Unfit for Office

[AdolfOliverBush]

No matter what, anyone elected president will be unfit for office according to someone else. Anyways, here's an article:

Unfit for Office

By JOHN O'NEILL
May 4, 2004; Page A20

HOUSTON -- In 1971, I debated John Kerry, then a national spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, for 90 minutes on "The Dick Cavett Show." The key issue in that debate was Mr. Kerry's claim that American troops were committing war crimes in Vietnam "on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." Now, as Sen. Kerry emerges as the presumptive Democratic nominee for the presidency, I've chosen to re-enter the fray.

Like John Kerry, I served in Vietnam as a Swift Boat commander. Ironically, John Kerry and I served much of our time, a full 12 months in my case and a controversial four months in his, commanding the exact same six-man boat, PCF-94, which I took over after he requested early departure. Despite our shared experience, I still believe what I believed 33 years ago -- that John Kerry slandered America's military by inventing or repeating grossly exaggerated claims of atrocities and war crimes in order to advance his own political career as an antiwar activist. His misrepresentations played a significant role in creating the negative and false image of Vietnam vets that has persisted for over three decades.

Neither I, nor any man I served with, ever committed any atrocity or war crime in Vietnam. The opposite was the truth. Rather than use excessive force, we suffered casualty after casualty because we chose to refrain from firing rather than risk injuring civilians. More than once, I saw friends die in areas we entered with loudspeakers rather than guns. John Kerry's accusations then and now were an injustice that struck at the soul of anyone who served there.

During my 1971 televised debate with John Kerry, I accused him of lying. I urged him to come forth with affidavits from the soldiers who had claimed to have committed or witnessed atrocities. To date no such affidavits have been filed. Recently, Sen. Kerry has attempted to reframe his comments as youthful or "over the top." Yet always there has been a calculated coolness to the way he has sought to destroy the record of our honorable service in the interest of promoting his political ambitions of the moment.

John Kennedy's book, "Profiles in Courage," and Dwight Eisenhower's "Crusade in Europe" inspired generations. Not so John Kerry, who has suppressed his book, "The New Soldier," prohibiting its reprinting. There is a clear reason for this. The book repeats John Kerry's insults to the American military, beginning with its front-cover image of the American flag being carried upside down by a band of bearded renegades in uniform -- a clear slap at the brave Marines in their combat gear who raised our flag at Iwo Jima. Allow me the reprint rights to your book, Sen. Kerry, and I will make sure copies of "The New Soldier" are available in bookstores throughout America.

Vietnam was a long time ago. Why does it matter today? Since the days of the Roman Empire, the concept of military loyalty up and down the chain of command has been indispensable. The commander's loyalty to the troops is the price a commander pays for the loyalty of the troops in return. How can a man be commander in chief who for over 30 years has accused his "Band of Brothers," as well as himself, of being war criminals? On a practical basis, John Kerry's breach of loyalty is a prescription of disaster for our armed forces.

John Kerry's recent admissions caused me to realize that I was most likely in Vietnam dodging enemy rockets on the very day he met in Paris with Madame Binh, the representative of the Viet Cong to the Paris Peace Conference. John Kerry returned to the U.S. to become a national spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a radical fringe of the antiwar movement, an organization set upon propagating the myth of war crimes through demonstrably false assertions. Who was the last American POW to die languishing in a North Vietnamese prison forced to listen to the recorded voice of John Kerry disgracing their service by his dishonest testimony before the Senate?

Since 1971, I have refused many offers from John Kerry's political opponents to speak out against him. My reluctance to become involved once again in politics is outweighed now by my profound conviction that John Kerry is simply not fit to be America's commander in chief. Nobody has recruited me to come forward. My decision is the inevitable result of my own personal beliefs and life experience.

Today, America is engaged in a new war, against the militant Islamist terrorists who attacked us on our own soil. Reasonable people may differ about how best to proceed, but I'm sure of one thing -- John Kerry is the wrong man to put in charge.

Mr. O'Neill served in Coastal Division 11 in 1969-70, earning two Bronze Stars and additional decorations for his service in Vietnam

 

[2-0-Sixx]

Who cares what this loser has to say

 

[AdolfOliverBush]

Who cares what this loser has to say

Likewise.

 

[nefar559]

Who cares what this loser has to say

what a waste of a click, get me out of here

 

[Hatch]

nice article

 

[WHITE DEVIL]

Who gives a fuck?

John Kerry's book has an upside down flag on it! John Kerrry exaggerated US war crimes! John Kerry threw away his medals!

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o *jazz hands*

Slander US Troops, or send them off to be slaughtered in a bullshit war?

Exaggerate harm done by the military, or use the military to cause harm?

 

[THA RIPPA]

I would say he would know better than 2-0-Sixx or any other left wing poster on this board whether Kerry served well while in the military. I wouldnt quite call any veteran a "loser".

 

[THA RIPPA]

WHITE DEVIL:
Bullshit war? We went into the war intending to find WMDs. Obviously we haven't as of yet found the stockpiles we were expecting, but with the attacks seeming to elevate (the sarin gas of this past week) I would not be surprised to see more nerve agents being used by insurgents.

And let's pretend for a minute that we will NEVER find WMD's.

Going to war for the wrong reasons does not make the war itself wrong. Lincoln went into the Civil War so that the south wouldn't secede from the Union. But now we justify it with the fact that the War freed the slaves. So even if we don't find any WMD's history will be able to justify it because we liberated 26 million slaves to Saddam.

 

[Hatch]

Going to war for the wrong reasons does not make the war itself wrong. Lincoln went into the Civil War so that the south wouldn't secede from the Union. But now we justify it with the fact that the War freed the slaves. So even if we don't find any WMD's history will be able to justify it because we liberated 26 million slaves to Saddam.

well said

 

[WHITE DEVIL]

We liberated 26 million slaves of Saddam and we will turn them into....26 million slaves of a barbarous, civil-war prone fakeocracy, an idiotic smegma meld of Bush's good wishes that will be forced on them and will not work. Bush's war plan was faulty, the pre-planning was faulty, the planning during the actual operation was faulty, and the post planning will be faulty.

Lincoln did not go to war for the wrong reasons. The South was originally part of the US. The civil war was fought largely over tariffs, not slavery, and Lincoln rightly feared a dissolution of the entire nation into several fractional countries if the South succeeded.

The difference between the Civil war and now is that the South actually *did* something to bring a causation of the war. Saddam was a butcher, torturer, yes. But this is not unique in any continent or region. Saddam's Iraq was crippled from 10 years of sanctions, and whether or nto Saddam had WMDs was a simple matter of logic. Richard Butler, the inspector who was 100 percent sure Saddam had WMDs, could not find anything more thana framework for producing them, dual-iuse factories that *could* have been made into WMD programs.

Bush went to Iraq expecting to throw out a man who had his hand in everything the country was, produced, had become, etc, and expected an open arms greeting, and a hunky dory reconstruction phase that would last 6 months to a year, after which the Iraqis would have their freedom, prosperity, and democracy. Bush expected to find WMDs. Bush expected little or no insurgency that could not be crushed by US troops.

He was wrong on several counts. For one, the Iraqis have no political environment that promotes democracy. The only type of dissension/discussion Iraq has ever seen has been through Islamic clerics, which is why they now want a theocracy, which *will* lead to a loss of personal freedoms.

If the Iraqis are given a democracy, the only type of leaders they will elect are leaders who will make raw appeals to ethnicity or religion. They don't understand that a tax plan, a fiscal policy, a domestic policy is what defines a leader. They understand that leaders are either 1. Gun-toting fearmongers or 2. Muslim clerics, and they will elect people that run on platforms like "Kill all Kurds" or "Destroy Sunni Islam", not "Yes on proposition 57".

Saddam has no WMD. The finding of serin gas in one undetonated missile does not constitute a huge arsenal of destructive capacity. The 99.9999% majority of WMD we have found in Iraq have been already slated for destruction, buried, or incapacitated.

We had no international support. Our plinky group of hesitant allies does not count as a multi-lateral, multinational force. After 9/11 the support for America was extremely high. Bush took this down to levels never before seen with the bullshit invasion of Iraq. Iraq was Not a hotbed for terror or weapons of mass destruction, at least until the U.S. got there. What will happen now remains to be seen.

There is a big difference between asking the intelligence community the question of "what does Saddam have" versus "what does Saddam have that is a justification of war". I have no doubt that Bush had been gunning for Saddam for awhile, and would use any excuse to go into Iraq.

We are now engaged in construction, not re-construction. The de-Baathification essentially ripped out the stucture on which the country was built, and we have offered little as far as what really needs to be given to Iraq at this point. Not just military help, not just economic help, but political, monetary, help in relation to debts, international support, etc. The Iraqi unemployment rate is sky-high, and in addition teh Iraqi army thought they would be kept intact and used to keep Iraq secure. Only now are we starting to train demoralized, low-paid Iraqi security forces...when we could have used the Iraqi army that stood down. Except that would mess with Bush's black and white, third grader perception of good guys versus evildoers, so no, theres no way that would happen.

This is a shit sandwich we will eat for years and years to come. Little, if any good will come out of this. Support Bush for whatever reason you could find, if you're so inclined to do so. I really can see no justification for it, not on domestic, economic, policy-making or legislative grounds. I guess cheering for a home team is important enough to people that they completely blind themselves to the reality of the effects of our actions on the world.

 

[MEXCOM]

Well said.

 

[THA RIPPA]

WHITE DEVIL I saw your response and would give you an in depth reply, except that O'Reilly Factor is on now and i want to catch that segment about teachers teaching sex in schools.

However, a main point of yours was that democracy would never work in Iraq. Didn't people say the same about Japan and Germany? They work perfectly now.

 

[shep]

Didn't people say the same about Japan and Germany? They work perfectly now.

and look at all the countries it didn't work in

 

[I AM]

^^^ Such As?

South Korea is healthier than ever, which is one of the reasons they dont want to reunify with North Korea--because THEY will have to foot the bill for NK, which fell into the crapper like all Communist/Socialist countries do.

The reason that Socialist countries don't work is because of people like you. Marxism, from what I have read, is actually a VERY good fucking idea.....There's just too many ignorant, greedy, stupid ass people that would fuck it up. That kind of shit only works in a higher level of society, and we obviously do NOT live in that....

 

[WHITE DEVIL]

Japan and Germany are entirely different from Iraq in several ways. Germany benefitted from proximity to Western countries where working democracies already existed. Germany was also very politically inclined, having been a base of concepts like socialism. People in Germany were willing to let alternative theory idealogues be able to reform their country's political landscape.

If you read up on the history of Japan, everything from their modernization to their war effort to their cultural revolution were all in aping of Western ideals. Their entry in World War 2, as a matter of fact, came after they attempted to seize land like any great Western Democracy, and were rebuffed. They attempted to become an imperial country and seize land in China, at which time they were told "No, this isn't right. You can't do this" By Russia, England, France, and the US. They were amazed at this hypocrisy, seeing as how the US had engaged in wholesale slaughter of Indigenous American Natives, Mexicans, and Filipinos, and the English and French were carving out Africa and the Indian peninsula for themselves.

So they planned to strike back and show us they were just as powerful as any Western empire. This plan culminated at Pearl Harbor. Ever since Japan was opened up to the outside world, their endeavors were to become a "great Western empire in the East". After World War 2 they literally were shocked and awed so much that they decided to scrap their entire system and accept what we had been pushing on them - a democracy.

Iraq lacks both a respect and admiration of the US AND a viable political climate. One could say Japan and Germany were already predisposed to democracy. Those being the most extreme military examples of imposed democracy, places like France and England, where it came from within, took hundreds of years to cultivate democracy. Bush thinks he can impose it in one, and given that the Iraq country is neither starry-eyed in respect to the US or completely backbroken, hopeless, and pandering after war, it is an absolute impossibility.

 

[WHITE DEVIL]

The international center for strategic studies is now declaring that the Iraq invasion has caused the overall growth in the number of terrorists as well as the scope for which Middle Eastern men will become terrorists. Iraq's borders are now more loose than they ever were under Saddam. Al-Qaeda has been saying for along time that the U.S would invade an oil-rich Middle Eastern country and is now using this as a battle cry. The chickens will come home to roost; Bush will soon see WMD in Iraq - only they wouldn't have been there in the first place.

 

[WHITE DEVIL]

Joe Lieberman aka Republican Light...the low-cal democrat option...lol.

You'd rather be lied to about a war than lied to about throwing away of Vietnam medals and having SUVs? What the fuck kind of logic is that? I'd rather have a president that Nukes Britain and doesn't lie about it, then a president who has civil rights activists beat up and lies about it. How the fuck is Kerry not better than Bush? A third-grader from Poughkeepsie, AL. would be a better choice than Bush.

He is *not* thoughtful, he doesn't *do* details, he hasn't laid out any comprehensive plans for anything besides a few small policy directives, and even those he didn't put very much, if any planning into. The Iraq war was a failure in pre, post, and present implementation. Bush has created an astronomical national debt, effectively cancelling out any and all surpluses we once had.

Bush has set the record for days on vacation as president. Need we say more? No child left behind was/is a flop, the Iraq war is an absolute flop, and this idiot could very well lead us into North Korea, Iran, or god knows where the fuck else.

If World War 3 starts it will be at the hands of Bush. I don't care if Kerry gives all hard earned rich people money to the poor people or throws away his Vietnam medals, or lies about having an SUV...I'd rather have an America that isn't in a state of constant emergency because of domestic and foreign terrorism created by Bush the Bungler. I don't see how you could endorse such a blazing idiot other than Republican/Democrat Home Team theory, the black and white, "Good and Evildoers" way that the average Fox News product views politics/the world.

 

[I AM]

NO SHIT! Who gives a fuck if Kerry has some SUVs? HOW IS THAT YOURS OR MY BUSINESS? It's not. Who cares if he threw away medals....It's just a fuckin mineral pressed into a shape and given out.

If he had a trophy from Jr. High school that was for a baseball team, and he hated those people yet got the trophy and threw it away would anyone give a fuck? HELL NO. But because the precious US gave him some gay ass fuckin medal he is OBLIGATED to keep it? That's some RETARDED logic if you ask me.

I'd rather have the guy lie about his cars and medals than lie to us about everything going on in our country and with foreign policy.

Why does Kerry have to tell you who his people are? That's his choice, if you don't like it, so be it, but that doesn't make him a "liar." That means he doesn't feel like devulging that information. Which Bush does ALL THE FUCKING TIME. So don't be a hypocrite.

Personally, I think Kerry and Bush are both pretty shitty candidates....But Bush is a complete fucking retard. If he makes office again, we WILL see the end of our country as we know it. The process is already starting...Do you really want to be fucked like that because of some half witted plan that Bush has? He won by default. His own FAMILY member was the Govn. of FL....That fuck is THE ONLY reason that Bush is now in office.

Fuck the system. Fuck Bush. And fuck ANYONE that follows him or his ideas.

 

[jay deuce]

Hes the worst president ever, Tadou is the prime example of the suburbinite rich boy that none of Bush's fuck ups effect.

I don't see how any sane person can even listen to the guy talk without realizing he is a grade A jackass.

 

[shep]

^^^ Such As?

Chile, cuba, el salvador, iran, guatamala, panama, afghanastan, iraq, koreas, vietnam, kuwait