Crossroads of a nation-Why we need Bush to win

I find Kerry to be a traitor myself and Im well past the age to vote

I would have felt very betrayed being labled the things Kerry was labeling those soldiers

* 200,000 vets filed a petition asking him for his records, he declines
* alot of POWS feel that way, have no numbers for this
*53% of the active and reserve componet soldier in the military today wouldnt vote for him, because of his actions in nam. That number being around 800,000 soldiers in todays military.

Because when those people came home they were condemned, spit on and charged as guilty with no trial. They were treated with dishonor....

He generalized, gave no facts like times, places, incidents or names. He as an officer in the the military said he witnessed things but did nothing...

As someone who actually has served in a war, I must say I would have felt very betrayed being labled the things Kerry was labeling those soldiers in nam while he sat safetly at home, after a 4 measly months. Kerry said himself he committed some of these acts or saw others do it. I actually veiwed some interviews of him saying it... So I too believe he should have been put in Jail.

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.

We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Vietcong, North Vietnamese, or American.

We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how money from American taxes was used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by our flag, as blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs as well as by search and destroy missions, as well as by Vietcong terrorism, and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Vietcong.

We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.

We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of Orientals.

We watched the U.S. falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against "oriental human beings," with quotation marks around that. We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater or let us say a non-third-world people theater, and so we watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the high for the reoccupation by the North Vietnamese because we watched pride allow the most unimportant of battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point. And so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 881's and Fire Base 6's and so many others.

But the problem of veterans goes beyond this personal problem, because you think about a poster in this country with a picture of Uncle Sam and the picture says "I want you." And a young man comes out of high school and says, "That is fine. I am going to serve my country." And he goes to Vietnam and he shoots and he kills and he does his job or maybe he doesn't kill, maybe he just goes and he comes back, and when he gets back to this country he finds that he isn't really wanted, because the largest unemployment figure in the country- it varies depending on who you get it from, the VA Administration 15 percent, various other sources 22 percent. But the largest corps of unemployed in this country are veterans of this war, and of those veterans 33 percent of the unemployed are black. That means 1 out of every 10 of the Nation's unemployed is a veteran of Vietnam.

The hospitals across the country won't, or can't meet their demands. It is not a question of not trying. They don't have the appropriations. A man recently died after he had a tracheotomy in California, not because of the operation but because there weren't enough personnel to clean the mucous out of his tube and he suffocated to death.

Another young man just died in a New York VA hospital the other day. A friend of mine was lying in a bed two beds away and tried to help him, but he couldn't. He rang a bell and there was nobody there to service that man and so he died of convulsions.

I understand 57 percent of all those entering the VA hospitals talk about suicide. Some 27 percent have tried, and they try because they come back to this country and they have to face what they did in Vietnam, and then they come back and find the indifference of a country that doesn't really care, that doesn't really care.

Ahhh, it IS beginning to worry you that so many people have registered. Good.

mesquite:

Sadly, the neoconservative rightwinger's unbelievable pre-programmed hatred of Kerry is so ingrained, and so indelible, as to be impervious to deletion. Why this hatred never existed within the neoconservative confines of Congress towards Kerry until quite RECENTLY, along with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rove, or anybody else hellbent on the ideological platform of god, guns, and gays, is truly a mystery.

mmm...but, Iraq bad. Deficits bad. Children still left behind. Bad. Balls to the wall tax breaks for America's corporations. Always bad. Can't talk like a normal brain functioning individual. Hilariously bad (and well documented). Can you imagine the George W. Bush Library including these whopping snippets of Presidential idiocy? Screwing the environment. Bad. Never understanding the complexity of war, and having everything offered to you on a silver f***** plate, including the Presidency of the United States?

Treason.

But wait...Kerry is running for President.

Ahh, yes, I see.

And what a barrage it has been.

Meanwhile, Bush already is running on a dismal 4 year record of abject failure as the incumbent.

Yes.... now it's all making sense...