Oh, gimmee a break, Snake. You just now heard about this. Right. Got it.
Did you have a comfortable cave for your thirty year stretch on Mars?
Yeah, I was on another planet, for sure. I ignored a lot, and was unconscious for some, so some of this is new to me.
Like you would know what was going on in my life.
I was in Nam in 1968, and understandably avoided all associations with VN for the next 30 years.
Unlike friend Kerry.
Yeah, I just now heard about it. Or if I heard about it before, I blocked it out.
Who the fuck was kerry, anyway? Just another unsatisfied VietNam vet. Our name is Legion.
A singularly unfortunate choice of metaphor.
What? You think VN vets are happy campers?
We put in our time to come back to be reviled, spat upon (in some instances), dismissed as “crazy VN Vets” in others.
We had the support of our government when we went, alledgedly, but when we came back, although occifers like Kerry got their silver stars and bronze stars, most of us got…
shit.
Can you speak from experience?
Or are you “above all that?”
Where the fuck are you coming from?
Nothing more than I said. “We are Legion”, as I expect you remember, are the words of the demon possessing the unfortunate man, the Gadarene, who howled and cut himself with stones. And subsequently demonstrated that just as pigs cannot fly, neither can they swim.
A minor point. Chill.
Oh shit. I think the literature threads go in Café Society…
chilled.
Any relevent comments???
Quite frankly, I’ve no idea what in hell you are trying to sat in the above. Perhaps you could come in and translate now that the workweek is upon us and (I hope) you have access to something speedier than dial-up. And if you want to insult me, you’ll have to do better than “wisdumb”.
See above. Just what in hell are you trying to say here? Is this a response to something that I posted? Or something else?
And FTR I know of more than a couple of veterans who cannot take three steps without mentioning their time In Country.
And I will ask again: Do you believe that Kerry had an eye on the White House in '68 when he was in Vietnam?
**When you hang out with/and admire President Kennedy to the point you try to emulate his military career as a small boat captain then it is reasonable to conclude Kerry saw himself as a politician and the prize was POTUS. So Yes, I think it was a childhood dream. Not only is there nothing wrong with that it is an admirable dream. The tendency for politicians to seek camera time is not an unknown personality trait.
**
>snip<
**If that makes me nuts as a non-veteran I have to expect that would make you even angrier. Which is why I don’t understand why it is so hard to make the point that there are Veterans who are equally pissed at Jane Fonda and John Kerry for their method of dissent. This has nothing to do with protesting war. That can easily be done with a handful of flowers and a Mercedes hood ornament around your neck. Which, I might add, could still be used for political purposes without endangering any soldiers who are still fighting or are POW’s.
**
Goddamn, Magiver, learn to code. Or preview. Or whatever in hell you have to do so that your posts are able to be read.
Y’know, when you decry the manners on the board, only to give me shit (which was fully deserved, by-the-by. I previewed and still fucked up) for a misspelling, your statements morph into pissing and moaning. Ineffectual pissing and moaning at that.
And my comment was in no way meant to be snide. I refuse to believe that you are incapable of recognizing that which I kid myself is humor. Oh, and this:
Also goes some way toward demonstrating that you only seem to be upset with those who are smart-assed when they’re not you.
And see I compare what I’ve heard Kerry say to what I listened issue forth from the chinless hillbillies around whom I grew up. And he doesn’t come close at all. Of course, the RNC talking points say that, “Kerry always mentions his service,” as if he never speaks of anything else. Which is nonsense. But if they can make it seem as if he brought the whole Swiftie bullshit upon himself, they’ve accomplished what they attempted. And since it seems you might have missed it previously, there are veterans who agree with and will vote for Kerry. Really nice fellas, too, those I’ve met.
Not particularly. They (for the most part) are assholes who have never managed to crawl out of their pasts. And they think that Bush fils is just peachy.
Little bit of both, actually, and yes, it’s decidedly bad form.
Okay, he went into the Navy. The reason for this is that he didn’t want to wind up disliking what he loved, which was flying. It wasn’t because he had a Kennedy fixation. Hell, if that were the case, he coulda gotten himself assassinated. Or just spent a lot of time in Dallas.
Okay, thank you. Now I only have to wait for New Iskander to respond, then translate. Particularly since the chances of Sam Stone coming back to answer a question are pretty slim.
I printed out the Kerry fitreps, and passed them to a buddy of mine for an independent appraisal. I figured he’s as qualified as anybody else to offer an opinion on them.
After all, he’s a Navy lieutenant commander, with eight years active duty service on submarines and continuing service as a reserve intelligence officer. As an added happy coincidence, he’s planning to vote for Kerry in the fall, so he’s inclined to evaluate the records fairly.
His analysis pretty much tracks mine, though. There are some fitreps in here that are decidedly poor, and would keep Kerry from advancing very far in the Navy.
Remember, this was an era where only one mark that deviated from “outstanding” in a whole career could deny an officer command of a ship or squadron. Kerry had a fitrep that didn’t contain even one “outstanding”. He had others that had similarly poor marks.
The narratives, too sound very different to a naval officer than they do to a civilian. There’s a lot of damning with faint praise. My friend picked up on it immediately, and I’m sure Naval retention and command boards would have as well. For instance, recommendations to serve as an aide or diplomat sound great to a civilian, but these are dead end posts in the Navy. They don’t typically lead to a command.
Kerry’s naval career was being cut short by these fitreps. It is clear that his commanding officers did not think as highly of him as some posters here would assert. Now, there may be reasons for this unrelated to Kerry’s performance. Great stock is placed in the Navy on being a team player, and Kerry seems to have been an outsider. He was a Yalie among Academy grads; an antiwar activist among gung-ho warriors.
All of this, too, detracts not at all from his genuine courage under fire.
This should be a warning, though, to posters who’d use these narratives as supposed proof of how highly Kerry’s superiors thought of him. They don’t mean what you think, and these documents should be used carefully.
Your point is entirely valid, but you don’t seem to be able to restrain yourself from a bit of shading, a touch of nuance…
Are we to be aghast at the breaking news: Kerry did not have very good prospects as a career Naval officer! Stunning revelation, that. Unless, of course, we operate from the premise that he never intended to be a “lifer”. You might as well astound us with the revelation that GeeDubya did not intend a career devoted to the defense of Texas.
Kerry’s “fitreps” reveal a mediocrity, it would seem. Save for a few offhanded references to his courage under fire, they seem not to have given him much thought at all. And if we were, indeed, trying to put forth a case that Kerry should be elected President because he would have made a splendid Admiral, we are undone.
Short of that, it signifies little.
“…an antiwar activist…”
Excuse please, but from whence? Is it your impression that Sen Kerry’s antiwar stance was a visible fact while he was overseas? You have cites for this? Some record, perhaps, of public denunciations of US policy while “incountry”? If so, I’m not sure I would question his patriotism so much as his sanity. Get the Hell out of Dodge, and then talk about what an asshole Sheriff Hickock is!
“…among gung-ho warriors…”
Perhaps. Perhaps not. The only vets I got to know in any number were anti-war vets, their feelings on the matter were plain, the term “gung-ho” dripped with contempt when used by them. One must admit the possibility that they were a vanishingly small minority. One might even admit it as fact, just as soon as you can show some plausible support for such a contention.
Have you such?
Mr. Moto, no doubt that’s true, regardless of the regular-Navy officers doing the fitreps possibly having their assessments affected by Kerry’s being not only a reservist and a j.g. but already outspokenly anti-war. But how would you explain the glowing endorsements he received during his Senate campaigns, as recently as 1996, from some of these same people even after they were all out of the Navy themselves? Did they simply fail to recalibrate their vocabularies for civilian life? Or perhaps they recognize that the qualities needed by a good politician are different from the ones needed by a good combat officer?
I’m inferring that Kerry was already known to his superior officers to be outspokenly anti-war from the fact that they knew he planned to run for Congress (as stated in his approved application to leave the Navy), and from the immediate-withdrawal platform he ran on in 1970, even before all of his paperwork cleared. That’s an unusual enough civilian career plan in itself that the Establishment officers would *have * to have asked him about his reasons. The approval of his request, during wartime at that, must have been an unusual act itself, allowing one to infer unusually-high motivation to approve it.
FTR, Kerry still holds the private-pilot license he acquired before joining, along with instrument, commercial, glider, and seaplane ratings as well - don’t know his hours or if he’s multi-engine rated too, though. AFAIK Kerry’d be the first private pilot to become President. There is no record of Bush being in a cockpit between his Texas days and his “Mission Accomplished” landing.
All very good points.
I’m just elaborating on my earlier warnings about fitrep language of that era. They were written in a kind of code. What may seem to a civilian to be a glowing fitrep may in fact be a highly critical one.
There is some evidence in this race that non-veterans are much more impressed by Kerry’s service than veterans are. This seems to be a part of that.
In that case, how about some annotated examples? Maybe, instead of repeating this claim for the upteenth time, you go ahead and give us some examples?
Unless, of course, you’re being intentionally vague.
-Joe, unless that’s part of the code, too
And I don’t see this sort of thing at all. By far the majority of people I know and associate with are not veterans, and they really could give a great goddamn one way or the other. It wasn’t until the Swifties started sliming the place up that anyone made a big deal out of it at all.
Too, the people I know who are vets seem to care less if they were actually in Vietnam. Most of those who seem to get their knickers in a twist are recent veterans. Some from Gulf I, and most who never saw combat at all.
And then there are the people who never served due to deferments, family reasons &c. Almost to a man they act as if Kerry shat upon them with his testimony. In the interests of full disclosure, though, this group is populated by no more than six people.
What you fail to accept, Mr. Moto, which I’ve said before, so please pay attention this time so I don’t have to keep repeating myself… I don’t CARE if John Kerry’s fitreps were “merely mediocre” for the Navy. I don’t CARE that he may have “only” gotten “excellents” instead of “outstandings.” I believe that the written descriptors of his performance and charcter were truthful. And that’s even if they weren’t as good as they could have been, had he been interested in a career in the Navy.
Given that he’s asking me to place him in a position where diplomacy is extraordinarily important, I like the fact that his COs describe him as being “highly polished” as a diplomat, even if it was an intentional slam against him rising through the ranks in a military career. I believe that when one said of him, “His division’s morale is one of the best on the ship due to his dynamic leadership,” that he was speaking the truth. And I want a President who is a dynamic leader who garners high morale amongst the people who work with him, unlike the one we have now, who is nothing short of antagonistic and divisive.
In short, I will take “Outstanding” over “has not been observed at this unit” any day of the year.
I hope that puts this issue to rest now.
That latter group includes Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Perle, Wolfowitz, DeLay, Limbaugh, Will … Clinton’s gotten over it, though.
My understanding of the hostility still held toward Kerry is that people hate being fooled, but even worse than that they hate knowing that others weren’t fooled. What Kerry said was true and necessary, yes, but at the time (and even now) there were many who still thought the war was winnable, with clear and noble and achievable goals, and was being fought honorably. Kerry was a prominent example of the many who came to realize that was all false, and helped make others realize it.
But, in the act of realizing it, they came up against the realization that they had supported this dishonorable, futile slaughter, and that that was because they had been gullible. There’s a defense against that, known as “shooting the messenger” - they rationalized that the ultimate failure of the war, and the atrocities that were coming to light, was because of the protesters and their negative effect on morale, not because it was based on lies they’d swallowed whole. Many haven’t forgiven Kerry for telling the truth even today.