LTCOL Oliver North, USMC (Ret.) has written an open letter to John Kerry. It is a good read to understand why many veterans do not want this man to be the commander of our armed forces.
Posted by Skywalker at August 27, 2004 09:22 AM | TrackBackWow! That is Right on bro! I'm going to make that part of this site.
As one visitor here says ...
VOTE OLIVER NORTH!!!
:-P
Posted by: muddy at August 27, 2004 11:29 PMwhat he did to them? those guys should be thanking him. how many more thouasands would have died in vietnam? sure the vietnam war could have been "won" but at what cost? 5 million SE asians? 150K dead americans? there comes a point were victory is not worth any price.
as far as accusing vets of war crimes, of course they commited them. it was something went back and forth. us soldiers did all sorts of horribles things, as did the vietcong. some may not want to talk about it, but read any book vietnam and theyll talk about it. ive even seen stuff on the history channel where people have talked about things they saw.
Posted by: mooseboy84 at August 28, 2004 12:53 AMAtrocities are always going to happen in a prolonged war. You can't send a million boys off to war, telling them that someone is their enemy, hate them and kill them and not expect them to take things to fr. The problem is that John Kerry incenuated that this was a normal thing and the majority of soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors (including himself) did these things, and anyone who says that is either completely ignorant, or lying.
Thank him? Frankly sir, he probably prolonged the war. The war probably would have been alot shorter and ended with victory if we had not had people like John Kerry and Jane Fonda expressing their heartfelt support for the North Vietnamese. I'll be polite to John Kerry, but Jane Fonda shouold have been executed for treason for her actions. Presidents being concerned with sending messages and body counts are what caused the length and waste of time in that war. A primary reason for those worries were the protesters and a fear of public opinion. John Kerry came home and betrayed veterans. He screwed them 50 ways to sunday, and lied about things he did in Vietnam to boot.
Posted by: skywalker at August 28, 2004 01:08 AMGo Ollie! And God Bless you!:-)
Oh, and Muddy:
"VOTE OLIVER NORTH!!!"
Are you changing your mind again? hehe.:-P
Posted by: mrs. muddy at August 28, 2004 01:37 PMThis is about the liers of swift boat veterans :
http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=231
If i were you Skywalker ... I would not be so sure. You had it wrong on WMD. You had it wrong on Iraq being an easy win ... you have in wrong on vietnam veterans against kerry (but I see you quickly backpedaled ... Now you possibly agree that kerry's record in vietnam is good)
And now you think vietnam war could have been easily won ...
What a joke !
I don't think, one single colonial war has been won in the post WWII era.
The times were against it.
Vietnamese were ready to die in order to stand proud and rule their own country. The end. The war was unwinnable, unless you suppressed the entire population.
Now the USA killed thousands of these vietnamese by launching bombs from their superbombers, well hidden in the sky.
There are still thousand of vietnamese who die up to his date because of the weapons the USA used back then. This is the US site caring about poor ol' veterans :
http://www1.va.gov/agentorange/
but the children still dying nowadays in vietnam .. No one cares. In fact the US government made sure in the peace treaty it signed in 1973 that it could not be sued for the damage it caused ...
So you can blame Kerry for exagerating the crimes committed in Vietnam... These were difficult times and objective information was hard to find. It's just about the same with the abu ghraib prison, I'm sure some opponents of the war say that torture is widely used in all prisons... when just some cases are documented.
But the point was, it was an unjust war, waged by a superpower on a small country and using unfair weapons ... like agent orange. Therefore opposing this war is one of the best thing Kerry has done, and it sure helped the war to end.
Of course in some cases some vietnamese torturers may have had access to his very own testimony. But if you suppress dissent in times of war, you end up in tiranny. And what would have been the difference between the US and the viet then ?
That guy in prison could have said : well, in my country we have this thing call free speech. So it's possible to criticize the government action, even in times of war. And we are here in this country to make sure that you vietnamese have this right too ...
Of course at the time the US were supporting a local tyran in vietnam, promoting prostitution and drug abuse ... so it might not have worked...
But then what were the USA exactly defending back then ?
What were they defending when they inspired the coup d'etat against pinochet in 1973 ? They suppressed democracy to install a tyranny.
WHat were they defending when they inspired a coup d'etat in Venezual some 2 years ago ?
Come on ... Stop thinking the USA are some kind of angel with a divine mission. At times they wake up to their true being. The rest of the time, like us all poor humans, they remain seekers of vain glory, riches and other "satanic" illusions...
Posted by: DF at August 30, 2004 10:18 AMyou may also check this out ...
The atrocities Kerry mentionned were true. At least most of them :
http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=244
I didn't have it wrong on WMD: the UN even agreed with me that IRaq had them and was sneaking them out of the country while we waited to invade.
I didn't have it wrong about IRaq being an easy win. We over ran the country in less than a month. I never said Kerry didn't pull Rasmussen out of the water, I never said he wasn't a hero. I just said he scammed his purple hearts and may be a war criminal. Sorry, but that "Fact check" story isn't telling the whole story. Kerry said "I to committed these atrocities." That's the part they aren't telling you.
1 I never read anything about the iraki sneaking arms out of Irak. If so they must have been of little volume and danger.
2 We're not talking about the invasion win. Any army could have defeated Irak's. I'm talking about all your confidence in Irakis welcoming US soldiers and democracy being build so soon ... When it was clear from the start that chiites and sunnites feared each other, kurds wanted out and nobody wanted them out, iranis had links with shiites, syrians, iranians and turks would oppose any kurd independance ...
3 the fact check mentions the purple hearts. check it out.
The war criminal thing is of more importance. I wonder what he has done that he judged at the time a crime of war.
But I believe the line of defense of Kerry would be, we had to, we were told so, everybody did so and that's why I wanted out and I wanted to end this war.
So it would be coherent. I've been forced into something I did not want to become. So I went out, and help put an end to a war that was forcing US soldiers to turn into war criminals.
That's a good point when you want to rule a country who's occupying another far far away. He won't let it become another vietnam.
Bush seems ready to do so, same despise of human rights (guantanamo, justice memos allowing "stressing methods), same lack of understanding of what is at stake locally.
He has this grand vision of terrorism, just like others had this grand vision of communism ... And he can not fit into this vision the local peculiarities ... So he tries to wash them away ... And it can only lead to defeat. Because reality lingers on.
DF I hear you, and I understand your points about the "torture". However.. putting yourself in the shoes as they say of someone in charge of getting info from captured terrorists that would save countless lives. What would you do?
How would you extract that information to save your friends and brothers at arms?
Or would you?
Posted by: muddy at August 31, 2004 06:34 AMI would be ready to die for what I believe in : democracy, human rights.
That's my answer, and there's no other. It all comes down do it. What are you ready to die for ?
Phrased in another way, it becomes : what guilt are you ready live with ?
The memos released by the highest authorities of your country are sickening. And just as sickening is the guantanamo prison. It reminds me of the jesuit order. The priests of the jesuit order were famous for being able to justify anything on the basis of the bible and roman church. To me it is the same as those lawyers who invalidate a trial on technicalities... The genova convention were made in order to protect prisoners of war, so that no single human could be out of judiciary protection. Either you were a citizen of a country, guilty of a crime there, and you'd be tried there, or you are a soldier held prisonner because of war. But it's either or. Either a crime, or a war.
And then comes bush, and he creates a new "war on terror" terror of course is not a country. And his opponents in this war, are neither criminals (with right to a trial) nor soldiers (with right to genova convention) ... They are ... you guessed it "ennemy combatants". No one ever heard of such thing. It's a new concept so you can do anything to them.
It's sickening.
Add onto that new "intimidation techniques" that are not "torture",no of course no. ANd you end up saying that finally, putting people naked is too cruel, but depriving of food is not, or the opposite...
I mean.
There is a clear intent from the US government of breaking the international law in every possible way. It has good lawyers and knows how to use them. But it can not escape the judgement of all those with clear eyes. All its technicalities can not hide its wrong intent.
The US government intends to hang those who did the 9/11 and it does not care about any law that may stand in the way.
In fact the terrorists have won : they have succeeded in transforming a democratic country, a model for the world, into an agressive bully, ignorant of others and of laws, each day becoming the like of its opponents.
I remain confident. Bush is a loser. SOoner or later he'll be replaced. A lawyer has for the first time been allowed in guantanamo. Rumsfeld will pay for abu ghraib... The tide is moving. Neo cons are on the lose... soon on the loose.
Posted by: DF at September 1, 2004 06:32 AMThe term enemy combatants actually dates to WW2 when we ran into vichy French and non uniformed Germans who staged uprisings after the liberation of Europe. BTW, accoording to the GEneva convention you have to be a uniformed member of a nations armed forces engaged in a combat action with the country who captured you, in order to be subject to the geneva convention If you are int hat situation except you are un-uniformed, you are eligible to be summarily executed as a spy.
None of the people people who are currently being held could be called a soldier by the Geneva convention's standards.
Why do you blame Rumsfield fo Abu Ghraib? He issues rules which forbade the things they did and a great many more. Guantanamo was always intended to have trials...but the liberals in this country were bitching about us putting anyone on trial without it being a jury of their peers and wanted us to just turn them loose altogether. That's why putting htem on trial has taken so long. Hey DF, your country islearning right now that no one is special in this war. Everyone is subject to attack, even reporters from a country that didn't support the military action.
Posted by: skywalker at September 1, 2004 01:28 PMSeveral reports show that secret memos released by the bush administration favored intimidation techniques that were involved in abu ghraib. Rumsfled knew about the situation there and did nothing.
We french perfectly know what terrorism is. We've been confronted to it long before you... France has a rich past in colonial wars... So french militaries tortured in Algeria and algerian terrorists bombed several places... back in 1960's and before that there was the vietnam war ... At the time called Indochina.
As I told you before... War is a threat for democracy.
Forcing democracy upon a country is very difficult. After all France also has a past in that, the revolutionary armies bach in the 1790's ... But a foreign army... is a foreign army.
The better way is never repression. Repression can only be the first step. You have to change the causes that fuel terrorism.
THe neocons say : the cause for terrorism is totalitarism of the arab countries and lack of economic development.
Let's bring democracy and economic developpment in Iraq.
By force.
Sounds good. But the by force sounds not so good. Because other reasons can be found for terrorism :
US troops are present in Turkey, Irak, Saoudi arabia, afganhistan, Qatar, Yemen ... Egypt is an ally... And the arab populace feels invaded, feels the corrupt leaders are backed by the USA and the USA only want cheap oil and kill those who oppose cheap oil (Mossadegh Iran, 1953)
Israel is occupying palestinian territory since 1967 in violation of UNO resolutions, and the USA back them.
In fact, one can wonder : why top off Saddam, US opponent, and create democracy there ? And not force US allies : seouds, egypt to become democraties ?
I guess that's the main point. Irakis don't want to be allies with those who support Israel and cheap oil. No ordinary citizen of the middle east will be allies with the USA for this reason. So Democracy yes, alliance, no. And here is the trick. WHat do the US wants : new democrats or new allies ? Because the thing is, you can't have both at the same time right now.
Later may be. In the long term democraties tend to find legal ways to solve their problems. But not always. And the greek wars were waged between opposing democracies.