It gets so old, buddy. You don’t say anything, you just whine. You don’t debate you complain. At best you editorialize.
I’ve long learned your “cite” trick. It’s like when you cried “I want a cite for Democrats calling Bush Nazis.” When given a slew of them, you pretend they don’t exist, or complain about where they came from. It’s all just bullshit.
You did the same thing with Sam in the other Swifvet thread when you stood on your stump and started demanding that somebody prove to you at what range an ak-47 round will shoot through tin.
Now you’re doing it here. “You haven’t provided any cites. Your cite sucks. Give me a cite.” Blah blah blah. You never address what’s in them. You never confront the material. I don’t think you have ever accepted a cite from me. You demonstrate bad faith again, and again, and again.
It’s like that stupid thing you trot out with the Balderdashes and the Tommyrots “Why is it a majority of liberals on a message board devoted to fighting ignorance?” You must have done that ten times.
Well, the Swiftvets for Truth, are dedicated for truth. How could they be lying, according to your own Elucilogic?
Freerepublic is dedicated to protecting our freedoms. How could they produce this material against Kerry if he wasn’t a threat?
Elucilogic in action.
It’s stupid. It’s unproductive. Your continual sophistry is a display of bad faith and a waste of my time. It demeans me, and it makes me shitty to reply to it, but it’s like picking a scab. I keep attempting to debate you and you keep playing games. Not gonna do it anymore. It’s old. Really really old.
John Fowles asked for two conditions for this debate. I’ve produced them. He has not responded and noone has seriously attempted to challenge what I produced.
The demand for evidence is a stupid question? Take care to remind us of that often. It is not even a difficult question. The honour of a decorated war hero has been impugned in absolute terms. The evidence is at your fingertips, I’m sure.
Kerry’s testimony glows with honour and decency. It is a credit to his country and himself.
Now let me share a joke with you. Do you remember the Salman Rushdie scandal? Incenced muslims chanting outrage, piling up burning books. “Rushdie must die. He insults the prophet”, we heard.
“Where does he insult the prophet?” was asked.
“I’ll not read, that filthy book” they replied.
Oh how we laughed at those backward and violent fools. Strong opinions from second-hand reports. No independence of mind. Relied instead on others’ addled brains.
In giggles we rocked too and fro. Those poor fools had formed their opinions before reading the testimony. Relied on the general rumour.
Can you imagine a more entertaining stripe of idiocy? Here let’s try. Imagine instead the book was in conversational English, a handful of pages in length and that it was immediately accessible. Rather than long, complex and expensive.
Nonsense. You got shit for cites, and I busted you on it. Tough noogies.
Well, sure. Guy says no bullet holes in boat means no bang-bang, Kerry liar. Simple question, really: would there necessarily be bullet holes? Seems legit to me. ‘Spect you ask around, Scooter, most folks hereabouts would think that’s a pretty fair cite call. Oh, aluminum, not tin, by the by. Got that from one of the cites. That I didn’t read.
SEC regulations. GeeDubya not indictable. Think again.
Got a Pit for that, you up for getting spanked again. Your call.
Yeah, and I responded, in detail, with ample proof that those boats should have been swiss cheese. I even went to the trouble to find out the grade of aluminum those boats were made of, found cites showing extensive bullet damage to swift boats from similar battles, cites that showed that sailors used to hang flak jackets over the sides of the boats where they were sitting to prevent bullets from coming through, and showed that these boats were built like civilian vessels - from lightweight aluminum that was not designed at all to stop even small arms fire. The only armor was around the gunner positions.
And what was your response? You IGNORED it. Totally changed the subject. Pretended you never asked the question. A lot of work on my part for norhing - just another tactic on your part to derail the debate.
So let me ask you now, since the subject came up: Since I’ve shown that even small arms will punch holes through Swift boats, how do you explain intense fire from both banks of a river only 75 yards wide, aimed at five boats each of which is the size of a semi trailer, which left no holes? The after-action report, apparently written by Kerry, says that the intense fire from the banks continued for three kilometers. Plus, the boats sat in the ‘kill zone’ for an hour and half hooking up the disabled 3-boat and bailing it out.
And yet… no injuries, and no holes in the boats (Thurlow’s boat had six holes in it, which could have come from previous action. No other boats had a single bullet hole). Given kerry’s description of the battle, there should have been hundreds, perhaps thousands of holes in those boats. And the sailors should have been shot up.
They’re lousy shots? A lot of the VC were drafted, IIRC, training was often limited, especially as to bountiful supplies of ammunition for target practice. I’ve also no doubt that not every VC was a devoted disciple of the proletariat, maybe not inclined to take the time exposed to aim at a target you probably can’t hit anyway, while the other guy is chewing up the countryside with .50 caliber machine gun fire.
The question of whether or not an AK-47 could have penetrated a swift boat was, IIRC, resolved as yes. The issue of how often, and how likely, was not. To your eyes, if the boat in question wasn’t riddled as a collander, then Kerry is a lying hound. My mileage varies.
Besides, heck of a hijack, Sam. You want to rag about my personal failings, you know where to take it.
“They are lousy shots” is simply not a credible answer. 75 yards. The size of a semi truck. FIVE of them. My yard is about 75 yards long. You park a semi at one end of it and give me an AK-47, and I’ll riddle it full of holes blindfolded. This was supposedly an ambush, with these guys laying in wait for a boat to hit the mine. They’re going to have overlapping zones of fire, dug-in positions to shoot from, supports to steady their guns, etc.
It’s simply ridiculous to suggest that a Swiftboat could sit in an ambush zone like that for an hour and a half and not get hit by a single bullet. It makes no sense.
And the assertion that the fire was maintained for three kilometers also makes no sense. For that to happen, they would have had to have been up against a bloody regiment of soldiers. In unarmored boats.
But this is an example of your tactics. You really don’t have a response for this, so you toss off a glib answer like, “Maybe they were lousy shots” and change the subject.
Great. You try that experiment. But, do it with five other guys in the five semis trying their best to kill you back with .50 caliber “suppression fire”.
Well, I can certainly agree with you there. It would be ridiculous to suggest that a boat passively sitting immobile in an ambush for 90 minutes would remain unscathed. You have a cite, I’m sure, to show both the passivity and immobility of Lt. Kerry’s boat during that ambush and the 90 freakin’ minute time frame during which he sat there? (I think you were called on that time frame in the earlier thread, weren’t you?)
Again… the report says they were shot at for three kilometers as they sailed down the river. During which time they weren’t shooting back. So now why are the Viet Cong missing?
Jelucidator: I see. So discussing your tactics (not attacking you personally) is verboten, and only pit-worthy. And yet, in the other thread on the Swift Boats my tactics come up for criticism repeatedly. But I like these new rules. I’ll agree to not discuss the meta-debate with you again, if you agree to the same. Deal?
No, it doesn’t, brother Brutus, but it certainly goes to the question “how come they were such poor shots?”
I’ve never been in a firefight. I’ve never been to Sam Stone’s yard. I’ve never fired an AK-47 into a boat hull from 75 yards. But I have doubts that sniping at a semi from Sam’s porch is quite similar to a firefight on the Bay Hap river.
For what it’s worth, and Ak-47 will penetrate 1/4 aluminum at whatever range you can hit the boat with. The Ak, while highly reliable is notoriously innacurate. At three hundred yards you have several inches of random drift in even a well-maintaned machine.
Speaking of Swiftboats and the kind of ranges we are talking about, you are correct to think it’s pretty difficult to miss.
From my reading, there was always fire after an ambush of this type. That was the point. Let the mine detonate, take a few shots and run. You would typically have a couple of gunmen firing briefly and then bugging out before the other boats could retaliate.
So my best guess is that this is what happened:
The mine blew, and Kerry accelerated away. Everybody agrees on this much. At this point I would guess the ambushers fired on the stationary targets, being the disabled swift boat and Rassman in the water. Those would be the easiest to hit.
Anyone in the other Swift boats would be too busy moving into action to really discern whehter there was fire or if their was fire. They were moving into position and laying down covering fire.
Rassman, on the other hand would probably notice the bullets splashing around him.
After anywhere from ten seconds to a minute the ambushers bugged out, and Kerry made the pick up. I don’t think this is quite the gunnels running with blood story that Kerry told at DNC, but on the other hand I see nothing dishonorable in his actions. Quite the contrary, reading between the lines of the Swiftvets account, I think his actions were appropriate and heroic. As were everybody else’s that day.
I really don’t see much point in arguing this train of thought. Kerry was there. He saw combat. He got medals. Whether or not he was a great soldier, and ok soldier, or a poor soldier doesn’t really interest me. He did his duty.
THe Wintersoldier is where I condemn Kerry. I participate in the Vietnam stuff, simply to correct any errors I see. I think the Swiftvets are painting Kerry’s service in the worst possible light, but I don’t they are lying, and it’s fun to point out wishful thinking to the contrary.
Actually, to begin with, the spot report (warning: pdf file) for this incident states quite unequivocally that Kerry’s own boat (PCF 94) had been damaged to such an extent that it was no longer battle ready. Scroll down to the bottom of the last page and read this final entry:
Secondly, the phrase ”intense fire” above, and your scenario of ”overlapping zones of fire, dug-in positions to shoot from, supports to steady their guns, etc.”, appears to be yet another example of your typical tendency to rhetorical exaggeration (some would say lying), once again. We know virtually nothing about the ”ambush” the boats were subjected to that day. All we really know that is the report states after the first mine exploded the patrol received ”HEAVY A/W AND S/A FROM BOTH BANKS. FIRE CONTINUED FOZN ABOUT 5000 METERS.”
That’s it; Sam’s entire case rests on this single line, along with the testimony of a handful of Kerry’s sworn political enemies, whose claims are contradicted by a second group of men also present that day. (This latter group, we are told by Sam, either lied or were confused in the ”fog of war;” we can therefore discount their testimony without further consideration. Luckily for us, our stout Swiftvets never suffer from such confusion.)
It is entirely possible that after a first, heavy burst, met with return fire from the Swifts, the ambushers pulled back, but continued with light harassment and interdiction fire afterwards. Sam’s entire argument hinges on how one interprets the word ”heavy” from the report cited above. Had the report’s author used the word ”light,” instead, would we even be having this discussion? (Knowing Sam, we probably would.) Is this what this entire controversy is about – that someone chose the modifier ”heavy,” rather than ”light,” to describe the incident? That to describe the encounter as ”heavy” was something of an exaggeration, and this somehow means that Kerry lied, and thus is not a suitable candidate for President of the US?
Excuse me for pointing just how pathetic this attack really is. Pathetic, petty, and hateful.
No shit.
Which explains, perhaps, why only Kerry’s enemies persist in promoting this version of events as ”Kerry’s story.” Find for me a quote in which Kerry states, ”We sat in the kill zone for an hour and a half, suffering withering cross-fire from the Viet Cong on both banks, until we finally managed to rig up the damaged PCF and tow it to safety. Even then we were forced to run the gauntlet for 5ks under a steady hail of fire from VC regulars,” and I’ll shut my mouth.
Otherwise, a suggest you shut yours. Scylla:
While I disagree with your view regarding Kerry’s Senate testimony, I can understand and respect it; and I’m relieved to see that you take this position regarding Kerry’s service, anyway.
I’ll try to get back with some specific criticism as soon as I get the chance.