Two MOH Winners say Bush Didn't Serve

"WalterM140" wrote:

http://www.democrats.com/display.cfm?id=157

Moron why don't you try finding a valid source for the garbage you want to
present - democrats.com might be a valid source for where the next left wing
riot might occur. That is the only news item it would ever have a chance of
getting right.

Ed Rasimus wrote:
On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 09:59:56 -0400, "George Z. Bush"
wrote:

I committed no atrocities, am guilty of no war crimes, .....

If, in your entire career flying bomb-carrying combat aircraft, you ever
jettisoned your bomb load for whatever reason on other than your assigned
bona-fide target (let's say in a free fire zone), there are some who might
make the argument that you most certainly did commit either an atrocity or a
war crime if your bombs landed on innocent enemy civilians. I personally
don't care to pursue that point, but you ought not be shocked to learn that
some people might, and they're not necessarily unpatriotic because they feel
that way.

"War crimes" need to be defined as violations of international accords
regarding the conduct of armed conflict. We can't ascribe the term to
whatever offends our particular sensibilities or suits our political
needs of the moment.

Let's take the red herring off the table. Let's just assume that the situation
I described is a violation of the section of the Geneva Accords that prohibits
punishing the civilian populace of the nation with which we are at war, to which
the US is a signatory.

Jettisoning weapons in emergencies, for personal defense, etc, is NOT
a war crime. There is considerable difference between jettisoning a
weapons load and targeting innocents. One is acknowledged as an
unavoidable risk of a combat zone while the other is most assuredly
proscribed.

I didn't suggest any imminent emergency. I was just suggesting that you had a
piece or ordinance hung up that you couldn't release on target. I also did not
suggest deliberately targeting civilians.

A "free-fire zone" is, in its entirety an area of unrestricted weapons
employment with only small exceptions, such as hospitals, refugee
camps, churches (religious buildings), and white flags exempt.
Delivering in a free-fire zone is not a war crime.

Let's assume that your exceptions to the definition of a "free fire zone" are
accurately stated, as they probably are. The problem becomes one that you may
be somewhat delusion if you think that some people might not take exception to
your conclusion regarding delivering ordinance in a free fire zone when (let's
assume) the entire Gulf of Tonkin was readily and safely available for that
purpose

Certainly there are some who "might make the argument" that I "most
certainly did commit either an atrocity or a war crime (that's either
an interesting distinction or a redundancy) IF your bombs landed on
innocent enemy (oxymoron???) civilians."

Well, we've finally reached an area of agreement in that there might be some
who would consider dropping ordinance on enemy civilians to be an atrocity or a
war crime. I happen to be one of those who think those terms are not
necessarily mutually exclusive in that traumatically amputating the extremities
of an unarmed civilian might well be both an atrocity and a war crime.

I've previously challenged your categorization of innocent enemy civilians since
you apparently suggested that they can't be enemy and innocent at the same time.
Infants and young children are incapable of posing a credible threat to our
armed forces, as are other civilians, including the excessively aged and the
infirm. Pretending that they don't exist in a free fire zone simply because you
can't see them is unacceptable. Only those who take up arms against you are
legitimate targets; those you suspect might do so are not until such time as
they arm themselves. As long as they're unarmed, they're protected by the
provisions of the Geneva Conventions regardless of our suspicions.

But making the argument isn't
following the definition of a war crime. Some might even accuse the
military of genocide or wholesale murder, but they would be employing
a despicable level of hyperbole.

The purpose of military operations is to "kill people and break
things". Doing anything less is a sure route to defeat.

In other words, you're saying that anything goes and that you have no
constraints on anything you or the military choose to do. If you claim
something like that, you have to realize that the entire world will snicker and
smirk when our government issues its next annual report of nations who have
egregiously violated the human rights of its own citizens or of others. How can
we expect others to live by our human rights rules when we fail to do so
ourselves? Won't we have lost the moral high ground that our nation has always
enjoyed in the past? Up until WWII and perhaps the Korean War as well, we used
to be the world's good guys. Nowadays, a billion plus Muslims look on us with a
clearly jaundiced or suspicious eye, as well as many others of our former
friends and admirers. What happened to bring that about?

George Z.

"WalterM140" wrote in message
...

"The official record of Bush's military service indicates that Bush did
not
report in person for the last two years of his service. In addition,
superior
officers in both Alabama and Texas say they never saw him during this
period.
And George Magazine offers no credible evidence to contradict this...."


"Bush did accumulate the days of service required for an honorable
discharge,
but these appear to be no-show days that were credited to him as part of
the
extraordinary favoritism that characterized his service from the beginning
to
the end of his service."

http://www.democrats.com/display.cfm?id=157


The record shows Kerry didn't complete his Vietnam tour.

"Brett" wrote in message
news

Moron why don't you try finding a valid source for the garbage you want to
present - democrats.com might be a valid source for where the next left
wing
riot might occur. That is the only news item it would ever have a chance
of
getting right.


There is no valid source for his assertions. WalterM140 is not interested
in facts or logic.

In message , Pete
writes
"Paul J. Adam" wrote
Perhaps: but by that argument, wouldn't the US victory be even greater
if back in the late 1940s it had told the French to get out of their
ex-colony and offered generous aid and support to Ho Chi Minh? Communist
or not, I'll bet he'd rather have sold rubber to Firestone and Goodyear
for hard dollars than to the USSR for roubles. (Fifty years of hindsight
applies, of course)

And 50 yrs later, people would be writing about "Another evil dictator that
the Americans kept in power"

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Sadly, you're right.


Now, for some very my-opinion analysis... (assayed at exactly $0.02)

Maybe Vietnam would go the way of South Korea (prosperous, stable, but
not pleasant to be labelled a 'dissident' in). Or maybe it would be a
new Argentina with its own "dirty war" (where 'dissidents' are subject
to 'a process of elimination').

But given the grief the US got over Vietnam, how much worse could it be?
After all, the US _did_ prop up an assortment of corrupt dictators and
generals in Vietnam before the collapse - if nothing else, better to be
condemned for successfully either walking away or backing the winners,
than for failure.


I'll ask a really cynical question - was the combat experience that the
US gained in Vietnam worth the lives and treasure expended, and the
alleged intangible costs that are so hard to pin down?

(Would the US military have been stronger or weaker without Vietnam? I
have honestly no idea. Would it have been a rejuvenated force as old
equipment was replaced, or would it have placed blind trust in new kit
and - for example - still been using AIM-9Bs into the late 1970s because
tests proved the missiles were marvellous?)


--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

In message , Jarg
writes
"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
But wasn't the whole point of the US presence to prevent the North
grabbing the South? They kept fighting until the US withdrew, then moved
on to achieve their goal. Sounds like a success to me, even if the end
result wasn't the Socialist Worker's Paradise they'd hoped for.

Well, you could make the arguement that the US objective changed at the end.

So why change *at the end* if the original goal was so unimportant?

Perhaps: but by that argument, wouldn't the US victory be even greater
if back in the late 1940s it had told the French to get out of their
ex-colony and offered generous aid and support to Ho Chi Minh? Communist
or not, I'll bet he'd rather have sold rubber to Firestone and Goodyear
for hard dollars than to the USSR for roubles. (Fifty years of hindsight
applies, of course)

I never said the US won in Vietnam!

Sorry, Jarg - my comment was generic rather than particular and
certainly not aimed at you.

But if that is victory, I'm not sure it
was worth winning. I'm certain Vietnam would be a far better place had the
North lost.

The knee-jerk reaction is to insist you're wrong, of course. Which is
why it's rubbish. (Would a South Vietnam dependent on US supply and
still a proxy battlefield for the USSR and to lesser extent China, be
much more stable and prosperous?)



Thinking about it, the problem is getting support and consensus for what
'the national government of Vietnam' is doing. (Can't develop isolated
locations if you can't move supplies without dissident ambushes...) and
a clear win is needed for that - by either side, but one of them has to
show that There Is No Alternative.


It's too late and I'm too tired to put much more on that thought for the
moment. Willing to discuss it, but not right now. (Seriously, Jarg - if
it offends you, I'm sorry and let's leave it be. If you're interested in
it, very willing to debate)

--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

Up until WWII and perhaps the Korean War as well, we used
to be the world's good guys. Nowadays, a billion plus Muslims look on us
with a
clearly jaundiced or suspicious eye, as well as many others of our former
friends and admirers. What happened to bring that about?


The Bush 43 administration.

Walt

"George Z. Bush" wrote in message
...

Up until WWII and perhaps the Korean War as well, we used
to be the world's good guys. Nowadays, a billion plus Muslims
look on us with a clearly jaundiced or suspicious eye, as well as
many others of our former friends and admirers. What happened
to bring that about?


The teaching of radical Islam.

In article ,
Ed Rasimus wrote:

....
What did we get out of it? We changed the way we organize, train and
fight our wars. We lost one F-105 for every 65 sorties over N. Vietnam
in '66 and '67. We lost one fixed wing aircraft for every 3500 sorties
during Desert Storm. We lost one fixed wing aircraft...period, in
Iraqi Freedom for 16,500 sorties. We learned some lessons.

Do you suppose the fact that Iraq didn't have the advantage of real-time
super-power support (from the Soviets) in the form of arms, training,
and "advisors" has anything to do with it?




--Mike

In article ,
Ed Rasimus wrote:

" I am saddened by the fact that Vietnam has yet again been inserted into
the
campaign, and that it has been inserted in what I feel to be the worst
possible way. By that I mean that yesterday, during this Presidential
campaign, and even throughout recent times, Vietnam has been discussed and
written about without an adequate statement of its full meaning."

Ahh, yes. That from he who repeatedly inserts Vietnam into the
campaign. How duplicitous.

"We do not need to divide America over who served and how. I have
personally always believed that many served in many different ways. Someone
who was deeply against the war in 1969 or 1970 may well have served their
country with equal passion and patriotism by opposing the war as by fighting
in it. Are we now, 20 years or 30 years later, to forget the difficulties of
that time, of families that were literally torn apart, of brothers who
ceased to talk to brothers, of fathers who disowned their sons, of people
who felt compelled to leave the country and forget their own future and turn
against the will of their own aspirations?"

Senator John Kerry, Jan 30, 1992

Why do I feel this strong urge to regurgitate?

From one of Kerry's accused war criminals...


Ed, can I ask when John Kerry ever said that _everybody_ serving in
Vietnam has committed atrocities and were war criminals (verifiable cite
please)?

I don't see him how saying that atrocities were going on translates to
everybody was doing them.

Or is it that partisanship compels you to play the victim when you're
not one?


--Mike