sfws

JohnB: While I agree with most of your post I must disagree , if Kerry is to be believed, that he never saw a war crime.

"SEN. KERRY: There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50 calibre machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions (ie, war crime).

http://hnn.us/articles/3552.html

McCain was a hero for having not only put himself in danger for his country, but for having survived torture such as you or I can likely not imagine.

Kerry, too, put himself in danger and survived (like your father) but came to believe, along with the majority of Americans, that the war was initiated on a lie and was contrary to the best American principles.

George Bush survived cocaine parties.

Got to love how people always want to throw Bush into the mix when the debate has nothing to do with him. Besides the cocaine issue never happened, if it did then prove it.

The majority of Americans didn't think Nam was a mistake. That is revisionist history by the hippies that now run the university system and want to blind our children to what was going on.

exactly
Larry that quote you got is great, its shows the "flip flop" style, or the less cleched "oppertunistic" approach that is Kerrys signature. In the O'neil deabte kerry specifcally says( and in many other places too) I never personally witnessed an atrocity. Your quote shows him stepping back and trying to be more abstract, "oh well I shot at a house, maybe someone was in it, I don't know, maybe" So you get a guy who can literally be in 2 places at once. depending on whether he is being abstract or not. Also if you read that quote there is no mention of an atrocity. Is a 50 caliber machine gun an atrocity? Is interdiction or herrasment fire(terms used for fighting an enemy) an atrocity? is a free fire zone an atrocity? No, No and No!!! All he is saying is that he partook in a war, thats all. Clearly Kerry couldn't handle warfare emotionaly, and saw it all as an atrocity. That realy says alot thanks for posting it, classic F'ing Kerry for you there. Come on guys if kerry had seen a little mamason get shot we'd all know in graphic detail about it. it is well known that he says he never directly saw an atrocity. The other thing no one can easily dismiss is that Mr. "I have my band of brothers" is actualy vehemently disliked by his band of brothers. I think it is quite disrespectful to these men who served honorably in TF 116 who oppose Kerry to try to scape goat there funding or dismiss them so off handedly. At the very least someting is ary when so many even admiral hoffman come out against him. These men served our country valiently and there voices are as good judge of character as any one, better than most. So go to the swift boat site and watch not the commercials but the testimony they have from most of the guys at the conference in May( including admiral hoffman) and then tell me that these guys are not genuine and worthy of respect when it comes to their view of their former assocaite John Kerry. These guys obviously have been emotionaly hurt by him, and they feel quite betrayed, far be it for me or you to dismiss them so carelessly.

good grief...the woodwork was teaming apparently.

1) nobody has used the word "hippie" in 25 years. well, that's not true. my father in law, may he rest in peace, used the word after i informed him in the early '90s that "flower children" had gone out of style by 1969.

2) you may be able to fool some of the youngsters here with that statement, but aside from true believers such as yourself, the rest of us old timers here know that the longer it went, the less popular it got.

according to polls, the same thing is already happening with iraq.

There is a difference between incedental bad things which happen in a war and systematic, order-based war crimes. The second describes a lot of what happened in Vietnam.

Cycloptichorn

Abe Simpson says "hippie" all the time. So does Montgomery Burns.

Baldimo, bless you for serving proudly in our armed forces, but I'd venture you were just born around the time we were thrown out of Saigon. Whoever is working their revisionist magic on you should be commended.

I have read on the issue and about the only people who thought the war was unpopular were the hippies and the protestors, who happened to be the same people we see here that are against the war in Iraq. The people haven't changed only their ages. Protestors were in the minority back in the late 60's and early 70's. They are now the people who are teaching the liberal indoctrination to our children in school. Don't fool yourself into thinking because you and all your friends thought the same way it was a majority.

Don't make the same mistake either...wink

Only at first, Baldimo. After a while, EVERYONE hated Vietnam.

You're telling me that the parents of all the kids who died over there weren't against the war?

It isn't revisionist history to say that Vietnam was a national embarassment, and everyone knew it by 1975.... it was a poorly planned, poorly executed conflict that accomplished nothing more than killing a bunch of people. Do yourself a favor and stop defending it.

Cycloptichorn

I'm not so much defending it as I am trying to prevent people like you from distorting the issue as it was then. I think you are right in that some people who lost family members didn't like the war but that can be said about any war in history. Vietnam isn't any different in that respect.

I happen to know there are plenty of people now who think Vietnam was a good thing to be involved in. I know plenty of vets who to this day support what they did as well as what went on back then. The only reason it was a national embarrassment was because the politicians didn't let the soldiers do their jobs. It was micromanaged by Lyndon Johnson and his war cabinet. As then as now we should let the soldiers do their jobs without being looked at by every politician that wants to point a finger.

Okay. Vietnam was bad because of poor leadership. I don't have a problem with that. But you need to realize that most people in America viewed the Vietnam war as a poorly-run war, even at the time it was going on, and as the situation got worse the opinions about the war got worse correspondingly.

There will always be hard-liners who will defend the U.S., no matter what we do. And do you really think there are more Vietnam veterans that support the Vietnam war than condemn it? You need a little dose of reality here, man, look up some poll numbers, please!

Cycloptichorn

Yes, please.

johnson (as an elected president) - '65,'66.'67,'68

nixon - '69,'70,'71,'72,'73,'74

i don't understand why it is so hard for republicans to take any responsibility for their part in anything bad that happens in america.

carter gets the blame for weakening intelligence and defense even though he was followed by 12 solid years of republican administration. then 8 years of clinton, during which period, america reaped some of the benefits of the "peace dividend" as outlined and promoted by g.h.w. bush in the 1992 state of the union address. an address in which he outlind the defense spending to be cut, at 30% by 1997. cuts which john kerry voted WITH the president on, btw.

9/11 comes along. bam. "for 30 years the democrats have weakened defense and intelligence!"

point being here;

nixon had time to fix the problem you refer to, but didn't. instead, he bent to the will of the hundred or so "hippies" you speak of and began looking for a way to get america out of vietnam.

likewise with reagan and bush. 12 years of sway and much popular support, yet failed to fix "the carter problem" and chose instead to begin the re-focusing of republican efforts on "family values". this was followed by gingrich's republican revolution, which had the main agenda of hamstringing clinton and again focusing on tax cuts, more "family values" with a little extra religion thrown in and little attention paid to what was going on in the middle east.

bush jr. enters office. has yet another chance to fix not only "the carter problem", but "the clinton problem" as well.

yet bush chooses to spend time on faith based initiatives, tax cuts, reviving the popular "star wars" video game for adults. names cheney in may 2001 (5 months to do this ??) to head a terrorism task force due to reported increases in chatter. defense against terrorists is apparently so vital that, after 4 months, the task force has never met.

what this tells me, is that 9 months into a 4 year term, terrorism and by extension defense/intelligence, was not largely on the mind of bush jr.

faith based initiatives, family values, tax cuts were.

and not one of those things was of any use to the people that got whacked in the towers, the pentagon or that field in pennsylvania.

and people wonder why i quit voting for republican presidents.

Maybe you could leave it to those of us who were around then to figure out where the distortion's coming from.

that should tell you something, mcg. !!!

People like you are the distortion.