02-09-2004 22:52									#301
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe Further there is this little bit as well:

Dont forget, not only was he a citizen, he was also a naval reserve officer until 76.

	02-09-2004 23:11									#302
	Inflate your Upload Space

quote: Originally posted by gunkulator If we were "on the way out" as you say, then they have all the weakness they need to wait us out.

Obviously a credible threat was required to bring them back to the table hence...

quote: So more death and destruction, even in a war you admit was lost, is somehow the right path. The same thing was tried in WWII in Dresden, yet it failed to bring the Germans to the table.

for which your example is innappropriate as in that situation it did not work yet here it did

quote: Yet we stayed until 1975. Maybe we would have been there even longer if not for actions of Kerry and many many others.

perhaps but equally likely perhaps not. Regardless his actions at Paris were in direct conflict of the desired course of negotiation the President wished to embark upon (and was elected upon might I add). In doing so he undermined those efforts. Like it or no, the Prez sets the tone for those negotiations not some Johnny come lamely. The attempts to circumvent the appraoch caused more harm than good, not to mention it was illegal to do so.

quote: At least the guy had convictions and the courage to act on them. What was GWB doing during this time of great American crisis? What were his convictions about the war and how did he choose to act on them?

GWB was probably getting drunk and coking up. In reality probably less of a threat than posed by politically motivated Kerry.

	03-09-2004 03:40									#303
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten It's nice to see how some of you view service in the National Guard. I guess all the Air National Guardsmen who flew in Iraq are cowards, too...

I respect those that actually complete their commitment to the letter, don't use family/political influence to get special treatment and advantages, and don't use and abuse the Guard as cannon fodder. I have a friend here in Reno who was going to be sent to South Korea and I have great respect for him. I'm worried sick for his safety.

	03-09-2004 03:56									#304
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten It's nice to see how some of you view service in the National Guard. I guess all the Air National Guardsmen who flew in Iraq are cowards, too...

The NG in the Vietnam and prior eras was a bit different from the NG in the present day.

Look at those sad-sack ONG buffoons at Kent State in all the hundreds of documented photos of them. You think real, honest-to-God ****ing soldiers marched and handled their weapons like that?

A lot of state NG units were so ****ed up that the Army didn't assimilate ranks in grade if they applied and were accepted into active duty Army status.

And Dubya's unit flew obsolescent aircraft which were classed non-deployable, so he knew at the time he could never be transferred into action, because he wasn't qualified in any deployable aircraft.

Nice try, but he's still a chickenshit draft dodger.

	03-09-2004 04:54									#305
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

quote: Originally posted by MrFun Lincoln, maybe you know of no one who committed atrocities because they did not want anyone to know??

It is kind of hard to commit a war crime on a submarine patrolling off the coast, but that is not to say we didn't try.

	03-09-2004 06:50									#306
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

quote: Originally posted by gunkulator If Kerry's actions halted our involvement in Vietnam by even one day, then he is a life saver and a hero in my book. Meanwhile GWB was snorting up coke and getting DUIs, whilst enjoying a free pass on the war courtesy of his father's connections. Bush talks the talk, but he's never had to walk the walk.

gun, then how do you feel if instead of shortening the war, he prolonged it?

	03-09-2004 06:55									#307
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Apparently Kerry has decided to pull off the gloves and will publicly call Cheney a coward for avoiding the draft.

	03-09-2004 06:55									#308
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

gun, our role in combat ended in January '73.

There is no need to speculate about whether Kerry prolonged the war. We have the statement of the NV themselves in the negotiations where they cited Kerry and others in the "peace" movement as to why they didn't have to negotiate for America to leave, as the peace movement would force an unliteral withdrawal.

Now you say, what was wrong with that?

If you really have to ask THAT question, you are man without honor.

	03-09-2004 07:02									#309
	Suffering from ads?

quote: Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe Where have you been the last 30+ years? I haven't found any shortage of folk being more than willing to discuss ad-nauseum the atrocities.

And yet, too many others want to dismiss these findings as unpatriotic nonsense.

	03-09-2004 07:09									#310
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

In the context that it reflects the vast majority of veterans that served, it very well could be described as such, yes. In the context that we must be ever vigilant to be on guard that some portion of soldiers are going to commit crimes (and most likely are those that are least disciplined, least trained) ala Abu Ghraib, then No.

	03-09-2004 08:02									#311
	Support Apolyton

quote: The NG in the Vietnam and prior eras was a bit different from the NG in the present day.

Quiet, you! You're ruining a perfectly serviceable troll...

And Bush is no more of a chickenshit than Kerry was. Kerry tried his best to stay out of combat in Vietnam, first by serving offshore on the Gridley and then by requesting to command a Swift Boat, which at the time of his decision operated solely in a coastal patrol role and hardly ever saw combat. Unfortunately for Kerry, the Swift Boat mission got changed after he had signed up and he had to actually fight the enemy on the rivers of Vietnam until he wrangled up enough Purple Hearts to go home.

Bush and Kerry tried the exact same ****. Only difference is that Bush was more successful.

	03-09-2004 08:58									#312
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

quote: There is no need to speculate about whether Kerry prolonged the war. We have the statement of the NV themselves in the negotiations where they cited Kerry and others in the "peace" movement as to why they didn't have to negotiate for America to leave, as the peace movement would force an unliteral withdrawal. Now you say, what was wrong with that? If you really have to ask THAT question, you are man without honor.

You mean we should let the President and Congress invite us to wars and keep us in them even after we discover they were partially built on falsehoods if not outright lies?

quote: Unfortunately for Kerry, the Swift Boat mission got changed after he had signed up and he had to actually fight the enemy on the rivers of Vietnam until he wrangled up enough Purple Hearts to go home. Bush and Kerry tried the exact same ****. Only difference is that Bush was more successful.

Yeah, he wrangled up a few purple hearts. You really think that if Kerry didn't want to go he and his family couldn't have figured out a way? There's one helluva difference between serving in the arena where missions change and serving in the Texas ANG as a detour to all those cushy Bushie family connections.

	03-09-2004 09:06									#313
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

Berz, regarding Vietnam, no one lied about our mission, even though later some politicians lied about the presence of enemy troops in Cambodia.

Do you have any idea why were there?

	03-09-2004 09:36									#314
	Tired of ads?

quote: Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe Obviously a credible threat was required to bring them back to the table hence...

So that we could give them the peace deal they asked for in 1968? I think maybe giving up had more to do with it than bombing them did.

	03-09-2004 09:47									#315
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: You really think that if Kerry didn't want to go he and his family couldn't have figured out a way?

That's exactly what I'm saying. Kerry wanted to serve but not actually fight, just like Bush. Bush succeeded in that goal, Kerry didn't. I guess Kerry's privileged family wasn't quite privileged enough. That or Kerry thought he could get a safe spot in 'Nam that would look great on his resume, only to get screwed when the Swift Boat mission changed.

	03-09-2004 09:47									#316
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

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."

	03-09-2004 09:48									#317
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

quote: Berz, regarding Vietnam, no one lied about our mission, even though later some politicians lied about the presence of enemy troops in Cambodia.

The Pentagon Papers documents our involvement and some of the lies, the Gulf of Tonkin was an excuse, not a justification.

quote: Do you have any idea why were there?

Yes, fear of the west losing it's grip on Indo-Chinese resources.

	03-09-2004 09:51									#318
	Remove this text

And "domino theory".

	03-09-2004 09:55									#319
	Got spare money?

quote: That's exactly what I'm saying. Kerry wanted to serve but not actually fight, just like Bush. Bush succeeded in that goal, Kerry didn't. I guess Kerry's privileged family wasn't quite privileged enough.

But connected enough to get those supposedly cushy jobs? I don't know anyone who wants to fight, I knew people who were told it was their duty or were forced to fight.

quote: That or Kerry thought he could get a safe spot in 'Nam that would look great on his resume, only to get screwed when the Swift Boat mission changed.

And he was brave regardless of our attempts at reading his mind.

	03-09-2004 09:56									#320
	Increase the size of your Attachments

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.

	03-09-2004 09:59									#321
	Put an end to popups!

quote: And "domino theory".

Only people ignorant of history bought into that one. We followed a corrupt colonial power in there and continued the corruption and enough people got pissed and did something about it.

	03-09-2004 10:02									#322
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

quote: 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.

France was an ally, one we wanted more. That's my problem with globalists, they can't relate to people. You can't go around screwing people and expect them to keep taking it (unless they're taxpayers )

	03-09-2004 10:02									#323
	Got spare money?

Actually, Berz, nearly every successful Commie revolution spawned others. Not as adherents of the DT would have it, communist subversion going from country to country, but people inpired by the liberation of their neighbors deciding to take own their own government. It's quite well documented.

	03-09-2004 10:03									#324
	Get a bigger avatar today!

quote: Originally posted by Ned Berz, regarding Vietnam, no one lied about our mission, even though later some politicians lied about the presence of enemy troops in Cambodia. Do you have any idea why were there?

We've been through this Ned, I've even quoted American officials saying why you were there.


Rubber, tin, rice, markets for American produce, mineral resources, tropical hardwoods, you name it.

Follow the money, as per usual.

Henry Cabot Lodge, speaking in 1965:

'Geographically, Viet Nam stands at the hub of a vast area of the world...with a vast population of some 249 millions...he who holds or has influence in Viet Nam can affect the future of the Philippines and Formosa to the east, Thailand and Burma with their huge rice surplus to the west, and Malaysia and Indonesia with their rubber, ore, and tin to the south....


Viet Nam does not therefore exist in a geographical vacuum- from it large storehouses of wealth and population can be infuenced and UNDERMINED.'

Boston Globe, 28th February, 1965

You know, same old, same old- Iran, Guatemala, Viet Nam, Chile- the same old imperial reasons for getting rid of the Spanish in Cuba and the Philippines and supplanting Hispanic colonialism with Cocacolanisation.

	03-09-2004 10:18									#325
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

quote: You mean we should let the President and Congress invite us to wars and keep us in them even after we discover they were partially built on falsehoods if not outright lies?

No, we should let the President and Congress use reliable data to convince wimps to have a backbone for one friggin' minute, win the war, then stick around afterwards to help rebuild the newly liberated country despite the whining of the wimps who've lost their backbones again.

	03-09-2004 11:10									#326
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

quote: Henry Cabot Lodge, speaking in 1965: 'Geographically, Viet Nam stands at the hub of a vast area of the world...with a vast population of some 249 millions...he who holds or has influence in Viet Nam can affect the future of the Philippines and Formosa to the east, Thailand and Burma with their huge rice surplus to the west, and Malaysia and Indonesia with their rubber, ore, and tin to the south.... Viet Nam does not therefore exist in a geographical vacuum- from it large storehouses of wealth and population can be infuenced and UNDERMINED.' Boston Globe, 28th February, 1965

So help me understand, mb. Fighting to secure access to resources is wrong. Unless you are Maoist ideologues bent on convincing the uneducated peasants to spend themselves as cannon fodder so the Maoists can have access to the resources.

But then fighting to free people the people of Iraq, with virtually no economic motive (despite all the "war for oil" protests the US has never imported significant quantities of Iraqi oil) is wrong too. What can we do then?

I suppose that leaves us with, "Sorry, people. Suck it up, a little torture and rape isn't so bad. Saddam and his sons will croak someday, then you'll be free. Unless somebody else picks up where they leave off. But let's not dwell on the negatives, take that frown and turn it upside down!"

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.

That's OK, as long as it is somebody else (non-whites) getting massacred. As long as it isn't eeevil Americans using their wicked pinpoint munitions to minimize collateral damage like no war before. As long as it isn't white anglo-saxon descendants who won't even attack snipers and terrorists who've sought shelter in native religious shrines.

	03-09-2004 11:53									#327
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Actually, Berz, nearly every successful Commie revolution spawned others. Not as adherents of the DT would have it, communist subversion going from country to country, but people inpired by the liberation of their neighbors deciding to take own their own government. It's quite well documented.

All successful revolutions inspire the oppressed.

quote: No, we should let the President and Congress use reliable data to convince wimps to have a backbone for one friggin' minute, win the war, then stick around afterwards to help rebuild the newly liberated country despite the whining of the wimps who've lost their backbones again.

Straybow, are you suggesting Vietnam was a result of reliable data and truthful politicians?

	03-09-2004 11:56									#328
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

And Straybow, since when is it virtuous to lie or mis-lead people into killing other people and those who see thru the haze are wimps?

	03-09-2004 11:56									#329
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

quote: Originally posted by Berzerker The Pentagon Papers documents our involvement and some of the lies, the Gulf of Tonkin was an excuse, not a justification.

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

quote: Yes, fear of the west losing it's grip on Indo-Chinese resources.

What is this so called "West."

	03-09-2004 11:58									#330
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara So that we could give them the peace deal they asked for in 1968? I think maybe giving up had more to do with it than bombing them did.

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