Klingons for Kerry

[Mega Raptor]

I'm probably going to vote for Kerry baring any major, sudden changes simply because I don't agree with the majority of Bush's policies and Kerry's the only one with a realistic chance of ousting him (I don't necessarily agree fully with Kerry, but I agree with him on more things than I do with Bush).

Besides, most of the 'flip-flopping' is blown way out of proportion. Many of the 'opposing' votes were either made years later or were made against policies where he agreed with the initial idea, but that idea didn't pan out properly. After all, who is more foolish? The one who admits it didn't work and tries to change it or the one that steadfastly remains with the initial choice, regardless of whether it was right or not?

[The Giant-Size Man Thing]

Akodo said:

Well Ai, that's generally my opinion on politicians, but when you do vote, you'll have to go with the lesser of two evils, judging from Kerry's inability to stay on topic, I'm going to have to say that Bush is the lesser of two evils.

Kerry may not be able to stay on topic (where this came from I don't know), at least it isn't like Bush pulling a strawman (taking someone's position, twisting it, and then attacking the new position that was created). You can look at any of Bush's attacks on Kerry, and you'll realize that he's taking Kerry's words out of context.

Look, I'm not going to vote for another three years, so I really shouldn't care, but I like to stay on top of the issues so that when I do vote, I can understand what the hell is going on. Oh, and if I did vote, I'd probably go for Kerry because, well, he is the lesser of the two evils. Would you rather someone who would change his mind when he sees something is wrong ("flip-flopper"), or one who would blindly go in one direction ("descisive")?

And Ai, did you just say Nader is sensible? The guy who wanted to put catalytic converters on weed-eaters?

One last thing, Kerry seems to try to use his military record to convince us he would be a better leader. Now, personally I agree with MR that Vietnam was 30 years ago and should have no bearing on today. But the only reason Bush isn't flaunting his Vietnam record around is because he doesn't have one. I bet he'd be trying to same thing if he did go to Vietnam.

[Meyo-san]

Ai, people are going to vote for the one with the most likely ability to win.

I'm probably going to vote for Kerry baring any major, sudden changes simply because I don't agree with the majority of Bush's policies and Kerry's the only one with a realistic chance of ousting him (I don't necessarily agree fully with Kerry, but I agree with him on more things than I do with Bush).

No offense or anything MR, but that is what the majority of America thinks, and it is dangerous. You should put yourself aside when it comes to something that comes with putting in someone who thinks with the nation's best interests, as it stands, there has been more hostages being taken because the terrorists want Kerry to win, because he has been enough of a dumbass to tell them his goals, and plans, that if he wins, they win. I don't agree with Bush most of the time myself, but there's no way in hell that I would vote in someone who would only cause more 9/11s.

For a lighter note, I'll put it as this.

Klingon Emperor: "So tell me, what accomplishments made you a war hero?"
*Kerry squirms*
Kerry: "Um, I jump off a boat, and killed an already wounded opponent."
*Klingon Emperor frowns*
Klingon Emperor: "Enough with the jokes, what made you qualify for being a war hero?"
Kerry: "I testified against my fellow soldiers who were doing atrocities..."
*Kerry is suddenly stabbed by the Klingon Emperor's dagger, and the look on the emperor's face is not too pleased.*
Klingon Emperor: "HOW DARE YOU MAKE US TARNISH OUR HONOR WITH YOUR LIES! NOW THE ENTIRE GALAXY IS LAUGHING AT US!"
*The Klingon Emperor leaves, and the Klingons with the small foreheads walk in*
TOS Klingon: "You're still cool with us."

[The Giant-Size Man Thing]

At least Kerry went to a war. What would the Klingons say about Bush's skipping the pussy nation guard? I guess the Klingons feel that they'd rather have someone who's been in combat then some guy who snorted cocaine instead.

[Triyun]

Actually there are a lot of indication the terrorists want Bush to win a second term because they want war with the US, and want it isolated from the rest of the world....

Kerry in my opinion is the better choice. Even though I'm a liberal I respect some conservative philosophies, specifically the older ones. But I cannot abide people like Tom DeLay, Dick Cheney, and Donal Rumesfeld in charge of the United States government. This administration has an agenda of anti-foreigner policies. The rest of the world really hates this administration. Bush is taking the world to hell literally. I really fear for our situation in the world with 4 more years of Bush. Lack of credibility for dealing with Iran and North Korea because he squandered it, name one relevant allied country that actually has favorable public images of Bush. Blair's government in Great Britain is in real trouble in 2005. There is none. If Iran goes nuclear, there is a real possibility we may have trouble getting a world coalition together and we could be looking at Israel or Iran starting a broad regional war. A war that very well could cost America A WHOLE LOT. North Korea is even worse. And Bush's total lack of responsibility when dealing with Russia and China in their "war on terror" is appalling. This is a guy who has no clue how to tackle islamic extremists or their roots. (just read over this, I'm lobbing North Korea in here because it has to do with our national security but I know it isn't an islamic nation just encase anyone chooses to make a smart ass remark.)

And yes Kerry has been clear on his position on the war. Its been he voted to authorize the use of force so the President had the leverage at the UN. He did the same thing for Bill Clinton, but you did not see him standing on a poduim demanding the 3rd Infantry spearhead from Kuwait to Baghdad did you? No. He's got my vote, and from people I've been talking to, and I live in a really conservative county in PA (votes for Rendell number in the hundreds) I think he is going to win the state. A lot of people even here dislike Dubya.

[Ai]

Gojira said:

And Ai, did you just say Nader is sensible? The guy who wanted to put catalytic converters on weed-eaters?

A helluva lot more sensible than the two cocks we have running for president. They're both evil, corrupt assholes who LOVE giant corporations who sponsor them. The green party is more intelligent than any other party in America.

[Triyun]

Not that it matters but, I believe John Kerry used to work for Nader. On another totally irrelevant but related subject, does anyone know whats up with Nader's eyes. I've always wondered.

[Meyo-san]

Gojira said:

At least Kerry went to a war. What would the Klingons say about Bush's skipping the pussy nation guard? I guess the Klingons feel that they'd rather have someone who's been in combat then some guy who snorted cocaine instead.

Well, same thing, death, but I'd have to say that they'd feel very strongly about shooting a fleeing opponent.

[Triyun]

Lets think like geurillas who use deception and arrogance to their advantage.

A guy with a rocket launcher starts to run away under thick grass. As soon as the American boat turns around, he can turn around and fire that rocket at them causing significant damage. I think the officers in Vietnam who awareded the purple hearts knew a little bit more about what to do in that situation then you did. (thats not to say they knew much what they were doing)

As has been said many times, the VSBVFT ads were made by the same people who funded the attack ads against John McCain in 2000. I think if you have the caliber of war heros like Bob Kerrey, John McCain, and Max Cleland in addition to all but one of Kerry's crew mates standing behind him that he served honoroubly and to get off his back people should listen. And yes he did testify to the Senate, back then he was very angry at what many see (and were right about btw) as a pointless war. His words got out of hand, but at least he actually went to vietnam when a certain other person supported that war but instead chose to stay state-side, oh I'm sorry a certain 2 people.

[Meyo-san]

The simple fact was that their enemy was wounded, probably on the verge of death, Kerry most likely did it to be a "hero", heroes do not shoot already wounded enemies, in fact, I doubt that there was even enough strength for the guy to aim the rocket launcher, look at the facts before you make a counter-argument. And I do agree that his action had put his boat in jeapordy, why? Because there might have been an ambush, and the boat would have been sunk because Kerry was an idiot, and tried playing the hero.

[The Giant-Size Man Thing]

Wait, is this the time he turned his boat around to save the life of the guy who fell overboard?

[Meyo-san]

Gojira said:

Wait, is this the time he turned his boat around to save the life of the guy who fell overboard?

No, it was the time he jumped off the boat to shoot an already injured enemy.

[The Giant-Size Man Thing]

Do you have a link or testimony or anything backing that story up? I don't think I've heard it.

[Meyo-san]

It was in your link, I believe the retired admiral more than Kerry's own words. Also, did you know that Bob Dole could have pushed his own war hero status when he tried running for president? Dole was in World War II, and has a paralyized arm, while Kerry had received three purple hearts, and is not even paralized.

[The Giant-Size Man Thing]

Oh, you mean the Urban Legends Page, the one where they debunk your version?

Kerry earned his Silver Star on 28 February 1969, when he beached his craft and jumped off it with an M-16 rifle in hand to chase and shoot a guerrilla who was running into position to launch a B-40 rocket at Kerry's boat. Contrary to the account quoted above, Kerry did not shoot a "Charlie" who had "fired at the boat and missed," whose "rocket launcher was empty," and who was "already dead or dying" after being "knocked down with a .50 caliber round." Kerry's boat had been hit by a rocket fired by someone else — the guerrilla in question was still armed with a live B-40 and had only been clipped in the leg; when the guerrilla got up to run, Kerry assumed he was getting into position to launch a rocket and shot him:

On Feb. 28, 1969, Kerry's boat received word that a swift boat was being ambushed. As Kerry raced to the scene, his boat became another target, as a Viet Cong B-40 rocket blast shattered a window. Kerry could have ordered his crew to hit the enemy and run. But the skipper had a more aggressive reaction in mind. Beach the boat, Kerry ordered, and the craft's bow was quickly rammed upon the shoreline. Out of the bush appeared a teenager in a loin cloth, clutching a grenade launcher.

An enemy was just feet away, holding a weapon with enough firepower to blow up the boat. Kerry's forward gunner, [Tommy] Belodeau, shot and clipped the Viet Cong in the leg. Then Belodeau's gun jammed, according to other crewmates (Belodeau died in 1997). [Michael] Medeiros tried to fire at the Viet Cong, but he couldn't get a shot off.

In an interview, Kerry added a chilling detail.

"This guy could have dispatched us in a second, but for . . . I'll never be able to explain, we were literally face to face, he with his B-40 rocket and us in our boat, and he didn't pull the trigger. I would not be here today talking to you if he had," Kerry recalled. "And Tommy clipped him, and he started going [down.] I thought it was over."

Instead, the guerrilla got up and started running. "We've got to get him, make sure he doesn't get behind the hut, and then we're in trouble," Kerry recalled.

So Kerry shot and killed the guerrilla. "I don't have a second's question about that, nor does anybody who was with me," he said. "He was running away with a live B-40, and, I thought, poised to turn around and fire it." Asked whether that meant Kerry shot the guerrilla in the back, Kerry said, "No, absolutely not. He was hurt, other guys were shooting from back, side, back. There is no, there is not a scintilla of question in any person's mind who was there [that] this guy was dangerous, he was a combatant, he had an armed weapon."

Another member of the crew confirmed Kerry's account for the Boston Globe and expressed no doubt that Kerry's action had saved both the boat and its crew:

The crewman with the best view of the action was Frederic Short, the man in the tub operating the twin guns. Short had not talked to Kerry for 34 years, until after he was recently contacted by a Globe reporter. Kerry said he had "totally forgotten" Short was on board that day.

Short had joined Kerry's crew just two weeks earlier, as a last-minute replacement, and he was as green as the Arkansas grass of his home. He said he didn't realize that he should have carried an M-16 rifle, figuring the tub's machine guns would be enough. But as Kerry stood face to face with the guerrilla carrying the rocket, Short realized his predicament. With the boat beached and the bow tilted up, a guard rail prevented him from taking aim at the enemy. For a terrifying moment, the guerrilla looked straight at Short with the rocket.

Short believes the guerrilla didn't fire because he was too close and needed to be a suitable distance to hit the boat squarely and avoid ricochet debris. Short tried to protect his skipper.

"I laid in fire with the twin .50s, and he got behind a hootch," recalled Short. "I laid 50 rounds in there, and Mr. Kerry went in. Rounds were coming everywhere. We were getting fire from both sides of the river. It was a canal. We were receiving fire from the opposite bank, also, and there was no way I could bring my guns to bear on that."

Short said there is "no doubt" that Kerry saved the boat and crew. "That was a him-or-us thing, that was a loaded weapon with a shape charge on it . . . It could pierce a tank. I wouldn't have been here talking to you. I probably prayed more up that creek than a Southern Baptist church does in a month."

Charles Gibson, who served on Kerry's boat that day because he was on a one-week indoctrination course, said Kerry's action was dangerous but necessary. "Every day you wake up and say, 'How the hell did we get out of that alive?'" Gibson said. "Kerry was a good leader. He knew what he was doing."
Although Kerry's superiors were somewhat concerned about the issue of his leaving his boat unattended, they nonetheless found his actions courageous and worthy of commendation:

When Kerry returned to his base, his commanding officer, George Elliott, raised an issue with Kerry: the fine line between whether the action merited a medal or a court-martial.

"When [Kerry] came back from the well-publicized action where he beached his boat in middle of ambush and chased a VC around a hootch and ended his life, when [Kerry] came back and I heard his debrief, I said, 'John, I don't know whether you should be court-martialed or given a medal, court-martialed for leaving your ship, your post,'" Elliott recalled in an interview.

"But I ended up writing it up for a Silver Star, which is well deserved, and I have no regrets or second thoughts at all about that," Elliott said. A Silver Star, which the Navy said is its fifth-highest medal, commends distinctive gallantry in action.

Asked why he had raised the issue of a court-martial, Elliott said he did so "half tongue-in-cheek, because there was never any question I wanted him to realize I didn't want him to leave his boat unattended. That was in context of big-ship Navy — my background. A C.O. [commanding officer] never leaves his ship in battle or anything else. I realize this, first of all, it was pretty courageous to turn into an ambush even though you usually find no more than two or three people there. On the other hand, on an operation some time later, down on the very tip of the peninsula, we had lost one boat and several men in a big operation, and they were hit by a lot more than two or three people."

Elliott stressed that he never questioned Kerry's decision to kill the Viet Cong, and he appeared in Boston at Kerry's side during the 1996 Senate race to back up that aspect of Kerry's action.

"I don't think they were exactly ready to court-martial him," said Wade Sanders, who commanded a swift boat that sometimes accompanied Kerry's vessel, and who later became deputy assistant secretary of the Navy. "I can only say from the certainty borne of experience that there must have been some rumbling about, 'What are we going to do with this guy, he turned his boat,' and I can hear the words, 'He endangered his crew.' But from our position, the tactic to take is whatever action is best designed to eliminate the enemy threat, which is what he did."

Indeed, the Silver Star citation makes clear that Kerry's performance on that day was both extraordinary and risky. "With utter disregard for his own safety and the enemy rockets," the citation says, Kerry "again ordered a charge on the enemy, beached his boat only 10 feet from the Viet Cong rocket position and personally led a landing party ashore in pursuit of the enemy . . . The extraordinary daring and personal courage of Lt. Kerry in attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire were responsible for the highly successful mission."

By the way, the Urban Legend is attributed to an anonymous "retired admiral and Annapolis graduate," but doesn't give a name. That and it wasn't a firsthand account of the events in question. So, I instantly smelled bullshit myself.

And I did a little research, and Dole did try to use his war hero status in 1996:

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