On 15 Jul 2004 20:57:04 -0700, (Fred the Red
Shirt) wrote:

Ed Rasimus wrote in message . ..

He went to Congress, stood before the
US Senate and said that you and he had been guilty of war crimes. That
you had all committed atrocities. That you were rapists, baby-killers
and violators of the Geneva convention. Would he be exhibiting
"honesty to admit it"?


What if everything he said was true? Would that not be honest and
courageous?

You create a straw man. If everything he said were true, it would have
been a failure at all levels of leadership to fulfill their
obligations as officers and NCOs. If we all had committed atrocities
at all levels of command and he was the single moral voice it would be
honest and courageous. Of course, that was not the case, either in my
metaphor or in the testimony of Lt. Kerry.

Can you show that Kerry, ever LITERALLY accused every soldier in Vietnam
of committing war crimes? Are you the only person allowed to use analogies.

Here's a quote:

"Statement of Mr. John Kerry

....I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one member of the group
of 1,000 which is a small representation of a very much larger group
of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to
sit at this table they would be here and have the same kind of
testimony....


WINTER SOLDIER INVESTIGATION

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that
several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over
150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans
testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated
incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full
awareness of officers at all levels of command....

They told the stories at times they 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
Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and
generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the
normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging
which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

Or are you misrepresenting general statements and statements of
general moral responsibility?

In my opinon we Americans are collectively responsible, whether for
good or ill, for the invasion of Iraq. Would you take that to be
an accusation that you LITERALLY commited the crimes at Abu Ghraib?

You start with "in my opinion" which acknowledges that you are not
stating a fact but rather an interpretation. I'll accept that America
is responsible for GOOD or ill for the outcome of the invasion. I tend
to think removal of Saddam and initiation of the process of
democratization of Iraq and hence the Middle East is a good thing.

Abu Ghraib was reprehensible. It was clearly a failure of leadership
on site. It was also an aberration. It is not and should not be
construed as representative of American behavior in combat.

Consider the following letter written On 4 Aug 1863, From William
Tecumseh Sherman wrote, to John Rawlins, which read in part:

"The amount of burning, stealing, and plundering done by
our army makes me ashamed of it. I would quit the service
if I could, because I fear that we are drifting to the
worst sort of vandalism. I have endeavored to repress this
class of crime, but you know how difficult it is to fix
the guilt among the great mass of all army. In this case I
caught the man in the act. He is acquitted because his
superior officer ordered it. The superior officer is acquitted
because, I suppose, he had not set the fire with his own hands
and thus you and I and every commander must go through the war
justly chargeable with crimes at which we blush.

Sherman said "war is hell." Lee, however, said "it is good that war is
so terrible, lest we come to love it too much." Aristotle said that
"war ennobles man." Putting service above self and recognizing that
there are some principles that are worth fighting and dying for is
basic.

Now, after looking up to see what sorts of things Kerry REALLY said,
and the context in which he said them, would you not consider that
context to be much the same as General Sherman's remarks?

No, I would not. Sherman spoke of an incident and a failure of an
officer to perform. Kerry spoke of a generic ignoring of the rules of
war, not only tolerated by leadership but condoned and even directed.
That was a lie.

It is noteworthy that certain neocons (in this context, neo-confederates)
have taken the last sentence of that paragraph out of its proper
context, and misatributed it to a a letter from Sherman to Grant,
to prove that Sherman was an admitted war-criminal.

My real issue with Kerry is his desire to have it both ways. He sought
public approval for protesting the war vigorously. That was well
within his right to do so. Now, he seeks approval for being a great
warrior. Those are mutually exclusive positions.

It's sort of like voting FOR the $87 billion before he voted AGAINST
it.



Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8