A response to Kerry at the Army-Air Force game

[R.R.]

A West Point Cadet sends this along with the photo below:

I'm a cadet at West Point, and tonight at our game against the Air Force Academy, a big sign emerged, and it was shown to the Corps of Cadets, who cheered wildly, and then shown to the Air Force cadets, who also cheered.



http://www.blackfive.net/photos/uncategorized/picture_092.jpg

[domer]

I understand the sentiment fully, but I think it is untoward for service academies to voice a clear political endorsement of George W. Bush.

[Michael Tee]

Thanks for relaying their opinion.  I can think of a lot of schools whose students can match IQ's and GPA's with those cadets and, to put this as kindly as I can, come out WAAAAAAY, way ahead of them, where the prevailing opinion would be, maybe, a little more nuanced than the cadets'.

Possibly you live in a world where the top students with the highest GPAs go to fight and die in Iraq and the dummies stay home and attend the top universities in the country, in which case the cadets are correct and Kerry is clearly wrong.  But I personally just don't happen to believe that that is the case at all.

[Plane]

Thanks for relaying their opinion.  I can think of a lot of schools whose students can match IQ's and GPA's with those cadets and, to put this as kindly as I can, come out WAAAAAAY, way ahead of them, where the prevailing opinion would be, maybe, a little more nuanced than the cadets'.

Possibly you live in a world where the top students with the highest GPAs go to fight and die in Iraq and the dummies stay home and attend the top universities in the country, in which case the cadets are correct and Kerry is clearly wrong.  But I personally just don't happen to believe that that is the case at all.

So you agree with Kerrys pre-apology statement as misstated?

[Michael Tee]

<<So you agree with Kerrys pre-apology statement as misstated?>>

What statement do you mean?

[Plane]

<<So you agree with Kerrys pre-apology statement as misstated?>>

What statement do you mean?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLuMWiQ6r2o&eurl=

[size=14pt]"You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq," [/size]


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_6UUmuuA58&NR(with more context)




http://www.blogsforbush.com/mt/archives/008191.html


At a news conference Tuesday after the controversy arose, a defiant Kerry explained his mistake but did not offer an apology. Instead, he tried to turn the flap into a denunciation of Bush's Iraq policy.

"If anyone owes our troops in the fields an apology, it is the president," Kerry said....
And by late Wednesday afternoon, Kerry had issued his written statement of regret....
 Kerry did offer praise for American soldiers, saying "this is the finest military ... that we've ever had.".....

Speaking later in the day at a campaign rally in Montana, Vice President Dick Cheney said Kerry had "rightly" apologized, although he quipped that the senator "was for the joke before he was against it."


http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/01/kerry.remarks/index.html

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200610/POL20061031d.html

http://mbanks.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/11/kerrys_botched_.html

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2619383&page=1

[Michael Tee]

<<So you agree with Kerrys pre-apology statement as misstated?>>

The following, I presume, is what plane refers to as "Kerry's pre-apology statement:"

<< . . .  Kerry explained his mistake but did not offer an apology.>>

I don't know what the explanation was, so I can't say whether I agree with it or not as mis-stated.

<< Instead, he tried to turn the flap into a denunciation of Bush's Iraq policy.>>

Nuthin' wrong with that.  Hell, I've been known to denounce the Bushter's Iraqi policy myself.

<<"If anyone owes our troops in the fields an apology, it is the president," Kerry said....>>

He got THAT right.

<<And by late Wednesday afternoon, Kerry had issued his written statement of regret....>>

Well, I'd regret it too if I gratuitously insulted anybody.  I feel sorry for the poor dumb schmucks going off as cannon fodder to be sacrificed in a criminal war for oil.  They're already in as much shit as they possibly could be, and at this point a nice guy would try to make'em feel good, tell them what heroes they are, not how dumb they must be.  What good does it do now?   Sure he regrets it.  Politicians regret insulting anybody.  Those soldiers vote.  Their parents vote. Their wives and kids vote.  What's to be gained by insulting them?  This was beyond stupid.

<<Kerry did offer praise for American soldiers, saying "this is the finest military ... that we've ever had.".....>>

Well that's debatable.  They're basically one step above a gang of mercenaries.  Most of 'em are in it for economic necessity, Green Cards, etc.  They're torturers, rapists and murderers.  The finest military you've ever had was probably your WWII military led by FDR, where rapists and murderers were hanged or shot after court-martial,  torture of prisoners did not exist and atrocities against civilian populations comparable to My Lai or Falluja did not happen.  Examples in leadership have to come from the top.

[Plane]

WE hgave a military with a higher education level and a higher advradge age than any other in any time or place.


I think this is the first war in which we have Grandmothers flying helicopters into combat.


I did not know that rapists were shot after courts martial under FDR. Where could I look into that?

[Michael Tee]

<<I did not know that rapists were shot after courts martial under FDR. Where could I look into that?>>

Rapists were hanged after court martial in the US Army in WWII. 

If you remember the Emmett Till murder in the mid-1950s in Mississippi, where a 14-year-old black boy visiting Mississippi relatives was taken from his bed at midnight by white men,  horribly disfigured and then tortured and beaten to death for calling a white woman "Sugar" while buying stuff in her store, there was a bit of a back-scandal after the first MSM reports claimed that Emmett Till's dad had died in the service of his country in WWII, adding to the enormity of the crime against his son.  Unfortunately, it turned out that he was actually hanged for rape in Italy after a court-martial. 

There were also some magazine stories about three Canadian soldiers in Korea who got sixteen years for raping a Korean woman, where they contrasted the sentence with the far more lenient sentences being handed down at the time against U.S. soldiers for other Korean rapes and I think in that controversy as well, they referred to the earlier hangings of WWII.

[Plane]

<<I did not know that rapists were shot after courts martial under FDR. Where could I look into that?>>

Rapists were hanged after court martial in the US Army in WWII. 

If you remember the Emmett Till murder in the mid-1950s in Mississippi, where a 14-year-old black boy visiting Mississippi relatives was taken from his bed at midnight by white men,  horribly disfigured and then tortured and beaten to death for calling a white woman "Sugar" while buying stuff in her store, there was a bit of a back-scandal after the first MSM reports claimed that Emmett Till's dad had died in the service of his country in WWII, adding to the enormity of the crime against his son.  Unfortunately, it turned out that he was actually hanged for rape in Italy after a court-martial. 

There were also some magazine stories about three Canadian soldiers in Korea who got sixteen years for raping a Korean woman, where they contrasted the sentence with the far more lenient sentences being handed down at the time against U.S. soldiers for other Korean rapes and I think in that controversy as well, they referred to the earlier hangings of WWII.

Does the existance of these few cases indicate a coverup effort of a significant number of other cases?

[Michael Tee]

<<Does the existance of these few cases indicate a coverup effort of a significant number of other cases?>>

I don't think so.  There's probably a source you could go to that lists all of the court martial verdicts for every year.  domer might know it.  Just because you personally don't know of a case doesn't necessarily have to mean that there was a cover-up.

[Plane]

 "Just because you personally don't know of a case doesn't necessarily have to mean that there was a cover-up."


You certainly have me there.