Wow you guys have way more time than I do. I can tell I hit a sore spot with you Nemont. I might see it that way as well if I had the military service background you have. Where did I say swift boating was the worst thing ever done to a veteran? I didn't state that ever. I've read the book Unfit For Command as you obviously have. You realize much of the book has been debunked as being untrue? The link is just one of one of the accounts from that era I think is probably as accurate as any since it involves eyewitnesses that have no agenda.
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Vote2004/story?id=166434
Do I think Kerry lied? Possibly. I believe he came back as many did from Vietnam including my own past senator and governor Bob Kerrey and released some of the anger they felt from that colossal mistake known as the Vietnam War. What follows is his first public transcript from 1971 I'm aware of and his 2001 response to it.
" SEN. KERRY: There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50 calibre machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.
(End audiotape)
MR. RUSSERT: Thirty years later, you stand by that?
SEN. KERRY: I don't stand by the genocide. I think those were the words of an angry young man. We did not try to do that. But I do stand by the description--I don't even believe there is a purpose served in the word "war criminal." I really don't. But I stand by the rest of what happened over there, Tim.
I mean, you know, we--it was--I mean, we've got to put this war in its right perspective and time helps us do that. I believe very deeply that it was a noble effort to begin with. I signed up. I volunteered. I wanted to go over there and I wanted to win. It was a noble effort to try to make a country democratic; to try to carry our principles and values to another part of the world. But we misjudged history. We misjudged our own country. We misjudged our strategy. And we fell into a dark place. All of us. And I think we learned that over time. And I hope the contribution that some of us made as veterans was to come back and help people understand that.
I think our soldiers served as nobly, on the whole, as in any war, and people need to understand that. There were great sacrifices, great contributions. And they came back to a country that didn't thank the veteran, that didn't--I mean, everything that the veteran gained in the ensuing years, Agent Orange recognition, post-Vietnam stress syndrome recognition, the extension of the G.I. Bill, you know, improvement of the V.A. hospitals, all came from Vietnam veterans themselves fighting for it. Indeed, even the memorial in Washington came from that.
This is long and too much to digest on an internet chat room. I know this much perception becomes reality no matter how you choose to view it. I remember Reagan talking to P.M. Yitzhak Shamir in 82 or 83 and explaining the anxiety he had felt when his army film unit had shot footage of the freeing of the concentration camps. Reagan had never left Hollywood during WWII. I remember Bush stating that he had volunteered to be a replacement pilot in Vietnam which was later proven false. I DO KNOW AT LEAST KERRY WAS THERE TELL ME YOU KNOW THE SAME ABOUT Bush II, Reagan, Clinton.
So what will be the stupid move in Crimea and what is your response as Sec. of State?
Zigger you need a job, what do you actually do?