Kerry's Congressional Record on Defense

[LadyCrais]

I always want to know as many details as possible about a candidate's defense record and this has a whole heap of facts I either didn't know or didn't remember. There are also a lot of links out of the article, so go to it directly if you want to follow up in more detail.
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http://slate.msn.com/id/2096127/

John Kerry's Defense Defense
Setting his voting record straight.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2004, at 3:41 PM PT

Against defense? Not Kerry

Before George W. Bush's political operatives started pounding on John Kerry for voting against certain weapons systems during his years in the Senate, they should have taken a look at this quotation:

After completing 20 planes for which we have begun procurement, we will shut down further production of the B-2 bomber. We will cancel the small ICBM program. We will cease production of new warheads for our sea-based ballistic missiles. We will stop all new production of the Peacekeeper [MX] missile. And we will not purchase any more advanced cruise missiles. … The reductions I have approved will save us an additional $50 billion over the next five years. By 1997 we will have cut defense by 30 percent since I took office.

The speaker was President George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, in his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 1992.

They should also have looked up some testimony by Dick Cheney, the first President Bush's secretary of defense (and now vice president), three days later, boasting of similar slashings before the Senate Armed Services Committee:

Overall, since I've been Secretary, we will have taken the five-year defense program down by well over $300 billion. That's the peace dividend. … And now we're adding to that another $50 billion … of so-called peace dividend.

Cheney proceeded to lay into the then-Democratically controlled Congress for refusing to cut more weapons systems.

Congress has let me cancel a few programs. But you've squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don't fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements. … You've directed me to buy more M-1s, F-14s, and F-16s—all great systems … but we have enough of them.

The Republican operatives might also have noticed Gen. Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the same hearings, testifying about plans to cut Army divisions by one-third, Navy aircraft carriers by one-fifth, and active armed forces by half a million men and women, to say noting of "major reductions" in fighter wings and strategic bombers.

Granted, these reductions were made in the wake of the Soviet Union's dissolution and the Cold War's demise. But that's just the point: Proposed cuts must be examined in context. A vote against a particular weapons system doesn't necessarily indicate indifference toward national defense.

Looking at the weapons that the RNC says Kerry voted to cut, a good case could be made, certainly at the time, that some of them (the B-2 bomber and President Reagan's "Star Wars" missile-defense program) should have been cut. As for the others (the M-1 tank and the F-14, F-15, and F-16 fighter planes, among others), Kerry didn't really vote to cut them.

The claim about these votes was made in the Republican National Committee "Research Briefing" of Feb. 22. The report lists 13 weapons systems that Kerry voted to cut—the ones cited above, as well as Patriot air-defense missiles, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and AH64 Apache helicopters, among others.

It is instructive, however, to look at the footnotes. Almost all of them cite Kerry's vote on Senate bill S. 3189 (CQ Vote No. 273) on Oct. 15, 1990. Do a Google search, and you will learn that S. 3189 was the Fiscal Year 1991 Defense Appropriations Act, and CQ Vote No. 273 was a vote on the entire bill. There was no vote on those weapons systems specifically.

On a couple of the weapons, the RNC report cites H.R. 5803 and H.R. 2126. Look those up. They turn out to be votes on the House-Senate conference committee reports for the defense appropriations bills in October 1990 (the same year as S. 3189) and September 1995.

In other words, Kerry was one of 16 senators (including five Republicans) to vote against a defense appropriations bill 14 years ago. He was also one of an unspecified number of senators to vote against a conference report on a defense bill nine years ago. The RNC takes these facts and extrapolates from them that he voted against a dozen weapons systems that were in those bills. The Republicans could have claimed, with equal logic, that Kerry voted to abolish the entire U.S. armed forces, but that might have raised suspicions. Claiming that he opposed a list of specific weapons systems has an air of plausibility. On close examination, though, it reeks of rank dishonesty.

Another bit of dishonesty is RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie's claim, at a news conference today, that in 1995, Kerry voted to cut $1.5 billion from the intelligence budget. John Pike, who runs the invaluable globalsecurity.org Web site, told me what that cut was about: The Air Force's National Reconnaissance Office had appropriated that much money to operate a spy satellite that, as things turned out, it never launched. So the Senate passed an amendment rescinding the money—not to cancel a program, but to get a refund on a program that the NRO had canceled. Kerry voted for the amendment, as did a majority of his colleagues.

An examination of Kerry's real voting record during his 20 years in the Senate indicates that he did vote to restrict or cut certain weapons systems. From 1989-92, he supported amendments to halt production of the B-2 stealth bomber. (In 1992, George H.W. Bush halted it himself.) It is true that the B-2 came in handy during the recent war in Iraq—but for reasons having nothing to do with its original rationale.

The B-2 came into being as an airplane that would drop nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union. The program was very controversial at the time. It was extremely expensive. Its stealth technology had serious technical bugs. More to the point, a grand debate was raging in defense circles at the time over whether, in an age of intercontinental ballistic missiles and long-range cruise missiles, the United States needed any new bomber that would fly into the Soviet Union's heavily defended airspace. The debate was not just between hawks and doves; advocates and critics could be found among both.

In the latest war, B-2s—modified to carry conventional munitions—were among the planes that dropped smart bombs on Iraq. But that was like hopping in the Lincoln stretch limo to drop Grandma off at church. As for the other stealth plane used in both Iraq wars—the F-117, which was designed for non-nuclear missions—there is no indication that Kerry ever opposed it.

The RNC doesn't mention it, but Kerry also supported amendments to limit (but not kill) funding for President Reagan's fanciful (and eventually much-altered) "Star Wars" missile-defense system. Kerry sponsored amendments to ban tests of anti-satellite weapons, as long as the Soviet Union also refrained from testing. In retrospect, trying to limit the vulnerability of satellites was a very good idea since many of our smart bombs are guided to their targets by signals from satellites.

Kerry also voted for amendments to restrict the deployment of the MX missile (Reagan changed its deployment plan several times, and Bush finally stopped the program altogether) and to ban the production of nerve-gas weapons.

At the same time, in 1991, Kerry opposed an amendment to impose an arbitrary 2 percent cut in the military budget. In 1992, he opposed an amendment to cut Pentagon intelligence programs by $1 billion. In 1994, he voted against a motion to cut $30.5 billion from the defense budget over the next five years and to redistribute the money to programs for education and the disabled. That same year, he opposed an amendment to postpone construction of a new aircraft carrier. In 1996, he opposed a motion to cut six F-18 jet fighters from the budget. In 1999, he voted against a motion to terminate the Trident II missile. (Interestingly, the F-18 and Trident II are among the weapons systems that the RNC claims Kerry opposed.)

Are there votes in Kerry's 20-year record as a senator that might look embarrassing in retrospect? Probably. But these are not the ones.

Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate.

[fermicat]

I hadn't seen this. It has an intersting perspective on Kerry's defense votes, which have been decried by his opponents. Thanks for posting it.

[generic_screenname]

That was a whole lot of words. I went to public school. Is there a Cliff's Notes version?

[stellar]

Yes. The stuff the RNC is criticizing Kerry for voting against was the same stuff that Bush, the first and Chenney were taking credit for getting Kerry to vote against in the early 90s. The moral being, for ever time there is a season. And it's time for the Fall.

[LadyCrais]

LOL! I know. It sucks. It just takes so darn many words to get to the bloody details. Those soundbites that pervade our lives just don't convey much information.

Cliff Notes Version:
Kerry's defense vote record seems to be okay despite accusations otherwise.

[generic_screenname]

Thanks, stellar and LadyCrais.

And before the conservatives start up, I'll pre-emptively say that I'm aware that the Democrats use the same spin tactics as the Republicans. I think the main point of politics is vote for whoever blows less smoke up your ass. Or, barring that, who ever's smoke feels better.

[stellar]

They'll spin you right round, baby, right round; like a record player right round, round, round.

[LadyCrais]

Which is why I'd really like folks to start contributing articles with a few facts in them to at least give us a shot at having rational opinions based on something other than who spun us the best.

[Vampgrrl]

Kerry however has said he wanted terrorists prosecuted in courts not on the battlefield, and that he would only act like the US has if the UN said to do it (UN control of US military decisions), BUT he also decried Saddam for years before and after 9/11 saying the US needed to go in and take him out even without UN approval.

I'm no fan of Bush's really because he spends money like a Democrat, he's wrong on the gay marriage thing, he's wrong on the immigration thing, and he sucks up to Vicente Fox (Mexico) amoung other things. I will however, be voting for George Bush in November to keep weak waffling Kerry out along with his tax increases (I want to keep my tax cut since I actually earned the money)

[stellar]

The spin cometh(s).

[Harveylives]

I know both parties have wonderful spin machines, but look at the facts. Kerry voted for the tax cuts, and then blasted them. He voted for that thing over in the middle east that's banned, and then he blasted it. He voted for "no child left behind" and blasted it. Kerry voted for the patriot act and now is blasting it. Kerry is flipping and flopping like a fish out of water. I won't and can't trust him.

[generic_screenname]

The great thing about having a mind is the ability to change it. It's far more dangerous to think one way your entire life than to change your opinion when new information is brought to light.

[Vampgrrl]

Kerry doesnt change his mind, he goes however the politcal winds take him. No conviction.

I would have opposed Howard Dean but I respect him for sticking to his ideals. Kerry has no ideals.

[stellar]

Allow me to spin cycle.

Kerry voted for the tax cuts, and then blasted them.

Nobody wants to vote against tax cuts. As it turns out the tax cuts were horrible for the economy. Now people don't care about tax cuts because they have no job.

He voted for that thing over in the middle east that's banned, and then he blasted it.

He was lied to. As it turns out that thing in the middle east that's banned was horrible for the country and somehow gas is more expensive now.

He voted for "no child left behind" and blasted it.

"No child left behind" is good legistlation. It was (and is) underfunded by the administration for reason #s 1 and 2.

Kerry voted for the patriot act and now is blasting it.

After recoiling from the panic of 9/11 the legistlature are taking a step back to evaluate and now they're panicing about John Ashcroft.

Kerry is flipping and flopping like a fish out of water. I won't and can't trust him.

I trust him because he is willing to fix the things that he's done horrifically wrong. He recognizes his own mistakes as a legistlator and the reasons that he made those mistakes. It takes a grown-up to admit when he's wrong and work to repair it for the good of the country. It takes a president.

How's that for spining a spin?

[db11]

Originally posted by stellar
Allow me to spin cycle.



Nobody wants to vote against tax cuts. As it turns out the tax cuts were horrible for the economy. Now people don't care about tax cuts because they have no job.



He was lied to. As it turns out that thing in the middle east that's banned was horrible for the country and somehow gas is more expensive now.



"No child left behind" is good legistlation. It was (and is) underfunded by the administration for reason #s 1 and 2.



After recoiling from the panic of 9/11 the legistlature are taking a step back to evaluate and now they're panicing about John Ashcroft.



I trust him because he is willing to fix the things that he's done horrifically wrong. He recognizes his own mistakes as a legistlator and the reasons that he made those mistakes. It takes a grown-up to admit when he's wrong and work to repair it for the good of the country. It takes a president.

How's that for spining a spin?

Just a couple of points:

I completely disagree with you on the tax cuts. If not for them, this economy would be in worse shape than it is already. Lets not forget that we had a near collapse of the technology sector a few years ago, the corporate scandals, and of course, there's the financial fallout of Sept. 11. I think its a minor miracle we've come through it as well as we have and I credit the tax cuts for helping keep consumer demand rather steady throughout it all.

As for the lies...do I need to post some Clinton quotes from '98 regarding the situation? The Dems are taking advantage, but they're up to thier eyeballs in this as well. IMO, neither of them lied. The situation smells worse than the usual Dem vs Rep garbage going on here. I have yet to figure out exactly what it is.

[stellar]

Jobless Recovery.

Rich getting richer.

Clinton didn't invade.

Soundbyte spining.

[Harveylives]

Originally posted by stellar
Allow me to spin cycle.



Nobody wants to vote against tax cuts. As it turns out the tax cuts were horrible for the economy. Now people don't care about tax cuts because they have no job.



He was lied to. As it turns out that thing in the middle east that's banned was horrible for the country and somehow gas is more expensive now.



"No child left behind" is good legistlation. It was (and is) underfunded by the administration for reason #s 1 and 2.



After recoiling from the panic of 9/11 the legistlature are taking a step back to evaluate and now they're panicing about John Ashcroft.



I trust him because he is willing to fix the things that he's done horrifically wrong. He recognizes his own mistakes as a legistlator and the reasons that he made those mistakes. It takes a grown-up to admit when he's wrong and work to repair it for the good of the country. It takes a president.

How's that for spining a spin?

Or he looked at the DNC platform.

[fermicat]

Originally posted by Harveylives
Or he looked at the DNC platform.

On both the Democratic and Republican party websites you can find a lot of negative information about the other side. This is not unique to one party, nor is it new, nor are all the points mentioned completely accurate.

[stellar]

Originally posted by Harveylives
Or he looked at the DNC platform.

The RNC platform is unstable. Where else would he go?

[Third EYe]

Originally posted by Harveylives
Or he looked at the DNC platform.


I think so...

[db11]

Originally posted by stellar

Soundbyte spining. [/B]

Couldn't agree more.

[Third EYe]

Originally posted by db11
Couldn't agree more.

Sure you could, try

[Harveylives]

Originally posted by stellar
The RNC platform is unstable. Where else would he go?

Just my opinon on why he changes his mind. Both platforms are unstable. I'm just a little concerned that when he decided to run, he changed his mind on everything he voted for that conflicted with the platform.

[db11]

Well, I guess I could tow the Dem line 100% like a good little boy, but, alas, I prefer to think for myself. And no, I don't view the Republican party as a whole heck of a lot better. In fact, there was a decent chance I would have voted for Lieberman this fall, but being something resembling a moderate, the Dems kicked him to the curb.

[fermicat]

I know both parties have wonderful spin machines, but look at the facts. ..... Kerry voted for the patriot act and now is blasting it.

The fact is that the Patriot Act was passed in great haste by a margin of 98-1 (Feingold was the lone dissenting vote), and afterwards many senators admitted that they had not read the entire text of the act before the vote. In time, many of these senators on both sides of the aisle have grown concerned about the Patriot Act and a bipartisan group proposed the SAFE Act in order to trim back the more egregious portions of PA.
The SAFE Act was authored by Senators Larry Craig (R-Id.) and Dick Durbin (D- IL), and is cosponsored by Russell Feingold (D-WI), John Sununu (R-NH), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).

Are all of these senators flip floppers, too? How about the senators who are in favor of the SAFE Act? Are they waffling?

The Patriot Act should be re-examined carefully, now that the country is not in a state of acute crisis, and adjustments made if necessary. It is my opinion that some adjustments are required. Lots of people, both R & D agree with this basic position.

[Harveylives]

Originally posted by fermicat
The fact is that the Patriot Act was passed in great haste by a margin of 98-1 (Feingold was the lone dissenting vote), and afterwards many senators admitted that they had not read the entire text of the act before the vote. In time, many of these senators on both sides of the aisle have grown concerned about the Patriot Act and a bipartisan group proposed the SAFE Act in order to trim back the more egregious portions of PA.
The SAFE Act was authored by Senators Larry Craig (R-Id.) and Dick Durbin (D- IL), and is cosponsored by Russell Feingold (D-WI), John Sununu (R-NH), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).

Are all of these senators flip floppers, too? How about the senators who are in favor of the SAFE Act? Are they waffling?

The Patriot Act should be re-examined carefully, now that the country is not in a state of acute crisis, and adjustments made if necessary. It is my opinion that some adjustments are required. Lots of people, both R & D agree with this basic position.

Our representatives failed us again. Something so monumental as this should have been read. It would have been better for those who didn't read it not to vote, but they did, and they should be held responsible for it either way.

[fermicat]

Originally posted by Harveylives
Our representatives failed us again. Something so monumental as this should have been read. It would have been better for those who didn't read it not to vote, but they did, and they should be held responsible for it either way.

Does this mean they can never change it?

[db11]

Originally posted by fermicat
The fact is that the Patriot Act was passed in great haste by a margin of 98-1 (Feingold was the lone dissenting vote), and afterwards many senators admitted that they had not read the entire text of the act before the vote. In time, many of these senators on both sides of the aisle have grown concerned about the Patriot Act and a bipartisan group proposed the SAFE Act in order to trim back the more egregious portions of PA.
The SAFE Act was authored by Senators Larry Craig (R-Id.) and Dick Durbin (D- IL), and is cosponsored by Russell Feingold (D-WI), John Sununu (R-NH), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).

Are all of these senators flip floppers, too? How about the senators who are in favor of the SAFE Act? Are they waffling?

The Patriot Act should be re-examined carefully, now that the country is not in a state of acute crisis, and adjustments made if necessary. It is my opinion that some adjustments are required. Lots of people, both R & D agree with this basic position.

Republican, Democrat...It was their own faults for being stupid enough to pass something they hadn't read. Although I am no fan of the Patriot act, I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for the positions of the legislators who are using the 'I didn't read it' excuse. None whatsoever. In fact, I think they should be impeached.

[Harveylives]

According to what you said, they didn't even know the majority of what the "patriot Act held. I don't know if Kerrry read it or not. If he didn't that's even worse tha flip flopping on this issue. Signing a contract without reading it is irresponsible and stupid. You put him in a worse light in my eyes. Thanks.

[generic_screenname]

[Please-don't-ban-me-but-I-have-to-say-this rant] The reason I'm not voting for Bush is because I cannot understand how the worst act of terrorism in the history of the country can be commited under his watch and rather than being held accountable he's considered a hero. Why?!!

Because he said he'd catch "the evil doers"? Every time I think about that, I picture I five-year-old playing with G.I. Joes.

Four planes. Four. Something of that scale does not go unnoticed. The government knows more than they are letting on. And this most likely goes back as far as the Clinton administration. But the fact is, it doesn't matter if they've known since the Eisenhower administration, only one man was President on September 11, 2001. There is no doubt in my mind that 9/11 could have been prevented. And watching a man ride a wave of popularity after a tragedy that he should have stopped makes me ill.

[/Please-don't-ban-me-but-I-have-to-say-this rant]

[db11]

Originally posted by generic_screenname
[Please-don't-ban-me-but-I-have-to-say-this rant] The reason I'm not voting for Bush is because I cannot understand how the worst act of terrorism in the history of the country can be commited under his watch and rather than being held accountable he's considered a hero. Why?!!

Because he said he'd catch "the evil doers"? Every time I think about that, I picture I five-year-old playing with G.I. Joes.

Four planes. Four. Something of that scale does not go unnoticed. The government knows more than they are letting on. And this most likely goes back as far as the Clinton administration. But the fact is, it doesn't matter if they've known since the Eisenhower administration, only one man was President on September 11, 2001. There is no doubt in my mind that 9/11 could have been prevented. And watching a man ride a wave of popularity after a tragedy that he should have stopped makes me ill.

[/Please-don't-ban-me-but-I-have-to-say-this rant]

I can understand that sentiment, but I don't agree with it at all. The President of the United States, whether its Bush, Clinton, Kerry or Thomas Jefferson, is not an omnipotent being. Things are going to happen that they can't control. There were multiple terrorist attacks on US assets during Clinton's term and they did kill US civilians and military personnel. Should he be held accountable? NO! He didn't do it, some psychotic, crazed terrorist did. I feel the same way regarding Bush and 9/11, or any president when something like this happens. Should we blame Bush the next time some nut goes on a shooting rampage? How about blaming Clinton for the school shootings in the 1990s? Again, its not their fault, its the perpetrators' fault. The blame games and finger pointing just drive me nuts, because we end up lynching someone who isn't really responsible.

[Harveylives]

Originally posted by generic_screenname
[Please-don't-ban-me-but-I-have-to-say-this rant] The reason I'm not voting for Bush is because I cannot understand how the worst act of terrorism in the history of the country can be commited under his watch and rather than being held accountable he's considered a hero. Why?!!

Because he said he'd catch "the evil doers"? Every time I think about that, I picture I five-year-old playing with G.I. Joes.

Four planes. Four. Something of that scale does not go unnoticed. The government knows more than they are letting on. And this most likely goes back as far as the Clinton administration. But the fact is, it doesn't matter if they've known since the Eisenhower administration, only one man was President on September 11, 2001. There is no doubt in my mind that 9/11 could have been prevented. And watching a man ride a wave of popularity after a tragedy that he should have stopped makes me ill.

[/Please-don't-ban-me-but-I-have-to-say-this rant]

Not just Bush, but the whole gov't failed. The cia, fbi, congress, senate, clinton. Their is plenty of blame to go around. I personally have a vote of no confidence in our gov't. My personal opinion is to start from scratch again. Get rid of everything except for the original constitution, and just start over. I'm thinking of switching to the "constitution party".

[generic_screenname]

Not just Bush, but the whole gov't failed. The cia, fbi, congress, senate, clinton. Their is plenty of blame to go around.

Exactly. I'm not playing favorites. Anyone who had information and didn't do anything ishould be considered at least partly responsible.

Four planes. 3000 people. It didn't have to happen.

[grinner]

Originally posted by generic_screenname
Exactly. I'm not playing favorites. Anyone who had information and didn't do anything ishould be considered at least partly responsible.

Four planes. 3000 people. It didn't have to happen. Neither did Somalia... or the USS Cole incident... or...

the blame game can go on and on and on and on...

[fermicat]

Originally posted by LadyCrais
Which is why I'd really like folks to start contributing articles with a few facts in them to at least give us a shot at having rational opinions based on something other than who spun us the best.

Here is an article I found that addresses Kerry's voting record in general. It is about a month old, but the information is still relevant. It is from Tallahassee.com:

Kerry's voting record goes along party line

By Nancy Benac

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


WASHINGTON - The trouble with being a member of Congress, John Kerry once lamented, is that you can't vote "yes, but" or "no, but."

Kerry has cast thousands of votes in his nearly 20 years as a senator from Massachusetts, and they place him squarely in the Democratic Party mainstream. He's given a lot of speeches over the years, too, and those words sometimes have suggested a more nuanced world view.

"He votes with his party even though his critiques have sometimes gone against the grain of the party," said Elaine Kamarck, a public-policy professor at Harvard University who was an adviser to Al Gore in the 2000 campaign.

As the front-running Democratic presidential candidate, Kerry is finding both his votes and words coming under increasingly intense scrutiny, and he spends a considerable amount of time explaining his thinking.

On one hand, Democratic rival Howard Dean repeatedly has criticized Kerry's 2002 vote authorizing the United States to go to war against Iraq, painting him as just another Washington insider. On the other, Republican Party Chairman Ed Gillespie this week cited Kerry's 1991 vote against military action in the Persian Gulf as one in a string of votes he said suggest the senator is weak on national defense.

The rationale for such votes - not just for Kerry, but for any candidate with a congressional record - often can get lost in a campaign of glib sound bites and quick retorts.

Nearly a year ago, Kerry spoke of the challenge.

"This is the difficulty in any vote: You can vote 'no, but' and there are a whole lot of qualifiers, or you can vote 'Yes, but,' and there a lot of qualifiers sometimes," he said. "The way people read the votes, they don't see any of the qualifiers."

Whatever the qualifiers, Kerry has voted his party's line consistently, as reflected in ratings issued by various interest groups: a lifetime score of 5 from the American Conservative Union, a rating of 85 for 2001-02 from the liberal People for the American Way.

The value of such ratings, though, is limited. For example, the scores for Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the most centrist of the Democratic presidential hopefuls, aren't much different from Kerry's. Lieberman's rating from People for the American Way was identical to Kerry's - 85.

Darrell West, a political-science professor at Brown University, describes Kerry as falling "at the pragmatic end of liberalism."

"He's somebody who has carved out his own path and occasionally questioned doctrinaire positions, so although he is a liberal, he won't be quite as easy to pigeonhole as Republicans are claiming," West said.

Dean has stepped up his criticism of Kerry's record in recent days, on Friday saying the senator hadn't accomplished much and that the presidential nominee should be "a doer, not a talker."

Kerry's response is that effectiveness in Congress isn't measured by the number of laws that carry one's name and that he's helped pass important laws providing benefits such as family medical leave, mental-health care and children's health care.

The senator also is increasingly the target of Republican fire now that he has emerged as the Democratic front-runner. The GOP's Gillespie, besides labeling Kerry soft on defense, has cast him as an Eastern liberal out of sync with voters on economic and social issues.

Kerry, for his part, says he's happy to campaign on his Senate record, confident his background as a Vietnam war hero will help deflect any questions about his commitment to national security. He also can cite his votes that show a centrist bent - in favor of welfare reform, trade legislation and the Gramm-Rudman deficit-reduction law, for example.

His speeches, too, sometimes stray from Democratic dogma. In 1992, for example, he gave a speech saying affirmative action, which he supports, has had costs as well as benefits. "There exists a reality of reverse discrimination that actually engenders racism," he said.

Taking a hard look at public schools in a 1998 speech, he decried the "political timidity and powerful interest groups" that were keeping the nation from meaningful education reforms that would improve substandard schools.

But now Lieberman's campaign accuses Kerry, and another Democratic presidential rival, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, of backing away from President Bush's 2001 education-reform package in deference to complaints from the education establishment. Kerry voted for the package, known as the No Child Left Behind Act, but now wants to revise it and complains that Bush has failed to back up the law with enough money to help schools raise academic standards.

Kerry has built his Senate reputation more on pursuing investigations than crafting legislation. For example, he led a subcommittee probe into the Bank of Credit & Commerce International scandal and subsequently wrote a book that helped document how international criminal and terrorist networks work together.

Ed Kilgore, policy director for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, said that Kerry over the years has shown himself to be a thoughtful legislator who sometimes "has pushed his party to a little bit of fresh thinking."

[Vampgrrl]

I do for a sec want to get back to the tax cuts. I do work, I work in IT, I have maintained employment by carefully putting myself in a position to not get laid off these last few years.
Those tax cuts DO save me money, money that I have EARNED. Most poor people pay little to no income tax, the top 10% pay around 68% of income tax. I'm not in the top 10 but I am in the top 25%. That's my money, I dont get why people fail to understand that.

In top of that I would propose that as in pre WW2 days, federal income tax withholding should be eliminated. People half the time dont realize what they pay (try this: ask your avg person..What did you pay in income tax last yr? more of half of the time they will say "oh I got some back!"). I know taxes have to be paid but let's stop soaking income earners because most people the federal govt would consider rich..aren't. Most top 25% aren't anywhere near millionaries, so it does count for something.

[db11]

Originally posted by Vampgrrl
I do for a sec want to get back to the tax cuts. I do work, I work in IT, I have maintained employment by carefully putting myself in a position to not get laid off these last few years.
Those tax cuts DO save me money, money that I have EARNED. Most poor people pay little to no income tax, the top 10% pay around 68% of income tax. I'm not in the top 10 but I am in the top 25%. That's my money, I dont get why people fail to understand that.

In top of that I would propose that as in pre WW2 days, federal income tax withholding should be eliminated. People half the time dont realize what they pay (try this: ask your avg person..What did you pay in income tax last yr? more of half of the time they will say "oh I got some back!"). I know taxes have to be paid but let's stop soaking income earners because most people the federal govt would consider rich..aren't. Most top 25% aren't anywhere near millionaries, so it does count for something.

From an economic standpoint, I have yet to see an argument for why eliminating the tax cuts, even on the rich, is a positive. For one, nothing happens in an economic vacuum. Dump the tax cuts for the rich and it'll be expensed by businesses. How do they recover expenses? By either raising prices or cutting jobs. Or, as is more likely in the current economic climate, it will give them a GREATER incentive to outsource jobs overseas. It makes no sense whatsoever as far as I can see, and I think it is nothing but a class warfare tactic, IMO.

As for the gov't letting you keep YOUR money, have you ever noticed that when the subject of a tax cut comes up, the media always puts it in the context of a 'cost' for the country? Its sickening. My family owns a small manufacturing business that makes well under $100,000 a year. We get absolutely soaked by taxes. We end up paying MORE than the top tax bracket once payroll and income taxes are paid. Apparently taking 50%+ isn't good enough for the government. Considering that we'd be better off closing the doors as well, its no shock to me that manufacturing jobs are being eliminated and/or outsourced in this country. No wonder corporations rule America. They're the only ones with enough resources that the gov't can't tax them out of business.

[Twich]

National Security is a big issue for me in this campaign. Here are some facts that I have found about things Kerry has done with regard to Vietnam that bother me. They may not bother anyone else...just me. And that's okay. But they are facts that can be verified. Dates, names and pertinent information are given.

Much has been said of him being a "war hero" in Vietnam. Not much has been said about his protesting activities. While your friends, brothers and family are still in harm's way (I said this about the other not to be named topic too) it is important to support them. He did the opposite.

Much of Kerry's speech before Congress painted his fellow GIs as so brutal that, today, they could easily be mistaken for Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen killers.

"He reported to Congress that U.S. soldiers had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."

By the following day, April 24, the publicity from the 22nd and 23rd helped draw at least 250,000 demonstrators to the Mall in a massive protest.
Kerry, wearing his combat jacket, addressed the rally from the Capitol steps.

In less than a week, Kerry was transformed from little-known former swift boat skipper to a national icon for a movement that advocated against U.S. involvement in Vietnam and for the communist Vietnamese.'

This after he was involved with some questionable things himself:

While in command of Swift Boat 44, Kerry and crew operated without prudence in a Free Fire Zone, carelessly firing at targets of opportunity racking up a number of enemy kills and some civilians. His body count included-- a woman, her baby, a 12 year-old boy, an elderly man and several South Vietnamese soldiers.

"It is one of those terrible things, and I'll never forget, ever, the sight of that child," Kerry later said about the dead baby. "But there was nothing that anybody could have done about it. It was the only instance of that happening."

Also

Kerry ran for election to the U.S. House in 1972 during which he found it necessary to suppress reproduction of the cover picture appearing on his own book, The New Soldier. His political opponent pointed out that it depicted several unkempt youths crudely handling an upside down American flag to mock the famous photo of the U.S. Marines at Iwo Jima.

And later, after being elected to Senate:

C. Stewart Forbes, Chief Executive Officer of Colliers International (Kerry's cousin), was awarded a contract worth billions designating Colliers International as the exclusive real estate agent representing Vietnam. "

In December of 1992, not long after Kerry was quoted in the world press stating "President Bush should reward Vietnam within a month for its increased cooperation in accounting for American MIAs," Vietnam announced it had granted Boston, Massachusetts based Colliers International, a contract worth billions. Colliers International became exclusive real estate agent representing Vietnam.

That deal alone put Colliers in a position to make tens of millions of dollars on the rush to upgrade Vietnam's ports, railroads, highways, government buildings, etc.

and with regards to the idea that there may still be POW's in Vietnam:

In the Senate debate itself, Kerry, rather than embarass Vietnam by demanding the truth, launched a highly publicized diversionary investigation of the POW/MIA families and activists, who were demanding an honest accounting.

Kerry labeled them "professional malcontents, conspiracy mongers, con artists, and dime-store Rambos" who were only involved in the POW/MIA issue for money.

And this:


The Washington Times
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
December 6, 2002

John Kerry's war record

As Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, considers a bid for the White House, Americans should know a few things about him that he might prefer go unmentioned — and I don't mean his $75 haircuts.

When Mr. Kerry pontificated at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Veterans Day, a group of veterans turned their backs on him and walked away. They remembered Mr. Kerry as the anti-war activist who testified before Congress during the war, accusing veterans of being war criminals. The dust jacket of Mr. Kerry's pro-Hanoi book, "The New Soldier," features a photograph of his ragged band of radicals mocking the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial, which depicts the flag-raising on Iwo Jima, with an upside-down American flag.

Retired Gen. George S. Patton III charged that Mr. Kerry's actions as an anti-war activist had "given aid and comfort to the enemy," as had the actions of Ramsey Clark and Jane Fonda. Also, Mr. Kerry lied when he threw what he claimed were his war medals over the White House fence; he later admitted they weren't his. Now they are displayed on his office wall.

Long after he changed sides in congressional hearings, Mr. Kerry lobbied for renewed trade relations with Hanoi. At the same time, his cousin C. Stewart Forbes, chief executive for Colliers International, assisted in brokering a $905 million deal to develop a deep-sea port at Vung Tau, Vietnam — an odd coincidence.

As noted in the Inside Politics column of Nov. 14 (Nation), historian Douglas Brinkley is writing Mr. Kerry's biography. Hopefully, he'll include the senator's latest ignominious feat: preventing the Vietnam Human Rights Act (HR2833) from coming to a vote in the Senate, claiming human rights would deteriorate as a result. His actions sent a clear signal to Hanoi that Congress cares little about the human rights for which so many Americans fought and died.

The State Department ranked Vietnam among the 10 regimes worldwide least tolerant of religious freedom. Recently, 354 churches of the Montagnards, a Christian ethnic minority, were forcibly disbanded, and by mid-October, more than 50 Christian pastors and elders had been arrested in Dak Lak province alone. On Oct. 29, the secret police executed three Montagnards by lethal injection simply for protesting religious repression. The communists are conducting a pogrom against the Montagnards, forcing Christians to drink a mixture of goat's blood and alcohol and renounce Christianity.

Thousands have been killed or imprisoned or have just "disappeared." The Montagnards lost one-half of their adult male population fighting for the United States, and without them, there might be thousands more American names on that somber black granite wall at the Vietnam memorial.

As Mr. Kerry contemplates a run for the presidency, people must remember that he has fought harder for Hanoi as an anti-war activist and a senator than he did against the Vietnamese communists while serving in the Navy in Vietnam.
MICHAEL BENGE
Foreign Service officer and former Vietnam POW (1968 to 1973)
Washington

[Twich]

And adding....sheesh I can't believe I'm getting into this. I *was* gonna stay away from these topics. *shakes head*

[BillFrugge]

Oh yeah... Slate. I should have known.

So, Republicans spin and Democrats "grow." It makes no difference what anyone says, minds are made up with selective information.

[stellar]

Originally posted by Vampgrrl
I do for a sec want to get back to the tax cuts. I do work, I work in IT, I have maintained employment by carefully putting myself in a position to not get laid off these last few years.

What are your feelings on the chairman of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers concluding outsourcing was good for the American economy?

Technically it is good for the stock market because it cuts labor costs raising stock prices giving more money to the people who need it the least and don't value it as much as those of us who work for it do - just like the tax cuts. I don't have to tell you that IT jobs are the ones going to India and China because labor is the cheapest in India and China.

The one thing I can conclude is at least the current council of economic advisers is completely out of touch with reality.

This may very well turn out to be the shortest-lived thread in the history of FMD. :)

[generic_screenname]

"He reported to Congress that U.S. soldiers had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."

So after coming back from seeing the horrors of war and watching your fellow soldiers rape and murder, you are supposed to act like it didn't happen? Sure. Cause suppression is healthy, as long as it proves that America is always right and just in every action.

[Twich]

There is some question (and dang, I can't find it now) as to how he could have "seen" some of the things he testified to when he was on a ship.

And these stories did not come out until long after he had hooked up with militant protest groups who were stating the same things.

And he's got that connection with Jane Fonda's group...THAT bothers me because I am disturbed by the way she acted during that war.

When your brothers at arms are still in harm's way, you don't ally yourself with things that will do damage to them or harm them. Her actions, specifically aided the enemy and caused harm to our troops. His assocation with a group of that caliber puts him on my hit list.

[fermicat]

A request, please, for posts in this and other current events threads. When quoting outside sources or posting factual information, can you please list the source for the information somewhere within your posts? Thanks.

[stellar]

For the record: John Kerry almost met Jane Fonda at a peace rally before she went to Hanoi. Don't worry. The president came closer to Vietnam than Kerry came to Jane Fonda.

[Vampgrrl]

NOTHING can be done about outsourcing jobs, it sucks but if Congress passes laws making it illegal first off it will create major problems with the national economy, all the global monetary and trade orgs will trigger severe actions against the US economically.

I dont care for outsourcing but if you think the President can stop it you dont know much about how the global economy works. Besides some co.s have already brought their support for IT stuff back to the US, like Toshiba and Dell (corporate) sales due to customer dissatisfaction.

[Twich]

January 27, 2004, 8:25 a.m.
Vetting the Vet Record
Is Kerry a proud war hero or angry antiwar protester?
by Mackubin Thomas Owens



John Kerry, we know, is running against John Kerry: his own voting record. But there is another record that John Kerry is running against, and this has to do with his very emergence as a Democratic politician: Kerry, the proud Vietnam veteran vs. Kerry, the antiwar activist who accused his fellow Vietnam veterans of the most heinous atrocities imaginable.

John Kerry not only served honorably in Vietnam, but also with distinction, earning a Silver Star (America's third-highest award for valor), a Bronze Star, and three awards of the Purple Heart for wounds received in combat as a swift-boat commander. Kerry did not return from Vietnam a radical antiwar activist. According to the indispensable Stolen Valor, by H. G. "Jug" Burkett and Genna Whitley, "Friends said that when Kerry first began talking about running for office, he was not visibly agitated about the Vietnam War. 'I thought of him as a rather normal vet,' a friend said to a reporter, 'glad to be out but not terribly uptight about the war.' Another acquaintance who talked to Kerry about his political ambitions called him a 'very charismatic fellow looking for a good issue.'" Apparently, this good issue would be Vietnam.

Kerry hooked up with an organization called Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Two events cooked up by this group went a long way toward cementing in the public mind the image of Vietnam as one big atrocity. The first of these was the January 31, 1971, "Winter Soldier Investigation," organized by "the usual suspects" among antiwar celebrities such as Jane Fonda, Dick Gregory, and Kennedy-assassination conspiracy theorist, Mark Lane. Here, individuals purporting to be Vietnam veterans told horrible stories of atrocities in Vietnam: using prisoners for target practice, throwing them out of helicopters, cutting off the ears of dead Viet Cong soldiers, burning villages, and gang-raping women as a matter of course.

The second event was "Dewey Canyon III," or what VVAW called a "limited incursion into the country of Congress" in April of 1971. It was during this VVAW "operation" that John Kerry first came to public attention. The group marched on Congress to deliver petitions to Congress and then to the White House. The highlight of this event occurred when veterans threw their medals and ribbons over a fence in front of the Capitol, symbolizing a rebuke to the government that they claimed had betrayed them. One of the veterans flinging medals back in the face of his government was John Kerry, although it turns out they were not his medals, but someone else's.

Several days later Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His speech, touted as a spontaneous rhetorical endeavor, was a tour de force, convincing many Americans that their country had indeed waged a merciless and immoral war in Vietnam. It was particularly powerful because Kerry did not fit the antiwar-protester mold — he was no scruffy, wide-eyed hippie. He was instead the best that America had to offer. He was, according to Burkett and Whitley, the "All-American boy, mentally twisted by being asked to do terrible things, then abandoned by his government."

Kerry began by referring to the Winter Soldiers Investigation in Detroit. Here, he claimed, "over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did, they relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.
They told their stories. At times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.


This is quite a bill of particulars to lay at the feet of the U.S. military. He said in essence that his fellow veterans had committed unparalleled war crimes in Vietnam as a matter of course, indeed, that it was American policy to commit such atrocities.

In fact, the entire Winter Soldiers Investigation was a lie. It was inspired by Mark Lane's 1970 book entitled Conversations with Americans, which claimed to recount atrocity stories by Vietnam veterans. This book was panned by James Reston Jr. and Neil Sheehan, not exactly known as supporters of the Vietnam War. Sheehan in particular demonstrated that many of Lane's "eye witnesses" either had never served in Vietnam or had not done so in the capacity they claimed.

Nonetheless, Sen. Mark Hatfield inserted the transcript of the Winter Soldier testimonies into the Congressional Record and asked the Commandant of the Marine Corps to investigate the war crimes allegedly committed by Marines. When the Naval Investigative Service attempted to interview the so-called witnesses, most refused to cooperate, even after assurances that they would not be questioned about atrocities they may have committed personally. Those that did cooperate never provided details of actual crimes to investigators. The NIS also discovered that some of the most grisly testimony was given by fake witnesses who had appropriated the names of real Vietnam veterans. Guenter Lewy tells the entire study in his book, America in Vietnam.

Kerry's 1971 testimony includes every left-wing cliché about Vietnam and the men who served there. It is part of the reason that even today, people who are too young to remember Vietnam are predisposed to believe the worst about the Vietnam War and those who fought it. This predisposition was driven home by the fraudulent "Tailwind" episode some months ago.

The first cliché is that atrocities were widespread in Vietnam. But this is nonsense. Atrocities did occur in Vietnam, but they were far from widespread. Between 1965 and 1973, 201 soldiers and 77 Marines were convicted of serious crimes against the Vietnamese. Of course, the fact that many crimes, either in war or peace, go unreported, combined with the particular difficulties encountered by Americans fighting in Vietnam, suggest that more such acts were committed than reported or tried.

But even Daniel Ellsberg, a severe critic of U.S. policy in Vietnam, rejected the argument that the biggest U.S. atrocity in Vietnam, My Lai, was in any way a normal event: "My Lai was beyond the bounds of permissible behavior, and that is recognizable by virtually every soldier in Vietnam. They know it was wrong....The men who were at My Lai knew there were aspects out of the ordinary. That is why they tried to hide the event, talked about it to no one, discussed it very little even among themselves."

My Lai was an extreme case, but anyone who has been in combat understands the thin line between permissible acts and atrocity. The first and potentially most powerful emotion in combat is fear arising from the instinct of self-preservation. But in soldiers, fear is overcome by what the Greeks called thumos, spiritedness and righteous anger. In the Iliad, it is thumos, awakened by the death of his comrade Patroclus that causes Achilles to leave sulking in his tent and wade into the Trojans.

But unchecked, thumos can engender rage and frenzy. It is the role of leadership, which provides strategic context for killing and enforces discipline, to prevent this outcome. Such leadership was not in evidence at My Lai.

But My Lai also must be placed within a larger context. The NVA and VC frequently committed atrocities, not as a result of thumos run amok, but as a matter of policy. While left-wing anti-war critics of U.S. policy in Vietnam were always quick to invoke Auschwitz and the Nazis in discussing alleged American atrocities, they were silent about Hue City, where a month and a half before My Lai, the North Vietnamese and VC systematically murdered 3,000 people. They were also willing to excuse Pol Pot's mass murderer of upwards of a million Cambodians.

The second cliché is that is that Vietnam scarred an entire generation of young men. But for years, many of us who served in Vietnam tried to make the case that the popular image of the Vietnam vet as maladjusted loser, dehumanized killer, or ticking "time bomb" was at odds with reality. Indeed, it was our experience that those who had served in Vietnam generally did so with honor, decency, and restraint; that despite often being viewed with distrust or opprobrium at home, most had asked for nothing but to be left alone to make the transition back to civilian life; and that most had in fact made that transition if not always smoothly, at least successfully.

But the press could always find the stereotypical, traumatized vet who could be counted on to tell the most harrowing and gruesome stories of combat in Vietnam, often involving atrocities, the sort of stories that John Kerry gave credence to in his 1971 testimony. Many of the war stories recounted by these individuals were wildly implausible to any one who had been in Vietnam, but credulous journalists, most of whom had no military experience, uncritically passed their reports along to the public.

I had always agreed with the observation of the late Harry Summers, a well-known military commentator who served as an infantryman in Korean and Vietnam, that the story teller's distance from the battle zone was directly proportional to the gruesomeness of his atrocity story. But until the publication of the aforementioned Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and its History, neither Harry nor I any idea just how true his observation was.

In the course of trying to raise money for a Texas Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Burkett discovered that reporters were only interested in homeless veterans and drug abuse and that the corporate leaders he approached had bought into the popular image of Vietnam veterans. They were not honorable men who took pride in their service, but whining welfare cases, bellyaching about what an immoral government did to them.

Fed up, Burkett did something that any reporter worth his or her salt could have done: he used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to check the actual records of the "image makers" used by reporters to flesh out their stories on homelessness, Agent Orange, suicide, drug abuse, criminality, or alcoholism. What he found was astounding. More often than not, the showcase "veteran" who cried on camera about his dead buddies, about committing or witnessing atrocities, or about some heroic action in combat that led him to the current dead end in his life, was an impostor.

Indeed, Burkett discovered that over the last decade, some 1,700 individuals, including some of the most prominent examples of the Vietnam veteran as dysfunctional loser, had fabricated their war stories. Many had never even been in the service. Others, had been, but had never been in Vietnam.

Stolen Valor made it clear why John Kerry's testimony in 1971 slandered an entire generation of soldiers. Kerry gave credence to the claim that the war was fought primarily by reluctant draftees, predominantly composed of the poor, the young, or racial minorities.

The record shows something different, indicating that 86 percent of those who died during the war were white and 12.5 percent were black, from an age group in which blacks comprised 13.1 percent of the population. Two thirds of those who served in Vietnam were volunteers, and volunteers accounted for 77 percent of combat deaths.

Kerry portrayed the Vietnam veteran as ashamed of his service:

We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped their memories of us. But all that they have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission, to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and the fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more, and so when in 30 years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead the place where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.
But a comprehensive 1980 survey commissioned by Veterans' Administration (VA) reported that 91 percent of those who had seen combat in Vietnam were "glad they had served their country;" 80 percent disagreed with the statement that "the US took advantage of me;" and nearly two out of three would go to Vietnam again, even knowing how the war would end.

Today, Sen. Kerry appeals to veterans in his quest for the White House. He invokes his Vietnam service at every turn. But an honest, enterprising reporter should ask Sen. Kerry this: Were you lying in 1971 or are you lying now? We do know that his speech was not the spontaneous, emotional, from-the-heart offering that he suggested it was. Burkett and Whitley report that instead, "it had been carefully crafted by a speech writer for Robert Kennedy named Adam Walinsky, who also tutored him on how to present it."

But the issue goes far beyond theatrics. If he believes his 1971 indictment of his country and his fellow veterans was true, then he couldn't possibly be proud of his Vietnam service. Who can be proud of committing war crimes of the sort that Kerry recounted in his 1971 testimony? But if he is proud of his service today, perhaps it is because he always knew that his indictment in 1971 was a piece of political theater that he, an aspiring politician, exploited merely as a "good issue." If the latter is true, he should apologize to every veteran of that war for slandering them to advance his political fortunes.


And do you want the Jane Fonda references? I didn't say he worked WITH Jane Fonda...they were a part of the same organization. The very ideals and values put out by this organization were a slap to the faces of veterans and the military.

http://www.snopes.com/military/fonda.htm (snopes being a non-partisan group)

Claim: During a 1972 trip to North Vietnam, Jane Fonda propagandized on behalf of the North Vietnamese government, declared that American POWs were being treated humanely and condemned U.S. soldiers as "war criminals" and later denounced them as liars for claiming they had been tortured.
Status: True.

Example: [Collected on the Internet, 1999]


When I was at Camp Pendleton receiving combat corpsman training, I noticed that the pickup truck belonging to the gunnery sergeant in charge of our training was adorned with bumper stickers containing extremely unflattering remarks about Jane Fonda. I also noticed a few referred to Ms. Fonda and Vietnam, but at the time I honestly had no idea why.
Being an E-5 and close to rank to our E-7 gunny, after a training rotation one afternoon I decided to ask him about those stickers, and what they had to do with Fonda.

He muttered a few obscenities and proceeded to tell me the story. Fonda, he said, became a traitor during the Vietnam War -- a war in which "gunny" had served two tours and for which he had received three Purple Hearts (which is why he enjoyed training Navy corpsmen to be Marine Corps combat corpsmen -- they'd saved his life a time or two).

The following excerpts are not "gunny's" words, but when received them in an e-mail recently, it reminded me of his story. And, as ABC's Barbara Walters prepares to honor the traitorous Jane Fonda during Walters' "100 years of great women" program soon, I thought the American people needed to hear this story again. You see, Fonda isn't just exercise videos and the third wheel in "Nine to Five" (the movie).


* * * * * * *
"There are few things I have strong visceral reactions to, but Jane Fonda's participation in what I believe to be blatant treason, is one of them. Part of my conviction comes from exposure to those who suffered her attentions.

"In 1978, the Commandant of the USAF Survival School, a colonel, was a former POW in Ho Lo Prison -- the Hanoi Hilton. Dragged from a stinking cesspit of a cell, cleaned, fed, and dressed in clean PJs, he was ordered to describe for a visiting American 'Peace Activist' the 'lenient and humane treatment' he'd received. He spat at Ms. Fonda, was clubbed, and dragged away. During the subsequent beating, he fell forward upon the camp Commandant's feet, accidentally pulling the man's shoe off -- which sent that officer berserk.

"In '78, the AF colonel still suffered from double vision -- permanently grounding him -- from the Vietnamese officer's frenzied application of a wooden baton.

"From 1983-85, Col. Larry Carrigan was 347FW/DO (F-4Es). He'd spent 6 [product] years in the Hilton -- the first three of which he was listed as MIA. His wife lived on faith that he was still alive. His group, too, got the cleaned/fed/clothed routine in preparation for a 'peace delegation' visit.

"They, however, had time and devised a plan to get word to the world that they still survived. Each man secreted a tiny piece of paper, with his Social Security number on it, in the palm of his hand. When paraded before Ms. Fonda and a cameraman, she walked the line, shaking each man's hand and asking little encouraging snippets like, 'Aren't you sorry you bombed babies?' and, 'Are you grateful for the humane treatment from your benevolent captors?'"

"Believing this HAD to be an act, they each palmed her their sliver of paper. She took them all without missing a beat. At the end of the line and once the camera stopped rolling, to the shocked disbelief of the POWs, she turned to the officer in charge ... and handed him the little pile of notes.

"Three men died from the subsequent beatings. Col. Carrigan was almost number four.

"For years after their release, a group of determined former POWs, including Col. Carrigan, tried to bring Ms. Fonda and others up on charges of treason. I don't know that they used it, but the charge of 'Negligent Homicide due to Depraved Indifference' would also seem appropriate. Her obvious 'granting of aid and comfort to the enemy' alone should've been sufficient for the treason count. However, to date, Jane Fonda has never been formally charged with anything and continues to enjoy the privileged life of the rich and famous.

"I, personally, think that this is shame on us, the American Citizenry.

"Part of our shortfall is ignorance: Most don't know such actions ever took place.

"The only addition I might add to these sentiments is to remember the satisfaction of relieving myself into the urinal at some air base or another where 'zaps' of Hanoi Jane's face had been applied."

And there is this account:

"I was a civilian economic development advisor in Vietnam, and was captured by the North Vietnamese communists in South Vietnam in 1968, and held for over 5 years. I spent 27 months in solitary confinement, one year in a cage in Cambodia, and one year in a 'black box' in Hanoi. My North Vietnamese captors deliberately poisoned and murdered a female missionary, a nurse in a leprosarium in Ban Me Thuot, South Vietnam, whom I later buried in the jungle near the Cambodian border.

"At one time, I was weighing approximately 90 lb. [my normal weight is 170 lb.). We were Jane Fonda's 'war criminals.'"

"When Jane Fonda was in Hanoi, I was asked by the camp communist political officer if I would be willing to meet with her. I said yes, for I would like to tell her about the real treatment we POWs were receiving, which was far different from the treatment purported by the North Vietnamese, and parroted by Jane Fonda, as 'humane and lenient.' Because of this, I spent three days on a rocky floor on my knees with outstretched arms with a piece of steel re-bar placed on my hands, and beaten with a bamboo cane every time my arms dipped.

"Jane Fonda had the audacity to say that the POWs were lying about our torture and treatment. Now ABC is allowing Barbara Walters to honor Jane Fonda in her feature "100 Years of Great Women." Shame on the Disney Company.

"I had the opportunity to meet with Jane Fonda for a couple of hours after I was released. I asked her if she would be willing to debate me on TV. She did not answer me, her husband (at the time), Tom Hayden, answered for her. She was mind controlled by her husband. This does not exemplify someone who should be honored by '100 Years of Great Women.'"

"After I was released, I was asked what I thought of Jane Fonda and the anti-war movement. I said that I held Joan Baez's husband in very high regard, for he thought the war was wrong, burned his draft card and went to prison in protest. If the other anti-war protesters took this same route, it would have brought our judicial system to a halt and ended the war much earlier, and there wouldn't be as many on that somber black granite wall called the Vietnam Memorial. This is democracy. This is the American way.

"Jane Fonda, on the other hand, chose to be a traitor, and went to Hanoi, wore their uniform, propagandized for the communists, and urged American soldiers to desert. As we were being tortured, and some of the POWs murdered, she called us liars. After her heroes -- the North Vietnamese communists -- took over South Vietnam, they systematically murdered 80,000 South Vietnamese political prisoners. May their souls rest on her head forever."

In the words of Paul Harvey, America, "now you know the rest of the story."

ABC and Babs Walters will undoubtedly include "Hanoi" Jane in their televised celebration because their black souls are too hardened and too imbued with an anti-American sentiment to do anything else. And ultimately, they will all answer for what they have done in their lives. In the meantime, I don't plan on watching anything that has Jane Fonda's face anywhere near it. I won't buy her videos; I won't rent or go see her movies. As far as I'm concerned, she's already dead to me.

Whether or not you agreed with the war in Vietnam, whether you're a Vietnam vet or a former member of the protest movement, or whether you're too old or too young to have been there, the behavior of Jane Fonda towards our own military men is reprehensible beyond belief. All I ask is that you think about these accounts the next time you see her. Let your conscience guide your actions from there.




Origins: The
right to freedom of speech is one of our most cherished rights. It is also a double-edged sword: the same right that allows us to criticize our government's policies without fear of reprisal also protects those who endorse and promote racism, anti-semitism, ethnic hatred and other socially divisive positions.

Rarely is this dichotomy so evident as when a democratic nation engages in war, and the protection of civil liberties clashes head-on with the exigencies of a war effort. Protesting a government's involvement in a war without also interfering in the prosecution of that war is a difficult (if not impossible) feat, a situation that has sometimes led the government to curtail the freedom of speech, such as when the U.S. Sedition Act (passed during World War I) made criminals of those who would "willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States." Under this law, peacefully urging citizens to resist the draft or simply drawing an editorial cartoon critical of the government became illegal. (The Sedition Act was later overturned.)

The most prominent example of a clash between private citizen protest and governmental military policy in recent history occurred in July 1972, when actress Jane Fonda arrived in Hanoi, North Vietnam, and began a two-week tour of the country conducted by uniformed military hosts. Aside from visiting villages, hospitals, schools, and factories, Fonda also posed for pictures in which she was shown applauding North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gunners, was photographed peering into the sights of an NVA anti-aircraft artillery launcher, and made ten propagandistic Tokyo Rose-like radio broadcasts in which she denounced American political and military leaders as "war criminals." She also spoke with eight American POWs at a carefully arranged "press conference," POWS who had been tortured by their North Vietnamese captors to force them to meet with Fonda, deny they had been tortured, and decry the American war effort. Fonda apparently didn't notice (or care) that the POWs were delivering their lines under duress or find it unusual the she was not allowed to visit the prisoner-of-war camp (commonly known as the "Hanoi Hilton") itself. She merely went home and told the world that "[the POWs] assured me they were in good health. When I asked them if they were brainwashed, they all laughed. Without exception, they expressed shame at what they had done." She did, however, charge that North Vietnamese POWs were systematically tortured in American prison-of-war camps.

To add insult to injury, when American POWs finally began to return home (some of them having been held captive for up to nine years) and describe the tortures they had endured at the hands of the North Vietnamese, Jane Fonda quickly told the country that they should "not hail the POWs as heroes, because they are hypocrites and liars." Fonda said the idea that the POWs she had met in Vietnam had been tortured was "laughable," claiming: "These were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed." The POWs who said they had been tortured were "exaggerating, probably for their own self-interest," she asserted. She told audiences that "Never in the history of the United States have POWs come home looking like football players. These football players are no more heroes than Custer was. They're military careerists and professional killers" who are "trying to make themselves look self-righteous, but they are war criminals according to law."

Were Jane Fonda's actions treason, or were they the exercise of a private citizen's right to freedom of speech? At the time, the legal aspects of this question were moot: President Nixon was engaged in trying to wind down American involvement in Vietnam and had to face another election in a few months, so politically he had far more to lose than to gain by making a martyr out of a prominent anti-war activist. (No requirement in either the Constitution or federal law states that the U.S. must be engaged in a declared war -- or any war at all -- before charges of treason can be brought against an individual.)

On the one hand, Jane Fonda provided no tangible military assistance to the North Vietnamese: she divulged no military secrets, she gave them no money or material, and she did not interfere with the operations of the American forces. Her actions, offensive as they were to many, were primarily of propaganda value only. On the other hand, Iva Ikuko Toguri (also known as "Tokyo Rose") was convicted of treason for making propaganda broadcasts on behalf of the Japanese during World War II (although she claimed her betrayal was forced and was eventually pardoned many years later by President Gerald Ford), and Fonda's efforts could fall under the definition of "giving aid and comfort to the enemy." It is also undeniable that some American soldiers came to harm as a direct result of Fonda's actions, an outcome she should reasonably have anticipated.

The most serious accusations in the piece quoted above -- that Fonda turned over slips of paper furtively given her by American POWS to the North Vietnamese and that several POWs were beaten to death as a result -- are proveably untrue. Those named in the inflammatory e-mail categorically deny the events they supposedly were part of.

"It's a figment of somebody's imagination," says Ret. Col. Larry Carrigan, one of the servicemen mentioned in the 'slips of paper' incident. Carrigan was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and did spend time in a POW camp. He has no idea why the story was attributed to him. "I never met Jane Fonda."

The tale about a defiant serviceman who spit at Jane Fonda and is severely beaten as a result is often attributed to Air Force pilot Jerry Driscoll. He has repeatedly stated on the record that it did not originate with him.

The story about a POW forced to kneel on rocky ground while holding a piece of steel rebar in his outstretched arms is true, though. That account comes from Michael Benge, a civilian advisor captured by the Viet Cong in 1968 and held as a POW for 5 years. His original statement, titled "Shame on Jane," was published in April by the Advocacy and Intelligence Network for POWs and MIAs.

The unknown author of the "Hanoi Jane" e-mail appears to have picked up Benge's story on-line and combined it with fabricated tales to create the forwarded text. Some versions now circulate with Benge's name listed; others quote his statement anonymously.

In fact, Fonda carried home letters from many American POWs to their families upon her return from North Vietnam, and rumors that a POW was beaten to death when he refused to meet with her were nothing more than rumors. Still, legally treasonous or not, Jane Fonda's actions merit the contempt felt towards her, and her inclusion in ABC's 30 April 1999 "A Celebration: 100 Years of Great Women" rightly angered many who failed to see what was so "great" about this woman. She didn't go to North Vietnam to try to bring about peace or to reconcile the two warring sides or to stop American boys from being killed; she went there as an active show of support for the North Vietnamese cause. She lauded the North Vietnamese military and citizens while she denounced American soldiers as "war criminals" and urged them to stop fighting, she lobbied to cut off all American economic aid to the South Vietnamese government even after the Paris Peace Accords ended U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, and she publicly thanked the Soviets for providing assistance to the North Vietnamese. And she did all this not as a reckless youth who rashly spouted ill-considered opinions now best forgotten, but as a 34-year-old adult who should be expected to bear full responsibility for her actions.

In 1988, sixteen years after denouncing American soldiers as war criminals and tortured POWs as possessed of overactive imaginations, Fonda met with Vietnam veterans to apologize for her actions. It's interesting to note that this nationally-televised apology (during which she attempted to minimize her actions by characterizing them as "thoughtless and careless") came at a time when New England vets were successfully disrupting a film project she was working on. It's also interesting that not only was this apology delivered sixteen years after the fact, but it has not been offered again since. More than a few have read a huge dollop of self-interest into Fonda's 1988 apology. (Finally, in an interview in 2000, almost thirty years after the fact, Fonda admitted: "I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me in an anti-aircraft carrier, which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes. It hurt so many soldiers. It galvanized such hostility. It was the most horrible thing I could possibly have done. It was just thoughtless.")

Whether the war was right or wrong, those who risked (and gave) their lives fighting it deserve respect, and for Fonda to brand men who were held captive and tortured as "liars" and "hypocrites" (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary) in order to defend her political views was and is unpardonable.

Last updated: 21 June 2000

[fermicat]

Originally posted by stellar
For the record: John Kerry almost met Jane Fonda at a peace rally before she went to Hanoi. Don't worry. The president came closer to Vietnam than Kerry came to Jane Fonda.

The Snopes.com blurbs about the two pictures, one real and one fake, that appear to link Kerry and Fonda are here:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/kerry.asp
http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/kerry2.asp

[stellar]

I'm happy to hear about Dell and Toshiba.

How about no government contracts to companies who outsource?

[generic_screenname]

It's a fly swatter.

It's a spatula.

It's a fly swatter!

It's a spatula!

You're both right. Presenting the new Fly Swatter Spatula...

Is it possible that someone can be a war hero and an anti-war activist?

[stellar]

http://i.timeinc.net/time/daily/2002/0201/lay0110.jpg

Here's a picture of the president with Kenneth Lay. This is before Kenneth Lay became infamous for costing thousands of people their life savings and only source of retirement income. But if it works for Fonda almost meeting Kerry 2 years before she went to Hanoi, just think what an actual meeting between Bush and Lay would do.

[stellar]

http://www.faculty.sbc.edu/gdenn/rumsfeld_hussein.jpg

That's Donald Rumsfeld and Sadaam Hussein. Is that bettern than Fonda almost meeting Kerry?

[BillFrugge]

Originally posted by generic_screenname
So after coming back from seeing the horrors of war and watching your fellow soldiers rape and murder, you are supposed to act like it didn't happen? Sure. Cause suppression is healthy, as long as it proves that America is always right and just in every action.

The only problem with that is that Kerry later admitted that he lied in his testimony.

So, he either watched it happening and did nothing, or else he made it all up. So which Kerry is the one telling the truth?

[BillFrugge]

Originally posted by stellar
That's Donald Rumsfeld and Sadaam Hussein. Is that bettern than Fonda almost meeting Kerry?

For crying out loud! That is utterly absurd! Those two photos don't prove a thing. You are taking things out of context in an effort to say that President George Bush was complicit in Enron's financial wranglings and Saddam Hussein's terror. That is dishonest!

Kerry's words were used against the POWs in Vietnam!

I am disgusted by what I'm reading here. You are twisting everything to support someone who has worked against our troops! New tone in this forum? I'd say so! I will not associate myself with the ilk that calls betraying troops a heroic thing to do! I quit the FMD!

Honestly, I've begun wondering what the heck I saw in Farscape in the first place!

Goodbye! I am gone!

[Vampgrrl]

What point does it make to do no business with companies that outsource? What if it's a competitive bid process and the savings are the taxpayers money?

I dont have the easy answers b/c their aren't any. However, I can see the pain for programmers but help desk phone guys? No...Hell desk is a low end unskilled job really except for the few who use it to step into a better job (having done it in the past...most phone support people are worthless).

I mean ideally the Libertarian Party by in large is better suited to my ideals but much like Nader or the Greens they won't win. :(

I am very disappointed in Bush, but I dont think he's a terrible President either, I think he's very medicore with the exception that he has stepped up to the plate in dealing with WW3 and that's what the War on Terror is, at least right now. You thought 9/11 was bad just wait (and this WILL happen I'd bet one day) some nutjob group sneaks in a small nuclear/atomic weapon, explodes it and where will we be then? F**ked, that's what..watch the stock market tank then...watch a nation really live in fear.

I'd rather not live with all this stuff going on...I'd like to keep as much of my income as possible, no war, have a pretty descent job market (tho I DON'T think it's that bad either). I can only control so much and I think whoever is chosen for any elected position to some degree will stab you in the back for various reasons. Unfortunately, I cannot make my house it's own nation.

[Vampgrrl]

eh, Bill, everyone RELAX.
This is a discussion, a valuable discussion..there is alot of room for heated disagreement in politics, but no room to get genuinely pissed off.

There are alot of varying political POV in this Farscape community. Moderate, Indies, Repubs, Democrats, Libertarians...do not get personally offended or mad at each other. It serves NO purpose.

[Twich]

Stellar, I said it before and I will say it again. I never said Kerry KNEW Fonda or that he worked WITH Fonda. I said they worked WITH the same organization. I said he was associated with HER GROUP and that HER actions bothered me during the war. The actions of that GROUP were anti-military and did NOT help them...it ended up giving more support to the enemy HOLDING our troops than it did to our troops. HIS association with a group of that caliber is enough to turn me off.

So post all the pictures you want. I don't care about the Jane Fonda/John Kerry picture. I care about his associations with a group that did things that I do not agree with. It is well documented that he was a part of that group and so was she. That's it.

[trubador]

Originally posted by BillFrugge
I am disgusted by what I'm reading here. You are twisting everything to support someone who has worked against our troops! New tone in this forum? I'd say so! I will not associate myself with the ilk that calls betraying troops a heroic thing to do! I quit the FMD!

Honestly, I've begun wondering what the heck I saw in Farscape in the first place!

Goodbye! I am gone!
And THIS is why I felt POLITICS should be banned from FMD.

I haven't even read this entire thread. I just did a brief scan and noticed this one post. When will the people in this forum learn!!! If you continue to let you're non-Farscape hot-button issues and views spill over into this place, it leaves a bad taste in the mouths of the many non-registered viewers of this forum, and it begins to fracture the coalition to HELP SAVE FARSCAPE!!!


FRELL!!! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, PEOPLE!!!

[fermicat]

Here is some information about Kerry's antiwar protest experiences from the Boston Globe. I believe it has high relevance to the ongoing discussion (warning - very detailed and therefore long).

-------------------------------------------

With antiwar role, high visibility


By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, 6/17/2003


April 28, 1971, 4:33 p.m. President Richard M. Nixon takes a call from his counsel, Charles Colson.

"This fellow Kerry that they had on last week," Colson tells the president, referring to a television appearance by John F. Kerry, a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

"Yeah," Nixon responds.

"He turns out to be really quite a phony," Colson says.

"Well, he is sort of a phony, isn't he?" Nixon says.

Yes, Colson says in a gossiping vein, telling the president that Kerry stayed at the home of a Georgetown socialite while other protesters slept on the mall.

"He was in Vietnam a total of four months," Colson scoffs, without mentioning that Kerry earned three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star, and had also been on an earlier tour. "He's politically ambitious and just looking for an issue."

"Yeah."

"He came back a hawk and became a dove when he saw the political opportunities," Colson says.

"Sure," Nixon responds. "Well, anyway, keep the faith."

The tone was sneering. But the secretly recorded dialogue illustrates just how seriously Kerry was viewed by the Nixon White House. Some of these conversations have not been previously publicized, and Kerry said he had never heard them until they were provided by a reporter.

Day after day, according to the tapes and memos, Nixon aides worried that Kerry was a unique, charismatic leader who could undermine support for the war. Other veteran protesters were easier targets, with their long hair, their use of a Viet Cong flag, and in some cases, their calls for overthrowing the US government. Kerry, by contrast, was a neat, well-spoken, highly decorated veteran who seemed to be a clone of former President John F. Kennedy, right down to the military service on a patrol boat.

The White House feared him like no other protester.

Colson, in a secret memo, revealed he had a mission to target Kerry: "Destroy the young demagogue before he becomes another Ralph Nader."

The effort by Nixon and his aides to undermine Kerry went much deeper than even Kerry realized. Yet it is this chapter in his life, as much as any other, that helped turn Kerry into a national political figure. By targeting Kerry, the Nixon White House boosted his stature in ways that still are having an impact.

But at the same time, many of the issues that Nixon and his aides raised more than 30 years ago about Kerry still remain. Echoes of Colson's words can still be heard in Washington: "He's politically ambitious and just looking for an issue, a phony."

Yet even Nixon described Kerry as an articulate and impressive spokesman. The Nixon White House began an investigation of Kerry. Who was he, the Nixonites wanted to know. What was his real motivation? And how could they stop him?

Connecting with a cause

John Kerry returned from Vietnam in April 1969, having won early transfer out of the conflict because of his three Purple Hearts. He asked for a cushy assignment - service as an admiral's aide - and was given precisely that job in Brooklyn. Kerry had thought about running for public office long before he had gone to Vietnam. But when he returned from the war, he wasn't greeted as a hero, like the soldiers of his father's generation. Kerry found that being a veteran could be a drawback, especially in Eastern Massachusetts, where he hoped to run for the US House.

"I just came back really concerned about it and upset about it and angry about it," Kerry said. "It took me a little while to decompress. I saw someone who said, `What happened to you? Your eyes are sunk way back in your head.' The tension and the trauma in your life took its toll."

When Kerry returned to the United States, the country's troop strength in Vietnam was at its height - 543,000. To that date, 33,400 Americans had been killed, and the number of protests was surging. But during this time, Kerry was still a naval officer and not publicly protesting the war.

It was his sister, Peggy, who was involved in the antiwar movement. One day in October 1969, Peggy Kerry was working in the New York office of a Vietnam War protest group that was planning a "moratorium" peace rally in Washington, which would draw 250,000 protesters one month later. A leader in the New York protest, Adam Walinsky, a former speechwriter for Robert F. Kennedy, said he needed a pilot and plane to take him around the state on Oct. 15. Did anyone know a pilot?

Peggy Kerry said she would provide such a volunteer: her brother.

John Kerry flew Walinsky around New York to deliver speeches against the war. Kerry did not wear his uniform and did not speak at the events, but the experience helped convince him that he wanted to become a public leader of the antiwar movement. On Jan. 3, 1970, Kerry requested that his superior, Rear Admiral Walter F. Schlech, Jr., grant him an early discharge so that he could run for Congress on an antiwar platform.

"I just said to the admiral: `I've got to get out. I've got to go do what I came back here to do, which is, end this thing,'" Kerry recalled, referring to the war. The request was approved, and Kerry was honorably discharged, which he said shaved six months from his commitment.

But for all his Vietnam heroics and patrician background, Kerry was, politically speaking, a nobody. He gave up on a three-month 1970 bid for Congress in Massachusetts' Third District, which at the time stretched from Newton to Fitchburg, when it became clear the Rev. Robert F. Drinan would instead get the Democratic Party nomination.

Some of Kerry's positions at the time sound naive in retrospect. He was quoted in The Harvard Crimson as saying he would like to "almost eliminate CIA activity" and wanted US troops "dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations."

Out of the Navy and with a political failure behind him, Kerry refocused on his personal life. In May 1970, he married the woman he had been dating for more than six years, Julia Thorne, the sister of his best friend, David Thorne. Kerry, whose upper-class image was already well established due to his Forbes and Winthrop roots, had a glittering wedding.

The New York Times described it this way: "Miss Julia Stimson Thorne, whose ancestors helped to shape the American republic in its early days, and John Forbes Kerry, who wants to help steer it back from what he considers a wayward course, were married this afternoon at the 200-acre Thorne family estate" on Long Island.

The article noted that Miss Thorne's cream-colored dress had been worn by her ancestor, Catherine Peartree-Smith, who married Elias Boudinot IV, who served as president of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation. "Alexander Hamilton was best man at that wedding and among those present was George Washington," the story noted.

"Whether today's wedding becomes a similar footnote to history may depend on the bridegroom, a graduate of Yale and a veteran of the Vietnam war, who is considering running for Congress from his native Massachusetts." (The article left unsaid that Kerry had just failed in that bid.)

For his honeymoon, Kerry chose a telling location: the Pershing family's Jamaica home. Richard Pershing, a close friend of Kerry's and a fellow member of Yale's Skull and Bones society, had been killed in Vietnam. Pershing's grandfather, General John Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing, had commanded US forces in Europe during World War I.

With Julia by his side, Kerry became more active in the antiwar movement. After working behind the scenes and making a few little-noticed appearances at rallies, Kerry joined a group called Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Some thought the group was marginal; others mocked its connection to Jane Fonda, who had earned enmity by visiting North Vietnam. In January 1971, the organization held a series of hearings in Detroit called the "Winter Soldier Investigation," but Kerry did not speak at the event, which received only modest press coverage. Kerry wanted a bigger stage, and he wanted the top role.

During private conversations with other group leaders, Kerry suggested that a veterans rally be held on the Mall in Washington, an effort Kerry hoped would refute Nixon's charge that the protesters were mostly college "bums."

"It was my sense that it wasn't going to be heard unless we went to a place where the issue was joined," Kerry said. "It was my idea to come to Washington. It was my idea to do the march. I floated that idea at the Detroit meeting. We all decided to make it happen. I became the unofficial coordinator-organizer."

Some members of the antiwar group viewed Kerry as an opportunist. He hadn't testified during the Winter Soldier hearings, hadn't organized the group, yet now he was seeking to become the coordinator and spokesman. But plenty of veterans also realized Kerry - erudite and clean-cut - was the ideal foil for those who viewed the group as hippie traitors or even communists.

So Kerry became the face of the organization, and a media sensation.

The protests were set for the week of April 20. Kerry spent some of his time at the Georgetown townhouse of his longtime friend George Butler, working the phones, trying to round up veterans. But the real problem was money. Kerry, who was not financially independent despite rumors to the contrary, was supposed to raise money to pay for buses that would transport the veterans.

He called his friend Walinsky, who had run unsuccessfully for New York attorney general and had excellent financial connections. Walinsky arranged a meeting of potential donors at the Seagram Building in New York City. Among those present were Seagram chief executive Edgar M. Bronfman Sr. and about 20 other New York businessmen who opposed the war. Kerry delivered a low-key speech about the importance of having veterans attend the protest. Then the businessmen were each asked to stand and declare how much they would contribute.

"We raised probably $50,000," Walinsky recalled. "It took an hour."

Face of the antiwar movement

Just before the event, on April 19, 1971, Colson fired off a memo expressing exasperation that more wasn't being done to undermine the organizers. He ordered administration officials to show that Vietnam Veterans Against the War was "a fringe group, that it is financed from questionable sources, that it doesn't represent a veterans movement, and that the guys involved are a pretty shoddy bunch. . . . There just must be more that we can be doing."

At a jammed Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on April 22, 1971, Kerry took his case to Congress. Television cameras lined the walls, and veterans packed the seats. Kerry was dressed in his green fatigues and wore his Silver Star and Purple Heart ribbons, although he said he left the medals at home. With his thatch of dark hair swept across his brow, Kerry sat at a witness table and delivered the most famous speech of his life, the speech that defined him and made possible his political career.

"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam?" Kerry asked. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Attacking the Nixon White House, he said, "This administration has done us the ultimate dishonor. They have attempted to disown us and the sacrifices we made for this country."

Almost forgotten in that famous speech were Kerry's controversial assertions that Vietnam veterans had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephone to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."

To some veterans, including some of those who served alongside Kerry, this was too much. They thought they had served honorably, and they had seen Kerry as a gung-ho skipper who led the charge and didn't voice such opposition on the battlefield.

"I would go up a river with that man anytime. He was a great American fighting man," said Michael Bernique, a highly decorated veteran who served as a swift boat skipper alongside Kerry. But Bernique remains upset with Kerry's assertion that atrocities were committed, an assertion that Kerry has not backed away from. "I think there was a point in time when John was making it up fast and quick. I think he was saying whatever he needed to say."

In the Oval Office, President Nixon delivered a backhanded compliment to Kerry, whom he distinguished from the other "bearded weirdos."

The "real star" of the hearing was Kerry, Nixon told chief of staff H. R. "Bob" Haldeman and national security adviser Henry Kissinger the day after Kerry testified, according to the secretly taped White House recordings.

"He did a hell of a great job," Haldeman said.

"He was extremely effective," Nixon agreed.

"He did a superb job on it at Foreign Relations Committee yesterday," Haldeman said. "A Kennedy-type guy, he looks like a Kennedy, and he, he talks exactly like a Kennedy."

"Where did he serve?" Nixon asked.

"He was a Navy lieutenant, j.g., on a gunboat, and he used to run his gunboat up and shoot at, shoot babies out of women's arms," Haldeman said. (A member of Kerry's crew had shot and killed a Vietnamese child in an episode that occurred in a "free-fire zone," according to Kerry, but it is not clear whether Haldeman knew about the matter or was being jocular.)

"Oh, stop that," Nixon said. "People in the Navy don't do things [like that.]" With apparent sarcasm, Nixon turned to Kissinger, who assured him a naval officer would not shoot babies out of women's arms. But there was a seriousness to the statement as well; just three weeks earlier, a jury had convicted Lieutenant William Calley of killing 22 civilians in what became known as the My Lai massacre. Just days earlier, Nixon had ordered Calley released pending his appeal. The case had been more fuel for the antiwar movement.

Nixon seemed particularly incredulous that Kerry had won so many medals. "Bob, the Navy didn't have any casualties in Vietnam except in the air," Nixon told Haldeman, showing either a disregard for the high casualty rate of swift boat sailors or an extraordinary lack of knowledge about what had really happened during the war he oversaw as commander in chief.

The White House staff decided it needed to dig up dirt on Kerry, or at least undermine his effort. Three days later, Haldeman arrived in the Oval Office and announced to the president: "We've got some interesting dope on Kerry."

Nixon was interested.

"Kerry, it turns out, some time ago decided he wanted to get into politics," Haldeman said. "Well, he ran for, took a stab at the congressional thing. And he consulted with some of the folks in the Georgetown set here. So what, what the issue, what, he'd like to get an issue. He wanted a horse to ride."

The tape recording inexplicably ends at this point.

Kerry, meanwhile, was becoming a celebrity. Overnight, he had emerged as one of the most recognized veterans in America.

Kerry, who understood well the importance that the media placed on imagery, put an exclamation mark on events by lining up with veterans to return their medals to the military on April 23. Kerry said he suggested that veterans place their medals and ribbons on a table and return them. But he said other members of the antiwar veterans group wanted to throw the medals and ribbons over a fence in front of the Capitol, and Kerry went along with the idea.

Video footage of the scene shows hundreds of veterans angrily gathering in front of the Capitol, near a fenced-in bin with the large sign saying "Trash."

One by one, the veterans, most of whom had long hair and wore combat jackets, threw their medals into the makeshift trash bin.

Some press reports say that Kerry "threw his medals." But Kerry has long maintained he threw his own ribbons but someone else's medals.

In an interview, he said that he had previously met two veterans, one from the Vietnam War and another from World War II, who had asked Kerry to return their medals to the military. Kerry said he stuffed them into his jacket.

He said that when he prepared to throw his ribbons over the fence, he reached into his jacket and pulled out the medals from those two veterans. He said his own medals remained in safekeeping.

The week's events had unquestionable impact. At the beginning of the week, a band of 800 or so Vietnam veterans gathered to protest the war, followed by Kerry's April 22 testimony, then the medal-tossing ceremony on April 23. By the following day, the publicity helped draw at least 250,000 people to the Mall in a massive protest.

Kerry, wearing a blue button-down shirt under his combat jacket, addressed the rally from the Capitol steps. "We came here to undertake one last mission, to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war," Kerry told the cheering throng.

In one week, Kerry had gone from little-known former swift boat skipper to the face of the protest movement.

"The transformation was instant," said Kerry's friend George Butler. "Eight hundred people had turned into 250,000," said Kerry's then-brother-in-law, David Thorne, who stood beside Kerry during the rally. "That is what made it so spectacular."

A national figure

A few weeks later, Kerry was featured in a lengthy segment on the CBS television program "60 Minutes." Correspondent Morley Safer, in a segment titled "First Hurrah," portrayed Kerry as an eloquent man of turmoil who had a Kennedyesque future.

"Do you want to be president of the United States?" Safer asked Kerry.

"No," Kerry replied. "That's such a crazy question when there are so many things to be done and I don't know whether I could do them."

But Kerry's image as a self-promoter soon became the subject of parody, none more on-target than a Doonesbury comic strip penned by fellow Yale alumnus Garry Trudeau. A character in the strip is heard urging that they all attend John Kerry's speech. "He speaks with a rare eloquence and astonishing conviction. If you see no one else this year, you must see John Kerry!"

"Who was that?" another character asks.

"John Kerry," comes the response.

Another strip shows Kerry soaking up the adulation after a speech, smiling and thinking, "You're really clicking tonight, you gorgeous preppie."

At the White House, the plotting against Kerry continued.

"The concern about Kerry was that he had great credibility as a decorated Vietnam veteran," Colson recalled in a recent interview. So Colson and his staff tried repeatedly to dig up dirt on Kerry. The effort failed.

"I don't ever remember finding anything negative about Kerry or hearing anything negative about him," Colson said. "If we had found anything, I'm sure we would have used it to discredit him."

Colson's memos, in storage at the National Archives, show that he tried mightily to discredit Kerry. On April 16, Colson noted that, "A number of tough questions have also been planted with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War questioners for `Meet the Press."'

Vice President Spiro T. Agnew briefly led the White House charge against Kerry. Appearing in the Bahamas, Agnew said that Kerry, "who drew rave notices in the media for his eloquent testimony before Congress, was later revealed to have been using material ghosted for him by a former Kennedy speechwriter, and to have spent most of his nights in posh surroundings in Georgetown rather than on the Mall with his buddies."

Both of Agnew's charges were false, according to Kerry and Walinsky, the former Kennedy aide to whom Agnew referred.

Kerry began traveling around the country to carry the antiwar flag. During Memorial Day weekend, he joined a throng of antiwar protesters on the green in Lexington, Mass., where he and hundreds of others were arrested. Kerry said the arrest, for which he paid a $5 fine and spent the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage, is the only arrest of his life. At the time, Kerry's wife, Julia, kept $100 under her pillow just in case she needed to bail out her husband on short notice.

In another iconic moment, Kerry appeared with former Beatle John Lennon at a protest in New York City.

The White House found a better way to go after Kerry. Colson had seen a press conference featuring a young Navy veteran named John O'Neill, who served in the same swift boat division as Kerry shortly after Kerry left Vietnam. O'Neill, like many swift boat veterans, was outraged at Kerry's claim of US atrocities.

In short order, O'Neill became the centerpiece of the Nixon White House strategy to undermine Kerry. O'Neill, now a Texas lawyer, stresses that he did not receive any payment from the White House and was acting on his own because he thought Kerry's statements were unconscionable lies.

For weeks, Colson had been accusing Kerry of ducking a debate with O'Neill. On June 15, Colson wrote to another White House aide: "I think we have Kerry on the run, he is beginning to take a tremendous beating in the press, but let's not let him up, let's destroy this young demagogue before he becomes another Ralph Nader. Let's try to move through as many sources as we can the fact that he has refused to meet in debate, even though he agreed to do so and announced to the press he would."

The next day, O'Neill arrived at the White House to meet with Nixon. The two men bonded; a brief "grip and grin" session turned into an hourlong meeting, with Nixon bucking up O'Neill for the fight against Kerry.

'We've got to change'

Two weeks later, on June 30, the much anticipated debate took place. Kerry, who had been studying debate since he was about 14 years old, appeared with O'Neill on "The Dick Cavett Show." At 6 feet 4 inches, Kerry towered over Cavett and O'Neill. With his thick dark hair, dark blue suit, and lean features, he cut a striking figure.

O'Neill came out swinging. Visibly angry from the start, wearing a light suit, short hair, and white socks, O'Neill used words seemingly intended to taunt his opponent.

"Mr. Kerry is the type of person who lives and survives only on war-weariness and fears of the American people," O'Neill said. "This is the same little man who on nationwide television in April spoke of, quote, `crimes committed on a day-to-day basis, with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.' Who was quoted in a prominent news magazine in May as saying, `War crimes in Vietnam are the rule, not the exception."'

Where O'Neill was red-hot, Kerry sought to look calm and intellectual, toting a hefty briefing book. He said the veterans weren't trying to tear down the country, but instead say to the country: "Here is where we went wrong, and we've got to change. What we say is, the killing can stop tomorrow."

"On the question of war crimes, it is really only with the utmost consideration that we pose this question," Kerry said. "I don't think that any man comes back to say that he raped, or to say that he burned a village, or to say that he wantonly destroyed crops or something for pleasure. I think he does it at the risk of certain kinds of punishment, at the risks of injuring his own character, which he has to live with, at the risk of the loss of family and friends as a result of it. But he does it because he believes intensely that people have got to be educated about the devastation of this war. We thought we were a moral country, yes, but we are now engaged in the most rampant bombing in the history of mankind."

Again and again, the question was asked: Did Kerry commit atrocities or see them committed by others? Kerry stuck to his script.

"I personally didn't see personal atrocities in the sense I saw somebody cut a head off or something like that," Kerry said. "However, I did take part in free-fire zones, I did take part in harassment and interdiction fire, I did take part in search-and-destroy missions in which the houses of noncombatants were burned to the ground. And all of these acts, I find out later on, are contrary to the Hague and Geneva conventions and to the laws of warfare. So in that sense, anybody who took part in those, if you carry out the application of the Nuremberg Principles, is in fact guilty. But we are not trying to find war criminals. That is not our purpose. It never has been."

O'Neill for years has declined to talk about the experience, partly because he says he became disillusioned with politics and government after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

But in a telephone interview from Texas, where he is a trial attorney, O'Neill made it clear he still harbors resentment at the way Kerry accused veterans of atrocities.

"The primary reason I got involved was I thought the charges of war crimes were irresponsible and wrong," O'Neill said. "I thought they did a real disservice to all the people that were there. I thought they were immoral."

The bitterness remains. Asked whether he agrees with the view of some observers that Kerry was forever altered by the war, O'Neill responded: "The war didn't change [Kerry]. I think he was a guy driven tremendously by ambition. I think he was that way before he went and is that way today."

Some Vietnam Veterans Against the War leaders also viewed Kerry as a power-grabbing elitist, a source of internal friction within the antiwar movement. "There was no question but that the rift existed," said Butler, who was with Kerry at the time and remains a close friend. "A wing of the VVAW were pushing so hard to the left that they were almost Maoist. Every time John did something useful like raise money or speak in front of the Foreign Relations Committee or give an interview, he was criticized for being a media whiz."

Scott Camil, a former group leader, said Kerry "was not as radical as some of the rest of us. He was a pretty straight shooter, and he came under criticism for things that weren't fair."

Still, Camil recalled that Kerry's patrician image was derided by others in the group, which was mostly composed of working-class veterans. Camil said Kerry showed up in ironed clothes, while most of the others were rumpled. Camil said a member had tried to reach Kerry by telephone and was told by someone, presumably a maid, that "Master Kerry is not at home." At the next meeting, someone hung a sign on Kerry's chair that said: "Free the Kerry Maid."

Kerry left the organization after about a year of participation and about five months after assuming a leadership role. Kerry says he quit partly to focus on a new organization that emphasized veterans' benefits; others say Kerry was forced out.

In fact, Kerry once again was thinking of running for the US House from Massachusetts. But unlike in 1970, when Kerry was barely known, the antiwar movement had turned him into a national figure and taught him how to campaign, how to organize, how to raise money, how to use the media, even how to debate on national television.

Kerry had battled the Viet Cong, the Nixon White House, and the extremes of the antiwar movement. Now all he had to do was persuade mostly working-class voters north of Boston to vote for him.

[grinner]

my .02

[Vampgrrl]

hahaha
grinner
hahahaha:rollin:

[grinner]

pissing contests are wonderful, aren't they. everyone gets wet.

[Harveylives]

Originally posted by stellar
http://www.faculty.sbc.edu/gdenn/rumsfeld_hussein.jpg

That's Donald Rumsfeld and Sadaam Hussein. Is that bettern than Fonda almost meeting Kerry?

Stellar, do you have a date for that photo?

[stellar]

Originally posted by Harveylives
Stellar, do you have a date for that photo?

December 20, 1983. Five years before the Kurds were gassed.

[Harveylives]

Originally posted by stellar
December 20, 1983. Five years before the Kurds were gassed.

That picture is meaningless. As you can see from the web page I pasted here, he was a private citizen and CEO of a worldwide pharmacuetical company. I must also say that you posting a picture without the context is a little irresponsible. Well I'm off this thread anyway. I see nothing but bickering and fighting in the future of this thread.

http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/rumsfeld.html


From 1977 to 1985 he served as Chief Executive Officer, President, and then Chairman of G.D. Searle & Co., a worldwide pharmaceutical company. The successful turnaround there earned him awards as the Outstanding Chief Executive Officer in the Pharmaceutical Industry from the Wall Street Transcript (1980) and Financial World (1981). From 1985 to 1990 he was in private business.

[stellar]

No. He was Reagan's special envoy. He was a private citizen, but he was representing the United States under President Reagan.

[Third EYe]

curse you and frag them, the take this, that, the other thing and ba bing you got yourself a pizza load in your eye.

I agree with Twich, at least I beleive I do, I'm sure someone will correct me tho and say I agree with them, cause they are right.



grinner your picture swore
I'm tellin

[Third EYe]

Originally posted by stellar
No. He was Reagan's special envoy. He was a private citizen, but he was representing the United States under President Reagan.

Jealous?

[Harveylives]

sorry stellar your right. My fault. Here is his other posts he held during those years.

Member of the President's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control (1982 - 1986);
Special Presidential Envoy on the Law of the Sea Treaty (1982 - 1983);
Senior Advisor to the President's Panel on Strategic Systems (1983 - 1984);
Member of the U.S. Joint Advisory Commission on U.S./Japan Relations (1983 - 1984);
Special Presidential Envoy to the Middle East (1983 - 1984);

[stellar]

Originally posted by Third EYe
Jealous?

Yes. Everyone wants to be special.

[generic_screenname]

My mom says I'm special.

[NYPinTA]

Originally posted by generic_screenname
My mom says I'm special.

:spew:

[Harveylives]

So, Stellar where would you expect to see the Special Presidential Envoy to the Middle East (1983 - 1984)?

[grinner]

PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

[stellar]

The Middle East.

[NYPinTA]

Isn't the point of the Rumsfield picture not to point fingers at him but to say the anyone can take a snippet, or a photo and put it in the news or on the web so that others can make assumptions about it? Isn't that the very definition of spin?
Who cares about the picture. The point, (I think) is that we should question EVERYTHING and then make up our own minds.
Posting articles gives info. Then we should questioin the info in it. Does it give the whole story? We certainly cannot count on any political party to do that for us. The one we support or don't.

Edit: and don't forget that if something someone says pisses you off ask for clarification first. (Unless they called you a name. Thats kinda obvious.. and not cool.)

[generic_screenname]

So, Stellar where would you expect to see the Special Presidential Envoy to the Middle East (1983 - 1984)?

If it were me, I'd send 'em to Abu Dhabi.
They're the no. 1 importers of Nermal in the world.


http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/garfieldrocks/images/nermal.jpg

[stellar]

:rollin:

How long have you been holding that beauty back?

[NYPinTA]

Originally posted by generic_screenname
If it were me, I'd send 'em to Abu Dhabi.
They're the no. 1 importers of Nermal in the world.


http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/garfieldrocks/images/nermal.jpg

Suddenly, the world just became a more baffleing and frightening place. I am going to bed and never comming out- (except to watch the mini of course.) :lol

[fermicat]

Originally posted by NYPinTA
Isn't the point of the Rumsfield picture not to point fingers at him but to say the anyone can take a snippet, or a photo and put it in the news or on the web so that others can make assumptions about it? Isn't that the very definition of spin?
Who cares about the picture. The point, (I think) is that we should question EVERYTHING and then make up our own minds.
Posting articles gives info. Then we should questioin the info in it. Does it give the whole story? We certainly cannot count on any political party to do that for us. The one we support or don't.

Edit: and don't forget that if something someone says pisses you off ask for clarification first. (Unless they called you a name. Thats kinda obvious.. and not cool.)

THANK YOU, NYPinTA for saying this. I think you've hit the nail on the head.

Now I'm off to have a beer with a good friend! It's Miller Time. Only I am not going to drink Miller, I'm going to have a local brew. "It's Wachusett Time" just doesn't have the same ring.

[JadedLegend3]

You guys, this thread is starting to worry me. I just waded through all 6 pages and it doesn't seem to be going really well. The people who are posting articles are doing fine...the ones commenting on the articles in a hostile manner are not fine. This is just MO and I'm not trying to say "you're wrong and he/she's right," I'm just saying that you're worrying me.

I agree with trubador...enough is enough.

Back to the topic, I agree with Twich and Vampgrrl. And that's all I'm going to say on this topic.

[Digger]

I'm not gonna post an opinion on this subject. I just wanted to say that while I don't think politics should be banned I do think that there is perhaps too much political discussion on this board these days. This board used to make me laugh all the time, as well as inform and inspire me. I'm not laughing so much these days.

[NYPinTA]

Originally posted by fermicat
"It's Wachusett Time" just doesn't have the same ring.

I kinda like it. :D

[stellar]

Originally posted by fermicat
"It's Wachusett Time"...

Gesundheit.

[Vampgrrl]

Well I was a poli sci major in college and before I fell into IT I was going to work in the politcal arena. You can't let it get personal, when you do that it just becomes meaningless.
I am a Christian, I am a economic conservative, I have pretty conservative morals but my political opion on social issues is kinda liberal. I once was a Republican who is more Libertarian now. Most of my friends range from VERY left Democrat, to socially liberal NRA I love guns Republican atheist.

We CAN get along.

[Antrobus]

Gee, too bad I was away from the computer all afternoon. I missed all the fun;)

[Third EYe]

Originally posted by stellar
Yes. Everyone wants to be special.

...and you are special, so no more jealously...

[stellar]

...

[Zantar]

I didnt want to do this but it seems people in this thread has left me with no other choice.

http://www.thundermedia.co.uk/hasselhoff.jpg

Anyway i have to say i really love debating politics...but this forum isnt hte place to do it. Far to many people to keep up with it, and honestly people here get more one sided about it than ive seen in other places. I dont think we should ban the discusison of politics though...just people need to be more accepting when they enter. have to remember your opinion on what happended is your opinion. If you arent willing to see the other side before you click on that little button dont do it.

[LadyCrais]

Well, here's my completely and totally uncensored response to all of this:

If you're a full-blown Bush idolater, then just practice a little self control and stay the hell away while we poor unenlightened schmucks try to work out who we're comfortable with.

I would add that those of you that aren't interested in delving into the issues in order to help you make a responsible decision prior to voting, likewise stay away. Whether it's because you've already made up your mind or simply aren't interested is irrelevant.

NOBODY IS MAKING YOU READ THESE THREADS!!!! Kind of like that on-off button on that television of yours. Turn the frelling thread off if you're not interested.

Twitch, thanks for all the articles. I've only made it through about half of them and will start back on them tomorrow. This is an issue that bothers me as well and I feel like I'm having a really hard time getting a grasp on "the truth". In many ways for personal reasons. My father was a Colonel during Viet Nam, though he wasn't able to serve there due to a medical problem, one he actually tried to correct with surgery so that he could go, that ended up making it much worse instead. I always had the impression he supported the war then, even though he ended up riding the bus into Washington in civies and changing there because of the abuse he took in public when he was in uniform. But just a few years ago, he went off on a total tirade against everything the US did in Viet Nam. Just lamblasted it. And unfortunately he's passed on, so I can't ask him about it. I do know that not even a fraction of the resources were provided that were necessary and that it was used as a political football in the White House.

I do have one thing to say about the sentiment that those of us at home should never say or do anything to object to a war while our soldiers are in the midst of one. I totally and completely disagree with that. If the US has wrongly, if not stupidly, placed soldiers on a battlefield where they do not belong, where they should not be, where they are being slaughtered, and with reference to Viet Nam in particular, are not receiving even remotely the resources they need to do the job properly but are merely being left to die, then it is not just our right, but our moral obligation to loudly, vehemently, and as completely as possible insist that those soldiers be brought home and not left to die on the battlefield month after month and year after year. If the cause itself is truly just and we believe we should be there, then it is likewise our moral obligation to absolutely insist that every last resource be available and used to ensure the maximum safety and immediate success of our troops, EVEN IF IT MEANS RAISING TAXES! What happened in Viet Nam is abominable and unconsciounable (sp?).

[waltersgirl]

so...how many new Scapers have you all recruited today?

[Third EYe]

There's a quota? Holy Crap I had no idea...I bet I'm first to be dispatched the unmet quota bin bucket....Oh no, and I don't have an anti-viral catch me all utility belt.

I blame poor parenting...

[Zantar]

Originally posted by waltersgirl
so...how many new Scapers have you all recruited today?

got 1 this week if that counts for anything.

[fermicat]

Originally posted by waltersgirl
so...how many new Scapers have you all recruited today?

I'm trying to convert my mother. She finally promised to watch one episode with me. Unfortunately there is not a high probability of success here. She doesn't like science fiction. I'm hoping to sell her on the romance part of the story.

[stellar]

I'm in the bin with Third Eye. I'm still working on my wife.

I am helping with Fermi's mom by suggesting episode ideas so I'll take an assist on that one.

[Third EYe]

my wife has been converted, yet she's not on fire like I wish she was. She finally Life of Brian though, without calling it blasphemy.


I'm going to to the Library today, lets see how I do there.

[Harveylives]

I would personally like to apologize to stellar, ladycrais, and whoever else I offended. I get a little worked up on politics. I'm staying away from all said threads.

[fermicat]

Originally posted by stellar
I am helping with Fermi's mom by suggesting episode ideas so I'll take an assist on that one.

If anyone else has any ideas about which episode is most likely to Scape my Mom, please post 'em here: http://www.watchfarscape.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21687

[Third EYe]

The first one, then and I'm bad with titles, the one where John and Aeryn are alone and think they might die, so you know, they go where no human and sabacen have gone together before on TV with a whole crowd watching, at least to our knowledge this is accurate (damn I ramble like my tongue is on fire)............................................. ........

[Zantar]

wahts your mom like?

[fermicat]

Originally posted by Zantar
wahts your mom like?

Check here: http://www.watchfarscape.com/forums...;threadid=21687 I listed some of the movies and TV shows she likes. She's not a science fiction fan at all. Never saw any of the Star Wars movies, never watched Trek (any incarnation), never reads SF. She's in her early 60s and just retired.

[waltersgirl]

got 1 this week if that counts for anything.

SCORE!!!!

boots Third Eye et al out of the unmet quota bin.

get to work you scurvy dogs :spin:

[Zantar]

Im working on starting up a few others to. People are so resistant is the problem...

[waltersgirl]

so...BritAngie had this really good idea about that...having a viewing party that's scifi based...like "hey, come over and watch Star Wars and Blade Runner and some eps of the X-Files" and then toss in some Farscape. send out invites to your friends and list some flicks on the invites which will draw them in and then make sure to show some Farscape as well.

[fermicat]

Ah, the ole bait 'n' switcheroo. Well, marketeers wouldn't still be using it if it didn't work! I say go for it!

[stellar]

Originally posted by waltersgirl
get to work you scurvy dogs :spin:

I haven't had scurvy in weeks.

[waltersgirl]

I haven't had scurvy in weeks. and it's a damned good too, cuz man. *whew*

[Jeff O'Connor]

My best friend has always been all for Star Wars, and now 24, and according to... ach, can't remember the poll... the one by, er, forgot the name, sorry... where it was about what other types of television Scapers watch? 24 was a big hit from the action/adventure category which scored about 18 percent. So I'm really trying to get him into it... he's gotten most of the main characters down now, and has seen a couple of moments of a few episodes. He's solidly considering it now, and I'm relieved, although I may well be recording the episodes that come on constantly for him. =)

[DRD2001]

I know for a fact that someone has been trying to Scape Ms. Fonda. I don't know if they have suceeded yet. But she very kindly donated a personally autographed poster to the Southeast Scapers raffle to help them raise money for their DVD project. I thought it was a very nice thing to do.

[waltersgirl]

Brigitte or Jane?

[stellar]

Brigitte Fonda... :aok: what a sexy beast.

[fermicat]

Was it a Barbarella poster?

[DRD2001]

Sorry Stellar. It would be Jane. :)

And yes, she offered to personally autograph a Barbarella poster for the high bidder. There were actually 2 posters, but the proceeds from the second poster went to her charity.