats up, veterans taking sides</a> <i>......Another Vietnam warrior who is closely following Kerry's career, Ted Sampley, has a different vision: that of scores of veterans stalking the Massachusetts senator on the campaign trail this winter, telling voters of the former Navy lieutenant's ``disgraceful record'' after he ended his Vietnam service in 1969. ``If Kerry wins the South Carolina primary on Tuesday, we'll be coming after him,'' said Sampley, a POW advocate who is organizing opponents to Kerry through a new website, Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry,<b> and who was rebuked by Kerry a decade ago for alleging that Senator John McCain was brainwashed by Communists while a prisoner in Hanoi.</b> ``We will do what is politically necessary to stop John Kerry and draw attention to the hypocrisy of his campaign.'' James and Sampley are footsoldiers in two opposing camps of veterans that are waging their own quiet battle over Kerry's presidential bid, which received a huge boost last month in Iowa and New Hampshire from his ``Veterans' Brigade'' that helped sway thousands of former servicemen and women to back one of their own for the Democratic nomination.......... </i> <hr color=red> Summay: 1) Ted Sampley has been opposed to McCain & Kerry for quite some time and definitely before G.W. Bush was a Presidential candidate versus (McCain 1999-2000) and (Kerry 2003-2004) .........so that charge by you seems unfounded. 2) Ted Sampley takes shots at both Republicans & Democrats......so I fail to see the basis for the GOP henchman label that you posted earlier in this thread.
Okay, he is not a henchman. He is an idiot. The documentation for that is in what you just posted. But since you seem to have so much time and energy into finding Ted Sampley articles, can you check to see if he has ever attacked George W. Bush for his Vietnam record? Seriously, why would this guy be mad at Kerry, McCain, and Powell, but not W. Bush. Maybe he is, I guess you're the one who would know being the expert on Sampley. Thanks again.
Not to change the subject, but did anyone catch the Grammy's last night when CMartin of Coldplay said something about Kerry..."Hopefully he'll be President soon", or some BS like that... First of all, that English azz can shut the freak-up as he doesn't even live here and tell Gwenth to shut up as well as he's speaking for Hollywood... carry on...
Complaints about the current President Bush? Slightly negative about the Lt Cmdr Speicher case here: <a HREF="http://www.usvetdsp.com/gw_mia_sp.htm">Gulf War MIA Michael S. Speicher Still Alive In Iraq!!!</a> Other searches would bring up Former President Bush, but not the current President Bush. I had already looked for comments by Sampley on current President Bush and couldn't find anything. Perhaps it is out there and I missed it. I checked in Sampley's archives and it seems that most of his passion for this type of writing was during the 1990's: <a HREF="http://www.usvetdsp.com/list.htm">Archives</a> Seeing Senator Kerry in the news again might have rekindled his passion for this subject and caused him to take up a negative <i>campaign</i>. With Sampley, most of his <i>campaigns</i> are negative. In groups devoted to POW - MIA affairs, Sampley is kindly considered an <i>activist</i>. Some are even more harsh than that.
The photo where they are far apart is valid but in the other photo the NY Times and basso both got punk'd. http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/kerry2.asp Claim: Photograph shows Senator John Kerry with Jane Fonda at an anti-war rally. Status: False.
Wow. I'm sorry, but Sampley sounds a tad nutty. McCain was permanently brainwashed? We shouldn't hold out a hand of friendship to Vietnam decades after a conflict that we admit was a mistake? Yeah. Maybe we should reactivate our hostilities with all our former war foes: UK, Japan, Germany, Mexico, et cetera. Actually, now that I think about it, we're halfway there. It reminds me of a conspiracy theorist here in the Bay Area: Dave Emory. He used to do a radio show called "One Step Beyond," which was all conspiracy theory, all the time. Emory actually did (maybe still does) some amazing research, turning up some authentic facts and articles, but then he literally goes one step beyond into total wackiness (e.g. the government has a mind-control ray that they can aim exactly from orbitting satellites). Anyway, overall it sounds very reasonable that some vets would oppose Kerry and some would celebrate him. Like all demographics, it's not fair to lump them into one pile.
Mea culpa, I was wrong. They only punk'd the NY Times and the Vietnam Vets opposed to Kerry. Unless the Vietnam Vets opposed to Kerry knew it was fake, in which case they didn't get punk'd, they punk'd the NY Times.
