I’m bothered by all this. The most sinister thing “they” have done – with the culture – is that they have pathologized disagreement with them. They’ve pathologized other things, too, such as religion, and if you give it some thought, they’ve pathologized belief in anything. Perhaps its another piece of The Left’s obsession with deconstruction,
or symptom of it, maybe intentional. I don’t know.

When intense disagreement with the left, the willingness to fight them and their corruption and fraudulence, is portrayed as a character disorder, or the mark of instability, then debate is over and a type of warfare begins.

They’ve set news terms of argument, and when they get what they provoke, they then use our reactions against us. Thugge and several others probably do this habitually, because none of them here, especially Thugge, is bright enough or insightful enough to understand their ideas or themselves.

Thugge seemed to be a peacock without a tail, but he didn’t know it, and combined arrogance with ignorance in a new way. Thugge also ignored you, I think, because you were the rational one who had him by the neck. He couldn’t wiggle free of you.

Remember the cartoon about hidden identity on internet few years ago? A big fat ugly man can appear as a handsome rich gentleman.
You’re too kind on Thugge, Rhod.

But if continue to lace your postings with a bunch of insults, I may do so.

There is a limit to the amount of gratuitous slander and foul attacks that I will put up with. You say we are all bigots. That’s name calling and I won’t put up with it for long.

I know people involved in this. I have reason to know who to believe. You give me no reason to believe that you are anything other than a troll, combing here to spew insults.

You can dispute the issues. But your manner is offensive. If you find you can’t post any more, you’ll know that you crossed my threshold. I have a low tolerance for assholes.

With you guys claiming the truth and nothing but the truth (wait a minute, have you said that under oath) my country is in deep trouble. More trouble than you seem able to grasp with a lying Pres and VP and sycophants for advisors.

I say this not just because the piece is coherent and grammatical, but because of the rhetorical features. The bulk of the essay is standard Kerry boilerplate of guilt by association with Republicans and insinuations that any one who takes an anti-Kerry position has thereby demonstrated bad faith. He even tries to conflate anti-McCain ads in 2000 and anti-Kerry ads in 2004 into some sort of “strategy of attacking combat Vietnam veterans”. [see below]

His conclusion is particularly nasty:

Now, 35 years after the fact, some Republican-financed Swift Boat Veterans for Bush are suddenly lying about John Kerry’s service in Vietnam; they are calling him a traitor because he spoke out against the Nixon administration’s failed policies in Vietnam. Some of these Republican-sponsored veterans are the same ones who spoke out against John at the behest of the Nixon administration in 1971. But this time their attacks are more vicious, their lies cut deep and are directed not just at John Kerry, but at me and each of his crewmates as well. This hate-filled ad asserts that I was not under fire; it questions my words and Navy records. This smear campaign has been launched by people without decency, people who don’t understand the bond of those who serve in combat.

As John McCain noted, the television ad aired by these veterans is “dishonest and dishonorable.”

You will notice that this rejoinder is not argument, but false assumptions, personal invective, and emotional appeals that are not only irrelevant but preposterous. In fact, Nixon had won the war, but the Democrats threw Vietnam and Cambodia to the wolves; Nixon never knew about John O’Neil and other Kerry-truth-squad activists until they began to get attention; they objected not to Kerry’s policy stance so much as his slanders; and the ad says nothing about Mr. Rassmann or Navy records. Further, can Mr. Rassmann seriously maintain that the Swift Boat veterans “don’t understand the bond of those who serve in combat”, but that John Kerry does—John Kerry, who falsely accused his comrades of being war criminals and treated with his nation’s foreign and domestic enemies? If Mr. Rassmann, who presents himself as a retired police officer and orchid enthusiast, can write this kind of facile poison, he missed his calling.

An egregious example of the highly partisan, dissembling rhetoric in Rassmann’s piece is his reference to “some Republican-financed Swift Boat Veterans for Bush”. Of course, we know that the group is “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth”. Making up mocking parodies of opposing groups’ names is all very well, but it is typical Leftist chutzpah to twist the facts and present them bald-faced as the truth.

They did the same thing back in the early ’70s. The press and left-wing flacks quickly took to referring to the Vietnam Veterans Against the War as the “Vietnam vets”, as though every one who had served in the SE Asia Theatre were monolithically united.

This snapped back on them in ironic ways, because they believed their own propaganda lies. For instance, one time before a TV debate, the ACLU rep came up to me and began to chat in a friendly way, assuming that since I was a “Vietnam vet” I was on his side. The “for a Just Peace” probably hadn’t registered with the assistant producer who had briefed him. It probably didn’t hurt that I was bearded, had hair to my shoulders, wore dark glasses, jeans, and a jungle fatigue jacket, and did yoga exercises before the show (part of my loosen up/calm down routine as a competitive fencer).

A personal note: Mr. Rassmann: The first national figure to welcome us back from Vietnam was Ronald Reagan, after the Democrats, following John Kerry’s lead, had spent a decade suggesting we were emotional cripples who needed to stay drugged up to deal with our Army-induced addictions to murder and rape.

That ‘84 Cavalier just went by but disappeared like a fart in a gale.

Mark

Thugge’s world is fantastic, by definition, with monsters under the bed and gremlins in the closet (us). Kerry is the nightlight; he reassures The Left that their special world will go on forever, that they can remain in their soft cradles of self-deception and illusion. Without these things, The Left is nothing but an undisciplined urge to escape from reality.

That’s what we saw in Thugge’s last post.

You’ll check back right away to see what we have to say about you. There is an irony in a post criticising your opponents’ writing abilities, when you use the word-salad expression “slaboring with nice”. Did that come from Blackstone, or did you invent it yourself?

For one thing, if your last post is an indication of your professional talents, you’re not prepared to teach Middle School Civics. An angry and unstable “lawyer” is a sight to see. I’ll give you the degree, but you’re a perpetual amateur and should be doing real estate cases.

And by the way, you couldn’t prepare a case brief with your writing ability, much less work your way through an issue more complicated than a animal complaint. You’re a pretentious, dishonest poorly-educated, diploma mill Lefty.

You also don’t deal well with being refuted, which is a give-away about your courtroom abilities. We smoked you out in a few posts, which furthermore indicates that you’re not in control of yourself, in control of your facts, in command of the issue, period.

In conclusion, when I described you as an inelegantly self-regarding fool, that was a compliment, but it puts you in the circle with Kerry. Vote for him, jackass, and start reading those law books.

I know some of the Swifties. This is a genuine grass roots organization. They had to get some money somewhere (254 guys aren’t going to be able to afford an ad buy). And of course, since the ad wll hurt Kerry, Republican types will provide the cash. You didn’t expect George Soros to provide it, did you? He’s busy financing a lot of “neutral onlookers.” THen there’s Michael Moore.

Let me see if I understand this… a group of combat veterans want to get out the word that only they can give, and since they have to get money, they are liars.

Right.

Care to describe exactly what is a lie?

I have changed my mind as to continuing a dialogue on the Swiftvets and their ad. It appears it is a set up job by one of Texas’ millionaire Repukes. The name of the organization “.. for Truth” belies its nature as a mouthpiece for its hate of Kerry and support for another lying, Texan asshole.

Go to factcheck.org and spinsanity.org to see how the Swifty ad and the affidavits look to neutral onlookers. This blog responses to my comments has to be an attempted con-job, using big words, incorrectly I might add in several instances, slaboring with nice. I didn’t do it myself, but those who pay closer attention to these political things have found the Swifties out and in the end crucify them with their own words and deeds as liars.

Hey pour your hate out. I will check back another day.

I know that types of action induce a sort of amnesia which you recognize only when you search for an accounting of what happened…even if it is the same day. Even then, there is never a total void of awareness, but these sorts of impressions wouldn’t pass the test of a cross examintion.

This, however, is true. Being in one platoon or company does not mean one “did not serve” with others in other platoons and companies in the same battalion or regiment. It’s impossible to escape gossip, the jungle network, friendships or the reverse, and open observation of every man around you. Rules of engagement, tactical maneuvers and training contribute to this expansion of knowledge.

I would suppose that a Swiftboat cluster would have similar rules, similar requirements, and that commanders, gunners and other seamen would work as a group, where possible, and not swirl around in open water firing in all directions. Kerry wouldn’t, under these conditions, enjoy any anonymity. Indeed, the very charge that men who were not on Kerry’s boat “did not serve with Kerry” signifies the stupidity of the anti-military Left. They’re absolutely and totally clueless about the subject.

That other commanders couldn’t watch Kerry during combat is very wrong. They had a duty to keep a situational awareness and that included where every friendly and hostile was and what they were doing.

Regarding O’Neil not being present with Kerry. What O’Neill brings to this is a year’s experience crewsing Kerry’s boat after Kerry boogied, a knowlege of many of the personnel, a deep worry that Kerry will win (O’Neil told me and others that he was an Edwards man – NOT a Bushie), and the skills of a long practicing highly regarded civil litigator. With that background, he conducted a large number of interviews with swift boat veterans. While that may not make him a legal witness, he’s got their affidavits.

After he returned home, he gave some speeches and was chosen to debate Kerry on Dick Cavette. I have the video, and O’Neill did fine. He was of course there to defeat Kerry’s assertions. Kerry had been running around the country casting great lies about Vietnam, which O’Neill felt it his duty to counter. He impressed Colson who suggested that Nixon bring him in for a visit to pump up his enthusiasm.

The skepticism about truth tellers should take into account the extreme circumstances here. On one side, we have a man running for president as a warrior. On the other side, we have a lot of other warriors who believe he screwed up, both in country and especially in the anti-war movement. As such, they have an incentive to tell what really happened.

Unlike some press statements, he hasn’t been hounding Kerry ever since then. He went on to a normal life, as did most veterans. I suspect he has appeared now because, of the Swift Boat vets, he is a natural leader.

So according to the ‘Slug’ kerry is the man to vote for,He is honest, forthright, sincere has never lied to his constituents, upstanding and a regular guy just like me only difference is he has a Boston Accent, and Married lots of money. The swift Vets are all liars and the democrats are the good guys. Gee that was easy, Now slug all you have to do is to convince the people that John kerry is not just an opportunist politician.
Now he is taking to task O’neill, and O’neill used cheap legal tricks. That pretty, good for a busines man.
Yes Mr. Lawyer I have harbored a gurdge for 30 some years and I will not forget what John Kerry has done for his country. Like his glorious testamony before the Senate, where he turned everyone of us into War Criminals.
Wearing ribbons, he supposedly threw over the white house fence four days before the hearings. Protesting Nixon’s war. Well Mr attorney Nixon inherited from John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson both democrats.
But according to the deomcrats kerry will be tough on defense, however had kerrys voting record says he voted against every decent weapon system they now have, with that kind of record how is he going to be a President tough on defense of this nation?
But the real reason Thuggie is here, is because of the Swift-Vets. This is damage control for the democrats. Smear the Swifties before too much gets out about the real John F’ing Kerry.
John Kerry the wonderful man who said the National Guard was the Back door draft, disavowing the 6000+ names on the wall of National Guardsmen and Reserves. The same kerry who says he is going to tax the ‘evil Rich’(except himself of course and all the ’slip and fall’ lawyers) and turn them into middleclass, What a guy, how in the hell is that going to help anybody.
We as Veterans are a definite punch in the kidneys, but the ‘Swifties’ are a sucking chest wound that won’t go away.
Being a Marine I never had much use fot Sailors but God Bless the Navy and the Swift-Vets.

Mark

He says that Unfit for Command’s purpose is to reelect GWB and asks why the Swift Boat Vets didn’t speak up 30 years ago. He complains that John O’Neil was just a Republican attack dog 30 years ago, financed by partisan interests. He says that Kerry was cool when he and O’Neil debated on the Dick Cavitt show, and asks how any of the other Swift Boat commanders could have had a chance to observe JFKy’s performance.

First: Re-electing Bush doesn’t exhaust possible purposes for UoC. There are many possibilities, but from all I’ve read, it seems obvious to me that the purpose is to prevent the election of JFKy.

Second: He complains about O’Neil’s doing the very thing that a sentence before he was complaining he didn’t do, viz., speak out against JFKy 30 years ago. In 1970-71, Kerry wasn’t running for President on a platform of being a highly decorated Vietnam veteran. He was leading the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and declaring on the basis of utterly fraudulent Winter Soldier testimony and his own witness that US soldiers in Vietnam were daily and everywhere committing the most callous of war crimes.

It was to protest and refute Kerry’s slanders that John O’Neil and others formed the Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace [I was active in the VVJP in 1971-72]. Thugge points out the obvious, that the VVJP got support from sympathetic political contributors. Is this something that anyone should be defensive about? It is no more surprising than that the VVAW got support from left-wing political contributors and a lot less surprising than the fact that Kerry’s statement before the Senate Foreign Relations committee was written by a left-wing Democratic speechwriter. Yet Thugge does bring it up and implies that it discredits anything O’Neil or anyone else says about Kerry.

Thugge asks why O’Neil didn’t do what he in fact did do, and then find fault with the fact that O’Neil did it. He brings up the question of funding, a complete irrelevancy and blatant attempt at ad hominem argument. Talk about wanting to have all the cards on your side! These sorts of shady argument may be good technique in a courtroom cross-examination, but in a civil debate they make me wonder at Thugge’s good faith or his competence.

Third: Thugge is right that Kerry maintained his cool against O’Neil on the Cavitt show (my own encounter with Kerry’s cool is related at Kerry an Empty Suit). But style isn’t substance. Kerry wasn’t able to provide a single instance of a war crime. When pressed by O’Neil, he finally mentioned some damaged civilian structures as evidence of US war crimes. O’Neil’s response was the statement that Thugge quoted: “from going into Ku Alon River until leaving Bodie, you’re receiving continuous fire the entire time.” In other words, the buildings were damaged in combat, not as the result of criminal assault on civilian property. As I recall the exchange, O’Neil was saying that often the VC fire was coming from the buildings. Thugge’s use of this quotation is obtuse, blinded by partisanship, disingenuous, or dissembling.

Fourth: Thugge cited the quotation to cavil at the possibility that any of the Swift Boat commanders could have any knowledge about JFKy’s actions. Really! Sailors gossip. Kerry had to file after-action reports. During actions, commanders give situation reports on the radio and talk to other units. Sometimes when you are under fire there is nothing you can do but sit tight and look around you. Sometimes when Team A is getting the s*** shot out of them, Team B is out of range.

Then there are the medical records. Oh, sorry, Kerry won’t release those. But his own comments and the recollections of the doctors who treated him make it clear that at least two of Kerry’s Purple Hearts were ludicrously trivial. To receive a Purple Heart one must be injured seriously enough to require treatment by a medical officer. Treatment for two of Kerry’s war wounds consisted of Bactine and a band-aid. Kerry has spoken modestly of the severity of his injuries as requiring in total only a couple of days away of duty. That’s what it would have taken to hunt up medical officers to apply the Bactine and a band-aid, and, voila, qualify the scratches for a Purple Heart. You can read about it in a chapter of O’Neil book,
The Purple Heart Hunter . The chapter also reports how Kerry complained loudly and incessantly when his unit was transferred from relative quiet off-shore duty to the very hot riverine patrols.

He has the lawyer’s hand at planting doubts and cleverly diminishing others…his remark that being a lawyer doesn’t disqualify him from citizenship or patriotism was a way to imply an accusation that didn’t even occur.

He also indicates that he hasn’t “spent the last 30 plus years harboring negative thoughts about the VN (sic) and the antiwar people”, which accomplishes two things:

1. It tars the opposition with bitterness and implies small and mean motives for criticizing Kerry.

2, Thugge lifts himself above the implication he just made. Objectivity and all that.

Thugge has nary a word to say about Kerry’s 1971 book, which has all the faults he attributes to the Swiftvets’ book. On that subject, if the amount of effort devoted to discrediting the Swiftvets had been devoted to Kerry’s 1971 fantasies, Kerry today would be a low-paid public defender (Boston College Law degree. Wow.) in Natick.

In essense, the typical liberal left (the worst of both kind, liberal + left) are the most ardent supporter of inequality in process. This kind of mindset has plenty of examples in elitists, sophists, dictators, totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. They are the fake supporter of other’s liberty.

The problem with Mr. Thugge’s juridical approach to this issue is that it is infused with regulation Lefty boilerplate. Over the years the Left has pathologized disagreement in the same way that The Church used the charge of heresy. Democrats are never wrong, otherwise the same standards Thugge applies to the Swiftvets would be necessarily applied to Kerry. If the truth is a synthesis, part of it in Thugge’s world is already in place. Kerry’s view.

The vocabulary has been debased as well, so that “agenda” is both mistaken loyalty AND evil, variations on the word “partisanship” only apply to those who disagree with The Left, and “attack dog” is a slur which associates emphatic dissenting views with bad character, but only on The Right. One wonders what would qualify for attack doggedness on the Democrat side, or for that matter, what does The Left substitute for partisanship and agendae?

Thugge probably intentionally misinterpreted Rhod about a “small piece of the case against Kerry”.
Rhod referred to Elliot and Thugge substituted O’Neill. And then we have simply silly paragraphs such as those beginning with the quoted phrases “doubt about others” and “partisan position”. What do they mean?

First causes are important, and usually obvious. Thugge’s pretense to fairness and objectivity is actually partisanship. It’s agenda-driven and subjective. And that’s okay. Just admit it.

Is it so tough about answering my 2 points of your post. You can’t can you because removing credibility out of you ad-homenem attack, then what would be the substance of your post?