Politics: Onward from New Hampshire

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
10,000?

You've been reading too many cold war novels, I think.

Attempts on Fidel, maybe.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by bilmore
10,000?

You've been reading too many cold war novels, I think.

It ain't my fault that you don't know or remember what happened while you were running around with long hair and... forget it.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man

On the Clinton "admission" -- Ok, if so, WTF could the U.S. have done with bin Laden in 1996? Perhaps in hindsight we "should" have agreed to take him into custody (if Sudan could have delivered him), and then dropped him out of a plane over the Atlantic, but we as a nation have decided as a general rule not to operate that way.

S_A_M

You only wanted to throw away the "we as a nation" part, but the rest is a keeper?

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
OK, you guys are scaring me now. Do you honestly believe this has not been done at the order or request of the U.S. government more than 10,000 times since 1950?

I am sure it has been done but I think you are overestimating it. In addition, what the government does clandestinely is different from what they publicly announce they will do. Thinking that your government is doing something like that but not really having any proof of it and not attempting to do anything about it is not the same as supporting it.

In the past, Americans may have not condemned that the government did those things, but now many of us rabidly support our government doing this. That is different. I would have not been surprised to find out the CIA assasinated rebel leaders in central america, but I wouldn't have cheered them on. I will openly cheer and weep the day I find out OBL is dead. That is different than how I have ever felt in the past about this kind of activity.

The US has openly admitted that OBL is to be taken dead or alive and offered a reward and the American public widely supports this. I don't think Americans have felt that way about state sponsored assasination anytime recently. Maybe during WWI/II or civil war days or something like that, but not since the cold war began.

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
Do you distinguish whether its the White House asking an ally or agent, or the White House ordering an employee? Is it okay if its a CIA contractor fulfilling a contract with the CIA? A friendly foreign intelligence agency repaying a favor?

There is no moral difference. The difference is that in the past, Americans may have chosen not to condemn this, but now we openly support and encourage our government to do this.

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
And I have no idea why we as a people would ever have been absolutely opposed to these activities, whether preemptive or retaliatory.

Because we worry that the information may not be accurate and that innocent people may get killed. We are more willing to accept collateral casualties after 9/11 precisely because we have been attacked. Prior to 9/11, we were less willing to accept collateral casualties.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Not Me

Because we worry that the information may not be accurate and that innocent people may get killed. We are more willing to accept collateral casualties after 9/11 precisely because we have been attacked. Prior to 9/11, we were less willing to accept collateral casualties.

Leaving the rest alone, I guess I would leave the focus of my quote on the "absolutely" part of "absolutely opposed". Absolutes are for extremists.

Actually, I'll add that I do like your point about how people don't necessarily support what they don't necessarily know, though I'll add that they don't necessarily want to know.

Believe me, 95% of this country doesn't want to know what our G is doing to our own inner cities, so I can't imagine that they really want to know what our G is doing in other countries.

[Not Me]

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/articl...TICLE_ID=37706

FBI verifies Kerry at 'assassination summit'

Records back claim he was at meeting that discussed killing senators
Posted: March 23, 2004
5:00 p.m. Eastern

News management may have reached an embarrassing low in the Los Angeles Times for March 23 where an article by staff writer John M. Glionna purports to offer selections from the FBI file on soon-to-be Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry, who was under surveillance by the G-Men as a member of the executive board of the pro-Viet Cong Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

Presenting items from 50 documents carefully selected from what it reported were 14 boxes of related government papers 12 feet high, the Times confirmed from the FBI and other witnesses that Kerry had resigned from the VVAW leadership in November 1971 at a Kansas City board meeting to run for Congress.

For years Kerry claimed that he had resigned after a July 1971 meeting in St. Louis and had not been present for the Kansas City meeting that was moved from venue to venue to try to avoid FBI surveillance of the group's most secret plans.

The reason official confirmation that he did not leave the group until after the Kansas City meeting is important, say specialists on radical activities during the Vietnam era, is that the FBI documents confirm earlier reports by those present that Kerry participated in a closed-door discussion of a proposal to assassinate seven U.S. senators who were special targets of Hanoi, with whose agents selected leaders of VVAW had been meeting.

The Los Angeles Times made no mention of this part of the story, broken 10 days earlier in the New York Sun by founding New York Times books editor Tom Lipscomb and since spiked by editors coast to coast.

Kerry reportedly voted against the killings but did not leave the meeting and call a cop. Until the FBI surveillance report surfaced to put him in the middle of the assassination discussion, Kerry claimed to have resigned before the meeting at which VVAW discussed the murder plan.

After Kerry left the board of VVAW, with which he had made his national reputation, the FBI ceased surveillance of his activities according to a bureau memo in early 1972.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/articl...TICLE_ID=37706

Nick Confessore on this story (or CNN's version of it):

• But you have to look at this in context, and in context, what happened was this: Kerry was a moderate voice in an antiwar group, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, that was rapidly growing more radical. We also know from other accounts that, throughout his involvement, Kerry took pains to push the group more to the middle. Finally, at one meeting, some of the more radical voices discussed -- only half-seriously, if you believe CNN's account -- killing leaders who continued to support the war. At the end of that meeting, Kerry and some other moderates resigned. I think we can take it as a safe assumption that Kerry and his fellow moderates decided that VVAW had gone off the rails and wanted to wash their hands of any involvement in the group, which seems appropriate.
  
  In other words, although the CNN account contains the unspoken assumption that -- as the RNC will shortly be putting it -- "Kerry was tied to a group that supported the assassination of American officials," if you read the story in toto and in sequence, it's obvious that group's increasing and finally untenable radicalism was precisely what drove Kerry away from it.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by bilmore
(FWIW, I can drive 100 miles north and buy explosives. Big-time explosives. Legally.)

Look, I know that tempers are running high today with the congressional testimony and all, but let's all remember that tomorrow is another day.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Not Me
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/articl...TICLE_ID=37706

Hey, Bilmore -- were you at this meeting, too?

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
In other words, although the CNN account contains the unspoken assumption that -- as the RNC will shortly be putting it -- "Kerry was tied to a group that supported the assassination of American officials," if you read the story in toto and in sequence, it's obvious that group's increasing and finally untenable radicalism was precisely what drove Kerry away from it.

I don't dispute that Kerry left the group because it was growing more radical. The point, though, is that Kerry has claimed in the past that he resigned from the group in July and the meeting was in November. He has said in the past that he wasn't at the Novermber meeting. When confronted with the FBI documents, Kerry says he doesn't recall the November meeting. You would think he would remember a meeting that drove him from the group because people were talking about killing US Senators. Especially since he seems to have clearly "remembered" that he left the group in July.

Sounds fishy to me.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me Sounds fishy to me.

Here, "fishy" means something that reasonable people would not hold against Kerry, but with which we can beat up on him for a few days while we wait for Photoshopped pix of Kerry partying with the Manson family.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Here, "fishy" means something that reasonable people would not hold against Kerry, but with which we can beat up on him for a few days while we wait for Photoshopped pix of Kerry partying with the Manson family.

I didn't mean by saying fishy that he ploted to kill US Senators. He doesn't seem that wacko to me.

I meant that it seems like he may have conveniently forgotten that he was at the November meeting because he did remember the talk about killing US Senators and wanted to conveniently forget that he had ever attended. In other words, he lied.

Before you chastize me for saying the Kerry story sounds fishy, go back and reread your posts about the GWB national guard service records.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Not Me
....Before you chastize me for saying the Kerry story sounds fishy, go back and reread your posts about the GWB national guard service records.

What service? What records?

[Not Me]

It is about time that the government got out of the marriage business.

http://www.newsreview.info/apps/pbcs...NEWS/103230054

PORTLAND (AP) -- It took the threat of a lawsuit to make Benton County commissioners back off their plan to begin issuing same-sex marriage licenses on Wednesday. Instead, the county will stop issuing the licenses entirely until there is a court ruling on whether gay marriage is legal in Oregon.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
What service? What records?

The service that resulted in him being a fighter pilot and lead to an honorable discharge upon completing his service.