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Ugh, who cares. If you choose to be in a position of power, be prepared to get smeared. End of story.
Being smeared should be expected by anyone that is good at their job?
Quote:
Originally Posted by TriMT7
What, is the military infallible? Is anyone who doesn't support a military leader automatically wrong? Unpatriotic? UnAmerican?
Not supporting and questioning is one thing. I have many complaints about the way the war has been handled. To use your word, to "smear" a person's character because the results that he reports do not support your political views is tasteless and desparate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TriMT7
Why does brown-nosing authority seem to be THE hallmark requirement of being a "good American" to so many people? When did it start being like that, anyway?
Again, I don't think anyone should "brown-nose" authority, but I do think showing some class while you question is a good thing. The General certainly showed class in his responses to the senators, and they should have shown him the same courtesy.
Being smeared should be expected by anyone that is good at their job?
Isn't that what politics is all about?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rggr
Not supporting and questioning is one thing. I have many complaints about the way the war has been handled. To use your word, to "smear" a person's character because the results that he reports do not support your political views is tasteless and desparate.
The people don't believe he's objective. He has no credibility in their eyes. In this increasingly polarized political climate, you either play the game, or you take the higher road and lose. See Kerry and the Swiftboat smearers. Doesn't mean it's good or right... but it's reality. We'll have a return to civil discourse in this nation when ALL SIDES sign a pact to do so. Until then, the public is much to easily swayed by emotional language and sound bytes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rggr
Again, I don't think anyone should "brown-nose" authority, but I do think showing some class while you question is a good thing. The General certainly showed class in his responses to the senators, and they should have shown him the same courtesy.
I don't think the Senators placed the ad......
And since when does the Senate have time to police "political smearing"? That is definitely NOT their job, and if it were, they'd spend their time doing nothing BUT non-binding, pointless resolutions. It's not like people look to the Senate as an example of integrity and class!
The General is not a politician. Politics has unfortunately become about this, but it shouldn't be. This should not have been seen as a political opportunity either.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TriMT7
The people don't believe he's objective. He has no credibility in their eyes. In this increasingly polarized political climate, you either play the game, or you take the higher road and lose. See Kerry and the Swiftboat smearers. Doesn't mean it's good or right... but it's reality. We'll have a return to civil discourse in this nation when ALL SIDES sign a pact to do so. Until then, the public is much to easily swayed by emotional language and sound bytes.
When he was picked for the job, he was chosen with high accolades from democrats. They talked about what a great man he was and how they would not make any judgements until they got his report. Some democrats visited Iraq and reported progress, and they were smeared. This started the effort to discredit his report before he even had the chance to give it. The only way they would have said it was credible was if he had said all is lost and we need to come home yesterday. He said that there was progress and still a long hard way to go, but because he didn't report absolute failure he got smeared. An objective look should tell us that those doing the smearing were not going to be open-mined and therefore they should have no credibility.
I completely agree with you on what it will take to return to civil discourse. It's a shame that we are where we are with this.
[/quote]I don't think the Senators placed the ad......
And since when does the Senate have time to police "political smearing"? That is definitely NOT their job, and if it were, they'd spend their time doing nothing BUT non-binding, pointless resolutions. It's not like people look to the Senate as an example of integrity and class![/quote]
No they didn't place the ad, they're biggest supporters did. They then went on to say things in the hearings that were pretty consistent with the ad.
They already do spend their time "doing nothing but non-binding, pointless resolutions." I agree on your last point - or hope you're right.
Do you remember the sex scandal, I'm talking about?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rggr
You're right. They should pursue substance like the democrats and spend their time on non-binding resolutions that they know in advance will not pass.
What a joke. Do you remember what the Democrats pushed right before the elections that gave them the leadership of Congress? They pushed this certain sex scandal all the way to the voting booth.
Do you remember the sex scandal, I'm talking about? What's that Republican's name... You know, he was in the American News Media everyday for about a month prior to the election. The Democrat Leadership were releasing news everyday to keep it afloat..
The Republican had to resign... You remember his name. You must! It clearly helped win the Congress back for the Democrats.
THAT WAS A GREAT WAY FOR A POLITICAL PARTY TO WIN CONTROL OF CONGRESS OVER.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rggr
You're right. They should pursue substance like the democrats and spend their time on non-binding resolutions that they know in advance will not pass.
The Democrats that condemned the moveon.org ad are idiots. Why didn't they condemn the Swift Boat Repukes?
People did condemn them, but there was no vote like this. Also, the swift boat guys were not a group that serves as one of the larger contributors. A third point is that many of their claims were shown to be true and the Kerry campaign acknowledged them.
People did condemn them, but there was no vote like this. Also, the swift boat guys were not a group that serves as one of the larger contributors. A third point is that many of their claims were shown to be true and the Kerry campaign acknowledged them.
Show me a link where Kerry acknowledged the Swift Boat lies.
I am glad moveon did the ad. The Republicans whining about this ad is laughable, especially Bush. We should thank the troops for giving the General the name General Betrayus.
Lets condemn Fox news for their Nazi right wing reactionary propaganda.
That would be a horse of a completely different color. I don't hear anyone at all complaining about the actual content of the MoveOn ad being wrong. They are all complaining merely that the organization would have the gall to criticize the olympian General Petraeus in the first place. Well, maybe he's owed some criticism. Maybe the programs that he previously ran to stand-up the Iraqi police and military have been next to completely unsuccessful. Maybe the surge and focus on a new counterinsurgency strategy have been at best problematic in terms of anything but PR. Let's go get a yardstick on that. Let's use the Army's own Counterinsurgency Manual (FM 3-24) principally written by one David H. Petraeus.
COIN is fought among the populace. Counterinsurgents take upon themselves responsibility for the people's well-being in all its manifestations. These include the following:
-- Security from insurgent intimidation and coercion, as well as from nonpolitical violence and crime.
-- Provision for basic economic needs.
-- Provision of essential services, such as water, electricity, sanitation, and medical care.
-- Sustainment of key social and cultural institutions.
-- Other aspects that contribute to a society's basic quality of life.
Well, that's all very interesting, except that we aren't doing, and don't have an actual capability for doing, any of that. The same manual indicates that a force of between 20 and 25 soldiers per thousand of local population is optimal for carrying out a successful COIN operation. There are some 25,000,000 people still living in Iraq. The force size needed to meet Petraeus' requirements would be at least 500,000. We've got 169,000 all told. That's about a third of what we should have at the minimum.
Briefly put, we are not succeeding in Iraq, and we are not going to. Winning is not one of the currently available options. But Petraeus does not testify as to any of that. Instead, after the summer-long buildup to wait and see what the Great General has to say about how this bold new initiative is going, he says exactly the same thing that he said in 2004 or whenever it was. Progress is being made. We need more time. There is a long road ahead. Nothing at all that sounds anything like the reports and conclusions from any of the recent independent analyses of the situation in Iraq.
From all evidence and appearance, what we got from Petraeus in 2007 was a lot like what the UN got from Powell in 2003. More BushCo shuck-and-jive. MoveOn anticipated that, warned of that, and has been proven correct. For sending out an alarm to the populace, they -- like Hans Blix before them -- get slandered. I guess some people never learn...
The idea that the U.S. military simply protects Americans and their freedoms is the emperor wearing no clothes. There are folks whose ox is gored when this is stated in any national media forum. There are plenty of folks in the military who are there to perform a job, not as political activists. The military is a powerful domestic political force, but not sacrosanct. This is a difference in political opinions. Get over it.
Show me a link where Kerry acknowledged the Swift Boat lies.
I am glad moveon did the ad. The Republicans whining about this ad is laughable, especially Bush. We should thank the troops for giving the General the name General Betrayus.
After WorldNetDaily's report last week of a discrepancy in John Kerry's personal account of his first Purple Heart, his presidential campaign has backed off on claims that he was wounded from enemy fire.
WND reported that nine days after Kerry claims he was hit by hostile fire in 1968, he wrote in his journal as he set out on a subsequent mission, "A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn't been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven't been shot at are allowed to be cocky."
The Kerry campaign has not responded to repeated requests from WND for a response, including a call this morning. But yesterday, Fox News host Major Garrett confronted John Hurley, national coordinator of Veterans for John Kerry, asking him on camera if it is possible the first Purple Heart did not result from an incident involving enemy fire.
Hurley replied, "Anything is possible ... ."
With three Purple Hearts, Kerry was allowed according to Navy regulations to leave Vietnam after only four months of his 12-month tour.
The Kerry campaign's admission to charges in "Unfit for Command," the newly published book by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, is not the first.
Two weeks ago, Kerry was forced to revise his decades-long contention he was on a secret mission in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968. And last week, the Kerry campaign admitted a key contention of a story supporting the Democratic National Convention theme of "No Man Left Behind" was wrong. Kerry closed the convention with a story in which he claimed that five swiftboats fled on March 13, 1969, after a mine explosion and only he came back to rescue Lt. James Rassman. His campaign now is admitting that he fled and the rest stayed, before he later returned for Rassman.
Responding to Hurley's admission, "Unfit for Command" co-author Jerome Corsi told WND the swiftboat vets "remain interested in a solidly documented and researched examination which allows the truth to come out."
"As we do that, the Kerry campaign is having to reconstruct stories and admit to lies," Corsi said.
Conflicting account
Kerry, who served as commander of a Navy swiftboat, has insisted he was wounded by enemy fire Dec. 2, 1968, when he and two other men took a smaller vessel, a Boston Whaler, on a patrol north of his base at Cam Ranh Bay. The conflicting journal entry is cited in Douglas Brinkley's book about Kerry's Vietnam service, "Tour of Duty."
While the date of Kerry's subsequent four-day excursion on PCF-44 [Patrol Craft Fast] is not specified, Brinkley notes it commenced when Kerry "had just turned 25, on Dec. 11, 1968," which was nine days after the incident in which he claimed he had been wounded by enemy fire.
In "Unfit for Command," Corsi and co-author John O'Neill, who took over command of Kerry's boat, assert the wound for which Kerry received his first of three Purple Hearts actually was caused by him firing an M-79 grenade launcher too close, "causing a tiny piece of shrapnel (one to two centimeters) to barely stick in his arm."
The authors, who rely on the eyewitness accounts of more than 60 men who served with Kerry, say Kerry's initial requests to receive a Purple Heart for the wound were flatly rejected.
In "Tour of Duty," Brinkley quotes Kerry as saying he and his comrades were "scared s---less" that night, thinking fishermen in sampans might be Viet Cong.
When some of the sampan occupants began unloading something on the beach, Kerry lit a flare, causing the startled men on shore to run for cover. That's when Kerry says he and the other Americans began firing.
Said Kerry in "Tour of Duty":
My M-16 jammed, and as I bent down in the boat to grab another gun, a stinging piece of heat socked into my arm and just seemed to burn like hell. By this time one of the sailors had started the engine and we ran by the beach, strafing it. Then it was quiet.
O'Neill and Corsi, however, claim there is no evidence whatsoever Kerry took any enemy fire that night.
Patrick Runyon was operating the engine on the Boston whaler during the incident.
"I can't say for sure that we got return fire or how [Kerry] got nicked," Runyon is quoted as saying in "Unfit for Command." "I couldn't say one way or the other. I know he did get nicked, a scrape on the arm."
Wrote O'Neill: "In a separate conversation, Runyon related that he never knew Kerry was wounded. So even in the [Boston] Globe biography accounting, it was not clear that there was any enemy fire, just a question about how Kerry might have been hit with shrapnel."
The book also asserts another one of Kerry's Purple Hearts resulted from a self-inflicted wound.
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Do you remember the sex scandal, I'm talking about?
