John Kerry: Unfit For Command

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Well, the Seattle Times is the first major paper to pick up the Kerry-Cambodia story. How much longer can the NYT, Post, et al continue to bury this?

One of the quotes from the book makes me question its veracity. The U.S. regularly violated the neutrality of Cambodia and Laos. Not only would Kerry not have been disciplined for doing it, he would have been disciplined for failing to follow the enemy.

[Drake Tungsten]

Kerry has an agenda? I thought he was just the anti-Bush.

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4032

[notyoueither]

Election night around here is gonna be realllll interesting.

[chequita guevara]

Ya think?

[Shi Huangdi]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I actually read an interesting piece a month or so back about how Kerry might end up like Carter. The gist of it was that people are voting for Kerry not because they agree with his views (if such views even exist ), but simply to get Bush out of office. This kind of support would not give Kerry any sort of mandate to push his agenda after being elected, since most of his support will dry up once the primary goal, ie. beat Bush, has been achieved. With no mandate, Kerry ends up like Carter, a President with no political capital, unable to achieve anything of note.

Interesting point. Kerry could well end up not being able to get anything done and be a weak President, paving the way for him to be crushed by Senator Rick Santorum of the Great State of Pennsylvania in 2008.

Bush had no mandate, considering he lost the election, and had to be appointed.

He got a mandate from 9/11.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
He got a mandate from 9/11.

Yes, but he acted like he had one from Day 1. The people to whom I was listening said Bush had no choice but to act like he had a mandate cuz if he didn't, he'd by a lame duck in his first term.

Anyway, he only had a partial mandate from 9/11. Not to enact his reactionary domestic agenda or persue wars against countries which were no threat to us, but to take the fight to the terrorists, where ever they might be.

[notyoueither]

he did a good job then. After Afghanistan they ran out of bad guys. By invading Iraq he opened the honey pot to attract them there.

4 more wars!

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Ramo
My understanding is that the VVAW leadership told their members not to cooperate with the military regarding war crimes investigations.

Which makes the whole thing fail the sniff test, Ramo. Surely you realize that the refusal to cooperate with any independent investigation casts doubt on the credibility on thier results.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


I'm talking about policy here.

I'm talking about the what his IQ was. I though you were as well. Carters IQ is double Rayguns. I'm sure. Carter was a damn rocket scientist.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Which makes the whole thing fail the sniff test, Ramo. Surely you realize that the refusal to cooperate with any independent investigation casts doubt on the credibility on thier results.

Not in the early 1970s it didn't. You're talking about people who fealt they'd just been screwed by the government to trust that same government. At a time when more and more government lies and abuses were being exposed. It's no wonder they didn't cooperate. Anyway, given the military's habit of denying everything, why participate?

[DinoDoc]

Why go public at all if you aren't willing to submit at all the the appropiate authorities? It has the same weight as if I called a press conference and claimed to have abused prisoners in Iraq.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Why go public at all if you aren't willing to submit at all the the appropiate authorities?

I believe the key word here is "appropriate." Considering the times, submitting to the U.S. government would have been like asking the fox to investigate the claims of the hen house.

[DinoDoc]

Whatever che.

[chequita guevara]

COINTELPRO
Revelations that the CIA was spying on and doing things to Americans
The Pentagon Papers
The Vietnam War
Watergate,
etc.

This was a government to be trusted?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

Between committee hearings, amendments, floor votes, conference committees, etc., I doubt there's one bill of any significance that has originated with any member of Congress and not been thoroughly bastardized.

When did I say that passing named bills made up the totality of a Senator's record? Way to knock down that straw man, but it really has nothing to do with my point. The passing of bills is indeed a part of a Senator's record (a part Kerry fails miserably in), but so are other activities like participation on commitees. I know you'd like to discount these activities given Kerry's horrible record on them (missed 38 of 49 public hearings while serving on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence between 1993 and 2000), but reality isn't dictated by your spin.

And most of the useful work of the congressional intel committees isn't public. At any rate, how often has the public at large given a flying **** at a rolling donut about the legislative accomplishments of someone running for an executive office? I know people would like to see Kerry run on non-issues that don't challenge Bush in any way, but sorry, reality is that voters don't care.

Even if he was a lying douchebag, he'd need no defense. He hasn't told a single lie as President of the United States, so he's way ahead of his opponent.

Oh, so it's OK to be a liar as long as you haven't lied while serving in the position you're lying to acquire...

Come on, MtG, you didn't really write this tripe, did you?

We already know Bush has lied repeatedly in the conduct of his office. The best you can hope for is to say "Bush should be elected because Kerry will be just as big a liar as Bush is." That's not much of a claim to fame for Bush to deserve election.

you wouldn't need to try so hard with the smear campaign.

1. It's not a smear campaign, at least on my part. I dislike both Bush and Kerry, but the majority of Poly hates Bush and has him in their crosshairs on a permanent basis. A lot of you have lost your damn minds in support of Kerry, however, and someone needs to point out just what a piece of **** he really is. Sadly, that's fallen to me.

It doesn't matter what a piece of **** he is or might be. He's not Bush. Hell, I'd take G. Gordon Liddy, Strom Thurmond, Donald Duck, or just about anybody other than Charles Manson in place of Bush. Bush hasn't performed well enough on the job to deserve election to give him the delusion that his policy failures have been endorsed by the American people.

2. I'm not trying hard. A few minutes a day on the blogosphere turns up plenty of embarassing Kerry stories that you'll never hear about from the Big Media.

Blogs are wonderful things. I should start one about the time that a drunk, coked-out George W. Bush molested me when I was a kid in Houston. I can even prove I was in Houston.