That’s the crux of the argument. I think Coulter meant battalions and McKeown in response was ALSO talking about battalions, which makes Coulter wrong and McKeown right within that context.
I’ve been following this interesting debate, and have to jump in on Liberal’s side. Besides the fact that he’s simply right on this one, there is one part of the interview that actually makes a good case against the interviewer. Coulter came back at one point with “Indochina”, which sounded rather silly at first, but makes sense if in fact she was referring about the Canadians sent there in the 50s during the French involvement. Vietnam was commonly referred to as Indochina in those days, so I don’t think her use of that turn was accidental. The interviewer should have taken that as a clue of what she was talking about, and turned the argument around. “Oh, you mean what Canada did in the 50s? Well, that’s correct, but it had absolutely nothing to do with the US-- it was to support the French. What support did Canada give the US during it’s war in the 60s?”
Lib = The SDMB’s own version of The Energizer Bunny On Coke.
Just keeps going and going…right up the wall.
Except the involvement in the 1950s was the same capacity as in 1973, observing a withdrawal. No support. We **did not fight ** in Vietnam or Indochina during the two parts of the conflict.
Her Indochina was more likely a fishing experiment thinking that because she has a cursory knowledge that Canadians have certain words pronounced differently (See lieutenant) we may still quaintly refer to the territory as IndoChina.
Ann is suggesting we fought in Vietnam, we did not. His answer was the simplest way to say that. We did not support the US we did not support the French. This is just another one of those ways of clouding the issue by trying to make it look like a draw. This is just trying to make a loss into a tie by saying No one was right therefore no one wins or loses.
Bottom line Coulter was wrong, she lost that argument because it was a false one.
Whether McKeown was aware of the peacekeepers or not doesn’t change the fact that Coulter’s claim was that somehow Canada’s lack of support in Iraq was somehow contrasting our support in Vietnam, which it does not.
You want to continue to call him on the no troops shorthand? Fine. It is a silly tactic because in the end it doesn’t matter. Liberal, you called her wrong on this a few times now so hammering on his choice of words is pointless because we all agree she’s talking out of her ass and was called on it.
This is why proper debates are dying. There is too much fiddling with minutiae as if they are the main points and not enough looking at the over all picture. This thread is a prime example.
Let’s try to discuss this in a different way. Using Coulter’s example at face value.
Is Canada’s lack of support in the Iraq Conflict (Part II) markedly different from Their commitment to the US during the Vietnam conflict?
(Wanna guess what the answer is?)
JM is almost always the picture of sanity (though I disagree with about 99.98% of what he says), so I think you better chalk that one up to Libertarian solidarity.
It’s fucking plain as day that Coulter thought Canada had sent troops to the US-Vietnam Conflict itself and it’s equally plain that McKeown was correcting her on that point alone.
The rest is just so much sophistry, especially since Coulter’s intended greater point about Canada having changed its allegience to the US would be completely lost if she had been referring to anything other than the actual war. McKeown was not obligated to offer her a history lesson on Canda’s involvement with events tangential to the war. He corrected her on the point she was wrong about and he was correct in his correction.
But the only reason you did not fight, if indeed you did not, was that you were not attacked. We must presume that the peacekeepers were armed, and that, if fired upon, would have returned fire. Whether there is minutiae here depends, I suppose, on your point of view. If you are convinced that one or the other party made no mistake, then any mistakes pointed out will be minutiae.
It is my opinion — and this is purely conjecture on my part — that Coulter jumped into the discussion uninformed and very loosey-goosey with the facts. On account of this, she was caught unaware, and stumbled whenever she was challenged. But the interviewer, sensing a weakness, made a conscious decision at that moment to embarrass Coulter by taking a sort of intellectual highground. I believe that he — possibly one of the most informed journalists on earth — knew what the facts were, but decided that they were not important to his task, his task of embarrasing her. If anything, his case is worse than hers. She is stupid; he is not.
An assertion that a decision to go to war is “minutiae” goes even beyond batshit, and is not worthy of reply.
And that really sticks in your craw, doesn’t it? 
I don’t think so. Coulter is a mean-spirted cunt whore, but she is very smart. My guess is that she KNEW about the “troops” in the 50s and was deliberately using that fact as a way to imply that there was support for the US. That way, she could fall back on the technicality of being correct if she was called on it.
At any rate, I am definitely NOT defending Coulter here. She is the worst kind of pundit out there, and I don’t know how she maintains the standing that she does. I guess the only explanation is that sensationalism sells.
So does this boil down to you arguing that the thread title is incorrect and Ann wasn’t owned? Because she was wrong, the interviewer was correct in context though lacking the in-depth detail you apparently feel he should have thrown into an interview about why Ann is a fucking nut, and I can’t figure out what else your point might be. In which case, I agree with the OP–Ann was owned. And it does look like a The Daily Show segment.
IF you accept that Coulter knew about the peace keepers, or the Candians fighting for the US or the Canadians in Indochina in the 50’s then she is certainly guilty of being purposefully obtuse and misleading so as to make her point. She had ample opportunity to be clear if that was her comntention.
I am more inclined to think she was just plain wrong.
“I came here for an argument!”
“No you didn’t.”
I am indeed a Canadian…one with a particular interest in Canadian military history–but I have to say that the average Joe or Jane Canuck probably would know nothing of Canadian Forces personnel in Vietnam as peacekeepers. I only found out about the 1954-56 period ICCS service when someone donated a custom-tailored bush uniform made in Saigon with Canadian WW2 & Korean ribbons on it.
And as a small point of accuracy, I have to point out that New Zealand did send troops–and combat ones, at that–to Vietnam. The official Kiwi Army page says this:
(http://www.army.mil.nz/?CHANNEL=OPERATIONS&PAGE=Overseas+Missions)
NZ had some 40 casualties in Vietnam (including one female nurse, and one Kiwi serving with the USMC)
Absolutely!
And we’ll probably never know… 
It’s a good thing you didn’t reply since no one said anything remotely like that. I swear, you’re just about the most clueless son of a bitch on the whole board.
Agreed. But so did he, during his repeated categorical denials.
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree because what’s keeping Liberal going is a clear determination to martyr himself on the cross of individual opinion. He’s wrong, but he has a right to be wrong, and he’ll be damned if anyone challenges that right!
The subtle inaccuracies in McKeon’s statements might be found with determination and a microscope. The glaring and gross error in Coulter’s statements couldn’t be more obvious if it was biting you in the ass. But since McKeon is only 99.99% correct, Liberal can cling to a shred of… well, it’s not exactly “dignity” since that was jettisoned long ago. Call it “hope” that he can win the argument by sheer longevity and by default after everyone else gives up.
You don’t need to be one of the most informed journalists on Earth to know Canada wasn’t in Vietnam! That’s common knowledge. Almost any Canadian highschool graduate would know that. And many American TV journalists know it too. But I guess to our culture it’s a bit remarkable that our highschool graduates are more informed than some American journalists. That’s why we have TV specials about how fucking dumb they are.
Liberal,
What the hell is wrong with you? I mostly end up agreeing with you. Not this time. The odd time i’ve noticed you argue for no other point but to argue. This is one of those times. Why do you do that?