would america have been SAFER with kerry?
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Walt/Dragon, please just take a moment and let these words sink in. I think your radical all-or-nothing approach is based on a love for this country and more respect for the warrior kind of patriotism than the civil servant kind--so please look at what the most respected warrior President we've ever had had to say about the issues we're embroiled in, maybe you can acknowledge that of all people, he might be one who "gets it"...
From Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 Farewell Address to the nation:
"A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peace time, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea. Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United State corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
Now go see 'Why We Fight', which has interviews w/ the Eisenhower family, neocon stars Richard Perle and Will Kristol, family of victims of 9/11, Iraq war veterans and more...it's fascinating stuff.
From Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 Farewell Address to the nation:
"A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peace time, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea. Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United State corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
Now go see 'Why We Fight', which has interviews w/ the Eisenhower family, neocon stars Richard Perle and Will Kristol, family of victims of 9/11, Iraq war veterans and more...it's fascinating stuff.
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shanewalker said:
shane, in rebuttal, i prefer this one:
Be Seated.
Men, this stuff we hear about America wanting to stay out of the war, not wanting to fight, is a lot of Bullsh!t. Americans love to fight - traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble player; the fastest runner; the big league ball players; the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win - all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost, not ever will lose a war, for the very thought of losing is hateful to an American.
You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Every man is
frightened at first in battle. If he says he isn't, he's a goddamn liar. Some men are cowards, yes! But they fight just the same, or get the hell shamed out of them watching men who do fight who are just as scared. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some get over their fright in a minute under fire, some take an hour. For some it takes days. But the real man never lets fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to this country and his innate manhood.
All through your army career you men have bitched about "This chickenshit drilling." That is all for a purpose. Drilling and discipline must be maintained in any army if for only one reason -- INSTANT OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS AND TO CREATE CONSTANT ALERTNESS. I don't give a damn for a man who is not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready. A man to continue breathing must be alert at all times. If not, sometime a German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of sh*t.
There are 400 neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily all because one man went to sleep on his job -- but they were German graves for we caught the bastard asleep before his officers did. An Army is a team. Lives, sleeps, eats, fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is a lot of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting, under fire, than they do about f**king. We have the best food, the finest equipment, the best spirit and the best fighting men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor sons-of-bitches we are going up against. By God, I do!
My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight. That's not just Bullsh!t, either. The kind of man I want under me is like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Lugar against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand and busted hell out of the Boche with the helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German: All this with a bullet through his lung. That's a man for you.
All real heroes are not story book combat fighters either. Every man in the army plays a vital part. Every little job is essential. Don't ever let down, thinking your role is unimportant. Every man has a job to do. Every man is a link in the great chain. What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine of the shells overhead, turned yellow and jumped headlong into the ditch? He could say to himself, "They won't miss me -- just one in thousands." What if every man said that? Where in hell would we be now? No, thank God, Americans don't say that! Every man does his job; every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important to the vast scheme of things. The Ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the Quartermaster to bring up the food and clothes to us -- for where we're going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man in the mess hall, even the one who heats the water to keep us from getting the GI sheets has a job to do. Even the chaplain is important, for if we get killed and if he is not there to bury us we'd all go to hell.
Each man must not only think of himself, but of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this army. They should all be killed off like rats. If not they will go back home after the war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we'll have a nation of brave men.
One of the bravest men I ever saw in the African campaign was the fellow I saw on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were plowing toward Tunis. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at that time. He answered, "Fixing the wire, sir." "Isn't it a little unhealthy right now?," I asked. "Yes sir, but this goddamn wire's got to be fixed." There was a real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time.
You should have seen those trucks on the road to Gabes. The drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those
son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting around them all the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of these men drove over forty consecutive hours. These weren't combat men. But they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it -- and in a whale of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without them the fight would have been lost. All the links in the chain pulled together and that chain became unbreakable.
Don't forget, you don't know I'm here. No word of the fact is to be mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell became of me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamn Germans. Someday I want them to raise up on their hind legs and howl, "Jesus Christ, it's the goddamn Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton again."
We want to get the hell over there. We want to get over there and clear the goddamn thing up. You can't win a war lying down. The quicker we clean up this goddamn mess, the quicker we can take a jaunt against the purple pissing Japs an clean their nest out too, before the Marines get all the goddamn credit.
Sure, we all want to be home. We want this thing over with. The quickest way to get it over is to get the bastards. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin. When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a Boche will get him eventually, and the hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one. We'll win this war but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans we've got more guts than they have.
There is one great thing you men will all be able to say when you go home. You may thank God for it. Thank God, that at least, thirty years from now, when you are sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knees, and he asks you what you did in the great war, you won't have to cough and say, "I shoveled sh*t in Louisiana."
That's all
Thats a great speech to troops in the field, I'll grant you. I don't really see it as anything like a rebuttal though. Totally different speeches for different purposes. But thanks for posting...always a pleasure to read good stuff.
Reminds me of a story. It was my first weekend on campus in my college dorm. It was sunny and warm, and the guys all had their stereos cranked and their windows open. I was on the third floor, facing another wing, and had to suffer some horribly cheesy glam metal from the first floor opposite. Well, a neighbor had a tape, bagpipe music, that we let wail from my 14-inch woofers. We could hear the desperate shouts from below, "Shut that off, you f**king Commie bastards!!" Commie? Bag pipes? Must be really dumb to confuse Scotland w/ an eastern bloc nation, we thought, so we pulled out another cassette (yeah, we used cassettes back then).
It was the audio of George C. Scott's famous "Patton" speech, you know, with him standing in front of the big flag that fills the Panavision screen. "Alright you pissants...!" it started. That shut them up. And their crappy music. We never played 'stereo wars' again...maybe they learned where bag pipes come from.
Shane really, really out.
Reminds me of a story. It was my first weekend on campus in my college dorm. It was sunny and warm, and the guys all had their stereos cranked and their windows open. I was on the third floor, facing another wing, and had to suffer some horribly cheesy glam metal from the first floor opposite. Well, a neighbor had a tape, bagpipe music, that we let wail from my 14-inch woofers. We could hear the desperate shouts from below, "Shut that off, you f**king Commie bastards!!" Commie? Bag pipes? Must be really dumb to confuse Scotland w/ an eastern bloc nation, we thought, so we pulled out another cassette (yeah, we used cassettes back then).
It was the audio of George C. Scott's famous "Patton" speech, you know, with him standing in front of the big flag that fills the Panavision screen. "Alright you pissants...!" it started. That shut them up. And their crappy music. We never played 'stereo wars' again...maybe they learned where bag pipes come from.
Shane really, really out.
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Walt, I couldn't have said it better myself. Goaliebob, I feel for ya and will be praying for you. Clinton had a chance to get Bin Laden and wouldn't/couldn't pull the trigger, but that probably would have only delayed 9/11. My Dad served in the Pacific durring WWII and all 5 of his brothers served also. I did my time from 1970-1984. It took 19mo 17days in Vietnam and other colorfull places around the world. My thoughts? Protect The Innocent, Convince The Undecided, Kill The Rest.---Ray
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You say effective policies? When you have Bin Laden in the crosshairs and pull the trigger is effective policy! Being a pussy and not pulling the trigger cause a UAE sheik is in the vicinity to me is equal to treason. I really don't know how Clinton sleeps at night knowing he could have possibly prevented 9/11. Oh, yea I know. He thinks with his little head instead of his big one.---RayGeorgeLV said:
raymo721 said:
Raymo,
GeorgeLV, lost that argument a long time ago, he is just in denial.
He will soon pull out his fog and mirror machine and try to change the argument, like he successfully pulled off on me last night.
I have to give GeorgeLV his props though, we had a mini debate last night and he never made any personal attacks against me. I wish more people could be civilized when debating. After all, I believe we all want what we believe to be best for the nation, we just have different beliefs on how to get there. There's no reason for all the personal attacks and name calling. Sorry for the rant.
Ok on the basis of this poll its plain and simple ridiculus. Untill people wake up and stop voting based on party and start looking into the person they are voting for we will continue to give away are rights in the name of "false security". In my opinion I do not think it really matters who is or would have been the President.
raymo721 said:
Raymo-What you have stated is exactly what needs to be done. The problem is, people don't want to hear that in these "politically correct" times we find ourselves in.
Here's the thing-95% of the shipping containers coming into this country are not inspected and there is no way that they can or could be. There was just a story about airports failing a test to find certain bomb-making materials. Again, there is no way you can stop every bomb or any other weapon or terrorist plot for that matter from getting in. The Mexican and Canadian borders are completely wide open for much of their length, again affording an opportunity for terrorists.
What you can do is just what you said-protect our citizens to the extent it is possible, convince others that they need to help us (and thereby help themselves) in the terror war, and very simply kill the terrorists.
It really is that simple.
My compliments on an outstanding post and thank you for your service to this country!
:up :up :up
:up :up :up
waltinvt said:
waltinvt said:
According to the actions of this corrupt loser Administration, it IS.
So may I ask how the hell your 30-something years old war memories give you any leverage in a debate about fighting against terrorists?
I guess it's not the fact that just as we were in Vietnam, once again we're the agressor in Iraq...
You don't even know what the f**k are you talking about either.
Folks like you, old "Rambo"-styled armchair generals who think they're really "in the know" due to their 30-ys old war memories and apparently very narrow knowledge about the world and politics, do scare the sh*t out of me.
It reminds that old Rambos should be given some support to learn something about the world... free school vouchers, anybody?
Seriously, WTF you know about anybody's "integrity"?
I know this post is so ridiculously simple I shouldn't take it seriously but I'm still annoyed by your blatant, loud opinion. let alone such nonsense blurb like "how divided we've become as a culture"...
Usual silly simplification... like the world is so simple...
since when a Muslim = terrorist? Thank you, a person in-the-know, for telling us the "TRUTH"...
Who gets here?
Why?
When?
What for?
Jesus Christ, what's this stupid xenophobic BS, seriously?
Newsflash: they are here. We have milions of Muslims - and lot of them are American citizens, just like you. Bang, busted.
Let me guess: your 30-ys old war memories (against Commies) inspired these "sophisticated" thoughts about the current invasion of Iraq (Muslims)... am I right?
And how the liberals got into this crazy picture of yours?
Well, you pal are one of the best reasons why it is happening: such posts like this worth nothing but are polarizing the public debate thus the nation more and more. So you may want to have a chat with yourself...
What a...
People cannot survive what...? ANother newsflash: America was built on free speech, the clash of opinions.
And what happened? It survived...
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W_Tracy_Parnell said:
Well, it's YOUR President who, despite the continuous warnings for years now, DID NOT DO sh*t ABOUT THIS.
When a President puts people into positions by their loyalty instead of their knowledge, this is what you get: bunch of retarded, impontent but loud losers and broken security, broken society, broken int'l relations, even broken invasions.
T2k said:
I don't know of a single person (who knows what he is talking about) that thinks you can ever examine all the containers without shutting down the economy-it is just not practical.
W_Tracy_Parnell said:
That's unfortunate but not true at all - whoever said this, that person has no idea about technology at all. It's the incompetence and croniism what block the appropriate actions.
scott,
t2k has insulted our vets, our country, the members on here, the president, our laws, numerous federal departments and says we should be more like his socialist europa.
it is almost easter and you are PILATE,,, give us moqz1001 back!!!!!!!! LOL LOL
t2k has insulted our vets, our country, the members on here, the president, our laws, numerous federal departments and says we should be more like his socialist europa.
it is almost easter and you are PILATE,,, give us moqz1001 back!!!!!!!! LOL LOL
dragon002 said:
You're constantly insulting everybody here, both directly and indirectly...
PS: stop lying about me - I didn't insult anybody here and apart from some hypocrites nobody gives a ^%$#* about any federal departments or the Mighty Freak, ppal. Last time I've checked it we still had the first Am., despite the anti-constitutional Patriot Acts.
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