TranceAddict Forums (www.tranceaddict.com/forums)
- Political Discussion / Debate
-- Kerry unfit to be Commander in Chief?
Pages (2): « 1 [2]
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Shakka Your personal decision to be a pessimist and a cynic have been duly noted. Now please kindly piss off. Sure, your mother could've given birth to twins....or worse!   |
More information on the "nonpartisan" O'Neill:
| quote: |
| Who is John O'Neill? CNN's Blitzer failed to probe partisan ties of Kerry critic The May 4 Wall Street Journal editorial page featured an op-ed by John O'Neill about Senator John Kerry under the headline "Unfit to Serve." O'Neill is identified by the paper as having "served in Coastal Division 11 in 1969-1970, winning two Bronze Stars and additional decorations for his service in Vietnam." As Joe Conason wrote in Salon.com on May 4, O'Neill has long-standing ties to the GOP establishment, and O'Neill's own p.r. adviser has described O'Neill as sounding like "a crazed extremist." O'Neill is one of several Vietnam veterans who have criticized Kerry and called into question the decorations he received for his service combat. O'Neill is associated with the newly formed group "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," which held a press conference on May 4 that was promoted by the Media Research Center's Cybercast News Service and highlighted by The Drudge Report on May 3. According to Cybercast News, "Hundreds of former commanders and military colleagues of presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry are set to declare in a signed letter that he is 'unfit to be commander-in-chief.'" The Heritage Foundation's website Townhall.com became a vehicle for bringing O'Neill back to the current media spotlight. On April 2, Townhall.com published a syndicated column by Mona Charen -- and on April 8, David Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine published a timeline by Winter Solider.com -- both making brief mention of a 1971 debate between Kerry and O'Neill on The Dick Cavett Show in which O'Neill accused Kerry of lying about the activities and conduct of American military forces in Vietnam. On April 20, O'Neill made his cable debut on CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports. During the interview, O'Neill said that John Kerry told "damaging lies" about war crimes in Vietnam. He said, "We know the truth and we know that [John Kerry] is unfit to be the commander in chief." O'Neill continued, "I think you'll find people are very, very angry at John Kerry. They remember his career in Vietnam as a short, controversial one. And they believe only Hollywood could turn this guy into a war hero. I saw some war heroes, Wolf. John Kerry is not a war hero. He couldn't tie the shoes of some of the people in Coastal Division 11." Though Blitzer acknowledged that questions were likely to be raised about whether O'Neill was speaking out against Kerry for political reasons, Blitzer conceded that he had not looked into O'Neill's partisan affiliations. "Maybe you're a Republican -- I have no idea -- or the Bush people are encouraging you," Blitzer said. Houston lawyer John O'Neill is a Republican -- as the Houston Chronicle noted the day after O'Neill's interview with Blitzer. According to the paper, O'Neill voted in the 1998 Republican state primary. But O'Neill's ties to the Republican Party extend far beyond party affiliation. During the CNN interview, Blitzer reported that former President Richard Nixon had urged O'Neill to publicly counter Kerry on The Dick Cavett Show, but there is more to the story. O'Neill was a creation of the Nixon administration, as Joe Klein detailed in the January 5 issue of The New Yorker. Former Nixon special counsel Chuck Colson told Klein that Kerry was an "articulate" and "credible leader" of those veterans calling for an end to the Vietnam War and therefore "an immediate target of the Nixon Administration." As such, the Nixon administration found it necessary to "create a counterfoil" to Kerry. Colson recounted, "We found a vet named John O'Neill and formed a group called Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace. We had O'Neill meet the President, and we did everything we could do to boost his group." Articles from the April 21 Houston Chronicle and the June 17, 2003, Boston Globe confirm close ties between O'Neill and the Nixon administration. Beyond his role in the Nixon administration's strategy to undermine Kerry in the 1970s, O'Neill is also connected to Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist (a Nixon appointee) and to former President George H.W. Bush, according to Houston Chronicle articles from March 31 and April 21. In the late 1970s, O'Neill clerked for Rehnquist; in 1990, according to an October 7, 1991, report by Texas Lawyer, the former President Bush considered O'Neill for a federal judgeship vacancy. Media Matters for America will be monitoring media coverage of today's "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" activities and will issue an updated report. http://mediamatters.org/items/200405040004 |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Shakka I am optimistic about the future I am patriotic and passionate about freedom and my country. |
| quote: |
| Bush. He's done a good job considering the circumstances. He's not perfect, but he's far from some Hitleresque destroyer of all things good that his opponents try to portray him as. I'm getting sick of the spiteful rhetoric. |
| quote: |
| nomy is not in shambles, the war on terror is not a failure by any means--the negative spinsters spend their time focusing on the things that aren't going perfectly while glazing over the tremendous progress that has been made. |
| quote: |
| I see it, those who think things are going terribly tend to be more of those that think Bush is somehow the grand poobah that pulled the strings and made 9/11 happen. |
| quote: |
| aren't going perfectly, but to try to blame every shortcoming on Bush alone (like implying that the 7 soldiers who tortured Iraqi's were somehow acting directly on Bush's orders) is just idiotic, foolhardy logic. |
| quote: |
| the U.S. has been a victim of repeated terror attacks since the Carter administration. Now that someone's finally taking a hard-line stance against it people are as critical as they've ever been. |
| quote: |
| Tell me I'm selfish because I accept ultimate responsibility for my actions and the consequences they bring. |
Geez, when the conservative Newsmax questions O'Neill's group, I think there's some credibility problems:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/art.../4/132751.shtml
More specifically, here's this quote:
| quote: |
| O'Neill told NewsMax.com that the medals and their back stories were not the real issue being targeted by the organization, referring to the second paragraph of the letter to Kerry: "It is our collective judgment that, upon your return from Vietnam, you grossly and knowingly distorted the conduct of the American soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen of that war (including a betrayal of many of us, without regard for the danger your actions caused us.) Further, we believe that you have withheld and/or distorted material facts as to your own conduct in this war." But it is with regard to the latter sentence of the charge that O'Neill and others get vague. When asked by NewsMax if they had in mind any potential smoking gun of distortion that might be revealed by an unfettered examination of Kerry's military records, there was no answer forthcoming. |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by mps242 Question: what terror attacks against the US was Saddam responsible for? What connection to al qaeda did Saddam have? Where are the weapons that constituted the threat used as a pretense for invading? |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Shakka Well, he did try to have a U.S. president assassinated. Call that what you want. His regime also sponsored and funded terrorism. This much is fact. It's amazing how short peoples' memories can be. I still find the discovery of chemical weapons in Jordan a few weeks ago (That the press barely covered and I mentioned twice with little response, much to my chagrin) to be quite curious. It appears the chemicals came by way of Syria which is where many have claimed Saddam's WMD's may have gone to. Read about it here, and read it carefully: http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...threadid=176353 not to mention my efforts to revive the thread went largely unnoticed(ironic, eh?). |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by MisterOpus1 That discovery is interesting, but without substantive evidence it's not very compelling to the layman. Similarly, no sound evidence has been given indicating that Iraq moved their WMD to Syria (at least according to Powell): http://www.usembassy.it/file2004_01/alia/A4012101.htm Since there's no concrete evidence of WMD being moved to Syria, it seems even more reaching to incline a movement from Iraq->Syria->Jordon, don't you think? |
Did I read this right? Did Fox News actually question the validity and partisanship of O'Neill's group?
I must be dreaming...
| quote: |
| FOX exposed anti-Kerry vets' flip-flopping As part of ongoing efforts to undermine Senator John Kerry's war record, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group founded to discredit Kerry's record during and after his service in Vietnam, held its first news conference on May 4. Also on that day, Media Matters for America released a report on the group's founder, John O'Neill -- also one of Kerry's strongest critics; the report documents O'Neill's participation in Republican efforts to smear Kerry dating back to the Nixon administration. The scrutiny that cable networks directed toward Kerry's critics throughout the day varied significantly; FOX News Channel provided in-depth coverage, including revealing that some of Kerry's present-day critics have, in the past, actually praised Kerry for his Vietnam service. In many of the May 4 cable news reports, the partisan political backgrounds of the Swift Boat Vets were mentioned. CNN's afternoon news program, Live From..., described the group only as "Vietnam vets who formed a special purpose political action committee" and did not note O'Neill's or any other member's political affiliation. Later in the day, CNN senior political correspondent Candy Crowley reported on Inside Politics: "[T]he Kerry campaign points out there are Republicans here." Crowley also noted that the group's spokeswoman "is a Texas Republican who has contributed to the Bush campaign." On CNN's Crossfire, co-host James Carville also pointed to the Swift Boat Vets' Republican ties, as reported in Salon.com by Joe Conason in a May 4 article. On MSNBC's Scarborough Country, host Joe Scarborough mentioned criticism of O'Neill's "dirty tricks" for the Nixon administration and asked if O'Neill was doing it again for the Bush campaign. MSNBC's Lester Holt Live showed a clip of Michael Meehan, Kerry presidential campaign adviser, criticizing the Swift Boat Veterans for their partisan attacks on Kerry and noting that a number of Kerry's crewmembers in Vietnam have praised his service. An afternoon report on MSNBC's daily news show, MSNBC Live, noted only that the Kerry campaign is "of course putting up veterans who disagree" with Kerry's critics. The broadcast omitted any information on individual members of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whom the program identified as "a group of former Navy swift boat commanders and personnel many of whom served with Kerry in Vietnam." FOX News Channel pushed harder on the credibility of some of the group's members. On several shows throughout the afternoon and evening, including Special Report with Brit Hume, FOX News Channel chief political correspondent Carl Cameron provided substantial background on some key Kerry critics. Cameron reported that the veterans held a news conference "essentially to trash [Kerry]" and that much of their criticism "dramatically conflicts with the public record." Cameron stated, "Senator Kerry has released most of his military records and for the most part, they are a glowing detail of his military service." Not only does their criticism conflict with what The New York Times described in an April 22 article as Kerry's "uniformly positive" evaluations included in his military records, but, as Cameron also reported, their criticism is inconsistent with statements previously made by many of the Swift Boat Vets themselves. Cameron reported that in 1968, Kerry critic Grant W. Hibbard,[1] a lieutenant commander in Vietnam during Kerry's tour: ... described Kerry in various favorable ways, as quote, "One of the top few in his willingness to seek and accept responsibility." Captain George Elliot, who served in Vietnam at the same time Kerry did, condemns Kerry now for touting his service in a war that Kerry later protested. ... But in '96, Elliot and other critics of today, praised him for going after the enemy. Beyond pointing out the inconsistent statements by some of Kerry's critics, Cameron also reported that Democrats say that "many of them ... have become Republicans ... who have supported the Bush campaigns in Texas, have been close friends of the Bush family both in politics and business." Cameron stated on Special Report with Brit Hume, "The GOP says it's not involved with the veterans criticizing Kerry, but many of them are Republicans who have contributed to and backed various Bush campaigns and causes over the decades." On FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes, co-host Alan Colmes challenged the credibility of the Swift Boat Vets. Colmes noted that Swift Boat Vets leader O'Neill did not serve in Vietnam with Kerry; rather, as O'Neill told Colmes, "I actually took his boat over, but about two months after he [Kerry] left." Colmes also draws attention to the flip-flopping nature of the comments made about Kerry by several group members. Colmes questioned O'Neill who appeared on the show: Here is what Grant Hubbard [sic], who's now part of your group, here's what he had to say back then about John Kerry. And he signed -- let's put it up on the screen -- a report on Kerry. He said on initiative, one of the top few. Cooperation, one of the top few. Personal behavior, one of the top few. Why would he say that then and now be supporting you now? Colmes further probed: Let me show you the report of George Elliott, who also graded John Kerry in Vietnam. Here's what was said. Here's what he said. "In a combat environment often requiring independent, decisive action, Lieutenant Junior Grade Kerry was unsurpassed. LTJG Kerry emerges as the acknowledged leader in his peer group. His bearing and appearance are above reproach." That's a report of officer fitness from 1969 by George Elliott, who also graded Kerry. How do you account for that? Do you want to claim that everybody now is saying what you're saying? It's clearly not true. Colmes went on to say to O'Neill, "You haven't explained to me how the very people who you claim are supporting you now had these superlative things to say about John Kerry back in the day when he was serving in Vietnam. I don't understand the discrepancy. Maybe you could explain it." O'Neill answered by saying, "Sure. They were hardly superlative. If you look at John Kerry rated ... as a member of a group, you'll find that virtually everybody in the group got the same ones. Commander Hibbard, related generally, graded John Kerry as not observed. So you take that two or three items and ignored the not observed item on there." Colmes replied, "[E]verything he did observe him on he was superlative." O'Neill responded: "Yes, and mostly it was not observed." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes: [1]During his April 19 MSNBC show Scarborough Country, former Florida Republican Representative Joe Scarborough referred to an April 14 Boston Globe story, from which he quoted the following: "John Kerry's much-heralded service medals are being questioned." Scarborough extensively quoted the Globe's interview with Kerry's commanding officer in Vietnam, Lieutenant Commander Grant Hibbard, who has questioned Kerry's first Purple Heart: "He [Hibbard] said -- quote -- 'He [Kerry] had a little scratch on his forearm. He was holding a piece of shrapnel. People in the office were saying, I don't think we got any fire.' And when asked about Kerry's medal, Grant said: 'Obviously, he got it, I don't know how.'" Scarborough failed to mention the following facts from the Globe article: that Hibbard is a Republican and that "a review by the Globe of Kerry's war record ... found that the young Navy officer [Kerry] acted heroically under fire, in one case saving the life of an Army lieutenant." In an April 14 Salon.com article, historian Douglas Brinkley debunked efforts to diminish Kerry's Vietnam record. Brinkley is the director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies, a history professor at the University of New Orleans, and author of Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War. � N.C. http://mediamatters.org/items/200405050004 |
Even more fair and balanced than you realied, good sir!
| quote: |
| Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Worthy comparison:  |
Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright © 2000-2021, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.