Modesty compels me to blush. Or would, if I were so afflicted.
I would blush too if I had left in that split infinitive.
That is the sort of arrant pedantry up with which nobody should have to put. Paraphrase of a reputed Winston Churchill remark.
And the horse upon in which you rode.
I love it when you talk dirty to me, luci.
By the way, I think that Thurlow’s written commendation for the Bronze Star would indicate that he was under fire. I will double check to see what I can find.
There was a third person to receive a Bronze Star that day in that place. It mentioned that he was under fire. The report that won him his metal was not written by Kerry. (My source was a TV news report. Don’t remember which one.)
Also, the skipper of the swiftboat that was directly behind Kerry said that they were under enemy fire off and on that day. (Same source)
I am reminded of how silent the defenders of Nixon grew as it became apparent that he was involved in the Watergate scandal and attempts at coverup. There were still a few that defended him right on through. But most Americans, Republicans certainly included, were very angry at what he had done to this country.
Is this manipulation of the Swiftboat Pubbie Vets and the exploitation of their objections to Kerry’s 1970’s stance against the war any less vile than the break-in at Democratic Headquarters at the Watergate?
Putting spurs to the horse for now…But play nice or I will use smilies.
Sure, but I ask him one time to please fondle my buttocks, and he never talks to me again.
Yes. As I mentioned a couple of times, it was also eyewitnessed by R.E. Lambert. See here and here.
To my knowledge it has not been shown that Kerry wrote any of the reports.
As did the gunner of that boat, Langhofer, and another man, Jim Russell.
It may have been Jim Russell that I was thinking of rather than the skipper. Sorry if I posted incorrect information.
Also, I apologize for repeating points that you have made. Hell, I’m even repeating points I’ve made!
No need to apologize. The genius of Sam’s attacks on so many fronts is that it does create a lingering haze, not unlike a dorm room of farts that settles into everything. This is the intent: force others to spend time, money and effort running here and there pointing out how full of shit you are while you saunter away.
Said the patron saint of non-partisanship. :rolleyes:
After all the hand wringing and foot stomping you are still left with a candidate who based his entire campaign on his brief tour of Vietnam. This would have gone unnoticed had he resigned his commission and entered the work force. Instead, he chose to protest the war by publicly indicting his fellow soldiers as war criminals.
This was done while there were POW’s in prison under threat of war-crime trials. How many people were tortured over this and how many MIA’s did he create by his desire to enter into politics. We’ll never know. That’s the problem with MIA’s. They just disappear.
He could easily have expressed his anti-war sentiment in other ways. He could have presented the case for isolationism or even pacifism. Instead, he presented hearsay testimony in a public forum. There was no reason for him to do this. He had to know he was endangering the soldiers he left behind. He also had to know how angry a Veteran would feel being called a war criminal. That is something you remember forever. Time will not erase this. Kerry knows this because the focus groups know this.
The only war crimes Kerry can accurately relate to are his. He admitted doing things against his conscience and yet no one has called him on it. He can garner forgiveness for shooting someone in the back in a time of war because people understand that fear and survival are a part of war. However, he willfully and with forethought, set fire to people’s homes. This is the military career that he is running on as a campaign theme.
Although he has admitted his own failure do the right thing in a time of war, he is the first in line to use the Abu Ghraib prison scandal for his own political benefit. And again, he has put soldiers at risk with his political rhetoric. It’s not hard to understand the hatred the Swiftboat Vets hold for him as well as his fear it will spread to other Vets. The more he protests, the worse it will get.
And that’s why this thread is now on page 17 and moving at a rate of 2 pages a day.
Kerry had two succesive tours in Viet Nam. The first was a year and second was for 4 or 5 months.
That’s right we’ll never know, but we can sure as hell put the worst possible interpretation on it can’t we? Facts? Who needs facts? There are still some MIAs who just might be Kerry’s fault.
His first tour was on an offshore Frigate. I would not consider that a combat tour. It’s not about the possibility that there might be MIA’s with Kerry’s boot-print on them. It’s that he KNEW that he was endangering lives with his public testimony. A testimony that was not his to give (other than his own activities). I’m not faulting his objection to the war. I may not agree with it, but I respect it. And I mean that.
If you consider that his presence before Congress was in keeping with his intentions to run for office it does not reflect well on his character. I’ve always tried to give him the benefit of the doubt regarding his ambitions but his testimony colors my opinion.
The more he protests the Swift Boat Vets the more visible his military background becomes. When people learn that the home movies (in the commercials) were staged it diminishes his image. The commercials take on a Dukakis like quality. It’s the little things that people pick up on. There is only 1 reason for him to use his military service as a backdrop and that is because he scores weak in some focus group area.
The films were not staged. That’s been debunked in this thread already. Keep up with the facts.
Maybe we should leave whether or not it was a combat tour to an expert like, say, the US Navy.
Yes, it’s like a line from one old horror movie, “The more you struggle, Mortimer, the more you strangle yourself”.
All decent people know that these charges against Kerry need to be debated right now. Indeed, there was a better time to do it. Democratic primaries were the perfect time for Democrats to debate these issues with Kerry and put them to rest one way or another. Why didn’t they do it?
So you would consign to second class veteran status all the Viet Nam vets who served on aircraft carriers, escorts and the like?
Chipping in, page 17. I have a few things to say.
In rebuttal to this common line:
This is always from people who don’t listen to what he and his campaign say. He spends a lot of time (the vast majority of it) talking about his plans on health care and on jobs. A little less on foreign policy and a little less on other social issues. While I agree that he has often lacked specifics in his broad plans, I don’t think that we have expected enormous specifics out of political candidates before. I don’t think Kerry has spent any less time than Bush on specific plans for the next 4 years.
Kerry used the veteran imagery as an entry point for his candidacy – the salute, the “I know what it takes because I was in a war”, etc. But, especially since the convention, he has not rested on it. He has toned down the imagery, at least from what I see and read. Yeah, there are still cheesy things like the brief salute on the Daily Show. But what has kept it in the forefront of the campaign, primarily, is the SBVT ads and the debate that they have inspired.
On johnkerry.com, there is a link to an article by Rassman in rebuttal to the SBVT. We can ignore that, because it wouldn’t be there except for the SBVT. There is a speech to the VFW – of course he is going to mention service in that. There is a mention of it in his biography. But no other mentions anywhere of his service in primarily linked pages. Notably, he gave a long speech to Cooper Union on the 24th and didn’t mention Vietnam once. Only on one of his issues page, “Veterans”, can I find mention of his service. So when you say “his entire campaign,” please enlighten me as to what you mean. It seems that a tiny sliver of his time is spent talking about Vietnam, and most of that has been rebuttal to the SBVT stuff.
Next, this whole thing is going to blow over by next week and the president will be much worse for it. It is now a failed tactic – Kerry has organized enough to quickly and viciously defeat these attacks. Look how fast he is moving. Every time there is another negative ad released, people will question the president more. The press is growing tired of this back and forth and will find the next “Shove It” upon which to fixate by this weekend. I guarantee it. You can kiss your 2 page a day rate in this thread goodbye.
Mostly, though, it is just sad. Bush has politicized yet another previously immune area of our national debate. He did it with science policy; he has done it with nonpartisan economic analysis; he has tried to do it with church services. Now he has let it (or at least permitted it to) become politically in-bounds to go after a veteran’s record. Armed Services reports are now assumed to be tainted with politics. Medal circumstances can now be scrutinized. I mean, on Monday, after Bob Dole came out on the Sunday shows against Kerry, the liberal blogs were all over the fact that Dole’s first Purple Heart was caused by a self-inflicted errant grenade toss. It predates Kerry – every right winger worth his salt knows that Cleland lost his limbs from another errant grenade toss. We should be outraged. These are people who put their bodies on the line for our country, and their actions should only be subject to the rules of war, not second guessing how many pints of blood were laid down. It is sad – it is a line that Bush let his party cross (even if he did not do it directly himself) and now it is politically expedient and a salient debate point for everyone. I don’t like it when the SBVT does it; I don’t like it when Saxby Chambliss did it; I am just as angry at liberal bloggers when they do it to Dole. But I also recognize that politics is an arms race, and if they didn’t do it, they would be crushed. Look how they were crushing Kerry while Kerry was ignoring it and look how Kerry turned it around once he went on the offensive (mostly, surprise surprise, by interpreting the SBVT veterans’ records…)
Lastly, this is funny and I thought I would share it with you. Kerry as God of War, Death, and Madness:
http://kenlayne.com/2004/08/god-of-war-death-madness.html
And his opponent is a guy who led the nation into a war with Iraq over nonexistent WMDs, has failed to capture the leader behind the worst terrorist attack on American soil, and spent his formative Vietnam-era years guarding the skies of Texas between beer runs. Or have you forgotten that?
At least Kerry had the cojones to voluntarily show up in Vietnam and get his ass shot at, unlike some other candidates we could name. That his willingness to serve is now being smeared by a bunch of proven liars backed by a coward merely demonstrates how low the Bush-Cheney campaign is willing to sink in their quest for four more dishonorable years.
[Moan.]
Because there were no charges. There was nothing to discuss, nothing to argue about. Way, way back when O’Neill first started this crap, Nixon put John Warner, Secretary of the Navy, on the case. Investigate this punk Kerry, get me some dirt. And he couldn’t do it. Because…[drum rollllll]…there was no dirt!
And there still isn’t! With all the shit-headed pundits making serious noises about all these “charges”, there isn’t a grain of proof to any of it! The chief accusers have changed their stories, the evidence points entirely in another direction, the men most familiar with Kerry back him up…there is nothing! Nada! How many times does your nose have to be rubbed in it before you catch on!
They are making shit up to win an election!
The only thing remotely culpable they can come up with is maybe Kerry told a tall tale about what a big deal he was, dropping off CIA agents in a clandestine mission. The Bushiviks tell bigger lies than that before breakfast, before they get their game face on. You would be hard pressed to find a given week in the Bush Admin when they didn’t tell three lies bigger than that! That would be their best week!
Kerry is the little Mom-and Pop mendacity shop, Bush is Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target and Piggly Wiggly all wrapped up into one. Kerry is the War of Jenkins Ear, Bush is WWI, WWII, and the Big One that Thank God Never Happened! Kerry is the soccer hooligans of South Wellesley Borough, Bush is the Mongol Horde! Kerry is a bit of a fibber, Bush is a galaxy swallowing black hole of sheer neutron density bullshit! If you taped Bush’s mouth closed, and Kerry stayed up, eating amphetamines and lying non-stop, without breaking for food, sleep or nookie, it would take Kerry ten years to catch up! And that’s if he talks really, really fast!
And I am sure that everyone has noticed that E-Sabbath doesn’t have the fortitude to confront me directly with any point of contention that he/she may have with anything that I have written.
WOOOSH!!
The “Elvis” comment was for the benefit of any Elvis fans of the liberal persuasion that just may happen to be lurking around this thread.
Think they may be at least one?