Oliver North on Sen. Kerry

Guys... check out my link. Context is a wunnerful thing.

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I am personally aware of numerous attrocities commited in Vietnam. We would often leave c-rations for the VC to find.

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dyslexia wrote:

I am personally aware of numerous attrocities commited in Vietnam. We would often leave c-rations for the VC to find.

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McGentrix wrote:

Correct. He used hearsay.

Hearsay is a legal term meaning to repeat what someone else has told you which cannot be verified by the person himself. What your post demonstrated was a manipulation and willful misinterpretation of a man's words. Are you asserting that Kerry did this with the veterans' words?

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On April 22, 1971, Kerry went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to indict the American war effort in Vietnam for horrendous war crimes. These were "not isolated incidents," he testified, "but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

He offered no evidence. Instead he trumpeted the charges of the "Winter Soldier Investigation," an antiwar gathering a few months earlier at which men claiming to be Vietnam veterans -- many were later exposed as frauds -- described the atrocities they had allegedly committed.

Kerry has never taken back his terrible slur against his fellow soldiers -- men he now calls his "band of brothers." The most he has been willing to say is that his words "were a little bit over the top" and that he could perhaps "have phrased things more artfully." He certainly doesn't regret the propaganda coup he handed the Viet Cong: "I'm proud that I stood up," Kerry told NBC in April. "I don't want anybody to think twice about it."

And therein lies the fundamental hypocrisy of the Kerry candidacy.

He came to prominence as a radical opponent of the war in Vietnam, yet now he runs for president on the strength of his service in that war. He portrayed the men who fought there as unspeakable savages, yet now he surrounds himself with Vietnam vets at every turn. He lent respectability to those who demanded that America cut and run, that it abandon a beleaguered ally, that it drop "the mystical war against communism." Yet now he insists that he would be a tough and vigilant commander-in-chief, one who would never disrespect allies, one in whose hands the security of the United States would be safe.

source

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If there is a problem with the 'Winter Soldier Investigation' perhaps you could take you complaints up there. Or maybe you want to assert that atrocities did not happen Vietnam?

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"exposed as frauds"? Any source for that part?

Piffka's post on the debunking thread says that it was an investigation. I don't know if there were affadavits or whatever.

I see no hypocrisy or contradiction in serving in a war, seeing it up close, and then coming home and calling for an end to it. More moral standing than an anti-war protestor who avoided the draft, IMO.

Meanwhile, your cite confirms that your previous statement that he had "recanted" is false.

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sozobe wrote:

I see no hypocrisy or contradiction in serving in a war, seeing it up close, and then coming home and calling for an end to it. More moral standing than an anti-war protestor who avoided the draft, IMO.

The hypocricy stems from him now running for president claiming to be a Vietnam war hero. He gave up that status in 1971.

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McGentrix wrote:

The hypocricy stems from him now running for president claiming to be a Vietnam war hero. He gave up that status in 1971.

Well, maybe you see him as claiming to be a war hero. I watched the whole convention and thought that he was trying to get across that he was a public servant. He served in the military, he served as a prosecutor, he served in the Senate. Bringing the veterans out was an effort to connect to the veteran vote, I'll grant you, but the pres has made quite a few VFW stops of his own so what's the big deal?

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Round and round we go...

No, he didn't. His service didn't disappear. His deeds didn't get undone. And many see him as all the more heroic for doing what he did to try to stop the war.

This is what the debunking thread is for, to stop the round and rounding. So I'll link again:

sozobe wrote:

This has come up a few times. [That Kerry "started it"]

Who put on his fighter pilot paraphernalia and played soldier?

Who keeps talking about strong and tough and war president?

Who keeps trying to portray Kerry as soft and wishy-washy?

I wish I had time to do a nimh job right now -- I don't -- but I don't think it would be too hard to come up with a whole lot of ways that Bush "started it", where an emphasis (but NOT to the exclusion of issues -- issues were very much a part of the Dem convention, and are very much part of the campaign) on Kerry's Vietnam stint served as a rebuttal to the many things Bush had already said and done.

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=864417#864417

Meanwhile,

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JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Friday that the country will face ``abrupt and painful'' choices if Congress does not move quickly to trim the Social Security and Medicare benefits that have been promised to the baby boom generation.

Is this what Bush had in mind all along?

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There are always those who would seek to silence a whistle-blower.

For many Americans, Kerry's tesitimony amounted to exactly that. This stirred up a lot of bad blood amongst those who (stubbornly) refuse to admit that yes, a lot of Americans did a lot of very bad things in Vietnam. Kerry went there, was against the war, and spoke out about it afterwards.

It's not surprising to me that there are those who would seek to tarnish or smear him for telling the truth. After all, a lot of them look at it as 'telling tales out of school' or ratting out one's buddies.

My recommendation for these people? Grow up. Take some responsibility for what we did as a nation and stop trying to sanitize history to paint us as saints in a situation where we displayed a shaky moral imperative.

This is the same reaction that the whistleblower at Abu Ghraib is having to endure now, yaknow? While one of the women deeply involved, Lynndie England, was given a standing ovation by hundreds of people when she returned home. It's bizzaro world.

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The hypocricy stems from him now running for president claiming to be a Vietnam war hero. He gave up that status in 1971.

Bullsh*t. His actions after the war reflect in no way his actions during the war. You only say that because you want to pretend that U.S. soldiers didn't commit atrocities in Vietnam.

Not to mention there are quite a few of us who think that it takes guts to testify in front of congress about things noone wants to talk about.

Cycloptichorn

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Oh yeah, I forgot.

Why would you even bother posting anything Ollie North said? He's a liar, and a traitor to America. Who gives a damn what he thinks...

Hell, a condemnation of Kerry by North is a positive thing for him, in my book...

Cycloptichorn

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You are still missing the point.

The radicals that followed Kerry and his sordid stories beleive that EVERY soldier that went to Vietnam must have been guilty of those crimes. Kerry didn't say that only PFC. Johnson committed those crimes, he said that they were common place. He sullied the name of EVERY SINGLE soldier that fought in Vietnam and now he wants to be rewarded for that by becoming the President!

His speech before the senate was a rallying cry for those people that spit on soldiers returning from Vietnam. His speech before the Senate was used by the enemy to hurt POW's.

Kerry wasn't a whistle blower, he was a propagandist. Plain and simple.

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McGentrix wrote:

You are still missing the point.

The radicals that followed Kerry and his sordid stories beleive that EVERY soldier that went to Vietnam must have been guilty of those crimes.

That's one of those assertions that mean little without backup.

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Kerry didn't say that only PFC. Johnson committed those crimes, he said that they were common place. He sullied the name of EVERY SINGLE soldier that fought in Vietnam and now he wants to be rewarded for that by becoming the President!

Did those crimes exist? Were they commonplace? Do you know for a fact one way or the other?

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His speech before the senate was a rallying cry for those people that spit on soldiers returning from Vietnam. His speech before the Senate was used by the enemy to hurt POW's.
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The truth isn't always pretty. It's often pretty damn ugly.

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Kerry wasn't a whistle blower, he was a propagandist. Plain and simple.

Unless what he said was true. And he hasn't recanted it, as you previously said, and you haven't come up with any frauds...

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Yep. Keep your head in the sand. It's safe there.

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The radicals that followed Kerry and his sordid stories beleive that EVERY soldier that went to Vietnam must have been guilty of those crimes.

No, they don't. Quit appealing to extremes!

I'm sure that they believe a lot of soldiers were guilty of those crimes, but I think you'd have a hard time finding people who claimed that every soldier was a criminal... maybe back in the 70's there was more of that, but not today...

I could give a damn if his speech was used against POW's. The VC would have just used some other form of torture if Kerry hadn't said what he said.

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He sullied the name of EVERY SINGLE soldier that fought in Vietnam and now he wants to be rewarded for that by becoming the President!

Every soldier who fought in Vietnam is not responsible for the atrocities that took place there. The U.S. government, however, IS complicit, for allowing it to go on and failing to take responsibility/admit complicity in tactics that most civilians would find decidedly appalling. That was the major point of Kerry's speech; not that individual soldiers should be spit on, but that our whole war was a terrible idea and the way it was being run was even worse.

I think there are a lot of soldiers who wanted a name and face to put on their discontent on this issue, and they chose Kerry for it because he had the gall to actually speak in public about things that he had seen and heard.

Cycloptichorn

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Oliver North on Sen. Kerry

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