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#451
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#452
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"D. Strang" wrote in message news:o%gIc.22605$r3.21196@okepread03...
"Ian MacLure" wrote (WalterM140) wrote Whence he graduated in circa 1970. And the draft ended when exactly? Hmmm? Edwards in 51 YO. That would put him in the 1971 HS class. The draft ended in 1972. So explain how he graduated from a 4 yr college in 1974. Did he have a time machine? Summer School? CLEP? Bernie Kozar, former QB of the Cleveland Browns graduated from a 4-year college after two years. He did it because he was smart enough to complete a four-year program in two years. I also knew a girl in college who got her microbilogy degree in three years. -- FF |
#454
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#455
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Ed Rasimus wrote in message . ..
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. No. You created teh strawman yourself with your implication that he was speaking literally. Everyone, including yourself, knows that he was not speaking literally. 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. Thank you. You have shown that he was speaking as a representative of approx 1,000 veterans. .. Abu Ghraib was reprehensible. It was clearly a failure of leadership on site. It was a failure of leadership from the top down. When the Secretary of Defense re[peatedly and boldly decalres that the United States will not honor the Geneva Conventions, when he publically scoffs at accusations of abuse, he sends a clear message on down the line. It was also an aberration. It is not and should not be construed as representative of American behavior in combat. Agreed. But it is an aberration that was fostered and encouraged at the highers levels of our government. Colin Powell read the ICRC reports from Iraq and complained about them to the DOD befor Rumsfeld was even aware of them. 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. I agree with that but disagree that is is apropos this discussion. 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. No. I do have an advantage in that I already knew that Sherman wrote the letter as part of the correspondence he sent with three officers (not one) he sent back for court martial for (I think) three seperate crimes. However I also redirect your attention to the first sentence: "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. Sherman was writing about what was happening through out his army, not an isolated incident. Kerry did what Sherman said he wished to do. Kerry quit and then renounced the drift into vandalism that was overtaking the military in Vietnam. There were other differences of course. Sherman was fighting for the survival of the nation, and he was fighting and winning a war that clearly could be won, and was being won, by military means. Kerry not only occupied a lower station in the military, but he also saw that the survival of the US was not at stake and that the war in Vietnam could not be won by military means. The US had prevailed almost to the greatest extent possible in every military endeavor in Vietnam and still the end of the war was no where in sight. 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. I do not believe that it was a lie. Cite an example where an allegattion of war crimes was promptly investigated without an extensive, even illegal effort to cover-up or obstruct the investigation. 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. No they are not mutually exclusive positions. Moreover they represent the truth of his experience. Impetuous, even egotistical (and what politician is not?) he first believed the bull**** and lies about the glory of war and the righteousness of the cause, and perhaps there was at one time some truth to that. But once he saw with his own eyes the reality of Vietnam, and had at his disposal knowledge gained form his fellow soliders he learned differently, came home, and tried to fix the problem he had contributed to befor. Are not all great warriors anti-war in their hearts. -- FF |
#456
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#457
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Bush was not elected. He was appointed. We'll fix that in November.
Elected by the Congress, like all Presidents in a joint session that most Americans regard as a formality if they know about it at all. Michael Moore uses some footage in "Fahrenheit 911" from the 2000 certification of Florida's elctoral votes in the Senate. They could have been challenged if any one senator had agreed to co-sign the documentation provided by black members of Congress. Since you seem pretty familiar with this, what do you think about the rationale the Supreme Court used to close out the Florida recount? My understanding is that the Court has usually deferred to state courts in interpreting state constitutions. But here, they took the issue away from the state court and basically declared Bush the winner. In "F-911" you can hear Congresswoman Corrine Brown say that 16,000 of her constituents had been illegally disinfranchised in Duvall County. Bush is already gearing up to steal this election. Karl Rove, his communication director worked with Donald Segretti, who served time in prison for his activities in the 1972 campaign. Bush actually has Nixon adminstration officals working for him. These include Cheney and Rumsfeld. The Republican Party dirty tricks organization is hard at work and has been since Nixon's time. Walt |
#458
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I turned 18 in 1973. My draft lottery number was somewhere between
183 and 187. But no one was drafted from my year, the first such year since the start of the Vietnam era draft. I turned 18 in 1973 also. I asked my recruiter if I should register and he said not to worry about it. Walt |
#459
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Was I said was that Kerry didn't seem
particularly committed to his crew and his oath to serve since he took an "early out" from Vietnam. That early out took being wounded three times. Kerry had to volunteer three times to get that early out. He had to volunteer for the Navy. He had to volunteer for Viet Nam. And he had to volunteer for the Swift Boats. I wonder if his experience in the Swift Boats didn't sour him on the war. If he opted out of being killed for a mistake, I'd say it would be hard to gainsay him. He had an honorable out and he took it. Then, even more to his credit, he protested the war and helped expose some of the abuses. The more I hear about Kerry, the more I like him. He's done everything right in his campaign so far. Some of the pundits on TV yesterday were saying it was Kerry's election to lose. God willing, Bush will be ejected from the seat he stole. What you are doing is parroting the Republican Party attack machine. They've had the gall to attack Senator Kerry when their candidate cannot or will not account for two years of his own service. Walt |
#460
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Not that it really matters because what should matter is who would best lead
the country not so much as 35 year old history. Bush has been a disastrous failure as president. If Bush wins in November, this country will become even more of a police state. If Bush wins in November our national flag and national honor will continue to trail in the dust. If Bush wins in November we will still be hated and mistrusted around the world. If Bush wins in November, we will be less safe than we are now. If Bush wins in November, he'll still be sucking money out of the middle class to save the bank rolls of the rich and super rich. If Bush wins in November our grotesquesly maladroit foreign policies will continue. If Bush wins in November, Jeb will be right behind him. Those ******* Republicans have got to go. Walt |
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