Useful Fools

Dr. Condoleezza Rice gave the the Ronald Reagan Lecture this week. It covered a broad range of issues, including a new warning to North Korea. Here are excepts:

Libya’s leader made the right choice, and other regimes should follow his example. We are working with the international community to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. And with our four partners in East Asia, we are insisting that North Korea completely, verifiably, and irreversibly dismantle its nuclear programs.

Now, the North Koreans should also recognize that, with the unraveling of these proliferation networks, the A.Q. Kahn network, what the Libyans are now freely admitting and talking about, that their admissions and what they say is not the only source of information about what’s going on in North Korea. And it’s probably a good time for the North Koreans to come clean about what’s going on in North Korea.

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Check out this Kerry Campaign Ad. Have your sound turned on if you have it.

Roger Simon coins a new term:

Message alteration or flip-flop? Recommendation: when the Massachusetts Senator changes his position (or his haircut) we call it a “fop-flip.”

Welcome to Fugufish.org, my nephew Alex’s new website and blog from the University of Chicago.

The following is a status crafted by an Iraqi sculptor from three fallen Saddam heads. I found this on Iraq the Model, a fine Iraqi blog.

I received this in the mail. It speaks for itself:

[Thanks to Ed Kostiha for providing this]

See Vets Against Kerry for more information.

[note: originally from Counterpunch ]

From Don Bendell:

My wife had rotator cuff surgery earlier this year, and the recovery is terribly painful. Then, she developed a staph-epi infection, and they had to cut the same scar open and operate on her again. Just thinking about the pain and anxiety of facing that painful surgery a second time in the same wound, makes me cringe. That experience, however pales in comparison to what I am going through right now, in my heart.

The old hurts are surfacing and the feelings of betrayal by fellow citizens, and their leader stirring them up, are breaking my heart again. I am being cut in the same scar. How did we who served in Vietnam suddenly become cold-blooded killers, torturers, and rapists, of the ilk of the Nazi SS or the Taliban? Most of us were American soldiers who grew up idolizing John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and all the other heroes. That was why I volunteered. But for political expediency, John Kerry has rewritten history, again. After spending only four months in the country of Vietnam, John Kerry testified before Congress in 1971 with these exact words about incidents he supposedly witnessed or heard about from other vets: “They personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam.”
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Ryan of Tasty Manatees points out the absurdity of the “Just Choose Peace” thinking.

I received the following argument in a mailing list. It shows how far Bush Haters will twist logic in their need to believe he is evil. This was in response to my questioning why Bush was considered a coward and thus was immoral in sending troops to fight, while Clinton was not a coward and it was okay for him to send troops to Kosovo. Read it and laugh (or vomit). By the way, this was from a member of Mensa and a Vietnam Veteran.

It’s not the sending of troops; it’s the refusal to fight in a war that you believe is a just and proper war. Clinton did not believe that Vietnam was a just and proper war, but Bush did–and apparently you do to.

So, Bush’s deliberate avoidance of going to Vietnam is the chicken part; his being a war monger is the hawk part. And with the exception of Rumsfield and Powell, his entire administration and the vast majority of his nationally known political supporters are chicken hawks.

As I not so gently explained to this person, this means that if Bush was against the war when he joined the Guard, then he is not a coward and is now qualified to send people to war. But if he was for the war, he is a coward. Furthermore, it makes 5,500,000 Vietnam Era veterans who did not participate in Vietnam into cowards also. On the other hand, war protesters were not cowards, because they didn’t believe in the war (one may need to use prohibited substances to fully grasp this argument).

I wonder what this makes Kerry… he claimed not to believe in the war, but went anyway and killed people, including civilians. Then he came back and was against the war, testifying falsely before the Senate that Vietnam Vets routinely committed atrocities and were butchers. Then he joined Congress, voted against the first Gulf War, voted for the second gulf war, and is running as an opponent of the war he voted in favor of.

Go figure!

Mark,
You say there is no real connection between Kerry and Jane Fonda.

Fonda was a major funder of VVAW, of which Kerry was a leader. Fonda and Kerry spoke at the same events. Fonda funded the Winter Soldier “investigation” which is which Kerry attended to and which became the basis for his testimony before the Senate (and incidently where Fonda met her first husband, SDS’er Tom Hayden). Fonda and Kerry shared the same goals. They used the same type of language. There is an obvious connection.

Kerry’s campaign spokesman admitted they were acquaintances.

Finally, Jane Fonda is a symbol all Vietnam Vets understand. Kerry’s beahvior isn’t as well known, but is in the same spirit. Kerry didn’t go to the enemy’s capitol like Fonda, instead he went to our own capitol, where he did his damage. The association of the two is both real and symbolic. It is appropriate.