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2009-02-01 Europe

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Posted by tipper 2009-02-01 10:28|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

#1 The people who have been the most absolutely vicious towards me because of my support for the GWOT and for the few instances of harsh interrogation of captured terror suspects have been secular American Jews.

They take particular umbrage at labeling anyone 'evil'. I've gotten long angry lectures about how 'torture' never works and in any case no one except a very small (dozens in the world) handful of psychopaths are really bad, unless we make them so by labeling them 'other' and failing to acknowledge our nation's responsibility for their hatred.

The are DETERMINED to maintain that belief and lash out venomously at anyone who attempts to suggest otherwise. I have figurative, if not literal, scars from several such encounters. In one recent case the other person threatened to have me fired from my job for promoting hatred and is in a position to (at a minimum) create problems for me at work.

I have a very sick feeling in my stomach about this year. I suspect it may get very bad very quickly.

Posted by lotp 2009-02-01 10:57|| 2009-02-01 10:57|| Front Page Top

#2 Perhaps. But I'm getting a very good feeling about next year. Already.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2009-02-01 11:11|| 2009-02-01 11:11|| Front Page Top

#3 They take particular umbrage at labeling anyone 'evil'. I've gotten long angry lectures about how 'torture' never works and in any case no one except a very small (dozens in the world) handful of psychopaths are really bad, unless we make them so by labeling them 'other' and failing to acknowledge our nation's responsibility for their hatred.

Ya know, I don't really wanna do torture as a tactic, it's too much trouble, but the question to ask is, North Vietnam tortured not only our soldiers but lots and lots of South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians.

They used torture and other terror, and it worked like a son-of-a-bitch. They have a country and their kids get to be factory owners while their conquered enemy's kids get to be 5 dollars a day factory workers in the caste system they've set up there.

They're living in a fantasy world where nothing evil ever _works_. Unfortunately it works all too well, otherwise people wouldn't be doing it.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2009-02-01 11:19|| 2009-02-01 11:19|| Front Page Top

#4 Thing, I don't want to do torture either. What I asked them to do was to grant the possibility that those who authorized waterboarding did so because they believed that thousands of lives were at stake.

These people would not even admit that. The only 'evil' they could imagine were embodied in Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.

And, although it did not come up, possibly also in religious Jews. I suspect they hate, fear and are guilty about Israel and that that is at the root of their blindness to and even support for Muslim terror.

Or maybe that's just pop psychologizing on my part. Who knows?

What I do know is that they would gladly have destroyed me when I didn't agree with them. And I know that they and many like them are quite ready to support pretty damned near anything the Obama administration does.

NS trusts there will be a voter backlash in the Nov 2010 elections. Possibly so, and I would welcome it. But a lot can happen between now and then and some of it may be irreversible.

Posted by lotp 2009-02-01 11:28|| 2009-02-01 11:28|| Front Page Top

#5 Here is my evil story about Vietnam. A group of medics went to a village to give aid and to inoculate the children for small pox. The next day upon returning to finish their aid work they discovered a pile of little arms from the children that they had incoculated the day before. Did it happen? Who knows, but it damn sure could have. The atrocities commeted by the v.c. commies and nva are unimaginable to those that did not experience.

Posted by bman 2009-02-01 11:29|| 2009-02-01 11:29|| Front Page Top

#6 bman - Yeah, I heard the same story, from Marlon Brando (as Col. Kurtz) in "Apocalypse Now". Good movie.

Posted by DMFD 2009-02-01 11:36|| 2009-02-01 11:36|| Front Page Top

#7 the helicopter assault on the village made the hair on my neck stand up, but the rest of the movie didn't do much for me. I wondered where I had heard that story, amazing how fact and fiction blend together over the years.

Posted by bman 2009-02-01 12:07|| 2009-02-01 12:07|| Front Page Top

#8 Did it happen? Who knows, but it damn sure could have.

Ah, Truthiness. Haven't we had enough of that in the last four years?

And yes, it was a good movie.

Posted by SteveS 2009-02-01 12:10|| 2009-02-01 12:10|| Front Page Top

#9 Saigon... shit; I'm still only in Saigon... Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now... waiting for a mission... getting softer; every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.

Oh, did I show you my Lucky Hattm?

Posted by Frank G 2009-02-01 12:15|| 2009-02-01 12:15|| Front Page Top

#10 2010 is too son for a backlash. The press will stiffle most any pro-trunk or anti-donk/anti-Barry news for at least a year.

Posted by Mike N. 2009-02-01 12:19|| 2009-02-01 12:19|| Front Page Top

#11 2010 is doable. The Messiah has made some gigantic mistakes.

He has been rolled by Queen Nan and Prince Harry into supporting an overreaching spending bill that does too little for stimulus and too much for special interest payoffs they've been waiting for years to implement. Too greedy too fast.

Barry is bad mouthing the economy way too much; too much fear, fear, fear to get the package passed before anybody figures out what's in it and too little "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" confidence building. This will also delay recovery.

As a result, the crowning jewel of socialized medicine will prove once again elusive and the blush will come off The One's halo for the true believers. They will see The Messiah has feet of clay and can't deliver the goods.

So the economy is still in the tank 3 years on, the donks own it, and they've gone a bridge too far.

The donk's House majority rests on lots of conservative democrats who ran against George Bush in pretty conservative districts. Now they are going to have to distance themselves from the Holy Family in their voting record, or defend themselves to constituents who are pretty loyal Rush listeners.

By then, the trunks may figure out that if they ever get in again, they better not screw up like they did last time. A Contract for America message delivered nationwide by a real positive, inspirational, mediagenic figure like, say Michael Steel supported by Palin, Jindal and (pick your fav for 2012) of lower taxes and growth can put the trunks on top in 2010.

And I didn't even assume any foreign disasters from the donk's friends. And there will be some. Because this economy will hurt everyone else a lot more than it will hurt us. And somebody will be pushed over the brink. That's The One's only hope, that he is the indispensable wartime leader. Watch for less Lincoln now and more FDR.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2009-02-01 13:15|| 2009-02-01 13:15|| Front Page Top

#12 #11 2010 is doable. The Messiah has made some gigantic mistakes.

Unfortunately, I suspect his greatest mistakes are yet to come.

Posted by Besoeker 2009-02-01 13:23|| 2009-02-01 13:23|| Front Page Top

#13 bman - Yeah, I heard the same story, from Marlon Brando (as Col. Kurtz) in "Apocalypse Now". Good movie.

A movie the liberals have been shoving down our throats for the past twenty years.

AND... a movie which pretty much postulated the view that the N. Vietnamese deserved to _win_ because they were willing to do evil things like cut off the arms of kids being vaccinated and we weren't. Or that we couldn't win because we wouldn't do those things.

But now... they want to talk about the morality of waterboarding and/or other forms of torture.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2009-02-01 13:40|| 2009-02-01 13:40|| Front Page Top

#14 When it comes to atrocities, the Muslim barbarians are rank amateurs compared to their communist predecessors, their obvious enthusiasm notwithstanding. I don't know about lopping off inoculated arms, but the VC and their fellow lefty heroes, the NVA, were fond of lopping off heads, skinning bodies (living bodies if they could get them), gouging out eyes, and various other disgusting practices.

It is a measure of their depravity that media- culture conformists and peace hypocrites will invariably leap to the defense of these savages and blame it all on napalm, "American imperialism," and the myth of "indiscriminate bombing."

Personally, I was appalled at our use of napalm at first, but after a few weeks of seeing Charlie in action, I was frustrated that we didn't have something even more scary.

Posted by Atomic Conspiracy 2009-02-01 14:32|| 2009-02-01 14:32|| Front Page Top

#15 As I told another Vietnam vet just Friday, the thing I cherish most about my year in Vietnam is being one of the people that drew ARCLIGHT boxes and did the follow-up bomb damage assessment. He told me something I hadn't heard before - that these strikes killed EVERYTHING, even the ants in the ground. I had known that they killed anyone within thee or four miles of the strike from overpressure, and they totally leveled the landscape, but that they killed ants in the ground? Of all the weapons in our arsenal, the NVA hated and feared ARCLIGHT the most. That's one reason I've been so adamant about using them against the muslims - they need to understand that we can sow much greater fear than they can, and we can do it as a total surprise. One ARCLIGHT strike down through the Gaza Strip would eliminate it as a problem for CENTURIES. There would be no Hamass, there would be no "palestinians", there would be no rockets, mortar shells, or anything else. You'd have to be in a completely self-contained bunker at least 750 feet below the surface to even POSSIBLY survive. I hope we never have to do that to such a densely-populated area, but we're going to HAVE to do something that teaches the arabs that messing with the US is a sure-fire way to die a horrible death. Not using ARCLIGHT strikes against the Republican Guards left the door open to the guerilla struggle that followed. Using such a strike against a target in the NWFP would send such a clear message even the Pakistanis would have to acknowledge it.

There's a good probability, especially with Barry in the White House, that the next place we'll have to use such weapons will be in Western Europe, principally against Brussels. I doubt we'll have the intestinal fortitude to do so, however.

War is not a computer video game. War is hell. Not using the most imposing weapons in your arsenal only prolongs your enemy's will to fight.

Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot 2009-02-01 15:43|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2009-02-01 15:43|| Front Page Top

#16 4 drinks in one post, OP. And I have to get up and go to work in a few hours.

Posted by Glenmore 2009-02-01 23:24|| 2009-02-01 23:24|| Front Page Top

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