Reading comprehension with Sam Stone, or: What did John Kerry really say?

The BBQ Pit
1

In the pit thread Another Swiftie lie gets shot down (this one’s for you Sam Stone) I was a bit surprised to see Sam making this assertion:

I thought: Wow! Saying that the whole US Army in vietnam was like the army of Genghis Khan, that sounds pretty shrill! Did Kerry really say that?

So I tried google, and searched for that little quoted sement of Sam Stones.

I got seven hits, five of them reprinting an open letter by Swiftie extraordinaire John O’Neill. So I tweaked my search some and found John Kerry’s actual testimony before House Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, where Kerry supposedly said that the US army was “like the army of Genghis Khan”.
That speach is pretty long, but I suggest you all read it. I’ll reprint the relevant parts here.

Ok. Nowhere in this text does John Kerry say: “The US Army [in Vietnam] was like the army of Genghis Khan”. Then it should be pretty fucking clear that what Sam Stone claimed John Kerry said, he didn’t say, and therefore Sam lied about what John Kerry said? Go back and read Sam’s first claim up there. Is he telling the truth about what John Kerry said?

So I pointed that out to Sam (in a manner I felt corresponded to the number of Swiftie talking points he had parroted so far in that thread). Well, frankly I said: Retract your smear lie about John Kerry.

Cutting to the chase, after a LOT of diversions Sam finally came back with this gem:

Yeah, damn right I want to “pick nits” with your “phrasing”.

If you want to make the point that John Kerry should not have talked about the testimonies of Winter Soldier before the House Committee, that’s one thing. If you think his repeating of those testimonies means that he endorsed them all you have to say is: “By repeating what thoes guys said he lent credibility to them and I think they were lying”. Simple as that.

But then of course you would have to come up with some proof that those guys was liars. And obviously that is a whole different discussion; why some might even say diversion!

What this is about is you putting words in John Kerrys mouth, words that he has not said. And that does, actually, make you a liar. Surprised? It’s ludicrous to call this a matter of ‘interpretation’. You’ll need Bill Clinton’s speech writing staff and O. J. Simpsons lawyers to weasle your way out of the fact that what you claimed John Kerry had said, he did at no time say, and in fact you lied about that.

I’ll be happy to give you one more shot at making your case though, about this specific issue. Therefore this thread. Here’s your opportunity, on the basis of John Kerrys testimony, show us which of his actual words you interpret as saying that the US army - in general, in vietnam - was behaving like the armies of Genghis Khan.

If you fail to do so, I expect you to retract your lie.

2

It’s all about interpretation. He actually did admit to lying, you just have to interpret it as he did Kerry’s testimony.

See? Easy!

3

Hooked on Parsing worked for me!

Sam

4

Anyone else remember when Sam was in the top three of the rational conservatives around here?

Was it because we had the likes of december around here? Did Sam feel the need to fill his vacuous shoes?

I remember the days when Sam wasn’t batshit fucking insane.

Ah well. As you were.

-Joe

5

This has to be one of the tiniest of nits to pick. If Sam insisted that he was quoted Kerry exaclty, then yes he was lying. Why don’t we ask Kerry why he compared the actions of our troops to “Jen-jiss Kahn” if not to evoke the images of raping and pillaging? Did Kahn’s army have some unique way of “razing villages” that the US troops emulated? Did they set fire to the roofs first, and then the walls? It’s very clear what Kerry meant, and Sam’s interpretation captures the meaning perfectly well.

6

Wow! Saying that the Army was ‘like the army of Genghis Khan’ is incredibly different from saying ‘razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan’! It changes the meaning 180 degrees!

Oh, wait. It doesn’t. It also doesn’t address the stalker-like obsession that this ‘JohnFowles’ has with Sam.

7

Nope, Sam deliberately distorted what Kerry said to make it sound more sweeping than it was. Don’t expect him to apologize, though. Facts seem to bounce off Sam like bullets off of Superman.

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No, you twat.

THE VETERANS HE SPOKE to said they razed villages in the manner of Ghengis Khan. Kerry was quoting them.

Makes a world of difference, douchebag.

9

Sam Stone, people, not Sam. I am Sam, Sam I am.

Sheesh. I read these threads about Sam Stone and see everyone referring to Sam and I freak out juuuuuuust a little bit until I realize it’s about Sam Stone.

:slight_smile:

Sam

10

Sure.

So Frank, what did ya do in Vietnam?

Oh, you know. I generally ravaged the countryside. Of South Vietnam, mind you.

You are bright enough to understand that Kerry himself was paraphrasing, right? Nobody actually said that they ‘generally ravaged the countryside’ or somesuch. Besides, if Kerry cared so much, where are the names? Where are the war crimes trials? He talked to these guys, so that gets them off the hook? Interesting that.

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I believe the difference is between the army was “like the army of Genghis Kahn” verses the testemony of these 150 people had personally “razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Kahn”. The former implying that the entire army participated in such actions, the latter implying that the actions were not isolated incidents but not necessarily systemwide.

-lv

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So saying like Genghis Khan is so different from reminiscent of Genghis Khan as to constitute a lie?

I’ll be sure to keep that in mind when evaluating claims from the Usual Suspects (hi, Diogenes) that the Swift Boat Veterans are “lying”, or that Bush “lied”.

Mind you, I am not saying that you are like a bunch of raving lunatics. I am saying that you are reminiscent of a bunch of raving lunatics.

Seriously, this kind of shit is supposed to trigger yet another pile-on to Sam? Every fucking day closer to the election, the average IQ on the far fringes of the Left drops another ten points.

I really, really hope for a Bush win. You clowns are going to vomit up your intestines.

The SDMB - the best value for your entertainment dollar since they closed Bedlam.

Regards,
Shodan

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Ain’t nobody right, if everybody’s wrong. [/FWIW]

It’s patently obvious to me, if the transcript is indeed correct, that Kerry meant to evoke images of the destruction of Genghis Khan by comparing the way he razed villages to the way the Army did. Furthermore, to sneak in a comparison to Genghis Khan by only mentioning him in the context of villages speaks to a desire to have his cake and eat it too, by then claiming to only have referred to villages!

This would be entirely a bad mark in the Kerry camp, if not for the way many conservatives, in turn, mischaracterize Kerry’s statement.

All implications and innuendo aside, actually comparing, flat-out the Army to Genghis Khan is a much worse statement than simply suggesting the parallel in a few cases.

Which is why many pundits decide to conveniently leave out the troublesome nuances of Kerry’s actual statement. Around these parts, it’s known as “lying”.

14

Get in line, pal. I am still waiting for the cite from which Stone quoted Kerry as saying he sped out of the kill zone (using quotation marks and everything), when he was trying to depict Kerry as cowardly.

Now, about that NASA budget… :slight_smile:

15

I hate to agree with Shodan, but he’s right–this is a stupid, tupid thread. Kerry made the Ghenghis Khan connection, Sam Stone was right, so get over it.

And can we please stop refighting a war that ended 30 years ago and concetrate on issues that affect us today? Fuck Vietnam, let’s talk about Iraq. …

and health care, employment, terrorism, the environment and so on.

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I hate that Sam Stone said that all Democrats likened our military to Ghengis Khan.

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Mongolophobe.

18

And he also said that the actions were “not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.” Look… Kerry was painting a picture of a war gone bad. He wasn’t testifying in order to implicate only a handful of people fighting the war. He clearly meant that the problems were systemic and routine. No one believes that EVERY single soldier was committing attrocities.

This is beyond silly.

19

What John Kerry is saying is pretty simple:

  • Some time ago there were held an investigation in Detroit, Winter Soldier, attended by John Kerry, where around 150 veteran soldiers from Vietnam confessed to different acts of violence in which they had participated themselves.

  • Those acts included rape, cutting off ears, cutting off heads, cutting off other bodyparts, electrocuting people dicks and balls, shooting civilians, razing villages and ravaging the countryside.

  • Those acts were not isolated incidents but done on a day-to-day basis.

  • The witnesses superiors had been aware of what they were doing [and we may deduce, allowed them to continue, maybe also encouraged them to do so].

  • The act of razing villages, and ravaging the country-side reminds John Kerry, or one of the witnesses at Winter Soldier, of the behaviour of Genghis Khan’s warriors.

It is a retelling of specific testemonies made by specific soldiers. Do you think the part where he says “They told the stories at times they had personally…” directly preceding the Genghis Khan analogy is some kind of joke?

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First of all, I have a hard time seeing that any such comparison is supposed to be a defining characteristic, as if the person that said such a thing to Kerry was this big war buff who had some intimate knowledge of Ghengis Khan. I’d like to get that out of the way. We’re all English speakers here as either a first or second language, and loaded comparisons or hyperbole are very common in making points in English. (I’d guess that’s the case in every language, but I only speak English.) At best we can say that someone thinks there’s similarities. Fine.

Second, this is Kerry’s report on what he hears people saying, and which, apparently candidly, they do not disagree with.

However, by using such rhetoric to back his own position, it seems clear that he certainly doesn’t dispute the analogy. If he did dispute it, it would hardly be appropriate to use it to support his position, as I think we could all agree.

Third, the question I think we should ask is whether the description is worth having one way or another. If so, then it doesn’t matter who said it, who repeated it, and so on. If it is a report of false testimony, then it is safe to say that those that continued to repeat it were not correct.

So did these things happen in Vietnam? If so, then who cares

  1. who made the assertion, if it is correct?,
  2. whether it was a direct assertion or a report of someone else’s assertion?