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Kerry: US troops are terrorists

Hey, I didn't lionize a woman who called the insurgents "freedom fighters." I didn't invite someone who compared them to the Minutemen to the Democratic National Convention. I didn't team up with people who demonstrate outside of military hospitals to demoralize the injured troops. You won't find any conservative congressmen giving speeches at ANSWER rallies. If anti-war people want to lie with dogs, they can't complain when it's pointed out that they have fleas. Deal with it or solve the problem.
 
DavidJames said:
If you watch closely, and long enough, this is the crap you will eventually get from conservatives. They simply can't seem to fathom an honest and honorable disagreement. Simple minds are unable to accept complex thoughts, complex being defined as more choices then the binary "you are with us or with the terrorists".

Sad, very sad displays but fellow Americans.
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As opposed to dudes who generalize whole groups with a binary conservative liberal label? Or generalize a whole group on the other side of said binary conservate/liberal label? "They" don't get this or that so "they" act in this manner or do this? That wouldn't sound like bombastic rhetoric comming from Rush Limbaugh?

Looks to me like you are doing a similar thing that you bitched about, "you are either with us or against us!"

I see little difference between the vitriol each of these binary choices throw at each other, only that each side doesn't seem to see what the smeg they are doing. Like bitching about something while at the same time doing what you are bitching about.
 
manny said:
Perhaps I can help.

1) We earnestly do not believe that those troops who are dying are doing so in vain or "for no reason," at least as long as we stay and finish the job. Look, the Bush administration overplayed the WMD thing. That's fine, beat them up for that; they took a gamble and lost and deserve it. But the case for war was never a one-legged stool. Don't imagine for a second that a single person on earth believes that WMD alone would have justifed this war. Pakistan has WMD. Russia has WMD. We have WMD. Even other direct threats like Iran and Libya have WMDs or WMD programs. WMD alone did not cause this war. Try this on. Saddam Hussein was a bad person for a host of reasons and could not be allowed to run a pivotal country in the post 9-11 world. That's why we did the war, OK? It's really that simple. The world changed on 9-11 and some threats were previously OK to appease or contain were no longer appeasable or containable. And at the core, in our hearts, we believe that removing Saddam Hussein from Iraq was, is and will be a noble mission.

2) The troops, broadly, do not believe that they are dying for no reason. The anti-war left and its pro-terrorist allies can say that they're for the soldiers all day long; many of them will even be telling the truth as they see it. But the people who are actually in the military, the people who are at risk, overwhelmingly believe in the mission. The soldiers rotating off duty are telling us, when we ask them, that they have fallen in love with the Iraqi people and want them to be as free of the terrorists and criminals and remnant Ba'athists as they now are of Saddam Hussein. They believe that their job is not done, and they want to finish it. Volunteers for return tours are sky-high. Reinlistments are sky-high. It is their earnest belief that the best way to support them is to let them finish their jobs. Read the words of Marine Cpl. Jeffrey Starr, who wrote a letter on his laptop to be delivered to his girlfriend if he were to die on his third tour of duty in Iraq: "I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark.'"

That is why many of us believe that we can best support the troops, and our country, by finishing the job in Iraq.
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The question then becomes why do you think they are dying for a good reason? The only answer to that I can see is because Bush tells you so. That is not good enough for me. Indeed, the world changed after 9/11...it changed so much that for some people their impotent rage could only be satisfied by invading a nation that had nothing at all to do with 9/11. I call that sending our troops off to die for no good reason...I do not call it "supporting the troops." I value their lives.

Btw, are you aware that there is an organized group of Iraq Veterans Against the War? It is not only those of us on the Left who are opposed to this senseless tragedy, however much you on the Right want to delude yourselves into believing that.

Our troops lives do matter and squandering them is one of the worst things I can imagine.
 
manny said:
Hey, I didn't lionize a woman who called the insurgents "freedom fighters." I didn't invite someone who compared them to the Minutemen to the Democratic National Convention. I didn't team up with people who demonstrate outside of military hospitals to demoralize the injured troops.
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I don't know of anybody on this board who has.
If you are not unitering, then you must be a dividerer. I think you are confusing the panderers with the panderees.
 
fishbob said:
I don't know of anybody on this board who has.
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And nothing in the statement at issue referred to anybody on this board.

Mark said:
The question then becomes why do you think they are dying for a good reason? The only answer to that I can see is because Bush tells you so.
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If you earnestly believe that there is quite literally nothing more to discuss.
 
manny said:
And nothing in the statement at issue referred to anybody on this board.

If you earnestly believe that there is quite literally nothing more to discuss.
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I'll try to be open minded but, seriously, where is the sense in invading a nation that nothing to do with 9/11? Keep in mind I supported the invasion of Afghanistan.

I mean, Canada would have been a lot less trouble and would have made about as much sense in terms of 9/11.
 
Mark said:
I'll try to be open minded but, seriously, where is the sense in invading a nation that nothing to do with 9/11? Keep in mind I supported the invasion of Afghanistan.

I mean, Canada would have been a lot less trouble and would have made about as much sense in terms of 9/11.
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Did we have a war with Canada in the past 15 years? No? Hmm.
 
Reaching. Desperate. Stupid. Wrong.

Jocko said:
Dishonesty from Mark, what a surprise. Okay, basic grammar time.

One who "terrorizes" kids in the dead of night is a ________

It's not hard, just like calling one who deliberately misrepresents what other people posts is called a... a... anyone? Yes Mark, a LIAR.

I think terror is terror. What's your problem with that? Apart from your usual intellectual dishonesty?

Oh, by the way, thank you so much for proving my response to Snide correct... and SO quickly.
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Pretending that constructions "terrorize/terrorist" has one and only one meaning is disingenious at the best, and boneheadedly ignorant at the worst. Naming your adventure in ambiguity a "grammar" lesson is garbage. If Mark had mis-used a verb in place of a noun, or hung a split infinitive out at the end of his sentence, or incorrectly joined a plural and singular construction, he would have committed a grammatical error. However, what you're really doing is quibbling over various dictionary definitions of a word, a word which is moreover ambiguous and has only comparatively recently entered the language in its current form. Furthermore, it has been given extreme added weight by the last few years of history which it did not have before, and there are still plenty of uses of "terrorize" that do not equal "Islamic-Style Murdering Terrorist." Furthermore, one would presume you are capable of knowing that.

Using word ambiguity like this to slander a completely justified and TOTALLY RIGHT critic of the war as unpatriotic used to be maddening; now it's just tiresome. This thread looks like it's huge and I'm already bored of it; one of the reasons I don't hang around here much is because the lack of a community moderation system means that chowderheads like you don't ever have to suffer for being such insufferable morons. If you were on Slashdot or Plastic your karma would be in negative numbers for continually abusing logic, fact, and reason the way you do.

In closing, you're still wrong, and I still don't respect your intelligence or point of view in the slightest. Any questions?
 
I'm pretty much in agreement with this post of Fishbob's. If I were some Iraqi kid who got woken up one night by the noise of the front door being smashed open, immediately following which (what appeared to be) a horde of hulking foreigners clad in body armor, carrying lots of nasty looking guns and shouting in a strange language filled the house and dragged off my dad, I'd be terrified, whether or not that was the GIs' intention and they had a legitimate reason for conducting the raid (e.g. it turns out Dad was planting IEDs instead of drinking tea at the neighbors' every Tuesday). I didn't read Kerry's (admittedly somewhat stumbling) statement as a slam on GIs, just that it would be better--or at least more palatable--for all parties involved if such operations were carried out by Iraqi security forces instead.

Jocko said:
It's not hard, just like calling one who deliberately misrepresents what other people posts is called a... a... anyone? Yes Mark, a LIAR.
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If we replace the word "post" with the phrase "say in a television interview," I'd say you're not describing anyone but yourself, Jocko.
 
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Mason said:
Prior to the WTC bombing, the word "terror" was in common use, and had a commonly understood meaning. Sadly, some people just can't keep up with the changing times and still use it to mean what it means...



And people immediately jump on it to say that he meant to say it in the context of the "new" definition of terror.

You see, here, he just means to say "terrorize" as a stronger version of "scare". You know, like we did in the old days. However, in the title of the thread, it is used in the manner of "Forgoing legitimate political structure and creating a non-government affiliated group of loosly organized religious extremist suicide bombers who want to destroy the american way of life and using them to scare the public into doing things their way", which is obviously a very easy mistake to make, given the context the word was used in.
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Keeping this in mind, I'd like to wish you a gay Holliday Season, Jocko.
 
Mark said:
I'll try to be open minded but, seriously, where is the sense in invading a nation that nothing to do with 9/11? Keep in mind I supported the invasion of Afghanistan.

I mean, Canada would have been a lot less trouble and would have made about as much sense in terms of 9/11.
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It's going to take a stronger argument than "Saddam was secular" to convince some of us that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.

iraq_twin_towers.jpg


Never mind that he was paying Palestinian terrorists some of that hard earned oil-for-food money to buy his popularity in the Arab states. Never mind that he actually used WMD in two wars. Never mind that in the Gulf War he sent missiles at Israel without being attacked by Israel. Never mind that he was burying any opposers in his own country in mass graves. Never mind that he refused to cooperate fully with the UN in order to keep Iran guessing about his WMD capability.
 
peptoabysmal said:
Never mind that he was paying Palestinian terrorists some of that hard earned oil-for-food money to buy his popularity in the Arab states. Never mind that he actually used WMD in two wars. Never mind that in the Gulf War he sent missiles at Israel without being attacked by Israel. Never mind that he was burying any opposers in his own country in mass graves. Never mind that he refused to cooperate fully with the UN in order to keep Iran guessing about his WMD capability.
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You forgot one. Never mind that these are not the reasons the public were given for invading (at least not before the invasion).
 
manny said:
Perhaps I can help.

1) We earnestly do not believe that those troops who are dying are doing so in vain or "for no reason," at least as long as we stay and finish the job. Look, the Bush administration overplayed the WMD thing. That's fine, beat them up for that; they took a gamble and lost and deserve it. But the case for war was never a one-legged stool. Don't imagine for a second that a single person on earth believes that WMD alone would have justifed this war. Pakistan has WMD. Russia has WMD. We have WMD. Even other direct threats like Iran and Libya have WMDs or WMD programs. WMD alone did not cause this war. Try this on. Saddam Hussein was a bad person for a host of reasons and could not be allowed to run a pivotal country in the post 9-11 world. That's why we did the war, OK? It's really that simple. The world changed on 9-11 and some threats were previously OK to appease or contain were no longer appeasable or containable. And at the core, in our hearts, we believe that removing Saddam Hussein from Iraq was, is and will be a noble mission.

2) The troops, broadly, do not believe that they are dying for no reason. The anti-war left and its pro-terrorist allies can say that they're for the soldiers all day long; many of them will even be telling the truth as they see it. But the people who are actually in the military, the people who are at risk, overwhelmingly believe in the mission. The soldiers rotating off duty are telling us, when we ask them, that they have fallen in love with the Iraqi people and want them to be as free of the terrorists and criminals and remnant Ba'athists as they now are of Saddam Hussein. They believe that their job is not done, and they want to finish it. Volunteers for return tours are sky-high. Reinlistments are sky-high. It is their earnest belief that the best way to support them is to let them finish their jobs. Read the words of Marine Cpl. Jeffrey Starr, who wrote a letter on his laptop to be delivered to his girlfriend if he were to die on his third tour of duty in Iraq: "I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark.'"

That is why many of us believe that we can best support the troops, and our country, by finishing the job in Iraq.
Click to expand...

I think that there is some truth here. But, I worry that it's been tried before. What can we do to prevent repeating the errors of Vietnam? Simply sticking around didn't do the trick then...

One thought comes to me that I've heard a few times. Is there a clear separation between native insurgents and foreign al-qaeda types there? Native insurgents may prove fruitful to negotiate with. For all intents and purposes we'd be negotiating their surrender. Why not get started if we can?
 
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