Steve Schacher

quote:Until then everything is speculation and I'm not one prone to jump to conclusions.To me, this one doesn't seem to be that much of a leap.

quote:The fact remains that while they appear suspicious, the technology to produce such a document was possible at the time, even if it was rare. Do you really believe that "rare" technology would be given to a Lt. Colonel at a lowly Texas Air National Guard base for routine office typing?

I found this on another website: quote:Microsoft announces release of Word '73 Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) today announced the release of its long-awaited '73 release of its popular Word word processing program. The new release allows implementation of popular word features, such as superscripting, proportional fonts, and center justification, on older technology, such as IBM selectric typewriters, and quill pens. Said prominent Kerry supporter Bill Gates "While some users, principally those born after 1980, have questioned why we should implement MS Word on pre-PC tehnology, we in Redmond recongize a sudden need for our product, particularly for retroactively producing important memoranda for political campaigns. There are thosen who argue MS Word did not even exist in 1973! Well it does now! Microsoft realizes that there is an issue with the superscripted 'th' character. It will be corrected in version 1.1.

It doesn't matter if it's proven to be a forgery. It's what they would have written at the time anyway, and probably did but the Pentagon conveniently "lost" the documents and the guy "conveniently" died 20 years ago. Besides, everybody knows that technology is first invented for government purposes and then eventually works its way into the consumer marketplace. If fancy typesetting and word processing is common today, that just proves that the military had it back then but kept it Top Secret. These are probably the documents that Sandy Berger stuffed down his other pant leg.

quote:These "documents" were made on a computer, in Times Roman font...You just don't get it, do you? What kind of an idiot are you? CAN'T you SEE that BILL Gates WAS so IMPRESSED with THE typing OF the MILITARY back IN 1972 THAT he PATTERNED the NEW Times ROMAN font AFTER this MEMO and OTHERS like IT? Geez, AND you CALL yourself A military INTELLIGENCE expert?

Oh, come on!! Everybody knows these documents aren't forgeries. It's obvious to anyone who reads them, because there is no mention of yellowcake or Al Qaeda members secretly meeting with agents of Iraq.

Let's see... In 2003, the FBI reported 598 murders in Chicago, and 514 murders in Los Angeles, and 597 in New York City alone. Where was CNN's ticker then? Then add in 149 in Atlanta, 270 in Baltimore, 109 in Columbus, 226 in Dallas, 366 in Detroit, 278 in Houston, 144 in Las Vegas, 126 in Memphis, 109 in Milwaukee, 274 in New Orleans, 109 in Oakland, 348 in Philadelphia, and 241 in Phoenix, and you might get the feeling that the USA is more dangerous than Iraq!

quote:Yup, just ask the Israeli's how effective military force has been in beating back the Palestinians. It's only been about 50 years or so.Also remember that the Palestinians were kicked out of Egypt and then fled to Jordan. Then they were kicked out of Jordan and fled to Lebanon. Then they were kicked out of Lebanon and fled to Tunisia before coming back to the territory where they are now. Why is it that they choose to live in these permanent regugee camps like Jenin when they don't have to live in rubble and hovels?

quote:I happen to think that the military one is the strongest and most reliable, and the most real time front. The rest are going to take longer, because they are the long term solutions.Can you say "United Nations Resolution 1441?" Twelve years of negotions? Rush to war? Jag is right. Even President Bush said that there would be things that we hear about and things that we don't. Negotiations -- in this case the term would be Diplomacy -- take a very long time, even while people die in the process. Remember as far back as Theodore Roosevelt when he said "Speak softly, but carry a big stick." What do you suppose he meant by that? We can speak all we want, but if we don't wave the stick, and then use it occasionally, what good is it as a backdrop to our speaking?

quote:Why would they go through all the trouble of manufacturing the document and never raise doubts about it before we went to war? Kind of self-defeating. You'd have to search here and elsewhere for the clues that I previously posted, because I don't feel like doing that now, but the gist of one line of reasoning is that the French motivation was not so much about the United States and Iraq, but was really about the European Union and who would dominate. The alternative thinking is that France was motivated to prevent Britain (and Tony Blair) from exerting deciding influence over the direction of the EU. Apparently, there were several competing views about how the EU should develop. The French were in one camp, and the English were in another. The French actions over Iraq were ultimately driven by their long-term desire to compete with Britian over who will dominate the EU. That isn't to say that, secondarily, there weren't economic interests in Iraq and the UN at stake. But the long-term strategy was around Blair and the EU, not Bush.

quote:Steve, I've always respected the way you present your point of view even though I rarely agree with you. Thank you. quote:I think your point is fairly obvious, but since we all know that terrorism is an ideal, is it really possible to squash it? I'm afraid we'll always be fighting the battle but never win the war. I think that utopia is the ideal. I doubt that the people killed by car bombs and suicide bombers are ideally dead. I know what you mean, though, about "terrorism" as opposed to terrorism. It's also like they say: the terrorist has to be lucky just once, we have to be lucky all the time. That doesn't mean that we give up trying to make it difficult for them to thrive. quote:To me it's not much different than the "War on Drugs" and by that I mean inherently non-winnable (what is it about republicans and these nebulous, loosely defined 'Wars'?)Let's not forget about the first one: LBJ's War on Poverty.

quote:If Jag's argument is that you should never negotiate with terrorists, and when they act so must we, I think that's a given. However, this line of thinking is short-sighted and does not address the problem. Do any of you actually believe beating them down is going to stop them? They thrive on oppression and violence and we are all to eager to feed them.Actually, I do think it will stop them. Mostly, my reasoning is that a well-formed army against a militia of suicide bombers will always win given that the suicide bombers are armed with one-shot weapons. The well-formed army can always resupply. The suicide bomber cannot. Given enough suicide bombers, natural attrition will weaken their forces and siege warfare will ultimately win.

I must say that I'm pleased that even our newest members feel comfortable jumping right into the fray and mixing it up. The more diverse views there are, the better it is for all of us.

Here's a new one. According to this article, France was responsible for the forged Niger uranium documents so as to undermine the American and British claim for war and to protect their business interests in Iraq and Niger. Italy blames France for Niger uranium claim quote:Italy blames France for Niger uranium claim By Bruce Johnston in Brussels and Kim Willsher in Paris (Filed: 05/09/2004) A row has broken out between France and Italy over whose intelligence service is to blame for the Niger uranium controversy, which led to Britain and America claiming wrongly that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy material for nuclear bombs. Italian diplomats say that France was behind forged documents which at first appeared to prove that Iraq was seeking "yellow-cake" uranium in Niger - evidence used by Britain and America to promote the case for last year's Gulf war. They say that France's intelligence services used an Italian-born middle-man to circulate a mixture of genuine and bogus documents to "trap" the two leading proponents of war with Saddam into making unsupportable claims. They have passed to The Sunday Telegraph a photograph which they claim shows the Italian go-between, sometimes known as "Giacomo" - who cannot be identified for legal reasons - meeting a senior French intelligence officer based in Brussels. "The French hoped that the bulk of the documents would be exposed as false, since many of them obviously were," an Italian official said. "Their aim was to make the allies look ridiculous in order to undermine their case for war." According to an account given to The Sunday Telegraph, France was driven by "a cold desire to protect their privileged, dominant trading relationship with Saddam, which in the case of war would have been at risk". The allegation, which has infuriated French officials, follows reports last month that "Giacomo" claimed to have been unwittingly used by Sismi, Italy's foreign intelligence service, to circulate the false documents. The papers found their way to the CIA and to MI6, and in September 2002 Tony Blair accused Saddam of seeking "significant quantities" of uranium from an undisclosed African country - in fact, Niger. President George W Bush made a similar claim in his State of the Union address to Congress four months later, using information passed to him by MI6. The International Atomic Energy Agency expressed doubts over the documents' authenticity, however, and in March 2003 declared them false. The suggestion that Italy, driven by its government's support for America, had forged the documents to help to justify the war in Iraq, has caused a furore and has now led to the revelation of new information about "Giacomo". The Sunday Telegraph has been told that the man has a criminal record for extortion and fraud, but draws a monthly salary of Ôé¼4,000 (┬ú2,715) from the DGSE - the French equivalent of MI6 - for which he is said to have worked for the past five years. He had an expense account and received bonuses in return for carrying out orders allegedly given him by the head of the French services' operations in Belgium. "Giacomo" could not be reached for comment on the claims last week at either his home in Formello, a suburb on the northern edge of Rome, or at his second home in Luxembourg. He is said to be wanted for questioning over the Niger affair by Italian investigating magistrates, and is believed to be in the United States. He is said to have received an 18-month prison sentence in 1985 for threatening violence against a bank manager in an extortion attempt. More recently he was apparently reported by Carabinieri for using stationery forged to appear to be from the Italian prime minister's office. He is said to have previously worked for Italian military intelligence, but was "kicked out" for running up debts with illegal loan sharks. "Giacomo" was allegedly first engaged by the French secret service to investigate genuine fears of illicit trafficking in uranium from Niger. He collected a dossier of documents - some real, some forged by a diplomat - by offering large sums of money to Niger officials. American intelligence officials were further misled over Saddam's supposed attempt to buy uranium when France - which effectively controls mining in Niger - told Washington that it had reason to believe that Iraq was trying to do so. "Only later did Paris inform Washington that its belief had been based on the same documents that had tricked the Americans and the British," an Italian diplomat said. "This was la grande trappola [the big trap]. The Americans were now convinced by the French that Saddam really was trying to buy uranium. They thought the French must be right, since not even a gram of uranium in Niger could be shifted without their knowledge." British officials still say that the claim about Iraqi uranium purchases rested on a second source, not just the now-discredited documents. Intelligence officials from some other Western countries now believe, however, that the second source was also France - part of a "sinister trap" for Mr Blair. French intelligence was asked by The Sunday Telegraph for a public comment on the allegations against it, but has yet to give one.

quote:Wasn't it Ben Frankilin, or someone that said in order to sustain a democracy, you'd have to have a civil rebellion every hundred years or so?Thomas Jefferson. quote:Jefferson on Armed Rebellion God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. - Thomas Jefferson, November 13, 1787, letter to William S. Smith, quoted in Padover's Jefferson On Democracy

Watch it, guys.

Don't pin your hopes on McCain any time soon. I don't expect him to survive that long. McCain has been fighting a melanoma (skin cancer) for a long time -- just look at how his face gets bloated from time to time. He may wind up like Sen. Paul Tsongas, who declared that he was cured of his cancer when he ran for President, only to die from a recurrence two years later.

Media 'Con Game': Predetermined Storylines, from TCS: Tech Central Station. Excerpt: quote:NEW YORK -- Harper's magazine editor Lewis Lapham is being appropriately mocked for a major pre-GOP-convention boner. In the September issue of his magazine, which has been on newsstands for over a week, Lapham writes about the "Republican propaganda mill" and the GOP convention: "The speeches in Madison Square Garden affirmed the great truths now routinely preached from the pulpits of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal -- government the problem, not the solution; the social contract a dead letter; the free market the answer to every maiden's prayer -- and while listening to the hollow rattle of the rhetorical brass and tin, I remembered the question that [Richard] Hofstadter didn't stay to answer. How did a set of ideas both archaic and bizarre make its way into the center ring of the American political circus?" That's right, Lapham wrote about the GOP convention speeches before anyone even stepped to the podium. Lapham has apologized for what he's calling a "rhetorical invention," use of "poetic license," and a "mistake." But the only "mistake" Lapham made is in revealing for all to see what has long been known by anyone who pays attention to the news: the major media routinely bring to their coverage of significant political events a predetermined storyline -- you might want to call it a "Lapham". Facts that undermine the storyline are ignored or explained away as aberrations to The Truth. For the editor of Harper's and other establishment press figures, it really makes no difference to them what will be said at Madison Square Garden because the Laphams are already set, loaded in the scribblers' word processors and television anchor tele-prompters and ready to go.

I'm talking about the "who's who" of financing 527's. Today's news reports are of how the media is salivating over the Ginsberg resignation while ignoring the Robert Bauer and Harold Ickes connections to Democrat 527's while also being lawyers for either the Kerry-Edwards campaign or the DNC. Hint to others: do an internet search on Robert Bauer and Harold Ickes and compare what you find to the situation with Ben Ginsberg. On another front (pun intended): Kerry, in 1971, Admitted Writing Combat Reports: quote:Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's 1971 testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee reveals that the then anti-war activist admitted to writing many of the battle reports during his four months of combat in Vietnam. Kerry told the committee on April 22, 1971, "...I can recall often sending in the spot reports which we made after each mission..." Kerry also said that many in the military had "a tendency to report what they want to report and see what they want to see." Kerry's comments about the battle reports came in response to a question from then Senator Stuart Symington (D- Mo.), who wondered about the accuracy of information from military sources. According to the testimony , which is available in the Congressional Record, Sen. Symington asked Kerry, "Mr. Kerry, from your experience in Vietnam do you think it is possible for the President or Congress to get accurate and undistorted information through official military channels.[?]" Kerry responded, "I had direct experience with that. Senator, I had direct experience with that and I can recall often sending in the spot reports which we made after each mission; and including the GDA, gunfire damage assessments, in which we would say, maybe 15 sampans sunk or whatever it was. And I often read about my own missions in the Stars and Stripes and the very mission we had been on had been doubled in figures and tripled in figures. Kerry later added, "I also think men in the military, sir, as do men in many other things, have a tendency to report what they want to report and see what they want to see." The 34-year-old testimony could shed light on the present debate over who wrote key battlefield reports that critics of Kerry say allowed him to win awards. B. G. Burkett, author of the book Stolen Valor and a military researcher, calls the 1971 testimony "significant." "What is significant about this is [Kerry] is readily admitting that he often submitted reports and he is implying that he himself exaggerated in those reports," Burkett told CNSNews.com. "We have no way of knowing specifically which documents Kerry composed; and of the the ones he did compose -- did he in fact exaggerate or outright lie in those reports? That is the issue here," Burkett said. The controversy about who authored the now controversial after-action reports arose earlier this week, when the Washington Post obtained the military records of Larry Thurlow, one of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Thurlow's military records indicated that enemy fire erupted after Kerry's boat was hit by a mine explosion on March 13, 1969. Thurlow now insists there was no enemy fire that day. The best selling new book by John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi, Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, details the groups' critique of Kerry. Kerry has denounced the book and the Swift Boat vets and accused them of being an affiliate of President Bush's re-election campaign. Thurlow and Kerry were each awarded a Bronze Star for heroism on that 13th day of March. Kerry also received his third Purple Heart as a result of the events of that day. At the center of the controversy is whether or not there was enemy fire during Kerry's rescue of James Rassmann from the Bay Hap River. Kerry and Rassmann and others say there was enemy fire, while Thurlow and other swift boat veterans insist there was not. Thurlow's own Bronze Star citation states that there was "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire" directed at "all units." But Thurlow believes his citation was based on Kerry's own account of the day. "I am convinced that the language used in my citation ... was language taken directly from John Kerry's report," Thurlow said earlier this week. "John Kerry was the only officer who filed a report describing his version of the incident," Thurlow added. The Washington Post summed up the controversy this way: "Much of the debate over who is telling the truth boils down to whether the two-page after-action report and other Navy records are accurate or whether they have been embellished by Kerry or someone else." Burkett believes that Kerry stated the controversy surrounding his war record. "Kerry thought that he could make a grand presentation of his combat record, and there would be no response, obviously, from the Republicans, considering the lack of military experience on that side of the aisle," Burkett said. "I think [Kerry] completely misjudged the anger of Vietnam Veterans collectively and their ability to organize and have an answer to John Kerry," he added.

It's all noise. Pay no attention to it.

You can't really accept Rassmann's version because he admits that he spent most of the time underwater trying to avoid the boats from hitting him, and then trying to avoid "enemy fire." I don't fault Rassmann; I just think that he was disoriented from being thrown into the river. What he heard was probably suppression fire coming from the boats aimed at both shores. He probably thought they were incoming fire as he was frantically taking deep breaths and diving back under the water.

Look at Kerry's Bronze Star Citation and Silver Star Citation. The Bronze Star was issued in in 1968 and signed by Vice-Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Jr. The last sentence reads: quote:Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY's calmness, professionalism and great personal courage under fire were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Services.The Bronze Star Citation was re-issued sometime after 1981 and signed by John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy. The last sentence was changed to read: quote:Lieutenant (jg) Kerry's calmness professionalism and great personal courage under fire, and complete dedication to duty reflected great credit upun himself and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Services.The Silver Star was signed by Admiral John Hyland, Cmdr In Chief US Pacific Fleet. The last sentence reads: quote: quote:His actions were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service. The Silver Star Citation was re-issued sometime later and signed by John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy. The last sentence was changed to read: quote:By his brave action, bold initiative, and unwavering devotion to duty, Lieutenant (jg) Kerry reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

Takvah, I wasn't referring to your post, I was referring to Terran Marine's. The reason I posted those lists is to show how many former presidents were generals. As we approached modern times, the ranks have decreased, probably due to 1) the world seeing less total global conflict, and 2) perhaps the electorate is less interested in a military president (Wesley Clark was the highest ranking officer to get that close to a campaign). It could be that during the early years, military service (and command military service) were the most visible forms of leadership to a young country. Today, we have other ways to demonstrate leadership qualities. At the very least, the lists put Kerry's and Bush's squabbling over service into a larger context, considering that they were just Lieutenants compared to their predecessors who were Generals and Supreme Allied Commanders.

Then we move into the next mode: it was 35 years ago, it was a private matter, he made mistakes, Bush was AWOL... Actually, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Kerry camp retaliate right after (or probably during) the Republican convention with rehashes of claims that Bush used cocaine, his girlfriends had abortions, etc. Mark my words: Kerry 1st Purple Heart Fraud = Bush used cocaine. That's how dirty it will get. I don't know if you all remember, but I first mentioned that Kerry was going to have medal problems back in March here.

quote:I am sure, if the studies were conducted, in states, which have a majority REPUBLICAN vote, the results would show 68% republican...or the majority of cheaters on the republican side. Until other studies are offered, all you have is conjecture. I said that that the article made Republicans look bad because the statistics skewed Democrat but the examples presented in the article were more Republican than Democrat.