John Kerry the Braggart: Unfit For Command, Part 4

[Ned]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
And "domino theory".

The domino theory is the "grip on resources" theory.

[Ned]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
The domino theory isn't much of a theory. The truth is, a revolution in one country tends to inpire people in others to try and take control of their government. Should call it, the domino effect.

If, however, the US hadn't sold their allies out at the end of WWII and forced Vietnam back into the French Empire, we'd never have had to fight that stupid war.

Huh? The French government was the legitimate government.

[Berzerker]

There is no dispute about the first attack. There is no proof that the second attack did not occur.

No proof a second attack did not occur? Isn't there supposed to be proof an attack did occur before using it as an excuse for war?

What is this so called "West."

US, France, and every other colonial power in the area at the time. Play a civ scenario about the Pacific war and you'll see the western powers with "land holdings" in SE Asia. All that was threatened if revolutions were allowed to continue. That was the real domino theory, resources and who owns them. The west adopted the very anti-capitalist notion that what belongs to others is there for the taking and the rightful owners disagreed...

[Berzerker]

Hu? The French government was the legitimate government.

Then England and the King were the legitimate government of the 13 American colonies and the Founding Fathers were traitors. No Ned, France was not the legitimate government, it was a foreign occupyer stealing resources from other people.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Berzerker


No proof a second attack did not occur? Isn't there supposed to be proof an attack did occur before using it as an excuse for war?

Oh, I forgot. Democrats need to be attacked TWICE before war is justified. Thanks for reminding me.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Berzerker
US, France, and every other colonial power in the area at the time. Play a civ scenario about the Pacific war and you'll see the western powers with "land holdings" in SE Asia. All that was threatened if revolutions were allowed to continue. That was the real domino theory, resources and who owns them. The west adopted the very anti-capitalist notion that what belongs to others is there for the taking and the rightful owners disagreed...

I presume that by rightful owners you mean communist parties organized and financed by Moscow?

[Ned]

Originally posted by Berzerker


Then England and the King were the legitimate government of the 13 American colonies and the Founding Fathers were traitors. No Ned, France was not the legitimate government, it was a foreign occupyer stealing resources from other people.

Alright, I'll bite. Who was the legitimate government if not the French?

[Berzerker]

Ned -

Oh, I forgot. Democrats need to be attacked TWICE before war is justified. Thanks for reminding me.

What were we doing over there, Ned? Sailing the ocean blue as pirates boarded our ship? We were already in there fighting the North (as "advisors") even though our troop strength would soon climb after the 2nd attack (which is the one we used as our excuse, makes me wonder about what happened in the first attack). It looks to me like they realised too late to use the first attack as an excuse so they invented an attack - that's deceitful.

Now, if some foreigner is propping up a corrupt government, no... using that corruption... to oppress you, aren't you already justified in attacking the foreigners as well as your corrupt countrymen? It was a civil war, not some communist invasion. I could care less if Vietnam went communist, they did anyway and it was no skin off my back. But it easily could have had my older brother gotten a lower lottery number... Now, explain to me why my brother's life would be worth having a corrupt "democracy" in Vietnam...

[Berzerker]

Ned -

Alright, I'll bite. Who was the legitimate government if not the French?

Well, thank you for asking before presuming.

The people who had been living there for eons. They owned the land, if they wanted to have a government or not doesn't matter to me. But I can't support an effort to undermine their government and militarily suppress a population that sees the corruption we've brought. We effectively took the place of the colonial French power ripping them off..

[Ned]

Exactly, B. There was no government other than the French government or the Japanese occupation forces. The French were never given a chance to set up local governments, hold elections and evacuate as did the Brits in places like India. They were in a fight from the get go with the Viet Mingh, followers of Uncle Ho, who was a patriot, but hardly an elected leader.

Our policy was to allow the local governments of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia have a chance. Instead they were themselves in a fight for their lives against Uncle Ho and his merry men.

Give me a break about "corruption" and the like. We lost the whole nine yards, IMHO, when we did not back the French when they still had a chance.

[Berzerker]

Exactly, B. There was no government other than the French government or the Japanese occupation forces.

Exactly what? If a bunch of people don't have a government, that doesn't justify imposing one upon them. But of course they had government, a localised agrarian system. At least until Europeans discovered resources. It's the same story over and over... one group of people with more strength threaten weaker groups to get what they have. That's what Vietnam was about...

The French were never given a chance to set up local governments, hold elections and evacuate as did the Brits in places like India.

Who gave them the right in the first place? Their guns? Did the Indian people have justification to kick the Brits out? If it was moral for the French to militarily occupy Vietnam, would it be moral for the Vietnamese to militarily occupy France. You don't see something bizarre about the US going half way around the world to prop up a corrupt government?

Our policy was to allow the local governments of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia have a chance. Instead they were themselves in a fight for their lives against Uncle Ho and his merry men.

I believe Uncle Ho asked us for help, recognise them and stop backing the French. We declined that request and insisted on supporting the corrupt government we helped create in the South.

Give me a break about "corruption" and the like.

Why? Why do you suppose so many Vietnamese rejected "their own" government? Because it wasn't their government, it was the west's government and it was corrupt as all hell.

We lost the whole nine yards, IMHO, when we did not back the French when they still had a chance.

Is that how the US defines freedom? The "freedom" of the west to steal resources from the 3rd world? Look at the result of that freedom - a bloody war that took the lives of millions.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Straybow

Hmmm… Lodge didn't once mention resources in Vietnam, only in surrounding countries that could be "influenced and undermined" by a Communist presence in Vietnam. But he also mentions the 249 million peoples that we didn't want to see enslaved under Maoist or similar ideologies. Like what happened in two neighbor states with millions massacred.

Lodge didn't have to- he was after all ambassador in South Viet Nam, so presumably he expected his audience to be aware of Viet Nam's resources, or his knowledge of them.

As for the United States being concerned with the millions slaughtered in the neighbouring states, if they were so concerned why undermine Cambodia's legitimate government in the first place?

Why reduce parts of Cambodia to a moonscape?

Why bomb Laos and Cambodia until the peasant farmers sick of the incessant rain of high explosive, defoliant and napalm willingly joined the Pathet Lao and Khmer Rouge?

I confess, as a strategy for ensuring that the corrupt puppet regimes you like stay in place, this doesn't strike me as terribly successful, but then it seems to me from my reading of the sorry history of South East Asia and elsewhere in the 20th Century, whenever American economic interests are involved, any blood soaked dictator gets supplied with a figleaf with 'democrat' or 'anticommunist' written on it so people like Ned can go on deluding themselves that America's foreign policy has some sort of ethical aspect to it.

Of course America was so revolted by the perpetrators of genocide in Cambodia that following Viet Nam's successful liberation of the country from the Khmer Rouge America cosied up to them, supporting them in maintaining their seat in the United Nations and ensuring their fighters received food aid and medical supplies, and arms and money.

[Lincoln]

Originally posted by Ned
More lies from the would be president.

The Unsubstantiated Heroism of Hanoi John
September 1, 2004

The New York Times has a new typewriter key for the Swift Boat Veterans story that reads: "the unsubstantiated charges of the Swift Boat Veterans."

Unsubstantiated? It was Kerry – not the Swift Boat Veterans – who told The Washington Post: "I wish they had a delete button on LexisNexis." The Swift Boat Veterans haven't been forced to retract any of their story. Meanwhile, John Kerry has been issuing about a retraction a day since the Swift Boat Veterans started talking.

Most recently, Kerry has had to backpedal on the circumstances surrounding his first Purple Heart. Kerry has described the action on Dec. 2, 1968, for which he received a Purple Heart as his "first intense combat." The Swift Boat veterans say Kerry came under no enemy fire that day and that his injury, such as it was, resulted from the ricochet of a grenade fired by Kerry himself. (This rules out the Purple Heart but does qualify him for another "Boy, is my face red" citation, with clusters.)

Among the eyewitnesses who say Kerry came under no enemy fire on Dec. 2, 1968, is John Kerry himself. According to Douglas Brinkley's book, "Tour of Duty," Kerry wrote in his diary nine days later, on Dec. 11, 1968: "We hadn't been shot at yet." His campaign is still trying to figure out how to claim that Kerry couldn't have known this because he wasn't even on his own swiftboat at the time.

A Kerry campaign official first explained the discrepancy by essentially explaining that it depends on what the meaning of "we" is. Kerry, the official said, apparently had a nontraditional understanding of the word "we" to mean: "others not including me." "We": another two-letter word successfully parsed by a Democrat!

Another Kerry campaign official, John Hurley, has since admitted that it is "possible" that Kerry's first Purple Heart came from a self-inflicted wound.

The Kerry campaign has refused to release Kerry's personal Vietnam archive, including his journals and letters, saying that the senator was contractually bound to grant Kerry hagiographer Doug Brinkley exclusive access to the material. But then Brinkley said the papers are the property of the senator and in his full control. Still, no records.

On the bright side, the Kerry campaign is considering releasing the director's cut of Kerry's own filmed re-enactments of his war "heroics" – which, by the way, makes Kerry the first person ever to form a war re-enactment club during the actual war.

Kerry had long maintained that he did not attend the 1971 meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War in Kansas City, Mo., where the assassination of U.S. senators was discussed. Kerry campaign spokesman David Wade said, "Kerry was not at the Kansas City meeting." Later, FBI files showed Kerry was at the meeting. Now Kerry admits he was there.

So I think that means John Kerry attended as many V.V.A.W. meetings at which the assassination of U.S. senators was discussed as he did meetings of the Senate Intelligence Committee on which he later sat.

And let's not forget that Kerry was caught telling a big, dirty, stinky lie about being in Cambodia on Christmas Eve, 1968. What kind of adult tells a lie like that? (Answer: The kind who carries a home-movie camera to war in order to re-enact combat scenes and tape fake interviews with himself.)

One of the principal witnesses for Kerry's version of his heroics in Vietnam is Jim Rassman, who says Kerry "saved his life" after a Viet Cong mine knocked Rassman off his boat. Though Kerry would have us believe that – in addition to being baby killers – his fellow servicemen were planning on leaving Rassman to die, several eyewitnesses say another boat was about 20 yards behind Kerry's boat in getting to Rassman. (Kerry's boat was positioned slightly closer to Rassman because the moment the mine exploded, Kerry's boat fled the scene and returned only when Kerry was certain there was no enemy fire.)

It is indisputable that other men were being pulled out of the water right and left after a Viet Cong mine blew one of the swiftboats four feet in the air. How come none of those guys got Bronze Stars? Did they pull men out of the water in a less heroic way?

The way Kerry and Rassman tell it, you would think Kerry saved Rassman's life by staging a daring, high-speed commando raid on a prisoner of war camp. I was pulled from churning surfs a dozen times before I was 10 years old, each time exclaiming, "YOU SAVED MY LIFE!" but I'm not seeking out the people who fished me out of the water and demanding that they run for president.

In determining whose memory is more accurate, it's worth mentioning that Kerry and Rassman can't even get their stories straight about whose boat Rassman was on. Among the many accounts out there are these:

In his own Aug. 10, 2004, Wall Street Journal op-ed, Rassman says he was on Kerry's boat: "The second blast blew me off John's swiftboat, PCF-94 ..."

But according to the Kerry campaign press release: "On March 13, 1969, Rassman, a Green Beret, was traveling down the Bay Hap river in a boat behind Kerry's when both were ambushed by exploding land mines and enemy fire coming from the shore."

On Page 106 of the book "John F. Kerry, The Official Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best," Rassman is on a boat behind Kerry's.

In his Kerry campaign pamphlet, "Tour of Duty," hagiographer Brinkley resolves the conflicting accounts by having Rassman fall off both the boat that hit the mine (PCF-3) and Kerry's boat. (What would we do without historians?)

Another account has Rassman on the S.S. Minnow stubbornly insisting that Kerry's service in Vietnam consisted of just a three-hour tour ... a three-hour tour ...

Perhaps like the many and various meanings of the word "we," liberals use the word "unsubstantiated" to mean "tested repeatedly and proved true."

Heard anything more about the "V" on his "official" Silver Star. It turns out that the Navy does not issue them on silver stars and the Navy is investigating now.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Ned


Give me a break about "corruption" and the like. We lost the whole nine yards, IMHO, when we did not back the French when they still had a chance.

Why should the United States ever back up a colonial regime (especially one as cruel and corrupt as French government in Vietnam)??

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ned
STOP lying about some sort of "peace" deal in '68. This is getting tiresome.

I'm not lying. There was a deal on the table in '68. Then the South Vietnamese sabotaged it thinking they'd get a better deal under Nixon (cuz they were told that by the Nixon campaign). Traitors