No kidding – even if you could conclusively prove tomorrow that the Swift Bullshiters For Bush mudslingers were being paid directly out of George W. Bush’s wallet, I suspect the majority of Bush-backers will simply dismiss it as no big deal. Rush Limbaugh will tell us it’s just “fraternity-level hazing,” Ann Coulter will applaud Boy George as a fearless seeker of truth, and Karl Rove would just shout, “Look! Terrorists!”
I hope that Kerry can manage to publically contronts these accusations. It is almost like watchinging a kid getting picked on in Middle School…when these people are directly rebutted they will probably fade away. But if Kerry just allows these stories to go unchallenged, his campaign will end up getting wrecked.
Its obvious they hate Kerry for becoming an anti-war protestor after the war. I’ve said this before in another thread, does anyone seriously believe his commanders and fellow Swift Boat captains said “This Kerry kid, he needs to be put in his place…lets give him a load of medals and send him home a war hero. That’ll teach the uppity punk”.
If that was what passed for discipline among these men, then they are the ones that are unfit.
Obvious answer: “I’ve admitted many times that I made poor choices when I was a young man; if people base their vote on who I was thirty years ago, I might not vote for me either. But I think Sen. Kerry and myself should be judged on what we’ve done in public life.”
Whammo, the debate is back on Kerry’s senate record.
With time to prepare, a competent political team can defuse anything.
Not just you and not just military people. There was a palpable sea change when Kerry and the rest of the VVAW spoke and showed up at marches. Regular folks saw that the anti-war movement was not just shrill morons like Fonda and clowns like Abbie Hoffman (and just TRY to be taken seriously with those two grabbing the headlines :rolleyes: ). If men who had fought in it thought the war was wrong and poorly handled then the niggling little doubts in back of the heads of Joe and Jane Average could finally break through. John Kerry had the credibility to say the emperor had no clothes and by doing so allowed much of the rest of the country to sigh with relief that they weren’t nuts, that there was indeed a naked guy strutting down the street.
David Simmons can give the WWII vet’s perspective but from my vantage point as the son of a vet many of them seemed especially relieved that their own observations were accurate, that this war was no glorious John Wayne epic but a dirty, nasty thing run by people who didn’t know what they were doing for reasons that had long before lost any validity they may have once had. Americans were being killed to satisfy the political and financial ambitions of a small group of powerful men, not to “save the world from Communism.” They could see, and now speak about, the differences between this and their own war. John Kerry showed that a good soldier (sailor?) could speak up without being disloyal and, in fact, his speaking up showed what was GOOD about America, that to be patriotic sometimes required you to break step with your comrades.
Furt, yes, that is the obvious answer. If, at any time, Pres Bush said that I’d have much more respect for him than I do now. So far he hasn’t.
This just in…
“Republican Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, called an ad criticizing John Kerry’s military service “dishonest and dishonorable” and urged the White House on Thursday to condemn it as well…”
As far as that goes, we don’t have a lot of vetting of the credentials of those who sponsored the ad. For all we know many the Swuft vets among them were Swift boat command staff sitting in the relative safety of an office somewhere in Saigon.
I think it’s a mistake to put military service in the forefront but that train has pulled out of the station. Kerry’s military record speaks for itself as does that of his political opponent and revisionism 30 years later and by a political action group needs to be seen for what it is, just political campaign sniping.
This is political baloney and it’s hard to understand anyone swallowing it whole. Or maybe it isn’t so hard at that. After all, even our beloved commander-in-chief, who has never made a mistake by his own testimony, has a detractor here and there. In fact, I think I know one of them intimately.
Please extend her our warmest regards. In whatever manner seems appropriate.
Indulge me, I believe there’s always a second side to the story…
- There are solid arguments that Vietnam, when viewed in the overall framework of containment, was successful in at least slowing the advance of worldwide Communism at a critical juncture in history. It also allowed a lot of wonderful people to escape that country and come to the U.S., where they have enriched the ethnic melting pot that is our nation.
- The problem with Vietnam wasn’t that we were there - it was that we were there under a squeamish and politicized administration that ran the war from DC. Our soldiers performed admirably, but in a very real sense had their hands tied the whole time. Way to go, LBJ!
- 30 years of revisionist history, taught at our universities by the same draft dodging hippies that went to college in the 60’s and protested said war… Hmm, is there any way you’d realistically expect them to puncture their sanctimony by admitting the war did some good?
- If I have a problem with Kerry’s opposition to the War, it’s more a question of loyalty to his fellow soldiers. He spread a lot of wild accusations in an era when fine young men who’d served their country (leaving aside the justice of the cause) were being vilified and spit upon when they came “home.” This to me is the greatest disgrace of the Vietnam era. I am not saying Kerry was complicit in it, just that I don’t think his work helped
- Basically Vietnam is a great example of what happens when you try to help the French. Screw em!
Thus speaketh the Devil’s advocate. These are not necessarily my views, as I’m not really a committed scholar of the Vietnam conflict, but I’d probably lean more toward these than to Brainglutton’s.
I’m certainly pleased to hear that this steaming pile of balderdash does not necessarily represent your views TheRight. Especially as it contains some of the more obnoxious suggestions of a viewpoint long discredited.
For instance, your amusing suggestion that the worldwide advance of Communist hegemony was thwarted. Did you get the newspaper, the one about how a Communist regime took control of every square inch of Viet Nam? Perhaps you missed it, I can get you a cite should you require.
And that much-beloved myth, about how the US could have actually won in Viet Nam, save only that those wimpy liberals in Washington DC held them back. Perhaps. But only by unleashing every bit of military power we possessed, up to and including nuclear, and stacking corpses, theirs and ours, like cordwood. Most sane people would think that rather a high price to pay for a jungly nugget of third-world turf. YMMV
I won’t even go into that droll bit about “hippy draft-dodgers” taking over the Universities. Its kinda like nostalgia, since at the time, the Rightards were swearing that the pinkoes had already taken over the campuses. I am a bit disappointed that you didn’t mention the dastardly flouridation plot. Precious bodily fluids, and all that.
All in all, an exceptional debut. Though, frankly, you look a bit…familiar, stranger. Have we met somewhere before?
Interestingly enough {B]Right**, every one of your propositions is either demonstrable false or at least highly debatable.
Our involvement (a strange name for eight or nine years of full scale combat and some 60,000 dead) slowed the advance of world wide communism? At best it delayed the unification of Vietnam from 1965 when the Marines and the First Infantry Division went in, until the Fall of Saigon – what? Ten years at the most? Did Vietnam in any way restrict the Soviet Union or Red China? Somehow the war in Vietnam stifled the democratically and legitimately elected government of Chili, over threw the Communist government of Cuba, prevented Communist take overs in Central America? Accelerated the unification of Germany? Facilitated the Solidarity Movement in Poland? Curbed the Kammer Rouge in Cambodia? Set the stage for the implosion of the Soviet Union? In what way did the war in Vietnam slow the advance of Communism?
If the troops had been turned lose we would have cleaned up the war, no sweat? The war was “lost” because of political restraints imposed in Washington? One comment – the Cambodian Incursion. Do you remember the firestorm that erupted when Nixon widened the war? Do you remember Kent State? The troops get unrestricted discretion how to run a war only when the Army is the government. That does not happen in a civilian run system when the leaders are responsible to the electorate. To say that the troops won the war and Washington lost the war is a cop out to avoid saying that the war could not be “won” without a level of commitment that the country was unwilling to make, and even then would not stay won.
Thirty years of revisionist history? Unfortunately neither Senator Kerry nor I had have the benefit of those 30 years of biased teaching, both of us having lived it and having no need to be told about it. Another cop out – blame it on the leftist egg heads.
Wild accusations? Regrettably the wild accusations were true. Senator Kerry may not have witnessed the incidents he talked about (but he never claimed to be a witness to all), but the incidents happened. Talk to any Vietnam veteran and you will get stories that will curl your hair – prisoners tossed out of choppers, casualties mutilated, peasants gunned down for amusement, free fire zones through populated country, livestock slaughtered, productive land and forest defoliated, and more, and more, and more. It is no betrayal to tell the truth. Your so called betrayal is nothing more than an apology for a code of silence.
A claim that our post 1965 involvement in Vietnam was to benefit the French is so divorced from reality as not to require a response.
And I suppose you ask the same question of Moveon.org and Gerge Soros?
Oh, I know where Moveon.org’s money comes from. It comes from me!
“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we”
Talk about the misstatement of the century!! Ouch! He finally told the truth about his own administration. He wasn’t supposed to do that!
Just heard some of the Swift Boat Vets on the sound box. OUCH. Sounded like the Passion of the Kerry. Old wounds go deep and they apparently are getting moveon.org amounts of funding.
I thought it unwise from day one that Senator Kerry continually mention his military career. It was simply too short to brag about and it comes with it’s own shadow.
Despite repeated ribbings from comedians about it, his campaign managers continued to use it as a major focal point during the Democratic convention. The podium shaped like the bow of a ship, and his “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for Duty” intro were (trying to be polite) excessively iconic in nature. The theme is also used to start some of his commercials (“I defended this country as a young man etc…”).
He exited the convention without any bounce and now he has 20+ angry (and funded) vets on his tail. Since these vets have been voicing their opinion for almost a year it was just a matter of time before they surfaced. It is one of 2 shoes to drop. The 2nd shoe to drop will be his wife’s political undertakings.
If I were Kerry I would get a new campaign manager.
Oh, for Og’s sake! Is THK going to be the new Hillary Clinton now? This is ridiculous.
The Kerry campaign is working hard to [url=http://humaneventsonline.com.edgesuite.net/unfit_pdf.html]prevent the Swiftboat vets’ ads.
I’m already on record as saying that these guys may be going over the line if they can’t corroborate this stuff, but the letter reprinted at the cite above is slimy, untrue, intimidating tactic from Kerry’s lawyers. The letter claims that the men are lying because they weren’t ‘shipmates’ of Kerry’s - a claim they never made. The letter goes on to put scare quotes around the “doctor” in the video, implying that he isn’t a real doctor. The letter also claims that the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth are a ‘sham’ organization because they are funded by a rich Republican (does that make George Soros’ 527 organization a ‘sham’ organization?). The letter goes on to make vague threats about possible libel charges against stations that air the ad.
As someone who’s skeptical of this ad, I have to say that the thuggery expressed in that letter is also over the line. If the Bush administration had done that to try to stop Farenheit 9/11 from being shown, the Democrats on this board would be howling about freedom of speech and censorship.
This election is getting very, very ugly.
Indeed, friend ** McGiver**, might you be a bit more specific? What, precisely, are these unseemly activities to which you refer so discreetly? We’re all grownups here, we can take it.
This seems to have touched a raw nerve with John McCain, and backfired a bit on Bush…with McCain reminded of the disgraceful treatment he recieved at the hands of Bush supporters in the 2000 election. McCain will never endorse Kerry in a million years, but he won’t stand for this either - and it will hurt Bush’s campaign when McCain gets a little to “exhausted” to campaign vigorously this fall, or suddenly comes up with more pressing commitments.
In the end, this will not be good news for the Rove Cheney administration.
(Yeah, I know I sound like a liberal circle jerker, but this type of horseshit turns me into one).
Oh, migod! A were-liberal!