While Dean was Medically disqualified, Kerry was comitting war crimes..

[sfecap]

By his own admission:

(snip)

Almost forgotten in that famous speech were Kerry's controversial assertions that Vietnam veterans had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephone to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."

To some veterans, including some of those who served alongside Kerry, this was too much. They thought they had served honorably, and they had seen Kerry as a gung-ho skipper who led the charge and didn't voice such opposition on the battlefield.

(snip)

On the question of war crimes, it is really only with the utmost consideration that we pose this question," Kerry said. "I don't think that any man comes back to say that he raped, or to say that he burned a village, or to say that he wantonly destroyed crops or something for pleasure. I think he does it at the risk of certain kinds of punishment, at the risks of injuring his own character, which he has to live with, at the risk of the loss of family and friends as a result of it. But he does it because he believes intensely that people have got to be educated about the devastation of this war. We thought we were a moral country, yes, but we are now engaged in the most rampant bombing in the history of mankind."


Again and again, the question was asked: Did Kerry commit atrocities or see them committed by others? Kerry stuck to his script.


"I personally didn't see personal atrocities in the sense I saw somebody cut a head off or something like that," Kerry said. "However, I did take part in free-fire zones, I did take part in harassment and interdiction fire, I did take part in search-and-destroy missions in which the houses of noncombatants were burned to the ground. And all of these acts, I find out later on, are contrary to the Hague and Geneva conventions and to the laws of warfare. So in that sense, anybody who took part in those, if you carry out the application of the Nuremberg Principles, is in fact guilty.

(snip)

http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061703.shtml

[union_maid]

1. Wow..that's low

If you're going to do that, what was Dean doing when Kerry was back here making every effort to end that war, working as a Vietnam Vet against the war? Kerry did what he thought was right. I assume Dean did, too, as did Clark. Which do you think will play better in the general election?

[Darth_Ole]

5. For those who read this thread and are confused

It's in reference to the thread started by DJcairo where he said Dean was a draft dodger (essentially ignoring the fact he got a medical deferrment) and made the stupid point of saying that Dean's family was Republican and he was Republican when he was a boy.

Personally, I think this campaign is getting too personal on both sides. Calling people un-patriotic, draft dodger, and war criminal is what we expect from Republicans when referring to people like Clinton and Max Cleland. I know we're smarter than this.

[w13rd0]

10. It'll get a lot less personal...

...if you ignore a few choice people. The sorts that spend their time trolling candidates blogs and chat forums, posting inflammatory crap...

I hate doing it, but some add absolutely nothing to the dialogue...

[Feanorcurufinwe]

14. Experience counts.

[sfecap]

16. Wow...

That makes me want to vote for him.

He was in a boat with some other guys. Pres material!

LOL!

[Classical_Liberal]

51. Please don't. This is a flaimbait thread

I support Dean by the way.

[Demobrat]

2. Vietnam was 30 years ago.

Let's talk about now.

[sfecap]

6. Great idea!

n/t

[Rose Siding]

3. I'm HOPING this is just in response to-

"While Dean skiied in Aspen, Kerry was getting shot at in Vietnam" (another thread)

Both are useless flame bait but I'd rather see one of each up than just the one.

[Cha]

4. Exactly, of course, it's "in response" to

that thread that calls Dean "a no neck"!

[Demobrat]

8. Oh. Well, in that case

Clark's head is too small for his body.

[Octafish]

65. He's got a big brain, though.

Number One Graduate at West Point and Rhodes Scholars are few and far between.

[tsipple]

7. OK, Point Made

Somebody posts flame bait about Dean skiing while Kerry was in Vietnam, and someone answers with Dean doctoring while Kerry is shooting. Whatever.

A few points here:

1. It's great that John Kerry served in the military and then did what he could to end America's involvement in Vietnam when he got back.

2. Unfortunately voters don't seem to give much credit for military service. (Ask Max Cleland, Bob Dole, or George H.W. Bush.)

3. Howard Dean flunked his induction physical and then carried on with his life. He left Wall Street, went to medical school (to become a doctor and serve patients), and then entered public service upon the sudden death of Governor Snelling. All laudable, too.

4. George W. Bush has a lousy resume. Drove every business he was involved in into the ground. Couldn't seem to find time to report for duty during the Vietnam years. Yet, there he is, as POTUS.

Resumes are fine, but ask Al Gore whether they decide elections. :-(

[Feanorcurufinwe]

9. Truly pathetic flamebait thread, sfecap

[sfecap]

Thanks!

I'm sure you'll go over here and make that same observation, huh?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=108&topic_id=67740

Hey, I got more, too..

[Feanorcurufinwe]

13. Dean did get a medical deferment and go skiing in Aspen

that's the difference. Saying that about Dean is true.

[sfecap]

15. And your point is?

Dean got a deferrment, like thousands of others at the time. Legal, appropriate, the military doctor's decision.

Kerry admits to engaging in behaviour that is illegal under the Geneva convention and the rules of warfare.

But at least he threw someone else's medals over the wall. LOL.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

18. Kerry was a war hero with a conscience, Dean was a ski bum.

That's the point.

And you seem to be upset about it.

I don't understand why.

[KaraokeKarlton]

22. Well gee...

He didn't seem to have much of a "conscience" while he was in Vietnam, according to his own admissions in that article. It's sad that I feel justified in saying that, but you can't criticize me for it because you are doing the same thing to my candidate. Perhaps it's time for Kerry fans to realize that for every tiny speck of spun "dirt" they put out there about Dean, others can find a huge clump of earth to put out there about Kerry that is actually true.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

23. In the free fire zone

The possibility of killing innocent civilians haunted Kerry. With many of the South Vietnamese waterways in ''free fire zones'' - meaning that the US Navy was authorized to shoot anyone who was violating a curfew - the likelihood that innocent villagers could be killed was high.

One of Kerry's crewmates on swift boat No. 44 said such an event happened. Drew Whitlow of Arkansas said he was on patrol with Kerry when Whitlow spotted movement along the shore and yelled, "I'm going to fire!" The quiet river exploded in gunfire, with people on the shoreline dropping, dead or wounded, and no fire being returned.

Whitlow recalled the scene: "This is a free fire zone, I will fire, I will put rounds in, I'm doing my thing, I'm feeling Mr. Macho. But then when you get close, you see the expressions of the village people, people waving their arms, saying, `No, no, no! Wait a minute, hold this off.' I ended up putting a few down, and then I found out it was friendlies."

To make matters worse, a mortar round ricocheted back at the boat and wounded three crewmen.

Kerry, asked about Whitlow's account, said he had no recollection of the episode and wondered whether Whitlow was confusing it with another event or whether he was with Whitlow on that occasion. Naval records do not resolve the matter. After being told about Whitlow's recollection by the Globe, Kerry discussed the matter with Whitlow and said he still doesn't remember it.
http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061603.shtml

[KaraokeKarlton]

27. Sure. It haunted him so much that he voted for war in Iraq.

You've got more excuses than Carter has Liver Pills.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

30. So why did Dean lie about his vote?

Why did Dean say it a prepared speech that he voted on the resolution? Why lie?

"I'm the only major candidate running, who's in reasonably good shape in the polls, who voted “No” on the Iraq Resolution."
http://www.ourfuture.org/docUploads/dean_062303_131529.pdf

This isn't an off the cuff remark or an answer to a reporter's question. This is a prepared speech -- why did Dean like about this? Habit?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

37. He voted "No" every day on the campaign trail.

A voice vote.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

46. So that makes it OK to lie?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

47. I've got an idea!

:think:

Don't vote for him.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

49. OK

:freak:

[sfecap]

28. No recollection. Imagine that.

Kinda like "bush lied to me".

LOL.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

34. You see yourself as fit to judge those who fought in the Vietnam War

You laugh at Kerry's experiences and make light of the horror of war.

I have never felt so void of feeling before -- so numb. My God I feel sorry for Shirley …. I just feel so sorry for the whole thing. I am glad that you wrote Mrs. Pershing -- I know that it will mean a lot to her and it was warming to me to know that you did.

With the loss of Persh something has gone out of me -- he was so much a part of my life at the irreplaceable, incomparable moments of love, concerns, anger and compassion exchanged in Bones that can never be replaced -- never be satisfied in memory form. Persh was an unbelievable spark in all of us and we took for granted that we would always be together -- go crashing through life in our unconquerable fashion as one entity. Now that is gone in one incomprehensible moment. Time will never heal this. It may alleviate but it will never heal. If I do nothing more, and if I convince… the others to do nothing more, it will be to give every effort we can to somehow make this a better world to live in and to end once and for all this willingness to expend ourselves in this stupid, endless self-distruction.
http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/images/day1/transcript.htm

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

39. What was YOUR outfit?

[Feanorcurufinwe]

45. That's the difference isn't it.

I'm not pretending to understand something I couldn't understand without going through it.

I'm not mocking someone for having courage and a conscience.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

55. You pretend with every post.

(Here's to hoping that the 3rd time on ignore is a charm.):toast:

[sfecap]

24. War hero? Conscience?

Where was his conscience when he was burning innocent civilians homes, and engaging in free fire? (Of course you know what this is, right? It means firing at everything that moves in an area designated as a free fire zone. Civilians, elderly, animals, children...stuff like that.) Some fucking hero.

War hero? Only when it's convienient.

He violated the rules of the Geneva convention, by his own admission.

Maybe his conscience was bothering him, huh?

I'm not upset. Kerry's supporters should be.

[Skwmom]

29. Plus Kerry did not use his connections and wealth

to dodge the draft thus sending someone else's husband or son to take his place. This says volumes about a person's character.

[Egnever]

31. horse dooky

kerry was enthusiastic about going to vietnam when he went he didnt get drafted he volunteered.

Once he got over there he realized it wasnt such a great idea and used his connections to get three purple hearts based on wounds that at worst took him off duty for two days in order to get out of his service so someone elses kid would have to go.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

52. Kerry used his connections? Sorry but one of those purples he got saving

the life of a crewman who went overboard. Now there's cheap shot. Nice and, how sall I say... ignorant of you.

[Egnever]

56. was that the two day purple?

and what was his injury? Did he scrape his kneee when he got back in the boat?

who the hell knows? I sure dont.

I do know he got three purple hearts and total combined days inactive from all three injuries is only 2 days. I dont combine purple heart in my head with trifling injuries.

your right its a cheap shot but then isnt that what this whole thread is about?

[sfecap]

43. He wasn't very wealthy then...

That came during his "gold digging" years....

[LuminousX]

11. Totally Uncalled For

If Kerry truly was a war criminal, they (the Republican elite) would have pursued charges against him the moment he started unravelling the BFEE in the 80's.

This is a moot issue and posting this only increases the rancor and enmity between the Dean and Kerry camps.

What were you hoping to accomplish with this thread?

[sfecap]

12. Gee, you think it's over the top?

I mean, read the article, Kerry admits it.

On the other hand, Dean being a draft dodger is a bit over the top too, huh?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=108&topic_id=67740

[Feanorcurufinwe]

17. Why are you afraid of the truth about Dean?

"You can't handle the truth!"

In February of 1970, with the Vietnam War raging, 21-year-old Howard Dean carried a set of X-rays and a letter from a Manhattan orthopedist named Hudson Wilson to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, where US military doctors determined that he was not fit for military service because of a back condition called spondylolisthesis.

Dean was classified 1Y, according to military records, meaning he was exempt from service for the duration of the war and free to head to Colorado after his Yale graduation, where he skied at Aspen and poured concrete. Spondylolisthesis is a condition caused by an unfused vertebra. When diagnosed nearly four years earlier, he was cleared to participate in all sports except long-distance running.

<snip>

"The United States government said this is your classification," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I'm not responsible for that. I didn't have anything to do with the decision. That was their choice."

The basis for his classification is difficult to document. The Selective Service System, following standard procedure, destroyed all records in Dean's file save his classification listings. Dean said he did not keep copies of the X-rays or Wilson's letter. Nor did he keep a copy, he said, of the letter he believes he wrote requesting a deferral from military service. His physician, Wilson, is dead.

Dean drew a relatively low lottery number -- 143 out of 300 -- meaning he could have been called up after college, according to Lewis Brodsky, a Selective Service spokesman.

At Yale, Dean did not support the war but was not vocal. He took part in one protest, by his count. He said he was not overly worried about being drafted and said the reason he wrote a letter seeking a military medical exam was to clarify his standing.
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/dean/articles/2003/09/21/a_back_condition_wins_dean_a_vietnam_era_draft_deferment?mode=PF

It's really not so bad; nothing to be ashamed of; I probably would have done the same thing. Not as inspiring as being a war-hero, or an anti-war hero (or both) but nothing to be ashamed of.

[Cha]

19. You can't handle the truth about kerry.

and you go around accusing others of what you yourself cannot handle.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

21. The horrors of war

But Kerry does recall a harrowing incident, which he has never previously publicly discussed, in which he said a crew member shot and killed a Vietnamese boy of perhaps 12 years of age.

A member of Kerry's crew announced he was shooting, and the air filled with the ack-ack-ack of gunfire. The rounds blasted into a sampan, hurling the child into the rice paddy. The mother screamed as the flimsy craft began to sink, and Kerry, shining a searchlight, yelled, "Cease fire! Cease fire!"

Kerry said his crew rescued the mother, took her aboard the Navy vessel for questioning, and left the child behind. Due to the dangerous location, and the possibility that the gunfire had drawn the notice of Viet Cong, Kerry never had a chance to see whether the woman was hiding weaponry in the sunken boat, and does not know to this day whether his crew faced a real threat.

"It is one of those terrible things, and I'll never forget, ever, the sight of that child," Kerry said. "But there was nothing that anybody could have done about it. It was the only instance of that happening.

"It angered me," Kerry said. "But, look, the Viet Cong used women and children." He said there might have been a satchel containing explosives. "Who knows if they had -- under the rice -- a satchel, and if we had come along beside them they had thrown the satchel in the boat. ... So it was a terrible thing, but I've never thought we were somehow at fault or guilty. There wasn't anybody in that area that didn't know you don't move at night, that you don't go out in a sampan on the rivers, and there's a curfew."

The details of the episode are murky, however, because none of Kerry's crewmates remembers it the way Kerry does. The closest recollection comes from William Zaladonis, a crewmate on No. 44 who vividly recalls killing a 15-year-old boy, but does not remember a mother being rescued. "I myself took out a 15-year-old" when the crew came across a sampan in a free-fire zone, Zaladonis said. "It was all legitimate. We told them to stop. When we fired across the bow, people started jumping from the boat. At that time my officer, whoever it was, told me to open up on them, and I did. And there was one body still in the boat, a 15-year-old kid. But over there, 15-year-old kids were soldiers."
http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061603.shtml

[LuminousX]

41. 15-year-old

And seeing a lot of our guys were 18-year-old... in a different world, they could have gone to high school together.

It was a horrible war.

[LuminousX]

38. Uhm, yes. I condemn both. Both threads do nothing to enrich the debate.

[Cocoa]

20. reminds me of a parody political ad I heard on the radio

It was a parody of a Bush attack ad on McCain, accusing McCain of "lying around in a Vietnamese prison" while Bush was home working for a living.

[DemBones DemBones]

35. ROTFLMAO -- thanks for the laugh, Cocoa!

[Skwmom]

25. This is so low. Kerry should hit Dean hard for his draft dodging.

When I inform people of the facts surrounding Dean's evading the draft the response has been unanimous - it doesn't pass the smell test and there is no way this guy will win in the general election.

[Rose Siding]

33. Oh. No. He'll never get elected if you call him a

draft dodger

[no name no slogan]

50. We won't, not unless Ross Perot runs again (n/t)

[Egnever]

26. long as we are on the whole Vietnam thing

can someone tell me what this is all about?

WASHINGTON - Despite growing calls from human rights groups, US Army Special Forces veterans, and pleas from homeless refugees fleeing genocide Senator John Kerry (D-MA) has stalled the Vietnam Human Rights Act (Senate Bill HR-2833) since September 2001.



The stalled Bill would have sanctioned the communist Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) against further racially based sterilization, terrorism and genocide of the Christian hilltribe Degar peoples living in the Central Highlands region of the country.



The Degar tribes people, commonly known to westerners as the Montagnards, are ethnically unrelated to the Vietnamese. The Central Highlands region was never a traditional part of Vietnam. The region has been the home of the Degar tribes for at least a thousand years.



With HR-2833 stalled by John Kerry of Massachussetts, Vietnam is free to continue its widely publicized “cultural leveling” program. This means Vietnam will continue without restriction the ethnic cleansing of the Degar Christians in the Central Highlands region in an attempt to gain control of the Degar land and resources.


http://www.gb4hr.net/Pages/Kerry%20Stalls%20Human%20Rights%20Legislation.htm

this bill passed in the house with only one vote against it. Kerry has held it up ever since.

Why?

I dont know all the particulars on this but it disturbs me that he seems to be obstructing any debate on this subject.

any knowlegable info on this would be apreciated

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

32. Point taken.

I hope by more than I.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

36. What point?

That it isn't against DU rules to smear a candidate?

How do we know how many patients Doctor Dean has killed? What is the statute of limitations on medical malpractice? How many of Doctor Dean's patients received unnecessary medications and procedures and why? What is the statute of limitations on murder?

Did that achieve anything? No.

sfecap is just upset because someone pointed out the truth about Dean's draft deferment and what a contrast it is to Kerry's war record and anti-war record. And I guess some of you think if you smear a good man's name enough, you'll scare someone into being quiet. Guess what: to the truthful, truth is nothing to fear.

[sfecap]

42. The truth?

It's in the original post.

Kerry said. "However, I did take part in free-fire zones, I did take part in harassment and interdiction fire, I did take part in search-and-destroy missions in which the houses of noncombatants were burned to the ground. And all of these acts, I find out later on, are contrary to the Hague and Geneva conventions and to the laws of warfare. So in that sense, anybody who took part in those, if you carry out the application of the Nuremberg Principles, is in fact guilty.


You can't stand the truth from your own guy's mouth.

Now...how many patients did Dean kill?

You want to put up some proof?

[Feanorcurufinwe]

48. You ask me how many...

ok, I'm gonna try really hard not to stoop to that level again.

:freak:

[sfecap]

57. You've accused Dean of killing patients....

Put up or shut the fuck up.

I posted Kerry's own words.

Did he or did he not violate the Geneva conventions?

[Feanorcurufinwe]

59. Read what I wrote and try to comprehend it.

Please.

[Classical_Liberal]

53. Look your making Dean people look antiveteran

I don't trust your motives at all.

[Name removed]

44. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[dsc]

40. This isn't cool

I have a pretty good reason why you posted this but this really isn't cool.

[DrFunkenstein]

63. But Your Post Is

:thumbsup:

[Feanorcurufinwe]

54. "we could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam"

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command....

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

We call this investigation the "Winter Soldier Investigation." The term "Winter Soldier" is a play on words of Thomas Paine in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriot and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.

We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country; we could be quiet; we could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not redcoats but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.

...In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart....

We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.

We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone on peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Vietcong, North Vietnamese, or American.

We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how money from American taxes was used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by our flag, as blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs as well as by search and destroy missions, as well as by Vietcong terrorism, and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.

We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.

We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals.

We watched the U.S. falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against "oriental human beings," with quotation marks around that. We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater or let us say a non-third-world people theater, and so we watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the high for the reoccupation by the North Vietnamese because we watched pride allow the most unimportant of battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point. And so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 881's and Fire Base 6's and so many others.

Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese....

Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doen'st have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say they we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."

We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?


http://www.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/JohnKerryTestimony.html

[sfecap]

58. How do you ask the last man to die in Iraq?

Gee John...YOU voted for it.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

61. Why did Dean lie?

Why did Dean feel his opposition to the war was not convincing enough? Why did he feel it necessary to lie about actually voting against it? Is it because this vote is his only hope of distinguishing himself from another, more qualified candidate with a similar position and a better plan than Dean's 7 point wish list? And why is being one of the candidates who opposed Bush on the war early on not enough? Why must he claim he was 'the only one'? Is it because he doesn't want the media to start publicizing his true centrist record?

[Thomas Jefferson]

60. This is low. As a pre-med student Dean would have known how to avoid

service. Kerry was just one of the people who went over there. How about if we talk about the poor black boy who died in Dean's place. I bet that poor black kid would have made a better governor and/or Presdident than Dean ever would.

[Egnever]

62. I dont think dean was a pre med student at the time

but yea its a stupid thread.

Thank you for your contribution to the stupidity!

[DrFunkenstein]

64. Actually, Kerry DID Voice Opposition On The Battlefield

Once again cherry-picking articles, in the vain hopes that I won't call you out. Nice. Let's look at that article again, shall we? I think most people will be impressed.

"To some veterans, including some of those who served alongside Kerry, this was too much. They thought they had served honorably, and they had seen Kerry as a gung-ho skipper who led the charge and didn't voice such opposition on the battlefield."

--

"The possibility of killing innocent civilians haunted Kerry. With many of the South Vietnamese waterways in ''free fire zones'' - meaning that the US Navy was authorized to shoot anyone who was violating a curfew - the likelihood that innocent villagers could be killed was high.

Kerry said he was appalled that the Navy's ''free fire zone'' policy put civilians at such high risk. So, on Jan. 22, 1969, Kerry and several dozen fellow skippers and officers traveled to Saigon to complain about the policy in an extraordinary meeting with Zumwalt and the overall commander of the war, General Creighton W. Abrams Jr.

''We were fighting the free fire policy very, very hard, to the point that many of the members were refusing to carry out orders on some of their missions, to the point where crews were starting to mutiny, to say, `I would not go back in the rivers again,''' Kerry recalled during a 1971 television appearance on the Dick Cavett Show.

But Kerry went back in the rivers. Indeed, it was after this meeting that he began his most deadly round of combat. Within days of the Saigon meeting, he joined a five-man crew on swift boat No. 94 on a series of missions in which he won the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and two of his three Purple Hearts. Starting in late January 1969, this crew completed 18 missions over an intense and dangerous 48 days, almost all of them in the dense jungles of the Mekong Delta."

http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061603.shtml

[Octafish]

66. Kerry went out of his way to help end the war in Vietnam.

Despite you attempt to smear him, John Kerry had many reasons to want to end the damned war, including the memory of five friends who died there. One of his best friends from Yale, Richard Pershing, died in combat.

Knowing Sen. Kerry today is a REAL Democrat, he also, I imagine, would think the other reasons to end the war would be the memories of ALL the other people who died for a mistake in policy. In case you don't know, this policy was the brainchild of the White House CIA Action Officer Dick Nixon and the Wall Street/Old Money shits in the Establishment who wanted to make perpetual profits off of perpetual war.

BTW: During Vietnam, Dean, didn't do much more than attend one peace rally. Of course, while there's nothing wrong with that, it certainly would be difficult to explain to the men and women in uniform (as well as their families and loved ones) their commander-in-chief got a note from the doctor to avoid service.

During World War 2, John F. Kennedy got a note from his doctor saying his back was sufficiently strong to serve.

[DrFunkenstein]

68. Did Dean Go To An Anti-War Rally?

That's the first I've heard of it.

[Punkingal]

67. I'm locking this thread....

as flamebait.

punkingal, DU moderator