I disagree. I gave my opinion and that’s how I feel. The Navy might influence that opinion but ultimately it is mine to make. That is the meaning of “the court of public opinion”. People judge based on their feelings, not technical terms. Having to parse out what the definition of “is” is will not sway someone’s opinion. That is the problem with this debates like this. People are discussing how many bullet holes it takes in a boat to equal a hail of bullets.
Leaving a relatively safe Frigate for a swift boat is the admiral part of his career.
Actually, liars right here said that there were no bullet holes, ergo no enemy fire. When it turned out that there were bullet holes, the spinning started.
So, your argument is that Kerry’s service was not admirable until he moved from the seas to the waterways?
Good Lord no. You’re missing the point. The only person who is starting to get it is New Iskander. And you’d be hard pressed to make a term like “second class veteran” fly very far in any circle.
This debate is making people try to explain details as if it was a court case. Well maybe it is in a way but the closest case I can think of is the Simpson’s trial. This is trial by court-of-opinion, not by jury.
I have to believe that Senator Kerry understands it but is too far along to dump his campaign manager.
Oh, I’m sorry, but when you said it was “the admiral” part, rather than saying “the most admiral,” I took that to be, you know, exclusive of all the other parts of his career (as the words you actually used would mean). Clearly just a miscommunication, but of course my follow up would have been to ask about whether being on a frigate off of Viet Nam is more admirable than say, being in Alabama.
Funny, what are Johnathan and Dr. Einstein doing writhing on the floor? Mortimer, get back in that chair, now! We want to keep talking about how helpless you are.
What “decent” people are finding out, New Iskander, is that the Shifties are a bunch of liars and that John Kerry is every inch the war hero he’s been cracked up to be.
The poll numbers show it. “Decent” people are now realizing that this whole thing was a smear campaign luanched by the Bushies. And guess what? It’s backfiring. People are seeing just what a bunch of loathsome sleazeballs these guys are and the light of that realization is reflecting directly back on President Jesus McChimp.
While we’ve not heard yet, I’m gonna take a header and say that it was because Kerry knew that he would marry someone disgustingly wealthy who would be able to handsomely recompense those who would back Kerry’s version of events.
Sorta like he knew that he wold be running for president 35+ years in the future. Helluva prognosticator, that Kerry.
No, he didn’t.
Neat trick, that. Laying torture victims and MIAs at Kerry’s feet. Because, after all, he was certainly the only person who came back from Vietnam and claimed that soldiers were routinely breaking the laws of war. Everyone else was fulla stories about ice cream socials and beer runs.
Because so many badly planned wars have ended through isolationism and/or pacifism. And was the testimony he presented wrong?
Shit the bed, man! Everybody is using Abu Ghraib that can. It was a huge clusterfuck which we’ve still not seen the end of. (R)s are doing their damnedest to downplay it. Do you think that sweeping it under the rug is the proper response?
Yup, just Kerry. That evil, evil bastard. Why, oh why, does he hate America so?
Except that they’re angry at him because of his testimony. And they’re trying to make it appear that they’re upset with him because of his service. And they’re too fucking cowardly to condemn him for what is really sticking in their craws.
Nah, this thread is on pg 17 because everyone who bashed the Swifties is in here whooping it up and having a party. The apologists have tucked tail and run. Just like we expected them to.
You’ve been spanked for this already, but I have to wonder at someone who has slogged through this entire thread and missed the debunking of your claim.
Huh? Are you saying that the commercials make Kerry appear to be a politician? Because he is, y’know.
Like the unceasing lies from the Swifties. Man, that sticks out like a turd in a punchbowl!
See there. You’ve lived up to the least of my expectations. Congratulations! Of course, my expectations are pretty notoriously low, so it’s really more of a wash.
Well, your’e the one who dismissed reference to Kerry’s first tour with what looked like a sneering, “I would not consider that a combat tour.” Maybe I am missing the point of that comment. So would you explain it to me?
Any of you Swiftie fans want to condem Bush for being a weird, lying exaggerator or anything for claiming to have been in the Air Force for 602 days when he wasn’t?
Damn, Braintree, nice find. Getting the date wrong about when you were shot at in Cambodia kind of pales in comparison to repeatedly lying about (and overtly defending) which branch of the military you were in. Sheesh.
[sarcasm] No it doesn’t pale by comparison! Viet Nam/Cambodia were important! The record speaks for itself; nobody seemed to care if Bush showed up so it must not have been important, right?!! It’s much more important whether someone was in Cambodia over Christmas or whether it was January, or February!!!
And besides that, the cite depends upon military records which everyone knows, based on personal testimony in this thread, that military records are unreliable as hell!!![/sarcasm]
Have we covered this one yet? When the lies are thick upon the ground, one gets confused. And this is just an ordinary, garden-variety lie, doesn’t measure up to some of the weapons-grade crapola the Swifties are hauling in on dump trucks. But just to be sure…
From that notoriously lefty Dem propaganda rag, the Navy Times…
Two vets say Swift Boat group misrepresents them
(emphasis added with a weary shrug, “…so what else is new?..”)
Robert E. Lambert doesn’t plan to vote for John Kerry. But the Eagle Point man challenges claims by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that there was no enemy fire aimed at the five swift boats, including the one commanded by Kerry, on March 13, 1969 […]
Lambert, now 64, was a crew member on swift boat PCF-51 that day […] commanded by Navy Lt. Larry Thurlow […]
“He and another officer now say we weren’t under fire at that time,” Lambert said Wednesday afternoon. “Well, I sure was under the impression we were.”
Lambert’s Bronze Star medal citation for the incident praises his courage under fire in the aftermath of a mine explosion that rocked another swift boat on that day 35 years ago.
“Anytime you are blown out of the water like that, they always follow that up with small arms fire,” he said.
[…]
Nor does he have much time for the debate over who wrote the medal citations. Thurlow says his citation for a Bronze Star, which states the boats were being fired upon, was based on an initial report written by Kerry.
Lambert doesn’t know who wrote the documents.
“They took what everybody said after they got in, piled it altogether and shipped it off and somebody wrote that, either at the division level, squadron level or commander of naval forces, Vietnam level,” Lambert said. "They decided what kind of medal was going to be put on it.[…]”
Wow, thank you, Zoe. That means a lot, coming from you, as you are one of the posters around here I have a great deal of respect for.
I notice that the person I was actually addressing in my post hasn’t bothered to respond and seems to have slunk away from this thread entirely. So much for keeping an open mind, I guess.
And speaking of poll numbers, I came across an fascinating internal memo the other day, by GOP polling firm Fabrizio McLaughlin & Associates, regarding a poll done in early July. Addressing the “undecided” voters in serveral swing states, what they found was
So, what did they conclude that the Bush campaign needed to do in order to sway these voters to their side?
The Republicans are shaking in their boots and they know the ONLY way they can win is to deceive people about the economy and defame John Kerry (“agressively define” – ha ha!).
Hindsight 20/20? Put it in the context of the time Magiver. The Navy wasn’t such a safe bet. They weren’t that far removed from the Maddox getting shot at, who knows if they knew the truth about the Turner Joy. They expected the waters to be mined as was the case in Korea, and they never knew if China was going to step in and make things real interesting. So give the Navy and the Naval vets some credit for answering the call. It was only after Kerry served a year and saw that it was turning out to be a relative leisure cruise that he sought out the other duty. But there was never any guarantee that the Navy was a safe haven. Bush apologists talk about how dangerous it was to fly for the T.A.N.G., but at the time that Bush was using his family connections to avoid Viet Nam, young men volunteering for the Navy honestly felt they were going to see action. Don’t discount their bravery.
Well, Lambert might have fallen into the water, which would make his recollection worth far less. After all, evidently the US armed forces are more likely to not know what in hell is going on if they get wet. Who knew? Water is the secret weapon that makes US forces become all unhinged.
And because it needs to be posted again:
Well, that’s one less Swiftie. Anybody wanna get a pool together on who’ll be next?