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What is wrong with the media?
- Thread starter VetteMuscle427
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It might be nice to believe the media is liberal but it is just not true. The names Sean Hannity, Dennis Miller, Bill O’Reilly, Kudlow & Cramer, Brit Hume, Bill Kristol, Neil Cavuto, Joe Scarbouragh and John Gibson come to mind.
The point of the disgust over the photos is that we are supposed to be better than that. We expect things such as the beheading from the enemy. That is why they are the enemy.
About Kerry – Just remember you are voting between Kerry and Bush. Here we are discussing if his wounds were serious enough to send him home from Vietnam but you give Bush a free pass on this. How is Bush’s service more brave than Kerry’s?
The point of the disgust over the photos is that we are supposed to be better than that. We expect things such as the beheading from the enemy. That is why they are the enemy.
About Kerry – Just remember you are voting between Kerry and Bush. Here we are discussing if his wounds were serious enough to send him home from Vietnam but you give Bush a free pass on this. How is Bush’s service more brave than Kerry’s?
towbubba
boot 46 pilot
utrico said:
I think all the people you listed are on the Fox dayside line up. Not to mention none of them is on network TV. There you have Stephinopolis, Kurik, Lauer, Rather, Brokaw and others. Every read the big papers; New York Times, Washington Post? They aren't very fair and balanced. Hell the Times won't even review books from conservative authors that are on the Best Seller List for weeks on end. And remember the Times is virtually copied and reprinted in most of Europe and many other places overseas. There is always the BBC, when they aren't getting sued for slander against the Pres and Blair, I guess they aren't liberal eh? The celebs get more airplay than the people you listed and they aren't educated and have never served by and large. I know you have spent most of your time in a liberal mecca (insert any higher learning institution here) but when you get a bit older and wiser you may think differently. As for his wounds, Mr Kerry, it's a least a good conversation piece that he wrote himself up for a least one of those and never missed a day at BAS in his four month-out-of-twelve combat tour. Bob Dole got one Purple Heart and can't move an arm to break his fall off the stage, media played the hell out of that. And how is this for courage, Mr Kerry joined the Navy to fight a country with no standing navy of its own and Bush became a jet pilot in a jet heavy war. When/if you get an air contract and when/if you get to flight school that fact may impress you. Just my opinion but I think Mr. Kerry being in the brown water Navy kinda backfired on him and now he's riding it for all it's worth. But that aside it's his flip-flopping on issues that loses him credability with the American public. If you remember he recently made the statement "Harry Truman never said 'The buck stops at the Pentagon' " alluding that Bush was to blame and was hiding/dodging responsability yet on the same day he posted a petition to force Rumsfeld to resign on his election website. He contradicts himself in actions taking millions from outsourcing company Heinz and investing millions in stock options to the company while lambasting the Bush administration for "allowing" this to occur. Consider all the angles and make some educated guesses. Look at the voting record and the speach he made during Clinton's run for the White House when he said a man's vietnam service shouldn't be an issue for the Presidency. Think of that the next time he or a campaign worker touts his "warrior" status. How many veteran's groups support him? Should be all with that shiney record. I believe in field expediency not political expediency one saves lives while the other trivializes the sacrifices made by a brave few.
utrico said:
I don't thnk we are questioning that the man is brave. It takes quite a lot of courage to go to war. He erased all of that honor with his actions upon return to the States. On the other hand, are we to say someone serving stateside is not as brave as someone in Iraq? We all know how the military works, and I would go right now if they would send me as would hundreds of admin types that never get that chance because of their jobs. We need them all. We are a team so serve with honor no matter where you end up.
jg5343 said:
I mean this in all seriousness, would you guys rather we were still fighting the Vietnam war? Wasn't it a good thing that we got out of there? Would it not have been better to get out years earlier and lost less lives? If you agree that we should have gotten out, why do you say what Kerry did is wrong? He helped to end the conflict. How is that a bad thing? Let's keep this discussion mature. I am interested in what people think and different points of view.
PS - My dads for Kerry so there is at least one Veteran that is for him.
No one likes to see people die, but that is war. You don't just pull out because people are dying. There were a lot of Vietnamese being killed as well.
As far as Keary goes, I think it hurts moral for our troops if we don't show 100% support for what they are doing. We elect officals to make all the tough calls that we cannot collectively make. If they say we need to be at war, I have to believe that they have good reason (to an extent) and know that sooner or later that reason will come out. If I don't like it, then next time I vote for someone who will make choices I like. Keary has been very negative toward the military and military spending since he has been elected. How does he have any right to complain if every vote he has made has been against new/better weapons. I would hate to have to serve the rest of my enlistment under a man that is against making me the best. Against ensuring that no one in the world can touch me. You are applying for OCS so you should be asking yourself who is going to have my best interest in mind? NOT Keary. Point in case: I have now served under the Clinton regime and under W. Without a doubt, things are much better for me now that he is in office. Ask anyone on here who has served under both. A good example of what Bush does for his troops and sailors, FSA was raised to $250 a month from $100 a month. That's the pay you get when seperated from you family for more than 30 days. All I got from Clinton was budget cuts causing me to use old and worn out gear. Something to think about.
Try to keep your interests in mind before you vote for Keary.
As far as Keary goes, I think it hurts moral for our troops if we don't show 100% support for what they are doing. We elect officals to make all the tough calls that we cannot collectively make. If they say we need to be at war, I have to believe that they have good reason (to an extent) and know that sooner or later that reason will come out. If I don't like it, then next time I vote for someone who will make choices I like. Keary has been very negative toward the military and military spending since he has been elected. How does he have any right to complain if every vote he has made has been against new/better weapons. I would hate to have to serve the rest of my enlistment under a man that is against making me the best. Against ensuring that no one in the world can touch me. You are applying for OCS so you should be asking yourself who is going to have my best interest in mind? NOT Keary. Point in case: I have now served under the Clinton regime and under W. Without a doubt, things are much better for me now that he is in office. Ask anyone on here who has served under both. A good example of what Bush does for his troops and sailors, FSA was raised to $250 a month from $100 a month. That's the pay you get when seperated from you family for more than 30 days. All I got from Clinton was budget cuts causing me to use old and worn out gear. Something to think about.
Try to keep your interests in mind before you vote for Keary.
I have posted this before but it is worth reading. This whole idea that Kerry was the only one against some of the weapons systems is ridiculous. It is important to look at the context of every vote in order to understand what was happening. After reading this jg5343 don’t you think times would have been pretty tough under Bush Sr. as well as Clinton? They both cut defense because that is what the people wanted.
The full article can be found here http://slate.msn.com//?id=2096127
John Kerry's Defense Defense
Setting his voting record straight.
Against defense? Not Kerry
Before George W. Bush's political operatives started pounding on John Kerry for voting against certain weapons systems during his years in the Senate, they should have taken a look at this quotation:
After completing 20 planes for which we have begun procurement, we will shut down further production of the B-2 bomber. We will cancel the small ICBM program. We will cease production of new warheads for our sea-based ballistic missiles. We will stop all new production of the Peacekeeper [MX] missile. And we will not purchase any more advanced cruise missiles. … The reductions I have approved will save us an additional $50 billion over the next five years. By 1997 we will have cut defense by 30 percent since I took office.
The speaker was President George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, in his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 1992.
They should also have looked up some testimony by Dick Cheney, the first President Bush's secretary of defense (and now vice president), three days later, boasting of similar slashings before the Senate Armed Services Committee:
Overall, since I've been Secretary, we will have taken the five-year defense program down by well over $300 billion. That's the peace dividend. … And now we're adding to that another $50 billion … of so-called peace dividend.
Cheney proceeded to lay into the then-Democratically controlled Congress for refusing to cut more weapons systems.
Congress has let me cancel a few programs. But you've squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don't fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements. … You've directed me to buy more M-1s, F-14s, and F-16s—all great systems … but we have enough of them.
The Republican operatives might also have noticed Gen. Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the same hearings, testifying about plans to cut Army divisions by one-third, Navy aircraft carriers by one-fifth, and active armed forces by half a million men and women, to say noting of "major reductions" in fighter wings and strategic bombers.
Granted, these reductions were made in the wake of the Soviet Union's dissolution and the Cold War's demise. But that's just the point: Proposed cuts must be examined in context. A vote against a particular weapons system doesn't necessarily indicate indifference toward national defense.
Looking at the weapons that the RNC says Kerry voted to cut, a good case could be made, certainly at the time, that some of them (the B-2 bomber and President Reagan's "Star Wars" missile-defense program) should have been cut. As for the others (the M-1 tank and the F-14, F-15, and F-16 fighter planes, among others), Kerry didn't really vote to cut them.
The claim about these votes was made in the Republican National Committee "Research Briefing" of Feb. 22. The report lists 13 weapons systems that Kerry voted to cut—the ones cited above, as well as Patriot air-defense missiles, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and AH64 Apache helicopters, among others.
It is instructive, however, to look at the footnotes. Almost all of them cite Kerry's vote on Senate bill S. 3189 (CQ Vote No. 273) on Oct. 15, 1990. Do a Google search, and you will learn that S. 3189 was the Fiscal Year 1991 Defense Appropriations Act, and CQ Vote No. 273 was a vote on the entire bill. There was no vote on those weapons systems specifically.
On a couple of the weapons, the RNC report cites H.R. 5803 and H.R. 2126. Look those up. They turn out to be votes on the House-Senate conference committee reports for the defense appropriations bills in October 1990 (the same year as S. 3189) and September 1995.
In other words, Kerry was one of 16 senators (including five Republicans) to vote against a defense appropriations bill 14 years ago. He was also one of an unspecified number of senators to vote against a conference report on a defense bill nine years ago. The RNC takes these facts and extrapolates from them that he voted against a dozen weapons systems that were in those bills. The Republicans could have claimed, with equal logic, that Kerry voted to abolish the entire U.S. armed forces, but that might have raised suspicions. Claiming that he opposed a list of specific weapons systems has an air of plausibility. On close examination, though, it reeks of rank dishonesty.
Another bit of dishonesty is RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie's claim, at a news conference today, that in 1995, Kerry voted to cut $1.5 billion from the intelligence budget. John Pike, who runs the invaluable globalsecurity.org Web site, told me what that cut was about: The Air Force's National Reconnaissance Office had appropriated that much money to operate a spy satellite that, as things turned out, it never launched. So the Senate passed an amendment rescinding the money—not to cancel a program, but to get a refund on a program that the NRO had canceled. Kerry voted for the amendment, as did a majority of his colleagues...
The full article can be found here http://slate.msn.com//?id=2096127
John Kerry's Defense Defense
Setting his voting record straight.
Against defense? Not Kerry
Before George W. Bush's political operatives started pounding on John Kerry for voting against certain weapons systems during his years in the Senate, they should have taken a look at this quotation:
After completing 20 planes for which we have begun procurement, we will shut down further production of the B-2 bomber. We will cancel the small ICBM program. We will cease production of new warheads for our sea-based ballistic missiles. We will stop all new production of the Peacekeeper [MX] missile. And we will not purchase any more advanced cruise missiles. … The reductions I have approved will save us an additional $50 billion over the next five years. By 1997 we will have cut defense by 30 percent since I took office.
The speaker was President George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, in his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 1992.
They should also have looked up some testimony by Dick Cheney, the first President Bush's secretary of defense (and now vice president), three days later, boasting of similar slashings before the Senate Armed Services Committee:
Overall, since I've been Secretary, we will have taken the five-year defense program down by well over $300 billion. That's the peace dividend. … And now we're adding to that another $50 billion … of so-called peace dividend.
Cheney proceeded to lay into the then-Democratically controlled Congress for refusing to cut more weapons systems.
Congress has let me cancel a few programs. But you've squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don't fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements. … You've directed me to buy more M-1s, F-14s, and F-16s—all great systems … but we have enough of them.
The Republican operatives might also have noticed Gen. Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the same hearings, testifying about plans to cut Army divisions by one-third, Navy aircraft carriers by one-fifth, and active armed forces by half a million men and women, to say noting of "major reductions" in fighter wings and strategic bombers.
Granted, these reductions were made in the wake of the Soviet Union's dissolution and the Cold War's demise. But that's just the point: Proposed cuts must be examined in context. A vote against a particular weapons system doesn't necessarily indicate indifference toward national defense.
Looking at the weapons that the RNC says Kerry voted to cut, a good case could be made, certainly at the time, that some of them (the B-2 bomber and President Reagan's "Star Wars" missile-defense program) should have been cut. As for the others (the M-1 tank and the F-14, F-15, and F-16 fighter planes, among others), Kerry didn't really vote to cut them.
The claim about these votes was made in the Republican National Committee "Research Briefing" of Feb. 22. The report lists 13 weapons systems that Kerry voted to cut—the ones cited above, as well as Patriot air-defense missiles, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and AH64 Apache helicopters, among others.
It is instructive, however, to look at the footnotes. Almost all of them cite Kerry's vote on Senate bill S. 3189 (CQ Vote No. 273) on Oct. 15, 1990. Do a Google search, and you will learn that S. 3189 was the Fiscal Year 1991 Defense Appropriations Act, and CQ Vote No. 273 was a vote on the entire bill. There was no vote on those weapons systems specifically.
On a couple of the weapons, the RNC report cites H.R. 5803 and H.R. 2126. Look those up. They turn out to be votes on the House-Senate conference committee reports for the defense appropriations bills in October 1990 (the same year as S. 3189) and September 1995.
In other words, Kerry was one of 16 senators (including five Republicans) to vote against a defense appropriations bill 14 years ago. He was also one of an unspecified number of senators to vote against a conference report on a defense bill nine years ago. The RNC takes these facts and extrapolates from them that he voted against a dozen weapons systems that were in those bills. The Republicans could have claimed, with equal logic, that Kerry voted to abolish the entire U.S. armed forces, but that might have raised suspicions. Claiming that he opposed a list of specific weapons systems has an air of plausibility. On close examination, though, it reeks of rank dishonesty.
Another bit of dishonesty is RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie's claim, at a news conference today, that in 1995, Kerry voted to cut $1.5 billion from the intelligence budget. John Pike, who runs the invaluable globalsecurity.org Web site, told me what that cut was about: The Air Force's National Reconnaissance Office had appropriated that much money to operate a spy satellite that, as things turned out, it never launched. So the Senate passed an amendment rescinding the money—not to cancel a program, but to get a refund on a program that the NRO had canceled. Kerry voted for the amendment, as did a majority of his colleagues...
utrico said:
I'm not even going to touch your comment about the media not being liberal. You have a LOT to learn on that issue and TowBubba hit it for me.
I don't know about you, but I don't expect the enemy to behead civilian contractors just because they're the enemy. I'm not SURPRISED when I see it from a group of Islamic terrorists, but just because someone is the enemy doesn't mean you should expect brutal behavior. War is a nasty, dirty, filthy business, however there are generally "rules" to it. Executing civilians is beyond the normal dirty behavior of warfare, THAT is why people are shocked. We except that soldiers will die, in horrendous ways, and that yes, POWs will probably get tortured. Civilians are OFF LIMITS. If you come back and say we bombed civilians I'll tear your head off. That is not a deliberate targeting and I can't STAND when you liberal weenies say it.
The disgust over the photos is in my opinion a way for the media to influence a My Lai for this war. They act as if that behavior is prevalent throughout the entire US Army. I for one am sick and tired of hearing about them. A few people did something wrong and should be punished. A gad damn congressional investigation is STUPID.
Say what you will about Kerry and his politics, he did volunteer for the war and one of the Navy's more dangerous assignments (SEAL's and Tacair among the others). After one tour on a destroyer cruising off the coast of Vietnam he asked to be assigned to patrol boats that were much closer to the action. They did not hand out Silver Stars and Bronze Stars like candy the men in the brown water navy either. All but one of the sailors who served under him and the Special Forces Officer he dragged out of the river (earning him the Bronze Star) have given their support of his wartime leadership.
What Senator Kerry did after he came home was probably a combination of political gain and personal conviction, he was thinking about political office at that time. While he threw away his ribbons, they were his to throw away. His testimony before Congress was mostly grandstanding and politics that he was using to his advantage (including his claim about atrocities).
And how is this for courage, Mr Kerry joined the Navy to fight a country with no standing navy of its own and Bush became a jet pilot in a jet heavy war. When/if you get an air contract and when/if you get to flight school that fact may impress you.
What kind of argument is that? I can counter that with the fact that Kerry went to Vietnam and Bush did not. National Guard pilot slots are still largely a case of who you know to get one. I have no doubt that both would have given their lives for this country if necessary.
In the end, choose who you think will best govern the country. Some of our best leaders have never served a day in uniform (FDR) while some of our worst have (Grant).
What Senator Kerry did after he came home was probably a combination of political gain and personal conviction, he was thinking about political office at that time. While he threw away his ribbons, they were his to throw away. His testimony before Congress was mostly grandstanding and politics that he was using to his advantage (including his claim about atrocities).
And how is this for courage, Mr Kerry joined the Navy to fight a country with no standing navy of its own and Bush became a jet pilot in a jet heavy war. When/if you get an air contract and when/if you get to flight school that fact may impress you.
What kind of argument is that? I can counter that with the fact that Kerry went to Vietnam and Bush did not. National Guard pilot slots are still largely a case of who you know to get one. I have no doubt that both would have given their lives for this country if necessary.
In the end, choose who you think will best govern the country. Some of our best leaders have never served a day in uniform (FDR) while some of our worst have (Grant).
I don't think anyone should say that Kerry is unpatriotic or that he didn't earn his medals. But here's what I have to say. Vietnam happened a long time ago. Alot of people volenteered to go there, that does not quilify them to be president!! The fact that Kerry says what people want to hear, and does not stand to any one position worries me. If, god forbid, he becomes president is he going to act the same way? We will be in a lot of trouble at that point.
I'm with Flash on the last point. We live in a Civilian run government. That means that you DO NOT have to have military service to be president.
I'm with Flash on the last point. We live in a Civilian run government. That means that you DO NOT have to have military service to be president.
Anyone hear a firm reason why Kerry SHOULD be president? He hasn't proposed any plan for our future beyond "I'll bring our allies back" and "I will save us".... Why should we vote for him? OH YEAH!!!! OTHER nation's leaders want him elected... <maybe just the French>
Patmack18 said:
The only National Guard pilots who were sent to the Vietnam War were a handful that volunteered for some special programs (a very small handful). A known fact to everyone in those days was that 99% of the Guard were not sent to Vietnam. There were waiting lists for many Guard units as a result, including Bush's (which I am sure that there is still a waiting list to it, who the hell wouldn't want to fly an F-16 on the weekends?). I have little doubt that Bush would have served if called to do so but he made a concious choice to join a unit that would not go. Kerry specifically volunteered for duty in Vietnam. I am not saying he is a better person (nor will I get into a debate about his politics), just clarifying the choices both made.
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