Smear Starts at White House
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Smear Starts at White House
| Tue, 08-24-2004 - 5:26am |
Everyone I know (Republican, Democrat & Independent) thinks that the anti-Kerry smear campaign on his Vietnam War record began at the White House. Not a person, I know, believes the administration denials.
Does that matter? I think it does!
C

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Those 7 minutes on film are nothing more than that. If you want to believe that no one could make a move without the Presidents order, fine. It sure seemed to me that as events unfolded, agencies kicked into high gear and followed their plan of action. If you want to tell me, as others have, that the President should have ordered civilian planes shot down so no more would hit the towers or pentagon, or whatever target they had, ok. But then follow that up with the notion that you would have praised the President for his quick action and not have accused him of acting hastily and killing innocent Americans before he had all the facts. Uh, yea, as my kids would say.
I tell you, I'm so tired of all the people that can arm chair this. Michael Moore did an excellent job though of promoting his rhetoric and getting the left leaning to follow in step.
"You just seem very naive when talking about the war and it is because none of us who have been there knows how it was then, do we? No we do not. So then how can we judge what actually went on when the accounts are so scattered and varied."
Have I judged what went on in Veitnam? Absolutely not. All I have said is that Kerry put the Vietnam issue out there all by himself using it as a big part of his platform for electing him President. Of course he should have expected that there would be those that would dispute his accounts, they did it 30 years ago, they would certainly do it again. It has been Kerry that has changed some of his accounts of what happened, he didn't change those accounts 30 years ago, he didn't change them prior to holding himself up to us. He did it after he was challenged by Vets that had differing accounts of the same situations during this election campaign. In this case, yes, I can, and should judge that. Why is it that his accounts, which he was very solid on before, have now changed, and changed in that they support some of what the Vets against him are saying? Why is it that you don't think we have a right to judge that?
"The fact that GW never went to war really is not why I would not vote for him but his support of the slandering of a man who did (and don't tell me he is not behind those ads) is reprehensible from someone who didn't go at all."
Gee sounds like you are making a judgement on something that you weren't there to witness, and and absolutely no fact to base that on,( except op ed pieces and that old 'vast right wing conspiracy' montra. If you buy into that of course)
What I am asking you to consider is was that reasonable behavior on his part to sit there for 7 minutes? Would you? I know I would not. Do I believe no could make a move without his order? Of course not, I am not convinced he is fully in charge at all.
I would not be able to sit there if I needed to do something, but if I knew that I already had my ducks in a row and me leaving at that moment or 7 or even 15 minutes later wasn't going to impact events, yes, I would have stayed.
Can you tell me that in those 7 minutes the President was going to do something that would have changed the course of events that day? If you can't, you are simply speculating with your bias.
See, I could sit here and say how could Kerry come back and say what he did regarding Vietnam considering the impact it had on soldiers and even more, POW's. I could even sit in hindsight and use the fact that his words were used directly to negatively impact our POW's against him. But then I'd be letting my bias dictate the facts, and the result becomes rhetoric.
How can you have your ducks in a row when it is brand new information? You are the leader. Why would you not be in action immediately to make sure those ducks were swimming as they should be? Perhaps you are looking at it from your own bias.
The facts slowly coming out in the SwiftBoat controversy do seem to point to the obvious conclusion that Bush and his menions were intimately involved in orchestrating the Swift Boat ads, and I would go so far as to say, that if Bush gets re-elected (a very big if) that the Democrats will order up a congressional investigation of the matter, and when that happens we as a nation will have a far larger crisis of government than Watergate ever thought to be.
As to your comments on Kerry volunteering for the Navy and Bush not asking for a deferment, I would suggest you get your facts straight.
1. Bush asked for and recieved a deferment so that he could attend Yale.
2. Bush's deferment was set to expire in five days, and he was number 500 on the waiting list to get accepted into the Guard when his father stepped in and was successful in having his son's name moved up to number one on the list.
3. Bush tested for the fighter pilots program, and recieved the LOWEST possible score that still qualified to be considered for the program. However, those with such low scores simply were never chosen, as the guard had far more people wanting in that program than slots available...they thus could pick and choose the finest brightest young men to be apart of that training program. In short, Bush had NO CHANCE IN HELL of being in the program and eventually becoming a fighter pilot, but again Daddy Bush stepped in and smoothed the way for George Junior to be selected into the program.
4. Lastly, at that time in our nation's history we were at war. During a war, soldiers are not dismissed/released from duty six months early with an honorable discharge. Bush had a deplorable record and was AWOL, but again Daddy Bush stepped in and made arrangements for his son to get out six months early with an honorable discharge, when in fact he should have been Court Martialed.
Maybe, my bias is that as a nurse we have to be ready for any mass causalty emergency. We don't know what that will be, poisonous gas fumes in a school, plane, bus, train crash, tornado, a fire in a public arena filled to capacity. But it doesn't mean that we don't have a plan to set in motion as access as information comes in. Also, the CEO of the hospital or the Chief Medical Adminisrator (as in Dr), while he is an important part of this planning, he/she is not required to be on site, actively involved. People are already in place to report to him. As the need rises for that person to become more involved, it would happen. But just b/c we don't know what type of emergencies we are going to have, doesn't mean we don't have a plan to start with. I have no doubt that there were people from every agency relaying their reports which helped to clearify the situation. A person can make no decision without proper information. Sheesh, just look at all the flack over WMD's and the war with Iraq. That information was gathered from not only US agencies, but we had reports from other governments. At the time of the war, everyone believed that Saddam had weapons, etc, I won't go into the whole thing, you know the drill here. And yet, Bush has been accussed of 'rushing to judgement' and 'rushing to war'. What exactly was Bush going to do in those 7 minutes. We didn't know who was responsible, the only response I've gotten so far was to shoot down civilian planes. I think it was the right thing to do to find out which planes had actually been hijacked and to attempt to get a handle on what was going on with them before just shooting them down.
"As for any particular battlefield none of us who were not on that particular one will never know what happened. Kerry telling the truth was very important because no one else was telling it. I am getting tired of this conversation running around in circles."
Then we can end it.
In times of war the president is the only one who can make decisions such as shooting down planes if that had become a necessity.
We are never going to agree. You cannot see one single thing wrong with his behavior at all in any circumstance. I would fall off my chair if I heard any of you Bush lovers say one thing he has done wrong and there are plenty of things. "
I see. No, we won't agree. You may not think I have a decent arguement on this 7 minutes, but you certainly have nothing to add. You can't say what he was left undone or that those 7 minutes had any impact on the events of that day. So you turn to the play book of criticism of Bush and his Admininistation. That's fine. Your bias won't allow you to even suggest that those 7 minutes could possibly been no big deal. It's an strawman arguement.
You don't have to get personal with me either. I am not a Bush lover, and I do not agree with all that he has done in his 4 years of Presidency. I'm a thinking person, I don't follow anyone blindly.
I don't follow rhetoric for that sake of rhetoric b/c it supports my personal feelings. You went on to continue to dusperse the lies that the left leaners want to be truths, and somehow seem to think that if they say it enough, they'll become true. Amazingly enough, it has worked in the past, so why shouldn't it now. Not everyone bothers to check their facts and will simply follow their political guru's.
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