Random News Snippets

[GI_Admiral 2]

I agree that the war is stupid. But pulling out now is not the best thing to do.

Now if you want to make sexual analogy, you can say, that pulling out of Iraq would be like...pulling out.

It'd be messy.

You screwed their gov't, you can't leave them screwed.

The "war" is over. You can't change anything. Spend your time trying to convince the US to ge tmore world support for the rebuilding.

[Chickenman 9]

Yeah, if we were to just pull out, we'd absolutly ruin Iraq. The consequences would be catastrophic. I think what they mean though, is that they want the government to start thinking on how to pull out. How to get things working over there so our troops can come back home. Not just pull out this Friday, but start taking the steps neccesary.

[Alexander 0]

He started this war for oil and power, and her son died because of it.

I'm sick and tired of hearing that this war was started for oil. If that were the truth, why are the prices of oil so sithty right now? For power? Name a president whose main goal was not to grant more power to his position. Jefferson believed that the powers of the president should be limited, but when he got into office that feeling didn't last too long.

Do I agree with the war? No.

Was it justified? No.

Did her son get into the army knowing the risks? Yes.

Did her son die for a war that was not justified? Yes.

Did Bush put her son in a dangerous position?

Partly, but you know what, that's the risk you take when you take it upon yourself to sign up for a job in which death is more likely than in any other job. When you sign that application you are agreeing to the fact that you will be called into combat, and your life put on the line at any moment. It doesn't matter whether its justified or not - when you sign that dotted line its what you should expect.

Did her son die for doing his job? Yes.

Edited September 27, 2005 by Alexander

[Uncle Du 22]

I don't know if this is a defense for Sheehan or what, but this is what I know from experience. Kids that get recruited nowadys have the military so sugarcoated before they come in, that they might not actually think they there's a chance that they can die. If the recruiters went around saying, "Join up, and die for your country!" they would never get any one in. Which means they lie. And I don't agree with thtat at all. But, kids these days are smart, or so I'm led to believe, and if someone joins the military and thinks that there's not a chance that they can die, well, that's just ewokin stupid.

[Tsl 7]

Oh don't worry. Alot of them believe that. When they tried to get me to join, don't know about the rest of y'all, but they were very insistant that I could be stationed wherever I wanted....probably. I could go to Germany, or Hawaii or stay near home....maybe. And I wouldn't have to go into dangerous places.....unless they felt like sending me there.

Don't worry, they said. There are lots of nurses who want to be in combat zones. THey volunteer, so you probably would never get sent.

Yeah right. That's why I went through four years of school to be a nurse, so I could get my ass blown off in some crazy little med unit near the front lines of some god forsaken country nobody cares about. Sign me up!

[Uncle Du 22]

Yea, recruiters are like the nerfherder children of the military. And some of them really enjoy what they do. It sickens me, lying to people to get them to join the military.

[Ender 8]

He started this war for oil and power, and her son died because of it.

I'm sick and tired of hearing that this war was started for oil. If that were the truth, why are the prices of oil so sithty right now? For power? Name a president whose main goal was not to grant more power to his position. Jefferson believed that the powers of the president should be limited, but when he got into office that feeling didn't last too long.

Thanks for taking the words right out of my mouth, Alexander...

[GI_Admiral 2]

lol, recruiters are pushy people, one wouldnt let me hang up O_O

[Alexander 0]

Wouldn't let you hang up? Did he somehow paralyze you and make your arm unable to move to put the phone back on the receiver?

[SoftballJedi 0]

Yea, recruiters are like the nerfherder children of the military. And some of them really enjoy what they do. It sickens me, lying to people to get them to join the military.

Ha, yeah. The Marines keep on calling my brother, and he already told them he made his descion to go to the Air Force. My dad got really sick of that. But, whenever my brother goes to see the recruiter face-to-face, my great-uncle is going to come up (he was in the Air Force for a loong time) and is going to make sure they don't pull any crap on them

[Chickenman 9]

He started this war for oil and power, and her son died because of it.

I'm sick and tired of hearing that this war was started for oil. If that were the truth, why are the prices of oil so sithty right now? For power? Name a president whose main goal was not to grant more power to his position. Jefferson believed that the powers of the president should be limited, but when he got into office that feeling didn't last too long.

Ah, but did Jefferson's mad quest for power end with 2,109 coalition deaths, not to mention the probably uncountable number of civillian deaths? Did Jefferson wanting to be more powerful allow the most dangerous terrorist in the world to slip through our fingers, because he reasoned that a dictator in another country was much more dangerous? No. As far as I can tell, Jefferson wanting more power resulted in: the Louisiana Purchase.

Oh, and just because other Presidents take big risks for more power, doesn't make it right.

Karl Rove: How about we start a war so you can become more powerful?

George Bush: I don't know...

Karl Rove: Come on man! Everybody's doing it!

[Alexander 0]

Ah, but did Jefferson's mad quest for power end with 2,109 coalition deaths, not to mention the probably uncountable number of civillian deaths? Did Jefferson wanting to be more powerful allow the most dangerous terrorist in the world to slip through our fingers, because he reasoned that a dictator in another country was much more dangerous? No. As far as I can tell, Jefferson wanting more power resulted in: the Louisiana Purchase.

Oh, and just because other Presidents take big risks for more power, doesn't make it right.

Methinks you should read into Manifest Destiny and the amount of Native Americans that died in that quest for power - not all of them died while Jefferson was in office true enough, but the same will be true for Bush when he leaves office, hence even more soldiers will die even after he has finished his term.

Edited September 27, 2005 by Alexander

[Uncle Du 22]

So, do people honestly believe that a different President would be able to keep lives from lost meaninglessly? Hate to break it to ya, but that sith's gonna keep happening as long as you're alive.

[Alexander 0]

Of course people think that, they thought Kerry would take us out of Iraq, when in fact he'd still probably have to stay in just as long as Bush. This is another Vietnam, I wouldn't be surprised if it went through more than two or three presidents.

Edited September 28, 2005 by Alexander

[Chickenman 9]

So, do people honestly believe that a different President would be able to keep lives from lost meaninglessly? Hate to break it to ya, but that sith's gonna keep happening as long as you're alive.

I've never said that if a diffrent president had been elected, lives wouldn't be lost. Of course soldiers would die. But I honestly believe Kerry would have been able to handle the Iraq situation better. And if Gore had won in 2000, we wouldn't be losing lives meaninglessly at all in this war, because it wouldn't have been started.

Of course people think that, they thought Kerry would take us out of Iraq, when in fact he'd still probably have to stay in just as long as Bush. This is another Vietnam, I wouldn't be surprised if it went through more than two or three presidents.

I've never thought Kerry would start pulling troops out of Iraq. I'd be just as pissed with him for pulling troops as I am at Bush for starting the ewoking thing. Pulling troops out right now would be disasterous. However, like I said, I think he'd do a much better job, and could handle the transition of power in Iraq much better, so that our troops could come home when the job is done, not be pulled out.

[Alexander 0]

Kerry's experience fighting in a war are not the same as running a war. There's no proof whether he could do a better or worse job. The job of a soldier and the job of a commander are two completely different roles.

[Chickenman 9]

I know that. I never said he would be a good commander simply because he actually did his duty. I'm just saying I think he would have done a better job than Bush. (Which isn't saying much)

[Uncle Du 22]

Oh, this is purely a democratic vs. republican thing, gotcha.

[Chickenman 9]

No, this is a "any 5th grader could have done a better job in Iraq than Bush has been doing" thing.

[Uncle Du 22]

:roll:

Wow.

[Alexander 0]

Hooray for unfounded and baseless claims! I don't like Bush, but for you to say that is really ludicrous.

Edited September 28, 2005 by Alexander

[Ender 8]

I know that. I never said he would be a good commander simply because he actually did his duty. I'm just saying I think he would have done a better job than Bush. (Which isn't saying much)

Bullsith. John Kerry did NOT do his duty. He was in Vietnam for a total of four months. Most guys were there for 12 or 13 months. Do his duty? Let's run down the list...

3 Purple Hearts: None of which he deservedly got. In fact, one of them was due to his own negligence, when he fired a grenade too close to his boat and got a piece of shrapnel stuck in his arm, which only penetrated a millimeter. The medic treated it by pulling it out and applying a Band-Aid, and his own report says there was very little blood from the wound. Kerry tried to say that it was a rifle round, but his own report states that his boat received no enemy fire. Military regulations state that to qualify for a Purple Heart, an injury must come "from an outside force or agent," and treatment for the wound must "have been made a matter of official record." While John Kerry managed to satisfy the second criterion by insisting that an amused Dr. Letson provide an official Band-Aid, nicking himself with a fragment from his own poorly-aimed grenade fails to meet the first qualification.

Christmas In Cambodia? Gimme a fracking break.

On October 14, 1979, John Kerry described a remarkable event from his days as a Swift boat officer for the Boston Herald:

"I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon [sic] claimed there were no American troops was very real."

-- President Nixon, of course, did not assume office until January of 1969.

On March 27, 1986, during a speech opposing President Reagan's policy in Central America, Senator John Kerry had this to say:

"Mr. President, I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -? seared -? in me, that says to me, before we send another generation into harm's way we have a responsibility in the U.S. Senate to go the last step, to make the best effort possible in order to avoid that kind of conflict." [see Congressional Record - Senate of March 27, 1986, page 3594]

And again, in a 1992 article by the Associated Press:

"But for Kerry, who spent six violent months [sic] commanding a patrol boat on the Mekong River, there's always been a ring of truth to allegations of abandoned Americans. By Christmas 1968, part of Kerry's patrol extended across the border of South Vietnam into Cambodia.

"We were told, `Just go up there and do your patrol. Everybody was over there (in Cambodia). Nobody thought twice about it," Kerry said. One of the missions, which Kerry, at the time, was ordered not to discuss, involved taking CIA operatives into Cambodia to search for enemy enclaves.

"I can remember wondering, `If you're going to go, what happens to you,"' Kerry said.

As recently as May of 2000, U.S. News and World Report stated that, "Sen. John Kerry made his first forays into Cambodia during the Vietnam War as a Navy lieutenant on clandestine missions to deliver weapons to anticommunist forces."

Interestingly, Kerry's Cambodian sojourn, though "seared" into his memory by 1986, somehow failed to rate a mention in Kerry's own contemporary journal.

In "Unfit for Command," authors John O'Neill and Dr. Jerome Corsi document the impossibility of Kerry's story:

Despite the dramatic memories of his Christmas in Cambodia, Kerry?s statements are complete lies. Kerry was never in Cambodia during Christmas 1968, or at all during the Vietnam War. In reality, during Christmas 1968, he was more than fifty miles away from Cambodia. Kerry was never ordered into Cambodia by anyone and would have been court-martialed had he gone there.

During Christmas 1968, Kerry was stationed at Coastal Division 13 in Cat Lo. Coastal Division 13?s patrol areas extended to Sa Dec, about fifty-five miles from the Cambodian border. Areas closer than fifty-five miles to the Cambodian border in the area of the Mekong River were patrolled by PBRs, a small river patrol craft, and not by Swift Boats. Preventing border crossings was considered so important at the time that an LCU (a large, mechanized landing craft) and several PBRs were stationed to ensure that no one could cross the border.

A large sign at the border prohibited entry. Tom Anderson, Commander of River Division 531, who was in charge of the PBRs, confirmed that there were no Swifts anywhere in the area and that they would have been stopped had they appeared.

All the living commanders in Kerry?s chain of command?Joe Streuhli (Commander of CosDiv 13), George Elliott (Commander of CosDiv 11), Adrian Lonsdale (Captain, USCG and Commander, Coastal Surveillance Center at An Thoi), Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann (Commander, Coastal Surveillance Force Vietnam, CTF 115), and Rear Admiral Art Price (Commander of River Patrol Force, CTF 116)?deny that Kerry was ever ordered to Cambodia. They indicate that Kerry would have been seriously disciplined or court-martialed had he gone there. At least three of the five crewmen on Kerry?s PCF 44 boat?Bill Zaldonis, Steven Hatch, and Steve Gardner?deny that they or their boat were ever in Cambodia. The remaining two crewmen declined to be interviewed for this book. Gardner, in particular, will never forget those days in late December when he was wounded on PCF 44, not in Cambodia, but many miles away in Vietnam.

As part of the supporting documentation given to station managers for our television ad, "Any Questions?" we provided this regarding John Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia":

The story is a total preposterous fabrication by Kerry. Exhibit 8 is an affidavit by the Commander of the Swift boats in Vietnam, Admiral Roy Hoffmann, stating that Kerry's claim to be in Cambodia for Christmas Eve and Christmas of 1968 is a total lie. If necessary, similar affidavits are available from the entire chain of command. In reality, Kerry was at Sa Dec -- easily locatable on any map more than fifty miles from Cambodia. Kerry himself inadvertently admits that he was in Sa Dec for Christmas Eve and Christmas and not in Cambodia, as he had stated for so many years on the Senate Floor, in the newspapers, and elsewhere. Exhibit 27, Tour, pp. 213-219. Sa Dec is hardly "close" to the Cambodian border. In reality, far from being ordered secretly to Cambodia, Kerry spent a pleasant night at Sa Dec with "visions of sugar plums" dancing in his head. Exhibit 27, p. 219. At Sa Dec where the Swift boat patrol area ended, there were many miles of other boats (PBR's) leading to the Cambodian border. There were also gunboats on the border to prevent any crossing. If Kerry tried to get through, he would have been arrested. Obviously, Kerry has hardly been honest about his service in Vietnam.

John Kerry was never shot at by Khmer Rouge and Cambodians. He never took CIA operatives into Cambodia to search for enemy enclaves. In fact, John Kerry's boat never came within 50 miles of Cambodia.

On June 6, 1971, John Kerry described the work of the Swift boats to the Washington Star as follows:

"We established an American presence in most cases by showing the flag and firing at sampans and villages along the banks. Those were our instructions, but they seemed so out of line that we finally began to go ashore, against our orders, and investigate the villages that were supposed to be our targets. We discovered we were butchering a lot of innocent people, and morale became so low among the officers on those 'swift boats' that we were called back to Saigon for special instructions from Gen. Abrams. He told us we were doing the right thing. He said our efforts would help win the war in the long run. That's when I realized I could never remain silent about the realities of the war in Vietnam."

What John Kerry told the Washington Star was a lie.

Contrary to Kerry's claim, our consistent policy was to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians. On many occasions we did this at the cost of suffering additional casualties ourselves. We have interviewed hundreds of veterans who served on the Swift Boats or supported them, and there is simply no justification for Kerry's statement. Several members of our organization addressed the issue of atrocities during our May 4 press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

John Kerry also completely misrepresented the meeting with General Abrams and Admiral Zumwalt. Far from being a pep talk for officers distressed by their butchery of civilians, the purpose of this conference with the two highest-ranking American officers in Vietnam was to announce a new Swift boat mission: to drive the Vietcong out of the Ca Mau Peninsula. The goal of Operation SeaLords was to dominate the rivers in this area, and to eventually establish a permanent presence in the Cua Lon River, an effort later named Operation SeaFloat. This was to be done publicly, with the full participation of the media, to negate the claim of North Vietnamese negotiator Lee Duc Tho that Henry Kissinger could not legitimately represent South Vietnam because the U.S. did not control these areas.

We succeeded in that mission. We returned to Anthoi and drove the Vietcong out of the region, and soon the North Vietnamese and Vietcong representatives in Paris returned to the negotiating tables.

As its dominant tactic in their battle against the war, the antiwar movement successfully demonized Vietnam veterans by calling a series of "tribunals" or hearings into war crimes. But... they were packed with pretenders and liars -- historian Guenter Lewy, writing in "America in Vietnam"

John Kerry's lies about the activities of the Swift boats were part of a larger pattern of deception. As a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), Kerry testified before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 22, 1971, telling the Senators and a national audience that American troops "...had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam..." and accused the U.S. military of committing war crimes "on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

Kerry's charges were based on a VVAW conference called the "Winter Soldier Investigation" -- a leftist propaganda event funded primarily by Jane Fonda. None of the Winter Soldier "witnesses" Kerry cited were willing to sign affadavits, and their gruesome stories lacked the names, dates and places that would allow their claims to be tested. Few were willing to cooperate with military investigators. The Naval Investigative Service found that several of the veterans said to have given statements at Winter Soldier were in fact imposters using the name of real veterans.

False testimony and exaggerations were primary characteristics of the war crimes disinformation campaign, and also of the VVAW itself. Executive Secretary Al Hubbard, for example, claimed to have been an Air Force Captain wounded in Vietnam piloting a transport plane. In fact, Hubbard had been a staff sergeant who was not a pilot and who was never assigned to Vietnam.

John Kerry and the VVAW worked closely with America's wartime enemies, arranged multiple meetings with the North Vietnamese and Vietcong leadership, and consistently supported their positions. Kerry and his radical comrades also played a key role in defining the false, damaging image of Vietnam veterans as psychologically disabled alcoholics and addicts, haunted by the crimes they had been forced to commit in a "racist" war.

Come on, man. Saying John Kerry did his duty in Vietnam is like saying Hitler was a big fan of the Jews.

[GI_Admiral 2]

lol

Kerry did his duties but lied about them.

Everyone lies. Nixon, Clinton, Bush. I could find a bunch of spins bush put on himself. I could find a bunch of spin that Clinton put on himself. Its politics. You have to make yourself into a supre star to get any recognition from Star dazzled america.

[Uncle Du 22]

Yup, cause most Americans will believe what they're told if they agree with it. If they disagree, well, that's when they actually try and do research. To be abjective in a debate, you must know both sides, and lets be honest, that doesn't really happen. That's why I have no opinion any more. :p

[Ender 8]

lol

Kerry did his duties but lied about them.

Yeah, if doing your duty means stabbing your comrades in the back...