Finally a Washington insider (OK, ex-insider) with balls.

This is the original Dole e-mail:

Scott,

There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don't have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues. No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique.

In my nearly 36 years of public service I've known of a few like you. No doubt you will "clean up" as the liberal anti-Bush press will promote your belated concerns with wild enthusiasm. When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, "Biting The Hand That Fed Me." Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years.

I have no intention of reading your "exposé" because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job. That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively. You're a hot ticket now but don't you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?

BOB DOLE

No doubt manning the Atlantic Wall.....

.....................................

Fuckin Bravo Bob.

I used to deeply admire Bob Dole. He was after all, my Senator for many years.

But I have now lost all respect for Dole. This is now the second time he has "towed" the party line, and spoken without knowing the facts. In this case, he has even said he has no intention of reading McClellan's book. Well, it is rather hard to criticize something if you don't know what it says. How can you call someone a liar - or even imply that they are a liar, when you don't know what the person even said??

In 2004, Dole stated that Kerry never even shed blood when he was wounded. Now, I don't care for Kerry's politics, and I find his actions after he came home from Vietnam to be disgusting and inexcusable. Be that as it may though, the man does still have shrapnel in his left thigh from one of his wounds. So much for never so much as bleeding.

I used to respect Dole for his bullheadedness and stubbornness. The man knew how to get things done and get his way. But every time he opens his mouth and repeats someone else's talking points, he just comes off as ignorant, ill informed, and blatantly partisan.

kept all the blood in.

What a phony!

"Other Priorities" aka Dickhead Cheney

everybody already knows that shit, and even HuffPo mocks him.

The back cover says, No Shit, Sherlock

Yea but he gives Keithie Olberman an orgasim  and more then a tingling feeling up Chris Matthews leg

-- Modified on 5/31/2008 9:27:28 AM

I liked his blunt and direct way of expressing it.

Enough of McClellan’s book has leaked, that BOTH sides have said there is nothing new there, so why bother reading it. Saying your not going to read it, is more closely related to “I’m not giving McClellan my money for this”. If McClellan can’t be criticized at this point in time then certainly he shouldn’t be applauded either, right?

But you are misinformed. Dole’s (and my) criticism of McClellan isn’t about the content of the book. The closest Dole came to calling him a liar was to say “perhaps some (of those awful things) may have been (happening).” The main criticism of McClellan is his obvious false loyalty to Bush while press secretary, simply so he could cash in now.

And about Kerry. . . Kerry was definitely purple heart hunting. All but ONE of his men stood together as the now famed “Swift boaters". Listening to them talk, Kerry’s lucky his purple heart didn’t come from “friendly fire”.  Read the Doctor’s recollection about treating Kerry’s first “Purple Heart” wound (probably accidentally self inflicted) that was treated with a BANDAID! It was the equivalent of a sliver!!


-- Modified on 5/31/2008 11:42:43 AM

it should be easy enough to look up the records. for those of us who remember where we were, and had no other priorities.

Oh!  but there are NO records of an MD treating him!  Indeed, if the wound were all that small, the corpsman - who routinely take stitches in people - would have taken care of it.

So where are Letson's service records?  Do we want to bet whether he was there, then?

Republicons don't have a lot of room to be crying about anybody's service record, I think.  Do you have room?

are lying sax of shit.

You weren't there at the time either so must be that everyone but JFK could'a been lying.

I have lot's of room, but then I wasn't there either. I'm presently serving. What are YOU doing right now besides sitting on your ass, wishing you could masturbate just one more time?

serving under nIxon, the rat bastard. operation genghis Knan i think it was....top secret so i cant talk about it....or was it laos where we were filming ApairOLipsNow!

it's SEARED INTO MY MEMORY (that means the memory will never go away)

-- Modified on 5/31/2008 1:15:11 PM

and there's good reason you don't try to re-open issues 30 years after the fact.

And another good reason not to re-open this particular issue is that it's on account of a couple of draft-dodgers.

Whereever and whatever you are serving in doesn't keep you off TER, does it?  Since we're on the internet, we all know you're not fucking Lassie.

All his men respected him. He was courageous but kept the safety and well being of his men always forefront. He probably deserved the Navy cross, maybe even the MOH.

Note: I utterly abhor having to defend Kerry but I abhor disinformation even more, and bashing of our troops - any troops - even more than that. So defend him I will.

First off, Lewis Letson is a flat out liar. His name appears nowhere in Kerry's medical record. He was a corpsman, not a doctor. The DOCTOR who treated Kerry's wound, and who's signature is actually on the documents pertaining to Kerry's wound passed away several years ago. His name escapes me at the moment, and I'm feeling too lazy to go and look it up again, but it certainly wasn't Letson's name.

Second, all but one of the men who actually served alongside Kerry stood by him through all of the swiftboating attacks. The men who criticized him were never on a swiftboat with him.

Third, among the many claims made by the swiftboaters was that Kerry didn't deserve the silver star he was awarded when he pulled one of his men out of the river because they were not under fire at the time. The problem is, the very veteran making the claim that they were not under fire at the time ALSO recieved a silver star during the exact same incident - for courage under fire. So if Kerry's medal wasn't valid, why was his medal valid?

Fourth, as I stated in my first post, Kerry still has shrapnel in his leg. I believe it was the incidetn that led to either his second or third purple heart. I forget which it is now. Clearly, not a wound that required a mere band aid.

Finally, I frankly don't give a rat's ass how long Kerry was in country. He was there when thousands of Americans turned tail and ran to Canada. Thousands of people who criticize him today are those who themselves never served. That is bullshit. It is disgusting to see the validity of any purple heart questioned. When you scoff at the validity of one, you cast doubt on them all.

I don't care how long a person served, why they served, or whether they served during peace or war. I'm grateful to all of our soldiers, past and present, who had the balls to put on the uniform of this beloved country, and step forward to secure our freedom and liberty. End of story. I don't agree with Kerry's politics, and his actions following his return were disgusting and inexcusable. However, I would rather rip my own tongue out before I ever dare have the audacity to malign the service of a veteran.

And Dole, as a veteran himself, should have known better. That is why I lost respect for him.

I don't besmirch his military record, but I do question his motives. I still say his career was totally self serving. And I don't think all of the criticism from units serving along side him were totally politically motivated.

Also, it's totaly unfair to try to shut down criticism by saying that I'm indicting all military service. You know me better than that and I know first hand that government agencies and the military can and does easily and often screw up in their record keeping. That's not to say it definitely has happened here, but that can't be used as proof positive that everything in Kerry's record is correct.

-- Modified on 5/31/2008 2:44:00 PM

but they served - they signed up & followed orders, which is all you can ask of a man - or woman.  

We all have other priorities, but some of us sign up when the country calls, and most of us show up for muster.  

And most of us know better than to throw stones if we live in glass houses, but the Republicans have pretty much got it down to throwing stones and then blaming somebody else, and the Democrats are stupid enough to tolerate them.

Wright rates being pissed off at Bush & Cheney.  He was doing the dirt when they were fucking off, and now they're asking shit like, "why don't you go to Iraq and find out the war is over?"  Why don't you do your shopping in Baghdad yourself - without the air cover?

The war is over when the troops come home.  All the rest is bullshit, and we're sick of it.

Actually, technically we are still at war with North Korea. A peace treaty has never been signed. We simply agreed to a cease fire and created the demilitarized zone. But the war we officially declared all those decades ago has never been officially ended.

Odd little trivial fact

Also not trivial that American soldirs are still dying in Korea.

You really shouldn't help them out so nicely.

I'm not trying to shut down your criticism - merely giving you my take on it.

When attendees of the Republican National Convention wore bandaids with a purple drawn on them in 2004, I was honestly ashamed to be a Republican. That isn't what we are supposed to be about.

Sure Kerry's motives were questionable, his actions following his return and since then have been detestable. I will even admit that Kerry laid himself wide open to have his service in Nam questioned when he opened his speech at the DNC with his moronic "I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty" statement, followed by having some of his former shipmates join him on stage. We didn't have to rise to the bait though.

Kerry's politics offered a wide range of substantive issues on which to debate. He is wrong on everything from the Iraq war, to health care, social security, taxes, and just about anything else I can think of. I don't believe that slurs on military service, personal attacks, and other cheap shots have a place in politics when there are so many other issues to be debated. That is my opinion though.

I did not try to shut down your comments, and never would. We disagree, and there is nothing wrong with that. I don't like seeing attacks on military service, but I'm not going to tell you that you are a bad person for saying it, or that you aren't allowed to say it. I'm just going to voice my opinion about it, and we'll just have to agree to diagree on this one. Don't worry though, I still like ya lots

or are you just another deranged Republican with a guilty conscience?

is that what you're looking for, is another way to tie up half the army for 50 years?

Does it bother you at all whether we go to war on false pretenses, or not?

Does it bother you that a war is mismanaged?  Or lied about?  Doesn't look like it to me.

talking every kind of shit about his record and the people who made those decisions.

You're deranged if you think a person in combat is thinking about advancing his career.  As far as he knows WTF is going on, he's trying to stay alive without bailing on the people he has to face the next day.

EVERYBODY is self-serving in some way and degree and to some ends.  St Fucking Francis was indulging his thing for animals and poor people.  What is your whine now?

You're smearing the entire process, and the Navy decision and records system.  If you knew shit about the military, you'd know it's a massive bureaucracy with almost endless inertia; and anything can happen by accident once, but a man doesn't collect a record like that by accident.

So you don't think ALL the criticism was politically motivated, but it doesn't seem to bother you to know and admit that some of it was.  Support the troops much, hunh?

The real point here is that you're supporting an asshole by attacking somebody who DID serve, and WAS wounded, and that asshole needs to distract from the comparison with BULLSHIT like yours, so he comes up with this DISINFORMATION PAC to sling your shit.

Most of the accidents of combat 30 years ago are irrelevant to tomorrow's politics.  Ike turned out to be a damn fine president, and Grant, every bit as much a hero, was a total loser as president.  OTOH, Bush's character failures as a young man were probably a legitimate warning of his problems as a president.  Still, I would not link them to his dubious military service, UNLESS AND UNTIL HE raises the issue.

Bush was a dipshit for permitting the swiftboat PAC to operate, and he did it because he needed to distract the Kerry campaign, and he needed to avoid the obvious comparison.  Personally, I don;t think Kerry's record was that relevant, but Bush's tactics showed he was a total slime.

But you fuckers make hypocrisy your major issue, and the way you campaign, more than anything else, undermines your credibility.  

Fucking Republican sleazebags.  That's all there is to say.

But we can thank Republicans like RUG for making it one.

In a Navy tour and 10 years USMC, I don't recall a single foul or bitter or even hardly partisan discussion of politics.  Politics was a joke - we were there to do a job.  People were valued by their skills, and I wouldn't have given a shit if my 1stSgt was a fucking Buddhist Confederate as long as he was a good 1stSgt, and I'd be grateful to have a good one, and desperate to lose a bad one.

I am fucking SICK to see people wave their fucking 99 cent yellow ribbons solely for the purpose of politics.  If somebody wants to support the troops, how about sending Jim Webb $50 to fight to get the GI Bill back?

This really pisses me off!!!!!!!!

Kerry's initials are JFK. Or maybe YOU were talking about someone else?

-- Modified on 5/31/2008 7:58:58 PM

You said, "The real point here is that you're supporting an asshole by attacking somebody who DID serve, and WAS wounded. . . "

The person I'm supporting here is Bob Dole. So you really think Bob Dole is an asshole. You think Bob Dole didn't serve and WASN'T wounded. Gosh, how many YEARS did he spend in a VA hospitable?

Bush is SO far removed from this discussion, except in YOUR head. Your hatred of Bush infiltrates every aspect and minute of your life. You are pitiful.

JFK generally means Kennedy.  In either case, it's a non fucking sequitur

It's about Bush, and you prove that by going after kerry.

Talk about HATRED - you're OBSESSED here about running a man down for an exception record 40 years ago, only because your man is a shitbird.

But I will give you credit - it's not only Kerry you hate, and it's not just the US Navy because they decorated him repeatedly - it's also every soldier, sailor and decent American you hate when you run down the entire Navy with your blanket accusations.

Why do you hate America?

Looks like their records only go through 1994, they are publishing an "official" number of 91 hostile deaths. through 1994.

SMART people are ALREADY talking about John F. Kerry, but now I understand your problem.

like I said, it's still a NFS.

some new technolgy for the handicapped so you could keep up with the rest of us.

I didn't bring up Kerry, Sins did. She did not bring him up in the context of Bush. It was in the context of Bob Dole. If things are moving too fast for you, then you can always re-read the posts until it sinks in, maybe.

Your data lists a last casualty in 1994 when a training flight strayed and was shot down.

By contrast, look at the non-combat deaths:  http://www.koreanwar-educator.org/topics/dmz/p_dmz_military_deaths_since_oct_1979.htm

3 dozen non-combat deaths since then.  When you have to maintain a force that size, that's what happens.

when you've got something substantive, call me.

and you wouldn't need me to interpret the English language for you.

You're not only an idiot, but you're naive as well.

I specifically contrasted that to non-combat deaths.

Habla Ingles, cabron?

It does not follow that I'd be pointing out non-hostile deaths among a military population. Any population, military or otherwise will contain their statistically appropriate share of non-hostile deaths. Only you would think it appropriate to point them out.

The subject was American military deployments, active today. I pointed out how American military were still dying in Korea. It goes without saying I was referring to hostile deaths.

So thank you very much for the totally useless and inappropriate link to the non-hostile deaths.

He can stick his dick up my ass anytime & anywhere!!!

Adding a fourth to the mix is just too much. I'd have to follow your lead and have a lobotomy to continue.

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/20061228_3000FACES_TAB1.html

The DoD will release the names of KIAs whose bodies are hardly cold, but somehow you think Korean casualties are "still classified".

I know where you're serving - in the fucking broom closet at Benicia Arsenal.

You've got so so many dimensions of persona, yet all of their thoughts are so sadly, ONE dismensional.

And you're one person with multiple personalities?

BWAHAHHAHAAHAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

are a bunch of idiots!