John Kerry the Betrayer: Unfit to Command, part 3

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

When does all this election crap end?

[Ming]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
When does all this election crap end?

If it goes down anything like the last one... it may never end

[GePap]

Originally posted by rah
Back on topic.
Having tried to read everything with an open mind. I have come to the following conclusions.

Kerry coming back from the war and speaking out about it pissed some people off and they're going for a little payback. Both had a right to speak out but it doesn't really belong in presidential campaigns.

Kerry seems to have been well aware of the regulations about getting home early through the use of Purple Hearts and probably stretched the definition a bit to take advantage of it. I really don't care what others recall and all the counter claims since it all happened so long ago, I'm sure selective memory is in effect. If I had been in Nam and thought there was a way to get out of there early through proper proceedures, I probably would have tried to work things to my advantage also. I do have a lot of respect for people that volunteered to fight there. I'm sure he was put in mortal danger more than once. He should be proud he served. Alas he wasn't.

BUT, if I had taken advantage of certain regulations to serve a short short term there, and then spoke out against the war upon returning, I would have kept my mouth shut and not tried to use it as a main focus of my election campaign. A humble quiet hero plays better anyway.

SO my whole problem with this is not what happened, since I really don't care. He served his country and came home alive. That's enough for me.

BUT, it does make me question his decision making abilities if he could be convinced that Pushing the WAR HERO thing was a good idea.

Besides MtG's endless posts about how all medals need to be approved, so John kerry did not just have the power to magically authorize his own medals- he still has a bronze star and a silver star to show as a "war hero"

[rah]

I'm not saying he authorized his own medals. I'm saying he knew the proceedures and got three PHs and got sent home. Not serious wounds but enough to get sent home. How many vets do you think got three PHs and got sent home as fast as he did? Do you actually believe that he wasn't aware of the policy? If so, you're more naive then I thought.

I'm not questioning any of his medals. They are immaterial to my arguement. I admitted, he served and should be proud. He wasn't.
He knew he needed 3 PH and convienently got them amazingly quick. I have a few buds that had more than three injuries, but didn't get a PH for every little thing and got to come home early. If they had been more aware of the system, they might have. One bud didn't come back. None of them came home bragging about being hero's either. They were satisfied that they made it home. People that weren't there shouldn't judge their bravery.

I'm saying that it wasn't very smart of Kerry to use it as his main stratagy. If he had just kept his mouth shut, there wouldn't be any problems. People couldn't have attacked it. Come on, he went to Nam, Bush didn't. People didn't need to be reminded of it, they already knew. +1 for Kerry, but Nooooooooooooo, he thought he could get even bigger play out of it and pushed it. A lot of good it's doing him now.

Like I said, it make me question his judgement. Not about what he did back then, but what he's doing now.

[Patroklos]

Despite MtG remarks, I doubt that is the case. In Peace time all that paperwork gets done, but in wartime it does not, ESPECIALLY back then. We are much more anal now.

The silver star probobly got reviewed. The Bronze star probobly not and the Ph's definetly not. Like I said junior officers often write their citations themselves and submit them (I do) and then send them up. However, for routine stuff, like a PH in Vietnam, Kerry's level probobly was the review. If Kerry's CO went through each award at that time that is all he would have been doing. Kerry was a Junior Officer but also the equivalent to a department head on steroids. It would be easy to get that through.

Besides, if you have a Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts in four months and still have all your limbs, can speak without assistance, and are able to reproduce there is something wrong.

[JohnT]

What I'm surprised about is how Kerry allowed himself and his campaign to get as sidetracked as badly as they did because of these stupid ads. This (the ad controversy, not the Kerry in Vietnam controversy) has been going on for almost two weeks now and for almost every day this issue has dominated the headlines. The perception is becoming that his overreaction is lending credence to the attacks: he should have blasted them once and then shut the F up about it.

And I think Bush had a good point yesterday when he said that the current campaign finance law seemingly prohibits groups from supporting a candidate, but doesn't prevent them from denigrating a candidate. Under the law of unintended consequences, McCain-Feingold is becoming a boon for negative campaigning.

[Guynemer]

I'm just astounded at the complete ineptitude of the Democrats. (Though I'm not sure why I would expect anything more.)


Here we are, spending all this time debating John Kerry's military record, which by all official and reputable accounts is exemplary and heroic.

Meanwhile, Bush and almost his entire administration (and most of his loudest supporters in the "left-wing" media) did everything they could to AVOID the military. And even that wasn't good enough for Bush, who didn't even show up for his national guard desk duty!

Show some ****ing balls, Democrats!

[Patroklos]

Most people don't have a problem with Kerry's ACTUAL war record. I myself respect him for what he did. He however seems to feel that that is not enough and made up all this Cambodia chirstmas and other stuff. That is a charaacter flaw, but nothing major. I think he is a dishonorable person and would never vote for him because of it, but I don't hate him for it.

What he did before Congress however is far more telling, and blah blah blah read the thread.

If Kerry isn't willing to stand on his actual war record, I find no reason to go out of my way to praise him for what he doesn't find good enough himself. Especially after his hippie grandstanding.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ned
It interesting, is it not, that the commies who were being bombed never called the NYTimes to complain.

Why would they? It's not like reporters in Cambodia didn't notice that the population of the capital doubled in a year because or refugees from the bombing. By the time the bombing campaign was stopped, there were two million refugees in Cambodia.

The U.S. dropped over 275,000 tonnes of bombs on Cambodia from 1969 to 1973. That's a lot of bombs. One of the U.S. ambassadorial staff did a little experiement. He cut a piece of carboard to 1:50,000th size of a "box" (the area devastated by a B-52 payload). He couldn't find a single place in Cambodia where that box didn't overlap a village.

There's no official source for the numbers of dead, because Lon Nol's people were supposed to be incharge of surveying the effects of the bombing, but there were so many sorties that they couldn't cover them all.

Before 1969, the Kmher Rouge were a tiny group of a few hundred people, supported by the NV (I was wrong, Ned was right). Sianouk purged the leftist members of his cabinent, who ended up joining the KR. Despite this, Cambodia was a major source of supplies for North Vietnam (not NV forces in the South).

In 1970, rightist military leaders deposed the prince and set up a military dictatorship. After the American intervention (bombing and invasion), the party grew to include 10,000 regular soldiers, and 70,000 militia. Lon Nol was so hated that his brother, Lon Nil, was killed, his liver cut out and roasted, and distributed to a crowd.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ned
No one bombed a neutral country. Nixon bombed communist bases inside Cambodia with the "tacit" consent of Sihanouk.

They never found any evidence that Cosvn existed, actaully.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Guynemer
Show some ****ing balls, Democrats!

Uhm . . .

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Guynemer
Show some ****ing balls, Democrats!

Now that would be worse than the Janet Jackson incident

[Joseph]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
I buy nothing of the bull**** any political entity says, be it rep, dem or com. Be they "independent" or not...

But anybody should be better than Bush... Atleast now. Ask people in 5 years, what they thought of the Kerry presidency.

If Hillary has her way, Kerry is toast. That is so she can run in 08.

[Joseph]

Originally posted by molly bloom


So Ned, bombing neutral countries without the consent of Congress or the American people is o.k. with you?


Should any 'neutrals' in the vicinity of Iraq and Afghanistan be evacuating their civilian populations?


Now as to not deliberately killing civilians- if you drop more bombs on a country than you did, on, oh, Japan, in the course of WWII, how many civilians will those bombs not kill?

Will they not kill the estimated 600 000 Cambodian civilians unfortunate enough to have been under those bombs?

'
May-August 1973

Months after the Paris Agreement, which marked the official end of the Vietnam War, the United States, under the leadership of President Richard Nixon and his assistant for National Security Affairs Henry Kissinger, steps up its bombing of Cambodia—contradicting earlier claims that the rationale for bombing Cambodia had been to protect American lives in Vietnam. During the months of March, April and May, the tonnage of bombs dropped on Cambodia is more than twice that of the entire previous year. The bombing stops in August under pressure from Congress. The total number of civilians killed since the bombing began in 1969 is estimated to be 600,000 (see March 1969-1973). [Blum, 1995; Guardian, 4/25/2002] '

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=cambodia

C'mon, Ned, trying to do a snowjob on King Richard is just too much, even for you.

When that country is being used by the enemy, YES, YES, YES, YES, YOU GET THE MESSAGE.

[notyoueither]

Technically, it's no longer neutral, and a government that cannot eject foreign combatants no longer has sovereignty over affected areas.