The press core is a bunch of pussies (despite what conservatives crying “liberal press” would have you beleive) and if it takes a 30 year old issue to get them some damn balls and stand up to that sack of shit, more power to them. Then maybe one will get the bright idea that something he’s done lately sucks, and it’s not like that person will have to look hard to find anything.
Try reading the actual testimony. I like how a lot of people conveniently leave off the part of the sentence before “personally raped” in that paragraph. He didn’t see it and never claimed that he did. He was relaying stories that other soldiers had told, including soldiers that did claim to have personally done such things. This makes him guilty of spreading rumors, and I’ll leave you to decide whether that is better or worse than cutting off people’s ears.
No, please read the text of his actual speech (link posted before your quote) instead of believing out-of-context excerpts. What is it you are claiming he admitted, by the way? That he slandered the entire military? That he lied in front of the Senate? Or that he is a war criminal? I would like to see his admission of any of those, please.
Quoting your source a little more fully…
He did not state that he witnessed these atrocities personally, but that he was told of them after the fact. So yes, had he witnessed war crimes my feeling is he would have an obligation to try to stop them but he didn’t say he witnessed war crimes.
The inference I draw from your FB reference is that Kerry acted in a dishonorable fashion to obtain medals that he was technically entitled to but did not in your opinion deserve. If that is the implication you meant to make, I would like a cite. If not I would like a clarification.
I’m not sure what you’re asking. Frank Burns was entitled to his Purple Heart, it was Hawkeye and (BJ? Trapper? I don’t remember) who thought that his getting it was undeserved and gave it to the baby. Kerry himself has said that he lost two days of duty time for one wound and none for the other two. He undoubtedly deserved his metals: He was wounded on duty in combat operations. How much stock one should put in him trumpeting “3 Purple Hearts”, when two of the wounds for which he received 2 of the metals were not even serious enough to cause him to miss a single day of duty is for the individual to decide. One wonders weather the thousands of vets who spent months and years recovering from war wounds view Kerry’s Purple Hearts as comperable in value to theirs.
[aside]
I’ve probably told this story before but…
When my father crashlanded his B-17 he cut his chin on the steering column. The wound required stitches but was far from debilitating. After returning to England he refused his Purple Heart because his wound was so minor. Twenty five years later he needed a few more points for his Civil Service job and sheepishly asked the Air Force (or whoever was responsible) if he could now have his Purple Heart because the points it gave would put him over the top.
“Sure,” said the military guy, “We get these requests all the time. Most of the guys got shot in the ass and they were too embarassed to talk about it, but then they need a few more Civil Service points and they talk to me.”
[/aside]
As far as the Purple Heart is concerned, a wound is a wound.
Take a look at this site and then think about how you are going to retract your bullshit statements.
What cite? Is that your idea of an unbiased cite? Kerry’s own webpage? Will you then retract everything you have said about GWB if I show you a “cite” from his(GWB’s) webpage that contradicts it? Give me a fucking break. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: Nevertheless, I would like to make one correction. Please ammend the previous “less than 4 months” to “4 months and 10 days”. Thank you so much for correcting me, I hate to be wrong, and on such a vital point, too.
You can’t make me, you can’t make me, neener-neener, neener-neener :p. Anyway, I thought it would be nice to go ahead and have a Liberal get it out of the way.
So, what about that third Heart? How seriously was he wounded for that one? And in what ways was the bio of Kerry’s Vietnam service dishonest or factually incorrect? Are you saying he didn’t win those medals, or just that he didn’t deserve them?
Frank was awarded his Purple Heart based on getting a shell fragment in his eye. An egg shell fragment. He did not disclose the “egg” part when putting in for the PH. Had Frank stated that the fragment in question came from an egg, he probably wouldn’t have gotten the medal.
Your citing Frank’s PH and comparing two of Kerry’s PHs to it leads me to believe that you are saying that Kerry did something similar to Frank, manipulating the facts to get the medals. If your purpose in drawing the comparison was only to compare the minor nature of the wounds then I stand corrected. Which did you mean?
I don’t know anything about the specifics of Kerry’s citations, but it seems reasonable to me that someone wounded three times in four months while earning both a Silver and Bronze Star (with Combat V) has spent enough time in the shit. How many commendations should he have had to have earned or wounds sustained before being rotated out?
If you think this
is “trumpeting” either his Purple Hearts or his other citations then we have radically different definitions of that word.
Out of curiosity, what citations did GWB earn during his military career?
Attempting to defend GWB’s military record by saying that Kerry only spent four months in the field is ludicrous.
Actually, I was thinking about starting something along this line. So I’ll put it here instead (and probably watch my ass get flamed.)
To all those of my parents generation (in other words, Baby Boomers):
We don’t care about Vietnam. Many of us were born afterwards, by as much as a decade. At some point, you people should realize this. The youth of America have other worries than whether or not someone saw combat in a war they weren’t even alive for. The only things we should care about that came out of Vietnam was the lowering of the voting age to eighteen, the change to a volunteer military, and the political suicide that will ensue if any politican tries to reinstate a draft or national service program.
Thank you.
Whatever, but not, what-ever!
I think his comments speak for themselves. As do his later denials.
Missing a few National Guard meetings seems pretty small now, doesn’t it?
That’s it entirely.
#1. My only point is that if the Dems are going to package Kerry as a “war hero” ( and he undoubtedly is much more of a war hero-hell, much more everything, he actually went to Vietnam-than GWB ) that it would help to have a record that was as impressive upon deeper examination as it is on the surface. I’m not blaming Kerry, I’d have taken the ticket back to the world after my third PH too, no matter how minor the wound was, but packaging Senator John Kerry like he’s Senator Bob Kerrey is a risky strategy.
#2. My comments in this thread have nothing to do with GWB’s military record (or lack there of) at all.
My grandfather had a Purple Heart, and a DSC. My dad had a Purple Heart also. Just don’t duck at exactly the right time, or get captured.
Holy shit and shinola, I just realized something…
We either elect the overtheocratic, a wee bit stumped GWB to a second term.
Or, we elect the hairspray overdramatic JFK wannabee that turned on his comrades in arms.
C. None of the above. Make the parties renominate.
The story about him saving the other guy during a fire fight doesn’t qualify? your poiint seems to be that of the 3 purple hearts he was awarded, two of them were for ‘non serious wounds’.
in short - so the fuck what? he did in fact serve, was shot at and wounded. recieved mutliple decorations for his service. while I’m not claiming that he’s the only person in the history of the universe who got wounded or was the ‘most heroic’ of all vets, from what I saw, the term “war hero” does seem to be an accurate term.
Well, those of us who wondered how the President and the boys were going to handle the obvious and glaring contrast between the President’s service during Vietnam and Senator Kerry’s have our answer. The Bush PR machine or its surrogates on blog sites and wind-bag radio, will say, directly or indirectly:
- Kerry wasn’t shot up very much,
- Kerry wasn’t in country very long,
- Young America doesn’t care what anybody did during Vietnam
- Kerry betrayed his comrades by criticizing the war and his government.
That may work for Young America, it may work for committed partisans of all things Republican, it may even work for some other folks, but Damn it, it doesn’t work for a lot of paunchy middle aged men who know a Purple Heart meant you were shot at and that Silver Stars and Bronze Stars with V device were not distributed for perfect Sunday School attendance and that a day in that God forsaken country was more than enough for any reasonable person and who do not feel betrayed.
I suppose the tactic is that if you can not match your opponent’s accomplishments then you minimize them. I suppose that’s going to work better than pointing out that the Viet Cong never attacked Texas while George Bush was on patrol.
I wholeheartedly second this although if this does work against Bush, I won’t be that sad that the war is still being used for political maneuvering.
Something you might care about:
Will Bush bring back the draft?
If re-elected, a great deal of political constraint on Bush and co. will be gone.
Of course, it might just be a “last resort contingency plan” (where did I hear that before?). But I also heard they’re pushing out a major recruitment drive targeting NASCAR fans, so maybe you’ll luck out…
(emphasis mine)
Okay, if that is STILL the kind of thinking some people have about the people who spoke out against the war, especially those who fought in it and learned from their experience that the Vietnam War, as it was conducted, was wrong and was killing and maiming, both physically and psychologically, good men to prop up a corrupt government, then I guess the premise I based this thread was wrong. It is still necessary to be fighting that war because, in many ways, it is not over.
Beagle, your obstinancy in accepting the quote from that anti-Kerry website when his full testimony, a part of the Congressional Record and something that has been shown on TV repeatedly for all to see, shows that it has been taken out of context to a libelous extent demonstrates that you are blindly and obtusely partisan. You do not realize how badly you are embarassing yourself. I suggest you take some time off and read the full quotes and, if needed, take a course in reading comprehension.
Does protesting against a war make you a bad person, bad soldier, or bad political candidate? I think not. He was right in protesting the American involvement in the Vietnam war. It’s completely different from pretending to be in the Guard and never showing up. Anywhere. Money can and DOES buy a lot in this world.