Dennis updated it to this:

Being on the Left means never having to say you’re sorry.

Oh my goodness, Southpaw just attempted to insult me by implying that I’m homosexual.

I’m just crushed.

Heavens.

While it would be tempting to launch your hanging curveball of a clumsy and witless analogy into the heavens, your second post makes clear that in answering you with the seriousness this subject requires I would credit you with basic civility you no longer deserve. So please: go fuck YOURself, you taint-sniffing jizz sipper.

“It is the policy of the United States Navy to neither confirm nor deny the presence or absence of nuclear weapons on this ship or any other ship or station under its command” (or something like that – its been 36 yrs since I learned it).

That said, I remember no specific weapons handling in Subic Bay prior to joining the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club in 1969 (and you tended to remember when nucs were handled due to all of the extra firearms posted). Same on leaving WestPac.

I’m not saying (or denying) the presence of nucs on ships off of the coast of ‘Nam at that time, but I believe that the ships there were prepared in case the war suddenly took a turn for the worst and a major world power decided to assist North Viet Nam directly.

Mr Moore’s time there may have been different from mine and the policy may have been different, too.

Worked good, too.

I recognize that logic isn’t your strongest suit, but consider: back in the late 60s and early 70s, there was a group called the Weather Underground, which was a splinter group from the Students for Democratic Action, who were very active in the antiwar movement.

The Weathermen burned an ROTC building, tried to blow up another one, came to Chicago for the “Days of Rage”, in which a large armed mob fought the Chicago police and in which hundreds of people were injured, and blew up a townhouse in Manhattan, killing several people. (This is only a selection of things, by the way; since I was in ROTC in 1970, I felt the attacks on ROTC buildings rather personally.)

Not too long after that, a number of Democratic congressmen joined a large demonstration in which SDS members were instrumental.

Here’s the question: was everyone in SDS, at the various demonstrations, and in the leadership of the Democratic Party responsible for the arsons, assaults, and murders? Are they all implicated, since a number of members of the Weathermen never reported these people, and in fact helped them stay in hiding for years, even decades?

Choose carefully: if you say yes, then Teddy Kennedy and John Kerry are responsible for the men Dohrn’s group killed; if not, then you are being irresponsible to assert that atrocities in Viet Nam were somehow authorized or considered “right”.

When I google the “Tiger Force” I see a lot of URLS like CommonDreams, Zmag, AntiWar.

As to the Pulitzer, they haven’t revoked the one they gave Walter Duranty for covering up the Soviet’s atrocities, so I will take that with a grain of LLL salt.

I am not being completely dismissive, but I have just finished chasing down a lot of info on the Winter Soldier Investigation, and I’m not in the mood for a new paper chase until this one is accounted for. I acknowlege that atrocities and crimes occur in war and Americans are not immune. But we not only try harder to fight cleanly, we are miles ahead of others in admitting and rectifying our mistakes.

So deal with the slander of WSI and Kerry’s complicity before you bring up another set of charges. To me Tiger Force is not relevant to what Lane, Fonda, and Kerry did.

Seting the stage for slander

This review of ‘Conversations with Americans’ would seem to be a genesis of the WSI. Check out the photo of Mark Lane with Jane Fonda in 1970.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/smearing.htm

Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Neil Sheehan reported on the Vietnam War for the New York Times. Although he became strongly opposed to the war, he condemned Lane’s book in the following review from the New York Times Book Review, December 27, 1970.

A key exchange between Sheehan and Lane shows the thinking of the left:

Mr. Lane did not bother to cross-check any of the stories his interviewers told him with Army or Marine Corps records. I asked him why in a telephone conversation.

“Because I believe the most unreliable source regarding the verification of atrocities is the Defense Department,” he said.

But what about simple and obvious facts like those in the cases of Onan and Schneider which might throw light on the credibility of his witnesses? I asked.

“It’s not relevant,” he said.

On to 1971 and connecting Jane Fonda to John Kerry

Re: Snopes says photo of Kerry at rally with Fonda is true

http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/kerry.asp

The New York Times covered the Valley Forge in 1970:

Among the speakers at the rally were Representative Allard K. Lowenstein, Democrat of Nassau County; Donald Sutherland, the actor; Jane Fonda, the actress; Mark Lane, the civil rights and antiwar lawyer and Charles Bevel, a leader of a black group from Baltimore, which is marching to the United Nations to protest alleged American genocide in South Vietnam.

Jane Fonda:

We were at a rally for veterans at the same time. I spoke, Donald Sutherland spoke, John Kerry spoke at the end.

Summary

I think the discussion of what happened in 1971 is pertinent, because if you look closely, many of the same players/idealogies that wanted us out of Vietnam, want us out of Iraq.

Its not just the slander of his band of brothers, its the willingness of the VVAW and others to use any device, any slander to acheive their goal, ie., the Winter Soldier ‘Investigation’.

I want to develop this more, because the stakes are huge. If America backs down again because of self-doubt, egged on by activists with questionable association and dubious honesty, the ‘dialogue’ we are having with Islamofacism could be set back 50 years.

Some more material (proof is in the eye of the beholder of course) from a Marine who served in Vietnam 68-69

In fact, the entire Winter Soldiers Investigation was a lie. It was inspired by Mark Lane’s 1970 book entitled Conversations with Americans, which claimed to recount atrocity stories by Vietnam veterans. This book was panned by James Reston Jr. and Neil Sheehan, not exactly known as supporters of the Vietnam War. Sheehan in particular demonstrated that many of Lane’s “eye witnesses” either had never served in Vietnam or had not done so in the capacity they claimed.

http://www.nationalreview.com/owens/owens200401270825.asp

Connect the dots, Mark Lane, professional muck-racker, Jane Fonda, unprincipled activist, John Kerry (???), VVAW visits to Paris and meetings with NV and VC representatives such as Madam Binh

http://www.vvaw.org/veteran/article/?id=23

Some of you may remember Mme. Binh as the head of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (PRG) delegation at the Paris Peace Talks. After 1975 she was the minister of education and was a deputy of the National Assembly for four terms. She was elected vice president in 1992 and again in 1997.

http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/staticpages/index.php?page=20040609201851205

In March, Jane Fonda met with Madame Binh, lead negotiator of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (PRG) the political arm of the Vietcong. Fonda then flew to London, where she charged American troops with “applying electrodes to prisoners’ genitals, mass rapes, slicing off of body parts, scalping, skinning alive, and leaving ‘heat tablets’ around which burned the insides of children who ate them.”

John Kerry, interestingly enough, had already met with Madame Binh and Hanoi?s representatives in Paris the previous spring, before he joined the VVAW, while he was still a little-known Naval Reserve officer and fledgling politician.

All of this is enough to make me very suspicious of Kerry to say the least.

But then, Kerry wasn’t saying “atrocities happened and must be punished”. He was saying “atrocities happened and were the policy of the United States, up and down the chain of command.”

With all due respect, when such crimes go unpunished and unreported to the public, even though they are known and covered up at the highest levels, then that tells us quite a bit about whether people believed such actions “were all right” or not. In the two examples I’ve cited (My Lai, Tiger Force) there was an attempted cover up.

In the case of the Tiger Force atrocities, commanders ignored soldierís complaints for over 4 years. Army investigators learned about them in February 1971 and briefed the White House on progress regularly for two years, but upon conclusion in 1975 not one charge was filed. The Toledo Blade reported that investigators encouraged suspects to remain silent and other deviations from procedures.

So, again, these facts should be considered alongside the testimony of the Marine lawyer I commented on in my first post. What I fear is happening with the Swift Vet / Kerry controversy is that the chance to legitimately question bogus findings from the Winter Soldier hearings is being abused to revise history and whitewash actual crimes that ought not be forgotten.

1. The Blogosphere and Talk Radio have forced the MSM to report (even if unfairly) on the story told by the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth.

2. The flood of contributions to the SBVT’s long ago (10 days?) passed and now dwarfs the original $200,000 provided by Texan Bob Perry.

3. The general consensus is that Vietnam veterans are reluctant to even discuss Vietnam, much less stand up, testify and suffer the grim-faced glare of the MSM.

4. Recent polling indicates that the post-Democrat convention status of a slight-Kerry-lead with a pro-Kerry trend has slowly but surely reversed, to a slight-Bush-lead and a pro-Bush trend.

5. Kerry will lose.

Why? This is a Vietnam war that America will win.

When history judges the events of 2004, Vietnam veterans, Vietnam era veterans, all veterans will owe a tear-filled salute and heart-felt thanks to the Swiftboat vets. For a wrong will have been set right. A lie whose most visible perpetrators are John Kerry and Jane Fonda will have been rejected. The venomous, dishonorable, craven and hate-induced vitriolic bile of the America-is-evil crowd will have been discarded. The war was right. The war was good. And had Congress stuck by South Vietnam after Nixon got us out, millions of lives would have been saved. Had LBJ and Nixon let the Generals fight the war, thousands of Vietnam vets would still be with us.

America is not perfect. But as Ben Stein wisely said on the Dennis Miller show the other night – America will not win the war on terror unless we perceive ourselves as good.

We are good.

Thanks, Swiftboat vets.

Daniel J. Steele, CDR, USNR-R

I have no idea, however, what he did to earn the silver star. Unlike Kerry, he has never felt the need to brag on it.