(Even more) problems for Kerry...

After Kerry's big slide in the polls, and confusion over his military records, now Vietnam vets who served in Kerry's old division are coming out to speak against him:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/20/kerry.military/index.html

-peekay

 

This is a non-issue. Hundreds of atrocities were committed in the gruesome war by both sides, but don't forget we had the B-52s, the agent orange and most of the artillery. I don't think the other guys did too much carpet bombing Peekay. Do you?

And this report is premised upon someone who never even knew Kerry:"I saw some war heroes ... John Kerry is not a war hero," said John O'Neill, a Houston lawyer who joined the Navy's Coastal Division 11 two months after the future senator left Vietnam. "He couldn't tie the shoes of some of the people in Coastal Division 11."

I added the bold[B/] emphasis, not the liberally biased media that is out to get Bush.

 

damn lawyer went and blew the cover, and we all thought nobody knew

 

Issue at hand: Kerry alleged that he saw war crimes being commited in Vietnam -- not in abstract -- but by sailors from his own unit. According to Kerry, Coastal Division 11 sailors he had served with "commited rapes; cut off ears, limbs and heads; taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals; blown up bodies; and randomly fired at civilians."

Problem for Kerry:

1) He never offered any proof of any alleged wrongdoing by sailors in Coastal Division 11.

2) In fact, recently Kerry said that he didn't intend to "cast a negative light on the sailors with whom he served." Accusing them of war crimes notwithstanding.

3) As O'Neill asked 30-years ago... if Kerry saw war crimes being committed by his unit, why didn't he do something about it? Kerry did not take any action as an officer, nor did he report any of these allleged crimes up the chain of command.

Most logical conclusion:

Kerry lied back then, accusing sailors from his own unit of grave attrocities without any proof, to further his own political agenda.

-peekay

 

Atrocities were a daily occurance in that war - it was a way of doing business so to speak. Why would anyone risk there life to voice complaints about it?

Kerry did the right thing and got out as soon as he could.

And regarding the supposed specific allegations made by Kerry, i have seen no substantiation of this Peekay. Indeed, i thought that he made very general allegations, IIRC, and that these were taken out of context. But I do have an open mind about this, so what you got?

 

Issue is, if it wasn't an election year who'd give a shit?
And if GW was noticably out front in the poles nobody'd ever hear about it.
Whatever happened to running on one's accomplishments? so many attack ads from both parties -- disgusting

 

No need for attack ads when Kerry's own Commanding Officer in Vietnam told the Boston Globe last week that Kerry didn't deserve his Purple Heart, that Kerry probably lied about how he was injured, insinuating that Kerry wanted to get three Purple Hearts for trivial injuries so he can get out of the war.

-peekay

 

That's exactly how it came up. Kerry has run his Vietnam service up the flagpole at every opportunity during the campaign. If he didn't want it to be scrutinized, he should have shut his pie hole.

And sorry, Roger, but I don't think putting electrical lines from field telephones on enemy gonads was a daily occurrence. Nor was the wholesale slaughter of civilians.

Also, carpet bombing isn't an atrocity, at least how the term is commonly defined.

 

Millions died in this war, not just the 55,000 GIs. Most were civilians. Who do you think killed them? Just the NLF and the North Vietnamese?

Torture and assaniation were a part of the game by all sides, not just ours. We oftenn trned over suspected guerillas to the ARVN troops who routinely tortured and executed prisioners. If you don't think it was a daily occurance that is your perogative. But i think that you have to keep an open mind rather than assume "our country is always good."

 

When you make no attempt to avoid civilians or puposely target them it is.

 

I wasn't talking about this situation, I was talking about the election in general: no one's run anything BUT attack ads (but then ole Geroge did run the first one ).

I've always believed that if a candidate (or issue) spends all their time ripping the other guy, then the ripper is probably less qualified than the rippee. But when both sides are ripping how can a voter make an informed choice?
I want to know what they've done and detailed plans of what they are going to do... not all this finger-pointing crap.

 

I never said "we're always good." However, we've never, ever stooped to the level of our enemy. The Vietnamese did much worse than we ever did to POWs. We couldn't match the Hanoi Hilton on our worst day. Same with the Nazis and Japanese before them (I can't say about the Koreans).

As for the bombing of civilian targets, my understanding was that those types of missions took place in "free fire" zones. As in, if you were in that area, you were assumed to be hostile. Also, it's hard to separate "innocent civilian" from "guerrilla fighter" when they might occupy the same hut. Is the family support unit of a VC guerrilla an "innocent civilian" or merely a rear echelon support unit of the VC?

Same with bombing civilian targets in North Vietnam. We hit targets of tactical value. Were civilians killed? Yep. Were they "innocent?" That depends on your definition of "innocent." Were they uniformed combatants? No, but then again, neither were the VC (which also happens to make them outside of the Geneva Convention as military combatants). In addition, someone working on unloading Russian transport ships loaded with war materiels isn't an "innocent civilian" either. Nor ones carrying said materials down the Ho Chi Minh trail.

And none of this has anything to do with Kerry's lie. He said he saw atrocities committed and yet did nothing about it. Now he's backpedaling, yet again. A few weeks ago, he said that he'd been in contact with world leaders who told him "he had to win this thing." When pressed on that bullshit statement, first he said "it's none of your business who it was" or something to that effect (in reality, the answer to that question IS 100% our business since he's a public servant). Subsequent investigation has shown that he had NO opportunity to speak with world leaders since the campaign began, leaving one to conclude that he's lying, yet again.

THAT is the issue here. Every time this man opens his mouth, more bullshit comes out. Now while one expects a politician to be somewhat of a liar, Kerry takes it to a whole new level. He makes Al "I invented the Internet" Gore look truthful by comparison.

And let's not even go into his well-established record of being on both sides of every issue that comes down the pike. The man makes Bill Clinton look like a pillar of moral strength.

 

That's because they work. Sad but true.

 

yup, living through those times and that war ended that notion for a lot of folks. What's changed? people forget?

 

yup, very sad and very true

 

I won't dispute that, or really not much of your post, but we did have some of our guys running around with scalps and those ear necklaces.
Not sure of your age, in case you didn't experience it in some fashion, that war didn't have embedded/censored journalists, they were free to roam and show anything. There was no CNN just the evening news, and every night after dinner we saw images of dead, exploded, mangled soldiers, women and children. No rah-rah patriotism, just ugliness. And I think ot was the first time in US history that people began to doubt the government and distrust our leaders.

My dad and uncles fought in WW2, and everybody at home made sacrifices (higher taxes and rationing) and believed in what we were doing. That changed during vietnam, eventually most everyone was against the war. Strange but in this war, the only ones sacrificing are the soldiers, nobody else is giving up a damn thing to win, and I think the country is pretty much evenly divided.

None of this has shit to do with the topic; I'll quit the soapbox ramble and let you guys get back to it

 

You're quite right on the Vietnam TV coverage. I didn't see it personally, but I've heard all about it.

More than anything, that coverage just exposed war for what it really is. I don't think there was anything in Vietnam that wasn't in WWII. We just didn't get to see it. Coverage of WWII was done in such a way that you rarely, if ever, saw Allied casualties. In Vietnam, the war was shown with no glossing over.

I've read that Saving Private Ryan (and subsequently Band of Brothers) was made to accurately reflect what WWII combat in Europe actually looked like. They had a consultant who was a Normandy invasion combat survivor on the set and he said it had "everything but the smell." Compare the "footage" in either SPR or BoB to the stuff that was sent home during WWII. Even today, we're now seeing documentary footage from WWII that is quite graphic. That footage was never released to the public during the war because it would have undermined the war effort. The folks at home knew their son might die; they didn't need to see images of blown-up GIs to remind them of that fact.

Allowing it to be released during Vietnam was a major mistake. Young boys were being blown apart, maimed, and killed in both WWII and Vietnam. However, in the latter case, we put it on the 6 o'clock news and broadcast it to the world. That's not a good thing for morale.

And I won't dispute that we had soldiers with ear neckaces or scalps. However, we were not alone in that regard and we were still far from matching the things committed by those on the other side. Recall the interviews with John McCain during his run for President? It's been 30 years since he was a POW and he all but said he would kill the men who were his captors, on the spot, if ever given the chance. Contrast that with German POWs in WWII. Most of them became US Citizens at the end of the war.

 

Michael, I certainly would not defend torture and atrocities committed by either side. But it's easy to fight a war in a " civilized" manner when you can afford to use long-range bombers against people whose most powerful weapon is their desire to kill you.

 

FYI, McCain said last night that he put all of that behind him. It was on Hardball, I believe.

Typos corrected.

 

Heaven knows we don't want people to know what war is really like.

Sorry Mike, that was too much to let go by.