Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler OT: politics

PM... I have 4 relatives who served in Vietnam. They lived through cases where children would literally walk up to them, and explode (bombs on their backs) ... other times they would start firing automatic weapons.

Enemy Soldiers there learned to dress in civilian clothes to fool our guys, who WERE abiding by the Geneva convention. These "soldiers" would then open fire on our troops. Same thing would happen with women...

So our guys defended themselves. And yes, that IS excusable.

Here is a fact... no military in HISTORY has EVER used a higher standard of protecting innocent civilians on the "other side" than have we.

Also... in Vietnam, you never read about the millions of man-hours spent by volunteers to run hospitals, care for children... etc... These volunteers were off duty soldiers...

I don't want to be taken out of context. I was merely trying to state that reprehensible war crimes were in fact committed in Vietnam that could not even remotely be considered self-defense. I'll definitely concede that the number of people participating in them may not have been as great as Kerry suggested. They were likely rare incidents, similar in occurence to events such as Abu Ghraib the current conflict.

My point exactly, pmbuko. That's why Kerry will lose the election. He opened a sore. He did not heal the wound.

Peter...please tell me that's apple juice in your avatar.

Nope his kid's cranking brewskis! That's pretty non-PC, huh? LOL

Notice that at least an inch or so is separating his mouth from the beer...

He only gets a single dipped pinky's worth of beer at this age. But he always wants more.

Now THAT was funny.

Now you're making me feel guilty. But it's a good excuse to use a new pic!

PM,

I think that you have hit right on the point of what Kerry did that pissed all of these vets off. If you listen to his testimony, he lists off these different incidents and then states that these were not isolated incidents, but were rather the norm. Instead of telling of the horrors of war, he threw a blanket of disgrace over ALL vets. I think that this is why he's getting flamed so hard right now by these guys.

I think that I've said it before, but I'll say it again. John Kerry stepped on a land mine when he put his war record up as the foundation for his campaign. He is now trying to shift the dialog to pertinent issues of today, which is a welcome sentiment. The problem for him with doing that is that it will reopen the flip-flop dialog and his extremely liberal voting record dialog. This should make for an interesting few weeks up to the election.

This has been a great thread. It's hard for me to find legitimate reasons to get excited about Bush or Kerry. I think politicians of their "ilk" are the reasons voters in Minnesota elected a pro wrestler as Governor a while back.

My evaluation of the 2 leads me to the conclusion that I cannot vote for Bush. We need a strong intelligent leader for the next few years. Looking at Bush historically - one huge red flag appears. In 1989 as owner of the Texas Ranger baseball club, Bush allowed the trade of Sammy Sosa (and Wilson Alvarez) for Harold Baines and Fred Manrique. He's forever tainted in my eyes.

I'm hoping Jesse Ventura will enter the contest between now and November! Jesse and California's latest Governor would be a helluva bipartisan ticket.