WizArtist II
"How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock? "
Member # 1425
posted
WHAT SENATOR JOHN GLENN SAID:
Things that make you think a little:
There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq in January. In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the month of January. That's just one American city, about as deadly as the entire war-torn country of Iraq.
When some claim that President Bush shouldn't have started this war, state the following:
a. FDR led us into World War II.
b. Germany never attacked us; Japan did. From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost ... an average of 112,500 per year.
c. Truman finished that war and started one in Korea. North Korea never attacked us. From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost: an average of 18,334 per year.
d. John F. Kennedy started the Vietnam conflict in 1962. Vietnam never attacked us.
e. Johnson turned Vietnam into a quagmire. From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost. That is an average of 5,800 per year.
f. Clinton went to war in Bosnia without UN or French consent. Bosnia never attacked us. He was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three times by Sudan and did nothing. Osama has attacked us on multiple occasions.
g. In the years since terrorists attacked us, President Bush has liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran, and North Korea without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who slaughtered 300,000 of his own people.
The Democrats are complaining about how long the war is taking. But� It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation.
We've been looking for evidence for chemical weapons in Iraq for less time than it took Hillary Clinton to find the Rose Law Firm billing records.
It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard than it took Ted Kennedy to call the police after his Oldsmobile sank at Chappaquiddick
It took less time to take Iraq than it took to count the votes in Florida!!!!
But Wait. There�s more!
JOHN GLENN (ON THE SENATE FLOOR) Mon, 26 Jan 2004 11:13
Some people still don't understand why military personnel do what they do for a living. This exchange between Senators John Glenn and Senator Howard Metzenbaum is worth reading. Not only is it a pretty impressive impromptu speech, but it's also a good example of one man's explanation of why men and women in the armed services do what they do for a living.
This IS a typical, though sad, example of what some who have never served think of the military.
Senator Metzenbaum (speaking to Senator Glenn): "How can you run for Senate when you've never held a real job?"
Senator Glenn (D-Ohio): "I served 23 years in the United States Marine Corps. I served through two wars. I flew 149 missions. My plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire on 12 different occasions. I was in the space program. It wasn't my checkbook, Howard; it was my life on the line. It was not a nine-to-five job, where I took my tie off to take the daily cash receipts to the bank."
"I ask you to go with me ... as I went the other day.. to a veteran's hospital and look those men ...with their mangled bodies in the eye, and tell THEM they didn't hold a job!
You go with me to the Space Program at NASA and go, as I have gone, to the widows and Orphans of Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee...and you look those kids in the eye and tell them that their DADS didn't hold a job.
You go with me on Memorial Day and you stand in Arlington National Cemetery, where I have more friends buried than I'd like to remember, and you watch those waving flags.
You stand there, and you think about this nation, and you tell ME that those people didn't have a job?
What about you?"
For those who don't remember.. During W.W.II, Howard Metzenbaum was an attorney representing the Communist Party in the USA.
Now he's a Senator!
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
Registered: Nov 2004
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Also, John Glenn hasn't been a senator since 1999. Howard Metzenbaum hasn't been a senator since 1995. And on another edit (for god's sake, did the person who wrote this tripe do any research?), Metzenbaum apparently never represented the Communist Party of the USA. He earned his bachelor's degree from Ohio State in 1939, earned his J.D. in 1941 from Ohio State, practiced law in Cleveland for a very short while before serving in the Ohio House of Representatives from 1943 to 1947, and then serving in the Ohio Senate from 1947 to 1951.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
Impressive, copy-pasting something that's been floating around the internet for over a year and contains more logical fallacies than Tim has posts. Really.
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted
Regardless of the origins of this as a whole, the two halves of it are still pretty interesting. I noticed that Snopes didn't debunk any of the points in either half, just its origins as an "improptu" speech.
posted
Beyond that, it isn't Snopes' job to do more than say whether or not something is an urban legend. But, if you want: the problem here is that this piece articulates a ridiculous moral calculus wherein we only have to worry about a war if it is killing more soldiers than the worst war ever. It presumes that War is some sort of universal Platonic concept with only one variable: friendly soldiers killed.
Yet the various wars listed were all fought under vastly different circumstances and for vastly different reasons, and in fact there was serious opposition to almost all of them. Take Bosnia, for example, which happened to have been vigorously, loudly opposed by some of the very same people championing the invasion of Iraq. (It also had some opposition from the left.) President Bush's original campaign consisted largely of pointing out how terrible an idea "nation building," as practiced in Bosnia, was.
Registered: Mar 1999
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WizArtist II
"How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock? "
Member # 1425
posted
Hey, this IS the flameboard... I'm just waiting to see posts of researched numbers to debunk it.
The speech is accurate enough but what about the numbers cited in the rest of it?
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I don't doubt the U.S. casualty figures given, but that's immaterial because the argument they're supposedly in service of is baseless.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Amazing what counts as accuracy these days.
You'd be hard pressed to find anyone that defends what the U.S. did in Korea or Vietnam in the name of containing communism (especially since we reached a tenuous stalemate in one and failed in the other). Truman took a lot of heat for Korea as Johnson did for Vietnam. Nixon was elected president on a "law and order" campaign that included a "secret plan" to end the conflict in Vietnam.
Comparing the Iraq conflict with World War II is ludicrous. We declared war on Germany the same day that Germany declared war on us, which was three days after we declared war on Japan. Japan was allied with German and Italy, who were engaged in war against our allies, Great Britian and France.
In Iraq, we started attacking a fully-contained (for over a decade) country that (contrary to our intelligence, as we found out after taking the country) had no way whatsoever to harm its neighbors, let alone the US. Iraq wasn't allied with any country or group engaged in attacks on the US.
Comparing the US casualty figures from any of these wars is ludicrous. We've lost 2,000 troops due to Iraq; the bulk of those losses have been since Bush declared the mission accomplished and the result of an entrenched resistance. How many troops did we lose in World War II, Korea, or Vietnam after the official end of hostilities?
quote:In the years since terrorists attacked us, President Bush has liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran, and North Korea without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who slaughtered 300,000 of his own people.
For the record, both Iran and North Korea have resumed their nuclear power plant programs over the protests and warnings of the Bush Administration. The Taliban has not been crushed, and one can hardly call Afghanistan liberated when you consider the US only has Kabul under any sort of control. Al-Qaida is still up and running, as we've since in the time since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
"There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq in January. In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the month of January. That's just one American city, about as deadly as the entire war-torn country of Iraq."
Deadly for Americans, that is. Since the beginning of the year, how many troops have died? Close to 1,000. Most of them in combat. How many died last month--90 something?
"When some claim that President Bush shouldn't have started this war, state the following:
FDR led us into World War II."
I believe conservatives and Republicans vehemently opposed World War II, because it would be against their "isolationist" viewpoints. Ever read "The Plot Against America?"
"Johnson turned Vietnam into a quagmire. From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost. That is an average of 5,800 per year."
Between 1961 and 1965 we lost 1,864 soldiers. True, the conflict was still relatively low-level...but that's for four years.
"Clinton went to war in Bosnia without UN or French consent. Bosnia never attacked us. He was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three times by Sudan and did nothing. Osama has attacked us on multiple occasions."
Clinton tried to kill bin Laden in 1998 and was roundly condemned by conservatives for "distracting from Monicagate." So we know that until 2001 conservatives believed that we should not retaliate against terrorist attacks. Also, bin Laden only attacked the US twice before 9/11, in the AFrican Embassies (1998) and the USS Cole (2000). Other attacks atrributed to him were not his doing.
"In the years since terrorists attacked us, President Bush has liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran, and North Korea without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who slaughtered 300,000 of his own people."
Crippled al-Qaeda...for God's sake, today, in Amman, Jordan, more than 60 people were killed in suicide bombings! Who is responsible? Probably al-Qaeda. Not to mention attacks in Bali, London, Egypt, Spain, Istanbul, and the list goes on.
"The Democrats are complaining about how long the war is taking. But� It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation."
If you only look at the invasion from the fall to Baghdad.
b. Germany never attacked us; Japan did. From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost ... an average of 112,500 per year.
Buh?
The numbers are misleading...considering the number of soldiers killed the the Pacific theater.
And besides, didn't we declared war on Japan and then Germany declared war on the us?
-------------------- Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war. ~ohn Adams
Once again the Bush Administration is worse than I had imagined, even though I thought I had already taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is invariably worse than I can imagine. ~Brad DeLong
You're just babbling incoherently. ~C. Montgomery Burns
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Actually some of the first US casualties of WWII were the crewmembers of the USS Rueben James killed by - wait for it - a German U-Boat, on Halloween, 1941. Before Pearl Harbor. FDR kept us OUT of WWII for as long as possible. To quote (possibly, but you might want to check Snopes) Churchill " the Americans will do the right thing, after they have exhausted every other alternative."
Another important distinction - we have not declared war on Iraq or Afghanistan.
-------------------- Twee bieren tevreden, zullen mijn vriend betalen.
Registered: Oct 2000
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posted
Yes, we have instead declared war on terror.
-------------------- Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war. ~ohn Adams
Once again the Bush Administration is worse than I had imagined, even though I thought I had already taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is invariably worse than I can imagine. ~Brad DeLong
You're just babbling incoherently. ~C. Montgomery Burns
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote: Clinton tried to kill bin Laden in 1998 and was roundly condemned by conservatives for "distracting from Monicagate." So we know that until 2001 conservatives believed that we should not retaliate against terrorist attacks. Also, bin Laden only attacked the US twice before 9/11, in the AFrican Embassies (1998) and the USS Cole (2000). Other attacks atrributed to him were not his doing.
bin Laden (well, Al-Qaeda) may have been involved in the February 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center that killed 6 and injured 1040. It is believed that Ramzi Yousef, the bomber, had connections to Al-Qaeda and/or Osama bin Laden.
Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
From what I read, bin Laden had no hand in that. All I can find is that he supported it in 1993 (via fatwa or something) but didn't actually fund it. It was Ramzi Yousef's idea, and within two years of the bombing, he was captured and on trial.
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