Swift Boat Vets to set record straight

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Originally posted by Ilvane
I don't understand why you can't just answer my question. If Bush is so much better, why are we having all these terrorist threats, and we are having elevated levels of security for everything? Are we really safer?

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I feel Bush took us to Afganistan and Iraq for a reason... to get the enemy where they live and breed and get the threat at the source. Not the most popular decision.. but one I stand by. He does have a duty to protect the citizens from these type of attacks and I believe that he has done everything in his power to ensure we are protected.

Are we safer today than we were on 9-10-01? I believe so. I believe Bush has brought about many changes that 3 years later we simply take for granted today. Does more need to be done? Damn right they do. Ports need to be more secure, trains need bomb detection equipment, large buildings need anti-car bomb barracades put around them, etc...

I simply don't believe someone with the most liberal voting record in the senate will make these necessary changes take place. Liberalists are all about the individual rights above all else.. and I simply don't believe this is the time to worry about hurting someone's feelings right now when we are talking about the security of this nation.

I fully support the Terrorists bill and the broad power given to the US Government right now. If they need this power to make sure my neighborhood won't have a dirty bomb exploded in it next week.. then dammit they should have it. Sorry if a couple of crooks get caught in the process.. boo hoo.

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Originally posted by Parkbandit
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I feel Bush took us to Afganistan and Iraq for a reason... to get the enemy where they live and breed and get the threat at the source. Not the most popular decision.. but one I stand by. He does have a duty to protect the citizens from these type of attacks and I believe that he has done everything in his power to ensure we are protected.

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It's interesting PB, because as far apart as you and I are in the political spectrum in a lot of ways we are not all that far apart. Like you I agree that attacking Afghanistan was a good thing. Where we part company was when Bush took that big wrong turn into Iraq. You think Iraq was about the war on terrorists, I think Iraq was the fulfillment of a long term neocon pipedream that not only had nothing at all to do with terrorists, it actually weakened our fight by taking resources away from the fight we should be fighting. I think it was one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on the American people.

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Are we safer today than we were on 9-10-01? I believe so. I believe Bush has brought about many changes that 3 years later we simply take for granted today. Does more need to be done? Damn right they do. Ports need to be more secure, trains need bomb detection equipment, large buildings need anti-car bomb barracades put around them, etc...

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I'm with you on the need for better security at home. I happen to think that Bush's invasion of Iraq took resources away from that and made us less safe, but I do think that things have been put in place since 9-11 that have made us safer.

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I simply don't believe someone with the most liberal voting record in the senate will make these necessary changes take place. Liberalists are all about the individual rights above all else.. and I simply don't believe this is the time to worry about hurting someone's feelings right now when we are talking about the security of this nation.

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Your understanding of what a liberal is has obviously been formed by listening to far too many dittohead conservative wacko commentators. Seriously, Rush, Sean, etc wouldn't know an actual liberal if it came and hit them in the head. Suffice it to say that despite them getting it very wrong, radical conservatives have done an excellent job of redefining the definition of what it means to be liberal.

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I fully support the Terrorists bill and the broad power given to the US Government right now. If they need this power to make sure my neighborhood won't have a dirty bomb exploded in it next week.. then dammit they should have it. Sorry if a couple of crooks get caught in the process.. boo hoo.

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The problem is, PB .. when does it end? The "War on Terror" as it's been defined has no END. Therefore these are not just temporary changes needed in time of war, they are permanent erosions of our personal freedoms.

-P

One can't be free and safe. The people asked for safety, and it was given to them.

Give me an alternative Prestius. Tell me how we should protect this country and also keep all the same freedoms that we enjoyed prior to 9-11

My freedom wasn't changed essentially... but then again, I'm not a criminal or terrorist.. so I won't notice it.

“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”

This has been attributed to both Benjamin Franklin and Richard Jackson but most experts agree it was said by Franklin


Al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq prior the American invasion. The CIA knew and articulated this. The only legal reason to go into Iraq was if Iraq was in violation of UN resolution 1441. The resolution bans Iraq from having weapons of mass destruction and missiles that fly farther then 500 miles. Neither has been found.

Bush is nuts the man thinks he has a mandate from God to reshape the Middle East. Like most fundamentalist Christians he believes that Israel must remain in tact in order for Christ to come again. Yet it is our blind devotion to this theocracy that puts at us greatest risk from Al Qaeda. America is not a safer under George W Bush.

Now Kerry is another cretin, I think his domestic policy stinks. I think he will be bad for the economy. He is far too much of a left leaning liberal for me and the man flip flops like a fish.

Regarding US troops under UN control: It is my understanding that when troops of any nation wear the UN uniform this means they are under UN control. I don’t see what the big deal is. If we expect the other nations to follow the rule of International law isn’t it up to us to set a good example?

As to whom I would vote for? C/ None of the above

If Bush was more concentrated on Afghanistan, I would probably have a lot more respect for him. Instead, he tried to find a way to link Iraq to it, on faulty intelligence, and went to war under false pretenses. He also went to finish his fathers business there.

I saw a survey of the senate, by the way PB, that said that John Kerry was 21 or 22 as far as being liberal in the senate. I'll have to find the study, based on his votes.

We are not all a bunch of crazy liberals here in Boston, but as far as social programs, environment, health care and education, I'm proud to be called a liberal.;)

-A

Interesting article. Sorry for the length. I just wanted to bold up the points that stood out to me.

Anti-Kerry veterans group releases critical ad

Anti-Kerry veterans group releases critical ad
Bush campaign distances itself from commercial

Friday, August 6, 2004 Posted: 1353 GMT (2153 HKT)
Larry Thurlow is one of the Vietnam veterans featured in an anti-Kerry ad released this week.
(CNN) -- A veterans group that has been sharply critical of Sen. John Kerry launched an ad Thursday that accuses the Democratic presidential nominee of lying about his Vietnam war record.

"John Kerry betrayed the men and women he served with in Vietnam," former Lt. Shelton White, one of the veterans, says in the ad.

Kerry's campaign quickly pointed out that not one of the men featured in the commercial served in the two patrol boats Kerry commanded in Vietnam and that some of them had previously been quoted as praising Kerry.

Kerry's campaign also released material noting that the group has gotten some financial backing from Bob Perry, a homebuilder in Houston, Texas, who is a contributor to the Republican Party. (Texan, GOP donor helps finance anti-Kerry veterans group)

President Bush's re-election campaign distanced itself from the ad. Campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said the president's re-election effort "has never and will never question John Kerry's service in Vietnam. The election will be about the future."

And, in an interview with The Associated Press, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona -- a former prisoner of war in Vietnam -- denounced the ad as "dishonest and dishonorable."(McCain condemns anti-Kerry ad)

McCain told the AP the ad was "the same kind of deal they pulled on me" during his 2000 presidential race, when the Arizona lawmaker ran against Bush in the Republican presidential primaries.

At the time, McCain's backers accused Bush allies of using telephone surveys to spread rumors about McCain. The Bush campaign said it knew nothing about the tactics and couldn't do anything about them.

In response to McCain's criticism, the veterans group released a statement saying it had "the right to be heard" and asserting the veterans knew Kerry better than McCain.

The ad comes from a group that calls itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. It comprises more than 220 veterans from the naval units in which Kerry served in 1968-69.

Kerry led a pair of high-speed, 50-foot crafts, known as swift boats, that patrolled the Mekong Delta to disrupt Viet Cong supply lines.

In the commercial, former sailors accuse Kerry of lying to receive two of his combat decorations, a Purple Heart and the Bronze Star, and criticize his anti-war activism after he returned home from Vietnam.

Kerry also received a Silver Star for valor in combat and two other Purple Hearts during his service on the swift boats in Vietnam.

Larry Thurlow, a member of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who appears in the ad, told CNN that Kerry's boat fled from a mine blast that damaged another vessel in a March 1969 incident for which Kerry won the Bronze Star.

"Our boats immediately put automatic weapons fire onto the left bank in case there was an ambush in conjunction with the mine," said Thurlow, a Navy officer in a nearby boat at the time. "It soon became apparent there was no ambush."

But Jim Rassman, the man whose rescue from the water in that incident resulted in Kerry being decorated, said Thurlow "has a very unusual recollection of events."

"I was receiving fire in the water every time I came up for air," said Rassman, who has campaigned for Kerry since January.

The Navy's own letter awarding Kerry the Bronze Star also appears to be at odds with what the anti-Kerry group asserts.

The letter states Kerry exhibited "great personal courage under fire" in rescuing Rassman, an Army Green Beret officer who recommended Kerry for the decoration.

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is registered as an independent "527" committee, named for the section of the federal tax code under which similar groups are organized. Its contributors include several major Republican donors.

Kerry, now a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, has made his Vietnam record a major theme of his presidential campaign.

At a Washington conference of minority journalists Thursday, he said the country needs a president "who understands the test before you send young people to war."

When Kerry accepted the Democrats' presidential nomination last week, 14 of his former crewmates appeared on stage with him, and Rassman spoke of how Kerry had saved his life in Vietnam.

In Columbus, Ohio, where the president was traveling Thursday, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan cast the commercial as a product of "unregulated soft money activity."

"We will not and have not questioned Sen. Kerry's service record in Vietnam," he said. "This is another example of the problem of unregulated soft money."

The president, he said, "thought he got rid of all of this when he signed the McCain-Feingold bill [regulating campaign financing] into law," adding, "This should all be stopped. It does nothing to elevate the discourse."

The Bush press secretary said he "hopes the Kerry campaign will join us in calling for an end to all unregulated ads."

Asked whether the campaign will demand the ad be pulled from the air, he said, "We are calling for a cessation of all unregulated ads and hope the Kerry campaign will join us."

CNN's Jill Dougherty contributed to this report.

I'm tired of hearing about Kerry being a flip-flopper when Bush is really good at doing that himself.

This is a good link, from a notable Democratic site. :)
http://www.americanprogress.org/site...VF&b=42263

-A

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Originally posted by Ilvane
If Bush was more concentrated on Afghanistan, I would probably have a lot more respect for him. Instead, he tried to find a way to link Iraq to it, on faulty intelligence, and went to war under false pretenses. He also went to finish his fathers business there.

I saw a survey of the senate, by the way PB, that said that John Kerry was 21 or 22 as far as being liberal in the senate. I'll have to find the study, based on his votes.

We are not all a bunch of crazy liberals here in Boston, but as far as social programs, environment, health care and education, I'm proud to be called a liberal.;)

-A

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Depending on what 'study' you find... most of the reputable ones show Kerry as the most liberal... even bigger than drunk Ted.

It was from UPenn, I'll have to look into it later when I get home.

-A