New swiftvet ad, Kerry in big trouble!

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-05-2003
New swiftvet ad, Kerry in big trouble!
95
Fri, 08-20-2004 - 11:12am
Kerry's in big trouble now... the latest swiftvet ad (ad number 2) is if anything more devastating against Kerry than the first...

Check it out at http://a1281.v125028.c12502.g.vm.akamaistream.net/7/1281/12502/v0001/eaglepub.download.akamai.com/12502/sellout.wmv

Pages

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-26-2004
Thu, 08-26-2004 - 7:02pm
De-lurking to contribute this to the discussion. In my opinion, Kerry really blundered when decided to run on his medals. He could have made a case for his accomplishments on the Senate finance committee. I found this in the paper today

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/26/opinion/26lithwick.html?hp

August 26, 2004

GUEST COLUMNIST

No Smoking Gun

By DAHLIA LITHWICK



t has been four months since the photos from Abu Ghraib came to light, and America still can't decide what to make of them. Yes, they're appalling. But who's to blame? With the release of two new reports this week, we still can't quite connect the torture and abuse to the commander in chief or his defense secretary; we still can't quite find that smoking gun.

Because there's never going to be a smoking gun.

If you're waiting around for evidence of the phone call from Donald Rumsfeld to Pfc. Lynndie England - the one where he orders the "code red," instructing her to pile up a bunch of naked, hooded men and strike a queen-of-the-mountain pose - you'll wait forever. That's not how armies function. Armies depend on the realities of the chain of command and the cha-cha of plausible deniability.

This week's report by the James Schlesinger panel offers the closest thing we'll get to a smoking gun. Connect the dots and it's all there: the sadism at Abu Ghraib stemmed from "confusion." Confusion sounds accidental - like maybe it just blew in off the Atlantic - but the report is clear that this confusion resulted from systemic failures at the highest levels. The report faults ambiguous interrogation mandates, an inadequate postwar plan, poor training and a lack of oversight. It notes that much of this confusion stemmed from the Bush administration's posture that the Geneva Conventions applied only where the president saw fit, and that the definition of "interrogation" was up for grabs at Guantánamo Bay, thus possibly at Abu Ghraib.

Or you can put your ear right up to the horse's mouth, where - even before the Schlesinger report - Mr. Rumsfeld owned the blame. "These events occurred on my watch. As secretary of defense, I am accountable for them and I take full responsibility," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee last May. But we live in an era when such words are intended to signify simultaneous culpability and absolution.

Mr. Schlesinger's insistence that Mr. Rumsfeld not leave office - because his departure would "be a boon to all of America's enemies" - is a pragmatic argument. It doesn't even pretend to be a just one.

You can choose to connect these dots, or cast your vote in November based on whether Colonel Mustard was in a Swift boat with a lead pipe. But Abu Ghraib can't be blamed solely on bad apples anymore. It was the direct consequence of an administration ready to bargain away the rule of law. That started with the suspension of basic prisoner protections, because this was a "new kind of war." It led to the creation of a legal sinkhole on Guantánamo Bay. And it reached its zenith when high officials opined that torture isn't torture unless there's some attendant organ failure.

There is a sad, familiar echo behind the Abu Ghraib prosecutions. This is precisely the approach the administration has used throughout the so-called terror trials here at home. Behind virtually every prosecution of an Al Qaeda member since Sept. 11, there has been an overhyped, overcharged foot soldier taking the fall for his invisible superiors. From the losers making up the so-called Portland Seven to the Virginia "jihad network," all we've achieved in our courts is a lot of pretrial chest thumping by the Justice Department, followed by relatively short sentences for a handful of malcontents who watched training videos or played paintball.

The ranking terrorists we do catch? They disappear into yet more law-free zones for further interrogation. The same intelligence-at-any-price culture that led us to Abu Ghraib keeps the real terrorists from ever being held to account.

Such is the beauty of an army: the little guy can always get tagged as a proxy for the big guy. Does any of this suffice as justice? In the terror trials it must: we convict low-level Al Qaeda members as ringleaders because we can't catch (or won't prosecute) their bosses. It's not just, but it's satisfying. Convicting low-level American soldiers as ringleaders to protect their bosses is neither just nor satisfying. It's just easy.

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Thu, 08-26-2004 - 7:12pm

<<Why are we re-fighting Vietnam?>>


Because the same man who divided the nation and turned veteran against veteran his done the same thing again.

Renee ~~~

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Thu, 08-26-2004 - 7:17pm

It's great that you decided to join in the discussion!


Thanks, wmltate!

Renee ~~~

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-18-2004
Fri, 08-27-2004 - 3:54am

Hi wmltate!


Welcome to the board.

Miffy - Co-CL For The Politics Today Board

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-18-2004
Fri, 08-27-2004 - 4:02am
Then he would have to admit that he was wrong, and that he gave aid and comfort to the enemy (even if unintentional, but the meeting in Paris seems pretty intentional to me).

Miffy - Co-CL For The Politics Today Board

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-26-2004
Fri, 08-27-2004 - 5:34am
I personally am convinced that the Bush Whitehouse is behind these ads based on their past strategy. They did it to McCain and they did it to Max Cleland using Vietnam. In fact, they do it to everyone who is a serious threat.

The news on TV has become impossible to watch because they do nothing but debate this issue. That's why I have newspaper articles to contribute this week. I stopped watchin news on tv where I get most of my news.

This one points out why this discussion is futile (maybe I should buy that deluxe package from IV so I can do those cool colrs to point up the main points in thsi article, but I guess you all can read and also think

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/25/opinion/25zacharias.html

August 25, 2004

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

When Truth Dies in Battle

By KAREN SPEARS ZACHARIAS


ermiston, Ore. — Amid the confusing debate over John Kerry's Vietnam record, one thing is clear: war - particularly the trauma of war - corrodes memory.

My father was killed in Vietnam in 1966, when I was 9. There were two official Army reports regarding his death. One said he was killed by friendly fire. The other claimed he was struck down by enemy fire. Newspaper accounts in the local newspapers (we were living in Tennessee) said my father, a career soldier, a staff sergeant with nearly 20 years of experience, was operating the howitzer that killed him. Then there was a nasty rumor that he had been decapitated.

Several years ago, I set out to see if I could figure out what really happened. I traveled all over the United States and to Vietnam. I gathered documents and conducted interviews. In a remote Kentucky town, I met my father's commanding officer. In Nebraska, I found his gunner. In New Jersey, I discovered the man who had issued the radio call for medical evacuation. In Georgia, I found a private who had been awakened by my father's screams as he bled to death. "It sounded like a wildcat," he recalled. And just when I'd given up on tracking him, the medic who had identified my father's body called me.

Each of these men remembers the events of July 24, 1966 differently. They all agree that not long after 5 a.m. a mortar round exploded in a muddy spot, nobody remembers exactly where, in the Ia Drang Valley of Vietnam's Central Highlands. My father, his commanding officer and a medic were asleep in the same tent; their cots only a few feet apart. All three sustained injuries. The commanding officer was hit with hot shrapnel. "It looked like I'd run through a briarpatch," he said. The medic took a round in his buttocks. The daily log lists the last victim, my father, as "third man down." Bad weather delayed his evacuation. He died long before the chopper arrived.

From then on, though, the stories get convoluted. The commanding officer insisted the mortar round was incoming; so did the sergeant who was outside operating the howitzer for their battery that morning and said he heard the round come in.

But my father's gunner has always insisted that the round came from friendly fire. According to him, the sergeant was conducting routine harassing and interdictory fire that morning. One of the shells misfired and exploded in camp, near my father's tent. This version is supported by several of the men who were in the battery that day.

Rather than clarify matters, the autopsy report created more confusion. It stated that my father had a "possible GSW from back to abdomen." In others words, one former Army mortician explained, "Your father was shot in the back with an M-16." A small wound like that, the mortician insisted, could not have been mistaken for mortar shrapnel. It had to have come from a gunshot at close range. The commanding officer, however, maintained that the wound was the result of flying shrapnel.

I'm not sure I understand the events that led up to my father's death any better today than I did when the young lieutenant in the Army jeep pulled up in front of our home at Slaughter's Trailer Court in Rogersville, Tenn. and started my mother crying. Still, my search wasn't in vain. I learned that my father was a good soldier, well-loved and respected by those who fought alongside him.

"There's nobody I'd have rather have gone to war with," said Gary Catlett, my father's driver, whom I tracked down in California. "He was so confident. He had experience. He was the kind of guy that could walk through a minefield and have mines exploding all around him and he'd still be calm. He knew how to keep morale up. We respected him."

So, then, what about John Kerry and the Swift boat crew? Enough already. There are some things we'll never know. But there are also some things that are beyond dispute - even in the chaos of war. Mr. Kerry went. He served. Lucky for him, he got to come home and raise his daughters.

Karen Spears Zacharias is the author of the forthcoming "Hero Mama."

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2004
Fri, 08-27-2004 - 11:29am
It would be political suicide if he did it today, not if he did it say 10 or 15 years ago.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-18-2004
Fri, 08-27-2004 - 1:06pm
Hmm.. you think so?

Miffy - Co-CL For The Politics Today Board

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2004
Fri, 08-27-2004 - 1:28pm
Let's just say that if he had come out in the early 1980's and asked the veterans for forgiveness, then the issue with the veterans would be much smaller today, at least that is what I think.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-18-2004
Fri, 08-27-2004 - 1:40pm
AHH! Perhaps.... but would he still be running for President, I wonder?

Miffy - Co-CL For The Politics Today Board

Pages