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#441
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"Billy Preston" ) writes:
"Bill Shatzer" wrote Kerry's views may have been mistaken - though, in retrospect, it seems he was more correct than not about the war - but I see no indication that they were anything other than honestly held beliefs. He didn't even write the "baby killer" speech before Congress. The phrase "baby killer" nor any approximation there of was not used in his senate testimony. The text is available on line and that can be readily confirmed. http://www.pbs.org/greatspeeches/tim...j_kerry_s.html Kerry obtained most of his "evidence" of supposed atrocities from the Winter Soldier project which collected the testimony of a number of veterans. It later turned out that many of the incidents testified to were exaggerated or could not be confirmed. In some cases, it turned out that the veterans had not even been in Vietnam. OTOH, some of the testimony was essentially accurate. If Kerry was guilty of any thing, it was being overly naive and trusting. Perhaps the stories related during the Winter Soldier project should have be subject to greater scepticism and better investigation and cross- checks. But, I can understand why that did not occur. VVAW had limited resources for conducting any investigation and it seems unlikely the US military would have cooperated with any information request from them in any event. And, I would think, there would have been an inherent bias to -believe- the word of fellow veterans - both because the basic bias of folks who have served is to -want- to believe our "comrades in arms" and because their stories conformed to Kerry's "mind-set" about the war. Perhaps he was overly credulous but then that is not an uncommon vice of the young. I find it difficult to find anything more sinister than that in his activities and testimony. -- "Cave ab homine unius libri" |
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Ed Rasimus wrote in message . ..
I'm sorry, Art, but that is not the truth. The designation of free fire zones is not a violation of the Geneva Convention. It is an acknowledgement of a division between friendly and enemy territory. It is not, as insinuated, an area of authorized total destruction and wanton killing. What Ketty learned through his experience and what his fellow soldiers had told him that in practive free fire zones were treated by many (and I'm sure not by all) as areas of authorized total destruction and wanton killing. The paperwork on file at the Pentagon might not have said that. Harrassment and interdiction fire is not, in any way, contrary to the Geneva Convention. The whole purpose of military fire is to harrass the enemy and interdict is supply. In many specific areas of eh Geneva conventions, and as a general rule there is a prohibition of tactics that endanger civilians without military necessity or which endageer civiains disprotionately to the military necessity (my paraphrasal). As an example I specifically recall that it is prohibited to target dams if breaching the damse would cause excessive civilian casualties. The COnventions are v ague on the issue of how much would be 'excessive' or disproportionate. Clearly that decision would be made by the party conducting the trial, if any. It is clear to me that Kerry was sayign that harrassment and interdiction fire was routinely used in Vietnam in a manner that subjected the civilians to risk that was disporportionate to military necessity. An example might be the (possible) reconnaisance by fire incident in which Kerry wounded himself. There is no prohibition by the Geneva Convention of the employment of .50 cal automatic weapons. Nothing at all. There is nothing in international law which prohibits the use of .50 cal against personnel. Nothing. Over in sci.mil a while ago a fellow who said he was a vegteran of the Swedish army (don;t know if he was as they say, 'on the net no one knows you're a dog and that doesn;t jsut apply to alt.personals) who said in his basic training he was taught to not fire their heavy machine gun (equivalent to .50 cal) ar individual personell. He was taught that to do so was a violation of the Geneva Conventions, that the heavy machine gun was to be used against equipment only. The only support anyone found for that argument was a general prohibition agains weapons that cause excessive suffering. It was pointed out that shooting a man with .50 caliber does not cause excessive suffering, it reduces his suffering because he is more likely to be killed outright than if he is shot with a smaller caliber. I tend to agree but the point is that in some countries, one presumes those without combat experience in living memory, the use of a .5o caliber machine gun against peiople is considered to be a war crime. Search and destroy is a viable tactic. It means you search for the enemy. You might have called it "patrol" in WW II. If you find the enemy, you engage him and you destroy the enemy and any war material. That's not prohibited by the Geneva Convention. That also depends on what is being searched for and destroyed. If memeory serves me correctly, there was a program of 'resettlement' in VIetnam in which villiagers were rounded up and moved to ostensibly safer parts of the country and their homes were destroyed to deny the support of that civilian infrastructure to the enemy. That program was a clear violation of the Geneva conventions, the excuse being that it was supposedly condoned by the South Vietnamese government and the GCs do not prohibit nations from abusing their own people. One wonders if the the government of South Vietnam was coercved into accepting that program. And, certainly the authorization of "air raid strike areas" is not prohibited by the Geneva Convention. Again, it depends on what is reasonably expected to be in the target area in addition to the enemy. The cornerstone of Kerry's arguments, if I understand them correctly, is that the war itself was inflicting more suffering on the Vietnamese people that he would expect to be inflicted on them if 'their side' lost the war. The idiology of one's government means little to a subsistance former. And, the comparison of all of us who fought in the war to Lt. Calley is despicable. I missed that comparison. I'll go back and look for it now. Meanwhile, would you object to being compared to Hugh Thompson? -- FF |
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#446
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Fred the Red Shirt wrote:
...would you object to being compared to Hugh Thompson? Trying to assume that mantle is what Kerry was doing with the VVAW. Jack |
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#449
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Jack wrote in message ...
A presidential candidate is only as good as the people who support him. Good grief! I hope that's not true. From what I've seen of the people who are rabid supporters of either of the major candidates, this year's vote is going to be a difficult choice for folks who are just trying to avoid the greater evil. Reminds me of a bumper sticker: "Cthulu for President! The cadidate for voters who are tired of choosing the leser of two evils." -- FF |
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Fred the Red Shirt wrote:
What good would Kerry have done by remaining silent, or by echoing the lies of his government? Kerry was hardly a Canary in a coal mine by that time, but just another silver spoon sucker with political ambitions looking for a bandwagon to ride, with no regard for those he defamed. Jack |
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