Re: Something is terribly wrong here

On Oct 4, 6:42 pm, .p.jm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
OK - an anti-war group. Which has as much chance of fairness
and honesty and truthfulness as a KKK-sponsored 'investigation' into
race relations.

I can't draw a correlation between being against the political
policies and reporting war atrocities. The reports of inappropriate
actions by a few soldiers was a very small part of the overall anti-
war effort. Further, your KKK analogy is wrong, because the VVAW was
not anti-soldier analogous to the way the KKK is anti-black.

If you are lined up A, B, and C, and you are in the middle - A
goes on TV and says that C says that you ( B ) are a thief. Guess
what - A has just accused you of being a thief, even if it was in the
guise of quoting B

In that scenario, no. A did not make an accusation against B, he
accused C of making the statement. If A's statement is incorrect, it
is C who has recourse. If I were B, my first reaction would be to
turn to C for confirmation.

Yep. They happen in every war.

Bull***. Liars repeating lies are liars.

So if I understand this, you acknowledge that atrocities happened, but
think that Kerry was lying when he reported them.


Of course not. Nor should we, as seems to be the current
vogue, equate throwing a book on the floor or a homely girl showing
her titties with cutting someone's head off. The later is a war crime
and an atrocity, the former are not.

I don't think there's any disagreement about that. Nonetheless, I
believe you are conflating inappropriate treatment of detainees (the
Koran incident, right?) with the military actions in Iraq. On that
subject, I believe we as a nation (myself included) are woefully
underinformed and consequently insensitive about the beliefs and
practices of the Muslim people. But go to some southern evangelical
church and piss on a Bible. See what kind of outrage you get. Look
at the uproar about Mapplethorpe's artwork. Now turn that around and
you'll be able to imagine the outrage of Muslims about the
mistreatment of their holy book. I'm not saying it's a war crime, but
we shouldn't be using it as a matter of punishment or interrogation.

Bull***. Kerry repeated unconfirmed stories told by what he
KNEW was a totally biased ( check out their name ) group.

While politically biased, these VVAW men were soldiers who had been
there and witnessed first-hand what they reported. Who better to tell
the stories? How do you know they were unconfirmed? Quite possibly
(and this is more research than I have time for) several of these men
were from the same outfits and reported the same events.

Neither do I. I have never listened to him in my life. I
think he's an ***.

I'm feeling a chorus of Cumbayah coming on. :-)

Less than 1% is a good thing, don't you think?

I think it is very dangerous to draw conclusions based on that
small a sample.

But that's exactly what you did in deriding his small response.


That is a far cry from Kerry sitting in front of Congress and
repeating unconfirmed stories he heard about rapes and cutting off
ears and *** like that as 'facts'.

Again, we know it happened. It wasn't bull***, it was the truth,
unless you're maintaining that all of the VVAW guys were lying; and it
was only other guys who committed the atrocities.

I know I'll never convince you Kerry was a great guy; but I believe
history and subsequent facts pretty well vindicate his anti-war
actions. The swiftboat *** was a damnable smear against a man who
served honorably; and I dislike seeing those lies repeated against him
or any soldier.

.