McSame - War Hero or Collaborator?

[Plane]

<<All of these anecdotes [about GIs hating USAF and Navy pilots and shooting at their planes] are low in quality . . . >>

I agree with you completely.  They don't even belong in the article.  Point taken, and in future MoveOn.org material, I don't think they'll even be mentioned.  Thank you.

<< . . . and unecessacery for any purpose but a smear.>>

There I have to disagree.  I believe they were inserted by the author to build his own credibility, show him as really knowledgeable about war, knowing stuff that nobody else does, etc.

No , all of the anecdotes in the article are alike in quality , as a smear campaign they serve as justifacation for hate in those so predisposed , but the mildest scepticism turns the whole article around .

The Swift boat experience seems to show that when true accusations are mixed with exgerated ones and false ones , the false and exaggerated accusations serve mostly to reduce the credibility of the agent offering the arguments. The Swift Boat complaints included some real and some imagined complaints , but the real damage done was due to Kerry attempting to assume the heros mantle of PT109 when so many of his comrades had a negative remembrance of him.

[Plane]

"It would be na?ve for Republicans to sit back and assume that the Democrats have tipped their entire hand this early in the game. They undoubtedly have a few more zingers in their bag of tricks, and the day-to-day grind of a presidential election will provide ample fodder for both sides down the stretch. The mainstream press can also be depended upon for an October surprise designed to damage the Republican candiate, so ...."

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/GuyBenson/2008/03/30/teflon_john_democrat_attacks_fall_short

[Michael Tee]

<<No , all of the anecdotes in the article are alike in quality , as a smear campaign they serve as justifacation for hate in those so predisposed , but the mildest scepticism turns the whole article around .>>

That article just recapitulates from other sources the basic elements of the story.  None of the basic elements depends on that article.  There's nothing original in it.  Basically, what you are saying is that if a story is out there based on facts that are readily available to anyone, if a reporter collects the facts, re-tells them and throws in an exaggeration of his own, then all the facts are thereby invalidated?  That is ludicrous.  Dream on, my friend, dream on.

Regardless of what embellishments the author of that article chose to throw into the mix, the facts remain that McSame DID broadcast for the Vietnamese, DID confess that he was a war criminal, DID receive favoured treatment for his injuries and probably or may have provided technical information that aided the Vietnamese to shoot down 60 U.S. planes.

I find it very hard to believe that there are no tapes or transcripts of McSame's propaganda broadcasts for the Vietnamese (the currency with which he purchased his favoured treatment) and even harder to believe that these tapes or transcripts won't surface in the course of the campaign.

<<The Swift boat experience seems to show that when true accusations are mixed with exgerated ones and false ones , the false and exaggerated accusations serve mostly to reduce the credibility of the agent offering the arguments. >>

Ha ha ha ha.  The Swift Boat experience shows that if you make up a horrendous bunch of God-awful lies about a man's military record, enough fools will be confused enough by them that the guy will lose enough votes to make all the difference in a Federal election.

<<The Swift Boat complaints included some real and some imagined complaints , but the real damage done was due to Kerry attempting to assume the heros mantle of PT109 when so many of his comrades had a negative remembrance of him.>>

My recollection was that none of the slurs or only one of them came from anyone who actually served in his crew, the rest were fabricated by a bunch of liars and war criminals who hated Kerry for denouncing their criminal activity.  But they worked regardless of source.

[Plane]

<<No , all of the anecdotes in the article are alike in quality , as a smear campaign they serve as justifacation for hate in those so predisposed , but the mildest scepticism turns the whole article around .>>

That article just recapitulates from other sources the basic elements of the story.  None of the basic elements depends on that article.  There's nothing original in it.  Basically, what you are saying is that if a story is out there based on facts that are readily available to anyone, if a reporter collects the facts, re-tells them and throws in an exaggeration of his own, then all the facts are thereby invalidated?  That is ludicrous.  Dream on, my friend, dream on.

No I am saying that all of the "facts " in that article were embellished or pared of context.

Regardless of what embellishments the author of that article chose to throw into the mix, the facts remain that McSame DID broadcast for the Vietnamese, DID confess that he was a war criminal, DID receive favoured treatment for his injuries and probably or may have provided technical information that aided the Vietnamese to shoot down 60 U.S. planes.

and some people say that torture doesn't work , or even that truth isn't what you get under that sort of duress

I find it very hard to believe that there are no tapes or transcripts of McSame's propaganda broadcasts for the Vietnamese (the currency with which he purchased his favoured treatment) and even harder to believe that these tapes or transcripts won't surface in the course of the campaign.

Lets hope that they do , to the shame of the party introduceing them

<<The Swift boat experience seems to show that when true accusations are mixed with exgerated ones and false ones , the false and exaggerated accusations serve mostly to reduce the credibility of the agent offering the arguments. >>

Ha ha ha ha.  The Swift Boat experience shows that if you make up a horrendous bunch of God-awful lies about a man's military record, enough fools will be confused enough by them that the guy will lose enough votes to make all the difference in a Federal election.

So ...basically, what you are saying is that if a story is out there based on facts that are readily available to anyone, if a reporter collects the facts, re-tells them and throws in an exaggeration of his own, then all the facts are thereby invalidated?  That is ludicrous.  Dream on, my friend, dream on.

<<The Swift Boat complaints included some real and some imagined complaints , but the real damage done was due to Kerry attempting to assume the heros mantle of PT109 when so many of his comrades had a negative remembrance of him.>>

My recollection was that none of the slurs or only one of them came from anyone who actually served in his crew, the rest were fabricated by a bunch of liars and war criminals who hated Kerry for denouncing their criminal activity.  But they worked regardless of source.

You missed the point absolutely , takeing on the mantle of PT 109 would have ensured John Fitzgerald Kerry the Whitehouse if he had his brothers in arms on his side , he stepped to the podium and saluted the nation and said "reporting for duty".

This is the Winter soldier claiming the heros mantle for his membership in an organisation he had already denounced as inhumane and un-heroic , this was 90% self inflicted damage.
Wasn't he forced to disparage the credibility of Swift Boat Veterans while his claim to heroism depended on his being a  Swift Boat Veteran?

[Michael Tee]

<<This is the Winter soldier claiming the heros mantle for his membership in an organisation he had already denounced as inhumane and un-heroic , this was 90% self inflicted damage.
Wasn't he forced to disparage the credibility of Swift Boat Veterans while his claim to heroism depended on his being a  Swift Boat Veteran?>>

I think Kerry's point was that he had served nobly in a tainted and dirty cause which others had further disgraced.  The Swift Boat group attacking Kerry should have been attacked themselves as fascist war criminals, which Kerry couldn't convincingly do because he himself is a fascist war criminal.  You're still missing the basic point - - the mud they threw at Kerry was not that he was a fascist war criminal, it was that he was a fake hero who hadn't put his life at risk.  It was like attacking Adolf Hitler not for all the evil shit he did, but because he had won his Iron Cross by fraud.  That would not only be an audacious move (because to attack a "war hero" is to attack a sacred cow) but it would actually be itself fraudulent. The lesson of the Swift Boats is that thrown mud sticks, even when it is a lie.  It costs the victim lots of votes.  And that as audacious and seemingly desperate though the move may be, it actually does not cost the mud-thrower anything, even though the accusations are all false. 

Of course in McSame's case, the tactic will work even better because the charges are probably all true.

[Plane]

<<This is the Winter soldier claiming the heros mantle for his membership in an organisation he had already denounced as inhumane and un-heroic , this was 90% self inflicted damage.
Wasn't he forced to disparage the credibility of Swift Boat Veterans while his claim to heroism depended on his being a  Swift Boat Veteran?>>

I think Kerry's point was that he had served nobly in a tainted and dirty cause which others had further disgraced.  The Swift Boat group attacking Kerry should have been attacked themselves as fascist war criminals, which Kerry couldn't convincingly do because he himself is a fascist war criminal.  You're still missing the basic point - - the mud they threw at Kerry was not that he was a fascist war criminal, it was that he was a fake hero who hadn't put his life at risk.  It was like attacking Adolf Hitler not for all the evil shit he did, but because he had won his Iron Cross by fraud.  That would not only be an audacious move (because to attack a "war hero" is to attack a sacred cow) but it would actually be itself fraudulent. The lesson of the Swift Boats is that thrown mud sticks, even when it is a lie.  It costs the victim lots of votes.  And that as audacious and seemingly desperate though the move may be, it actually does not cost the mud-thrower anything, even though the accusations are all false. 

Of course in McSame's case, the tactic will work even better because the charges are probably all true.

Man ,you are working hard on this.

  John Kerry both denounces his unit and himself as being as cruel as Gingus Kahn, then runs for President on the strength of his membership in that organisation defineing his Heroism.

   The Cognitive dissonance that guy must have to put up with is astounding , the Swift Boat Veteran who said the worst things about Military service in the Swift Boats was John  Kerry .

As his own worst accuser , he should not have been surprised at his comrades also accuseing him of various things . Some of the accusations more credible than others , but in what sort of way are we supposed to discount the accusations he made on himself?

[Plane]

Of course in McSame's case, the tactic will work even better because the charges are probably all true.

I did not spot an effective accusation , the few that might be true don't make him look bad at all .

JF Kerry enraged his comrades , I don't think that John McCain has this problem.

[Plane]

http://www.reason.com/blog/archive/2008-06-08.html

What McCain Thought Upon Re-Entry
Posted on June 15, 2008, 12:34pm | Matt Welch

In 1973, after returning from five and a half years of captivity in Vietnam, John McCain spent nine months at the National War College, engaging in what he has described as "a private tutorial on the war, choosing all the texts myself, in the hope that I might better understand how we came to be involved in the war and why, after paying such a terrible cost, we lost." Thinking that this could be a Rosetta Stone for McCain's foreign policy evolution, and for his potentially conflicting feelings about his own arduous service in Southeast Asia, I sought his thesis paper via Freedom of Information Act. The results (which came too late for my book, though I write about it in the forthcoming paperback) were different than advertised: It was basically a meditation not on How We Got Involved in Vietnam, but rather on the practical efficacy of the military's code of conduct governing prisoners of war. I wrote about the paper briefly for reason here, and more expansively for the L.A. Times here.

The New York Times asked me for a copy of the paper a while back, and I handed it over. You can read the Gray Lady's write-up here.

Another interesting artifact of his thinking at the time can be found in this 12,000-word U.S. News & World Report essay he wrote in May 1973.



http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2008/01/28/john-mccain-prisoner-of-war-a-first-person-account.html



John McCain spent 5? years in captivity as a POW in North Vietnam. His first-person account of that harrowing ordeal was published in U.S. News in May 1973. Shot down in his Skyhawk dive bomber on Oct. 26, 1967, Navy flier McCain was taken prisoner with fractures in his right leg and both arms. He received minimal care and was kept in wretched conditions that he describes vividly in the U.S. News special report:


Lt. Cmdr. John S. McCain III after his release from captivity in Vietnam.
(Thomas J. O'Halloran for USN&WR/Courtesy Library of Congress)

This story originally appeared in the May 14, 1973, issue of U.S.News & World Report. It was posted online on January 28, 2008.

Of the many personal accounts coming to light about the almost unbelievably cruel treatment accorded American prisoners of war in Vietnam, none is more dramatic than that of Lieut. Commander John S. McCain III?Navy flier, son of the admiral who commanded the war in the Pacific, and a prisoner who came in "for special attention" during 5? years of captivity in North Vietnam.

Now that all acknowledged prisoners are back and a self-imposed seal of silence is off, Commander McCain is free to answer the questions many Americans have asked:

What was it really like? How prolonged were the tortures ..."

[Xavier_Onassis]

Now that all acknowledged prisoners are back and a self-imposed seal of silence is off, Commander McCain is free to answer the questions many Americans have asked:

What was it really like? How prolonged were the tortures ..."

================================================
I am guessing that this is unlikely to come out. It makes McCain look like a helpless victim, which is not the sort of image conducive to what most people expect in a leader. It might be more useful if he were running for Pope or some other job in the hierarchy of the Holy Mother Church...

Martyrdom is valued more in some subcultures than others.

[Michael Tee]

<<Martyrdom is valued more in some subcultures than others.>>

This jerk-off wouldn't even make it as Pope - - he was never tortured and he's far from infallible.

[Michael Tee]

Sorry, plane, looks like I missed some good points in the last couple of posts, but I've got to head out now and won't be back till the end of the day.  I've been skimming through the last half-dozen posts and basically just responding to anything that requires only a one-liner.

[sirs]

<<Martyrdom is valued more in some subcultures than others.>>

This jerk-off wouldn't even make it as Pope - - he was never tortured and he's far from infallible.

Now McCain wasn't "tortured"??  Just accidentally broke all those bones, I see.  Never raised his hand in school, which is why he can't raise his shoulders over his head now, right?       

[Xavier_Onassis]

This jerk-off wouldn't even make it as Pope - - he was never tortured and he's far from infallible.

I don;t think McCain will ever make Pope. One can't really start one's career in the RC Church at the age of 70.
Maybe be was tortured, perhaps he wasn't. What is important is how he might run the US if elected or selected president. Having been tortured is not something likely to garner votes one way or the other, though saying one was tortured when one was not might make a difference to some.

The pope is not chosen for his pre-existing infallibility. In the 1870's it was decided that God intended that the Church, as God's chosen spiritual guide, always wanted there to be someone who was infallible in matters of Church  doctrine. So if the Pope says that the communion wine and bread changes to actual the actual human flesh and blood of Jesus, then it is so, and believing this and decisions made due to this will rewarded, not punished, by God.

It does not mean that the Pope is incapable of parking violations, unjustly cussing out a valet, or putting his drawers or hat on backwards, since these are not doctrinal matters .

As for John McCain, I have not read where anyone, including McCain himself, believes him to be infallible.

[Plane]

Sorry, plane, looks like I missed some good points in the last couple of posts, but I've got to head out now and won't be back till the end of the day.  I've been skimming through the last half-dozen posts and basically just responding to anything that requires only a one-liner.

Don't be stealing my style.

[Michael Tee]

<<Don't be stealing my style.>>

I DIDN'T!!  I spelled everything right, didn't I?