Why Kerry doesn't deserve your vote

[Colleen Thomas]

Great analogy, but wait... wasn't John Kerry the Captain of his Swift Boat in Vietnam? Hmmm... Guess this doesn't really work after all.

As Always
I Am the
Dirt Man

LOL,

Was Doc's analogy not mine. I knew Kerry was a capatain in the brown water navy, but it was still to good to pass up. And like amicus, I would take popeye over either of the currnet options if I owned a ship.

-Colly

 

[KarenAM]

I consider Afghanistan to be a work in progress, but a resounding success so far. It is much better off now than it ever was under Taliban rule.

A "resounding success" may be pushing things a bit, in my view, but Afghanistan is an example of what can happen when the international community works together to solve a problem. I just pray we don't forget it because of Iraq.

And about the only places that might not be better off than under Taliban rule were Nazi Germany and Khmer Rouge Cambodia, and that's a big maybe. Yeah, I really, really hate the Taliban; can you tell?

 

[KenJames]

A "resounding success" may be pushing things a bit, in my view, but Afghanistan is an example of what can happen when the international community works together to solve a problem. I just pray we don't forget it because of Iraq.

And about the only places that might not be better off than under Taliban rule were Nazi Germany and Khmer Rouge Cambodia, and that's a big maybe. Yeah, I really, really hate the Taliban; can you tell?

I really hate the Taliban, too. They're the poster child for the desirability of gunboat diplomacy - imposing civilization on barbarians.

(For those who are wondering, I'm not being sarcastic.)

 

[cantdog]

This is the most contentious thread I've ever seen on this board.

 

[minsue]

This is the most contentious thread I've ever seen on this board.

Aw, you just haven't been around long enough.

 

[shereads]

This is the most contentious thread I've ever seen on this board.

You should have seen the one about Homer the baby squirrel. That got ugly.

 

[shereads]

Originally posted by Bullet:

If you don't care about world affairs, do you care about the environment? The Bush Administration has declared war upon our environment. The EPA was a product of the Nixon administration. The Bush administration has emasculated it. Bush will gladly destroy our air and water, cut our old growth forests for a campaign contribution.

How over the top can you be? One man wants to destroy our water and air eh? I must've missed the declaration of war on that one. Fanatical rantings of declaration of war and willingly destroying all air and water make the rest of the environmentally conscious people look bad.

Yes, he has systematically destroyed what took years to put in place: regulations that required industry to clean up a bit of its own waste. Why do you think Cheney has refused to release the names of the participants he invited to the Energy Policy Roundtable during his first months in office - after which the EPA and Interior began dismantling, one by one, restrictions on natural gas extraction that protected water and grazing lands in Wyoming; clean air and water regulations on industry; toxic waste cleanup policies that required participation by the offending industries...? It is not an exhaggeration at all to say that he came into office with an anti-regulatory agenda that has rolled back decades of work by the EPA under other presidents.

GWB has been more anti-environment than any president since Reagan, whose Interior Sec., James Watt, was on record as saying we didn't need to protect the environment for future generations because Jesus will return soon.

No, Kerry will not fix ALL that. He will certainly fix some of it though. Is he a hypocrite to drive an SUV? Yeah, probably. Does it mean he won't do more to protect the environment than GWB? Of course not. GWB has all but dismantled the Environmental Protection Agency. He is of the view that anything that affects corporate profits is evil, including regulations that protect our health.

 

[Wildcard Ky]

Shereads:

You asked me at the beginning of this thread if I had ever voted for a Democrat. Now I ask you the same question. Have you ever voted for a Republican?

 

[shereads]

Shereads:

You asked me at the beginning of this thread if I had ever voted for a Democrat. Now I ask you the same question. Have you ever voted for a Republican?

Yes, Wild. As I posted here earlier, I have voted for Republicans in local races against Democratic incumbents whose actions made me distrust them. The fact is that at the state and national level, the Democrats historically are the ones who fight for things I care about, and Republicans favor corporate interests. I just found this at Washington Post online:

THE BUSH MONEY MACHINE : An Industry Gets Its Way
Fundraiser Denies Link Between Money, Access
Ohio Businessman, a Big GOP Donor, Fought EPA on Hazardous-Waste Rule -- and Won

By James V. Grimaldi and Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, May 17, 2004; Page A01


Second of two articles

MASON, Ohio -- Richard T. Farmer is one of America's richest men and a Bush Pioneer by virtue of having raised at least $100,000 for the 2000 campaign. Over the past 15 years, he and his wife have given $3.1 million to Bush campaigns, the Republican Party and Republican candidates.


Farmer's family controls Cintas Corp., a $2.7 billion company that rents and launders uniforms and industrial shop towels. For years, Farmer's industry has been at odds with the Environmental Protection Agency over increased regulation of shop towels, particularly a Clinton administration proposal that, though not fatal, "would have cost us a lot of money," Farmer said.

In a recent interview at company headquarters here, Farmer said his campaign donations were made with no strings attached. He said he supports Republicans because they believe in "less government, more individual freedom, more individual responsibility.

"If you think I'm giving money to get access to [President Bush], you're crazy," Farmer said. "I'm just trying to get the right guy elected. That's all I care about."

The Clinton proposal would have required that woven shop towels contaminated with chemical solvents be wrung dry for them to be treated as laundry, not hazardous waste. Last November, the EPA changed its position, adopting a more lenient proposal for the woven towels. Farmer and his industry were overjoyed, because the change promised to save them millions and preserve their advantage over the competition -- paper towels. "It would have been a big problem," Farmer said.

After a series of telephone calls, e-mails, letters and meetings with representatives of the laundry industry, the EPA had provided industrial-laundry lobbyists with an advance copy of a portion of the proposed rule, which the lobbyists edited and the agency adopted.

That same opportunity was not given to the rule's opponents -- environmental groups, a labor union, hazardous-waste landfill operators and paper towel manufacturers who argue their product should be treated as environmentally equal to laundered towels. The opponents say industrial laundries send tens of thousands of tons of hazardous chemicals to municipal sewage treatment plants and landfills where toxics can get into groundwater, streams and rivers. Labor unions contend that the towels expose workers to cancer-causing fumes.

Cintas said in a statement that the rewritten rule will prevent pollution because "reusable shop towels are friendlier to the environment" than disposable paper towels.

The proposed shop towel rule is but one example of a policy change by the Bush administration that favors a company controlled by a Bush Pioneer or Ranger, who as a group have helped the president bank a record $200 million for the 2004 election campaign. The shop towel case reflects the subtle interactions between corporations and an administration determined to roll back what it considers to be regulatory overkill. For many big donors, getting "the right guy elected," as Farmer puts it, is an end in itself.

EPA Assistant Administrator Marianne Lamont Horinko said Farmer's campaign contributions had nothing to do with the agency's decision. Although Cintas was represented by the industrial-laundry lobbyists in discussions with the EPA, Farmer said he himself did not directly contact the administration about the proposed rule. He did say that, at the behest of the laundry industry, he called members of the Ohio congressional delegation, who wrote to then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman.

In a summary of the rule, the EPA said it would improve "clarity and consistency" of regulation, "provide regulatory relief, and save affected facilities over $30 million." Whitman -- who resigned from the EPA last year and has since become a Bush Ranger -- declined to be interviewed. But she said through a spokesman that contacts such as those from the Ohio congressional delegation "are helpful because they highlight an interest and a constituent's interest" and "that just feeds into the deliberative process."

Fred Meyer, the former chairman of the Texas Republican Party who in 1998 helped set up the Pioneers for then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush, said there is a good reason money will always flow to political campaigns. "There are too many things that are important to too many people," Meyer said. "The existence of businesses and billions of dollars are affected."

Democrats have their own history of rewarding large donors. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed major contributor Joseph P. Kennedy to be ambassador to Britain. Lyndon B. Johnson funneled contracts to Texas firms.

Direct quid pro quos -- specific benefits in exchange for cash -- are illegal. There is nothing illegal, however, about the adoption of broad legislation or regulations benefiting sectors of the business community -- such as laundries disposing of wastewater containing toxic chemicals -- that happen be a source of major fundraisers and donors.

For example, securities and investment banking firms have benefited enormously from reduced capital gains and dividend taxes initiated by the Bush White House. Six produced 17 Pioneers and Rangers this year, and employees in those firms have raised $2.53 million. Altogether, finance industry employees have raised $19.68 million for the 2004 election campaign, according to an analysis produced for The Washington Post by Dwight L. Morris & Associates.

Twenty-four Rangers and Pioneers are either drug industry executives or lobbyists whose companies stand to get more business from the administration's Medicare drug benefit bill passed last year.

Twenty-five energy company executives, along with 15 energy industry lobbyists, are either Pioneers or Rangers. Many have been deeply involved in developing the administration's energy policy. Seven of those Pioneers served on the Bush energy transition team. The administration's energy bill, which remains stalled by a largely Democratic filibuster in the Senate, would provide billions of dollars in benefits to the energy industry.

Industry: $400 Million Cost

The proposed shop towel rule shows how the process can play out to the advantage of a Pioneer.

For more than two decades, the EPA has grappled with how to regulate the cloth towels used to wipe up chemicals in printing plants, factories and industrial shops. Each year, 3 billion of them sop up more than 100,000 tons of hazardous solvents such as benzene, xylene, toluene and methyl ethyl ketone.

"Why should these materials be regulated as a hazardous waste?" the EPA said in a document given to the laundry industry in 2000. "Because they have the potential to cause fires, or to be the source of fugitive air emissions, and ground water contamination."

In 1997, the Clinton administration proposed a clean-water rule requiring industrial laundries to pretreat their wastewater to remove chemical solvents. The Uniform & Textile Service Association (UTSA) and Textile Rental Services Association of America (TRSA) mounted a $1.2 million lobbying campaign against the proposed rule, arguing that toxic pollutants are removed at the laundries or by municipal wastewater treatment plants. The trade groups said the proposal would have cost them more than $400 million.

In 1999, the Clinton EPA withdrew the rule. The next year, with Clinton still in the White House, the EPA floated a new draft rule that proposed to exempt shop towels from hazardous-waste requirements only if factories squeezed the towels "dry" -- defined as containing no more than five grams of solvents -- before placing them in sealed containers and sending them to laundries.

Calling this "an extremist view in the EPA," the laundry industry forcefully opposed the new proposal as overregulation.

But environmental activists, labor groups and paper towel makers said the laundries and local treatment plants frequently exceed their mandated pollution limits. Sixty-five Cintas laundries in 15 states and Canada have exceeded pollution limits on more than 1,100 occasions in the past several years, according to public records gathered by the Sierra Club and the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE).

For the EPA and the laundry industry, things changed when Bush took office in 2001. The industry pushed hard to derail the Clinton proposed rule in favor of a more lenient one that gives shop towels a hazardous-waste exemption without the need to wring them dry or store them in special containers.

Laundry trade groups appealed directly to EPA Administrator Whitman in February 2001: "The draft regulation in its current form . . . increases the regulatory burden."

In May, Whitman sent a conciliatory response: "Partnerships with our stakeholders will be an important part of how we will do business at EPA."

To aid in the effort, the industry urged contributions to its Textile Rental Services Association's Political Action Committee. "Will PAC donations open doors, get appointments and allow your message to be delivered? Absolutely," Textile Rental magazine said in its March 2002 edition.

Exemption Sought at EPA

In Richard Farmer, the industry had one of the biggest political givers in the country.

For President George H.W. Bush, Farmer, now 69 , was a member of "Team 100," donors who gave more than $100,000 to Republican Party-building committees. When George W. Bush ran for office in 2000, Farmer's "golfing buddy," Cincinnati financier Mercer Reynolds III, recruited Farmer to be a Pioneer, Farmer said. This year, he earned the more exalted Ranger status by raising a minimum of $200,000 in individual contributions.

Farmer said that his big gifts are not connected to political favors.

In the case of shop towel regulation, Farmer said Cintas itself was unconcerned. "We huddled up and [decided] no matter what happens here, it will have no impact on Cintas," he said.

Later in the interview, when specifically asked about the Clinton-era proposal, he said it would have hurt Cintas by making it difficult for the company to provide the full range of services its customers demand. Shop towels are now about 5 percent of Cintas's business, but they remain an important service to customers who also rent uniforms.

Farmer said he never contacted the administration about the new rule. He said he did complain about the rule to Ohio Republican Sen. George V. Voinovich and Rep. Rob Portman, a fellow Bush Pioneer and chairman of Bush's campaign in Ohio this year.

Farmer said he made the calls in 2002 on behalf of the two laundry trade groups. Cintas is the biggest company in the industry, but Farmer said that complaints from hundreds of small laundries probably had more impact than his calls. "It would have put small guys out of business," he said.

Portman said in a recent interview that he was first contacted by one of the trade groups, which he knew represented Cintas, "one of those big companies in our district." He said he considered it a constituent issue. "I do remember talking to Dick about it at least once," he said.

About the same time in 2002 that Farmer was making his calls and the trade groups were contacting members of Congress, he made a major contribution. On March 19, 2002, Farmer gave $250,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

On March 25, Portman and Voinovich co-wrote a letter to Whitman asking her to support a more encompassing waste exemption for shop towels -- this one from solid waste regulation. Gaining a solid-waste exemption would remove a further layer of regulation because some states apply additional taxes, fees and special handling requirements to solid waste.

Whitman spokesman Joe Martyak said such a letter from lawmakers "helps to precipitate a meeting to find out what's the glitch. You help to unglitch it, to move it along."

At this point , EPA attorneys were balking at the solid-waste exemption, Portman and Voinovich said in their letter.

A month later , Whitman wrote Portman and Voinovich that the EPA was considering the solid-waste exemption and assured that it would "incorporate suggested changes where appropriate."

Three weeks later, EPA officials signed off on the exemption, according to the trade group's timeline.

Jim O'Leary, the EPA official who wrote the original language that was rewritten, said there was no political interference from Whitman's office. "That's nonsense," O'Leary said. "We called it the way we saw it. No one interfered."

A Rule That Isn't 'Onerous'

On Aug. 2, EPA's Kathy Blanton, who replaced O'Leary, e-mailed to industry attorney William M. Guerry Jr. the "language we have put together to address the laundries' concerns," according to a copy of the e-mail obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Guerry wrote back on Aug. 15 with proposed changes, documents show. Among them was deletion of a phrase in the preamble stating that shop towels "remain regulated." Instead, the lobbyist wanted the words "regulatory status . . . remains unchanged."

Guerry, in an interview, said the change was important to make sure that states did not misread the rule as a significant change in policy. Otherwise there would have been "chaos" and a "train wreck," he said. EPA officials shared the language with him, he said, because "they recognized that we had the expertise they needed."

Blanton said she sent Guerry just part of the regulatory language. "I can see how, from the outside, that it would look like colluding or something. [But] these were the people who were going to be most affected by the rule and they were the ones with the expertise." She said at this point the EPA had already had sufficient input from the paper towel people and others affected by the rule.

Opponents, including the union, environmentalists and paper towel makers, say they were not given an advance look at the language. Ralph Solarski, a Kimberly-Clark Corp. executive who chairs a task force of paper towel makers, said his group would have been glad to have one.

"Kathy Blanton and Bob Dellinger at EPA were asked on multiple occasions for advance copies and we were consistently denied," Solarski wrote in an e-mail to The Post.

EPA officials attended two industry meetings to discuss the proposed rule, one in Baltimore on Aug. 20 and one in Old Town Alexandria on Sept. 12. On Aug. 30, Farmer donated $250,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

EPA's Office of Solid Waste Director Dellinger spoke at the Alexandria meeting. His comments later appeared in the trade group's magazine: "EPA doesn't want to make this onerous."

Instead of screw-on, sealed containers for transporting contaminated woven towels from factories to laundries, which were proposed in 2000, Dellinger said, a piece of plywood over a barrel would meet the new EPA proposed standard.

Also, the EPA opted not to require the towels to be wrung out. "The point of that is not to make it harder to do than what you would do through your normal course of business," Dellinger said.

However, he told the group, the paper towel industry would have to wring out its towels to make sure they had no more than five grams of solvent on them before being dumped.

The new proposed rule was published in the Federal Register on Nov. 20, 2003.

Paper industry officials say that the EPA is ignoring its own studies showing that laundries create 30 percent more waste than paper towels in the form of sludge -- lint, debris, toxics and other substances extracted from laundry wastewater -- sent to municipal landfills.

"This is a case study," Solarski said, "for how an industry has used the regulatory process to gain a market advantage."

 

[shereads]

from sierra club:

Every year for the past 30 years, our nation's waters were cleaner than the year before. But in 2003 that progress stopped. For the past 23 years, we have made steady progress cleaning up toxic dump sites. Now that has stopped too. And in the last three years, the Bush administration has "unprotected" wild lands the size of Texas and Oklahoma combined -- opening them up to drilling, mining and commercial logging.

 

[shereads]

Just to play devils advocate on this one:

Iraq: We stopped 30 years of torture, rape, murder. Gassing of entire villages. Doesn't that compare to stopping genocide in Bosnia?

Not unless we can leave without there being a bloodbath. Clinton would have had a plan, for one thing, as he did in Bosnia. He would have gathered an international coalition, as he did in Bosnia, so that there wouldn't be an American "occupying army" to make people think we were there to take over.

If you recall, the gassing of the Kurds was in response to open rebellion encouraged by Bush I who promised to support them. Saving people and then leaving them worse off runs in the family.

Afghanistan: We stopped a lot of terrorist training. Scattered AQ, and brought down the Taliban. Many people were on the verge of starvation in Afghanistan as well.

Read the news about Afghanistan lately? Things aren't that great. Taliban is on the upsurge in some parts of the country, Red Cross says we've been abusing prisoners in Afghanistan from the beginning and once again their reports have been ignored, women's rights are still pretty much zero (they did get to take off the Bhurkas long enough for a few photo ops while we were still there to protect them, but that didn't last.)

I don't like the way Iraq is heading. We went in strong, but now it's becoming too political. The military is being hindered from doing the job they were sent to do. Bosnia and Afghan turned out reasonably well. Two brutal governments were removed and the countries are rebuilding and moving forward with a Democratic government.

We went into Iraq without any plan of action other than "winning." It's been the most incompetent circle-jerk of a war effort by any country in my memory, with the exception of our long nightmare in Vietnam.

One of the biggest differences between Clinton and this lot is that he actually knew some history of these countries, some respect for the fact that not everyone is waiting to have a U.S.-style government. He would have known that Iraq is not one country, but a lot of groups who dispise each other.

He would have had a plan.

No good will come out of this except the symbolic one of Saddam having been removed. Replacing a brutal dictator with a bloody, open-ended war is not doing anyone a favor.

The reason we turned-tail in Somalia is that Bush I went in without a plan, and left the next administration to clean up his mess.

 

[shereads]

Statement of Mr. John Kerry

...I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one member of the group of 1,000 which is a small representation of a very much larger group of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to sit at this table they would be here and have the same kind of testimony....

A couple weeks ago, Sen. John Kerry was dragged across the patriotic coals for asserting that he and his fellow soldiers might have "committed atrocities" in Vietnam.

Odd. I don't see might anywhere in that statement. It doesn't seem to me that he left any room whatsoever for doubt. A very fine commentator you are quoteing here, but a question. If they actually read that statement then A. They can't read and understand english or B. they have an agenda of their own in which softening what Kerry said is important to them. Option C would be that this writer didn't even bother to read the statement at all.

Whichever you choose A., B. or C. it does beg the question of why I should give the rest of the article any consideration at all for being accurate and unbiased.

-Colly

Take out the word "might," then. John Kerry was dragged across the patriotic coals for asserting that he and his fellow soldiers committed atrocities in Vietnam.

It was true. They did. Everybody who was alive during Vietnam and old enough to be aware of the war, knows that there were atrocities. It's true whether you want it to be true or not.

Shoot the messenger.

 

[amicus]

Shereads...ignores..as usual...that the Allies in WW2...removed Hitler and the Nazi's.....In Japan removed Hirohito and the Imperial Japanese...In Korea and Vietnam...stopped the onslaught of world communism...some folks just never get it.

There are forces in the world, forces that wish to impose dictatorial rule over others. There are other forces in the world that wish to defend the rights of those who seek self government.

But then, again, I don't expect you to acknowledge that either.

amicus..

 

[shereads]

Shereads...ignores..as usual...that the Allies in WW2...removed Hitler and the Nazi's.....In Japan removed Hirohito and the Imperial Japanese...In Korea and Vietnam...stopped the onslaught of world communism...some folks just never get it.

There are forces in the world, forces that wish to impose dictatorial rule over others. There are other forces in the world that wish to defend the rights of those who seek self government.

But then, again, I don't expect you to acknowledge that either.

amicus..

Did we stop communism in Vietnam? Really?

Amicus, I have nothing but respect for our war effort during WWII and have never indicated otherwise. Where do you get this stuff?

One of the forces in the world who sometimes enforces dictatorial rule has been the United States. Remember the Shah of Iran? General Pinochet? Good friends of ours, as was Saddam Hussein until the 1990s when he was no longer a convenience for us.

You're awfully choosy about which parts of history you acknowledge. I'm not. I'm proud of what we did in WWII. It doesn't blind me to our wrongs.

 

[shereads]

Shereads:

You asked me at the beginning of this thread if I had ever voted for a Democrat. Now I ask you the same question. Have you ever voted for a Republican?

Oh, I almost forgot. The first time I voted, it was for Nixon. The uber-Republican.
I voted for him because my dad, my entire community and all of my relatives were Republicans and I didn't read the newspaper much, so I only knew what I was told.

I learned a hard lesson.

 

[shereads]

Amicus, are you aware that we armed and trained the Taliban when the Soviets were in Afghanistan? Do you know that we were in bed with Saddam Hussein for years?

We have nothing against dictatorships when they are the enemies of our enemies.

 

[KarenAM]

There are forces in the world, forces that wish to impose dictatorial rule over others. There are other forces in the world that wish to defend the rights of those who seek self government.

Huh?

 

[Xelebes]

Did we stop communism in Vietnam? Really?

Amicus, I have nothing but respect for our war effort during WWII and have never indicated otherwise. Where do you get this stuff?

One of the forces in the world who sometimes enforces dictatorial rule has been the United States. Remember the Shah of Iran? General Pinochet? Good friends of ours, as was Saddam Hussein until the 1990s when he was no longer a convenience for us.

You're awfully choosy about which parts of history you acknowledge. I'm not. I'm proud of what we did in WWII. It doesn't blind me to our wrongs.

Even though the Americans supplied the German Army with their arms in the timespan of 1930 to 1940.

 

[shereads]

You don't see, because you don't want to see. $40 million wasted on an investigation is cause for you to cry foul. The fact that Mr. Clinton could have forestalled such an expenditure if he had simply told the truth about his dealings at white water and about his sexual misconduct, rather than stonewalling, lying and using every concievable dodge to keep the truth from coming out, never impresses itself upon you.

Colly, there was nothing to tell on Whitewater so what should he have told? You keep saying the Clintons "appeared to be hiding something," but you haven't said what they were hiding that it was important to know. Whitewater kept being made an issue by Republicans who hated Hillary and wanted to embarrass her, so Clinton - against the advice of his aides who knew the Repubs were out to get him - asked the Justice Dept. to appoint a special investigator to clear the air. What should he have told Starr at the beginning to save us the 6 years and $40 million? "We aren't guilty of any criminal activity regarding Whitewater, so don't bother." Or, "If you stick around long enough, you can catch me having sex with a woman who's not my wife."

It has to be one of those two, because otherwise there was nothing for Starr to turn up. Which is it? What did we need to know that Bill didn't tell us, that justified that witch hunt?

If the all imporant truth were so important to you, then you , like so many others would have wanted Bill Clinton to stand up and tell the truth.

You still haven't explained what he was hiding that we needed to know. If it wasn't the criminal activity that Republicans had hoped to find but didn't, then what was it? I never said, "he had the right to lie under oath." I said that your side had no right to ask the question. You didn't have that right. He should have said, "yes, I banged her." But he was embarrassed, like anybody would have been, and angry, too, as he should have been. It was none of your business.

Btw, I don't care if GWB dresses up in his mother's underwear and dances the tarantella in the White House Rose Garden. There are so many things I don't want to know about his sex life, I couldn't begin to list them. Thank God it's none of my business.

But lie to me about how you're conducting foreign policy and governing the country, and you ought to be held accountable.

Those are things we have a right to know about.

 

[shereads]

deleted.

Hi Colly! How's it going?

 

[KenJames]

Shereads...ignores..as usual...that the Allies in WW2...removed Hitler and the Nazi's.....In Japan removed Hirohito and the Imperial Japanese...In Korea and Vietnam...stopped the onslaught of world communism...some folks just never get it.

There are forces in the world, forces that wish to impose dictatorial rule over others. There are other forces in the world that wish to defend the rights of those who seek self government.

But then, again, I don't expect you to acknowledge that either.

amicus..

amicus, haven't heard from you in a while. Remember that bet I proposed, about McCain, the Democrats' cats-paw. You want to back up your convictions with some cash? I'll negotiate down from the $1000 if that's too steep for you. Please PM me to work out the details.

 

[Ms_Kat]

Colly,

I'm addressing this to you because your words moved me. I can feel the anguish and heartache in them.

My grandfather was a Japanese POW, captured at Corrigedor. To my knowledge, he only spoke about his war experiences three times in his life, and he asked me to leave the room each time. "This is the kind of things that women and children don't need to hear," he told me. I don't really remember what started the first two conversations, but the last time was when he talked my brother out of joining the Marines. My brother told me that he was sworn to secrecy about their discussion. Like you, I still have a place of honor for his picture, since that is all I have left of him. He was a grand old man, as soft and gentle as only someone with great strength can be. I miss him all the time.

My uncle married a woman from Germany whose father had been a Nazi. She was ashamed of this fact for many years and refused to even speak his name. When my grandpa found out about it, he drove forty miles to visit her and talk to her about what the war meant. He told her how the dictators of Germany and Italy would murder anyone who didn't go along. My aunt is still ashamed of what the Nazi's did, but she was able to get past the biggest part of her hatred for what his job was (he was a clerk, by the way, in Munich, sending out paychecks to soldiers). This is the kind of man my grandpa was - he couldn't stand the idea of someone suffering needlessly.

For reasons I won't go into, I went through a period in my life where I grew very prejudiced against Phillipeanos. It was stupid and small-minded of me, but I hated everyone from the P.I. for no other reason that where they came from. After my grandpa died, I was talking to one of his friends about this. One of the things I hated them for is letting the Japanese set up these death camps in their midst. This man didn't say anything, but he went and got a book off his shelf and gave it to me. "When you've read this, come back and talk to me about what you've told me."

The book was written by a survivor of the Japanese POW camps. I found out that a lot of Phillipeanos had resisted the Japanese. Many of them were tortured and died for it. I realized that my hatred all these years had been a hollow thing, eating me up. I hid myself in my closet and prayed, begging forgiveness.

When I went back to my father's friend, he showed me a picture of my grandfather with his first love, a woman he met in the P.I. before my grandmother. I was so ashamed of myself. In his name, I had hated a whole class of people that he had accepted and loved.

This is why I so strongly argue for what I believe is the best in this country. My grandpa was a warrior and I have to live up to his name. I have to look myself in the mirror and say, "I, too, have fought a good fight."

I'm not sure why I'm sitting here and crying and telling everyone all this, except to say that I think I understand the feeling that you're talking about. It's the feeling of outrage for someone hurting the people you love most. It's a feeling that is multiplied infinite numbers of times because the one you love actually sacrificed himself so that those same people could hurt him without paying that price.

You are right. No logic or words of persuasion can make that pain go away. It cuts so deep into your soul that it defies definition.

I'm a bit too young to remember Viet Nam, but I do have friends who saw their older brothers go away and not come back. I, too, would hate anyone who spit on the soldiers. But I also hate what they had to do and I hate the people that sent them over there to do it because of a blind faith in some ideology that said any Communist government was bad and our enemy.

I feel the same outrage when I see these photos of men and women disgracing their uniform by torturing and humiliating helpless captives. I feel it again when I hear endless backpedaling by an Administration who can'd admit they've made a single mistake. I feel it when I look at my forbidden picture of flag-draped coffins coming home, knowing those men are not getting the heroes welcome they deserve. I feel it when I gather with my Church group and pray for the soldiers over there now. I feel it when I hear our President dodge questions over why he didn't fulfil his service and our Vice-President claims he had other things to do. Yes, I feel it when I hear about Kerry throwing away his medals. At least, he earned them. I feel an incredible shame for my government when the leaders question if someone was injured enough for a purple heart.

I'm sorry I'm rattling on. I just saw that you'd been singled out somewhat and I wanted you to know that I support you and I think I understand your feelings.

I always sign my posts the same way I've signed everything I've ever written. This time, I really wish I could reach out and take you in my arms and love away all the hurt you are carrying inside you.

Hugs,




Kat

 

[KenJames]

Even though the Americans supplied the German Army with their arms in the timespan of 1930 to 1940.

Hey, that was capitalism. You gotta make a few billion bucks where you find them. You got a problem with that, you're un-American!

 

[Xelebes]

Hey, that was capitalism. You gotta make a few billion bucks where you find them. You got a problem with that, you're un-American!

Why yes, yes I am.

 

[KenJames]

Why yes, yes I am.

Good! It always amazes me how American business can act against our national interest when it's profitable.