[opendtv] Fw: Re: SINCLAIR TO AIR "A POW STORY: POLITICS, PRESSUREAND THE MEDIA"
- From: "Nick Kocsis" <kocsis_nick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 20:14:10 -0400
Hey guys! Lighten up! This thread is overwhelming my mail box.
Sinclair is obviously touting this program as a history lesson directed at
the electorate. Others would characterize it as a last ditch attempt by a
Republican leaning Sinclair to tilt the direction of an obviously close
election. In either case, if the election is as close as the last one,
observant Canadians will die laughing at the claim of American democracy in
action in a $2 billion propaganda effort by both parties in getting media
attention.
I am hoping against hope that the Sinclair program will not ignore the
events of Mei Lai in Vietnam and the stupidity of the recording of the
abuses at Abu Garab. I have lived long enough to know that atrocities
occur on both sides of the battlefield. I have had veterans of WW2 give me
first hand accounts of the torture and killing of 15 year old Germans in SS
uniforms by Canadians and the liberation of Dutch women during the
liberation of Holland described to me by post war Dutch immigrants.
The aweful truth is that war is 'hell' and none of us should forget this.
A decorated American veteran friend of ours was wounded in the early days of
the Normandy invasion. His medals were never on display and his family
always maintained that he never spoke of his war experiences. I believe
that this is the experience of many war veterans.
The question becomes "is it patriotic to repress the memories of the horrors
of war" (my country right or wrong)?
I think that the universal answer is a resounding "YES" (it is patriotic)!
To think otherwise is to be weak (but not my position). I will give you an
example of what I am talking about at the risk of raising the ire of our
readers.
As a practising and committed Roman Catholic I am appalled by the events in
the Catholic diocese of Boston where the bishop knowingly covered up sexual
abuse cases by parish priests. I would be curious to know whether John
Kerry or any of the Kennedys were ever aware of this situation and failed to
vote their conscience unlike their expose of Vietnam?
I am fed up by family members calling me a 'bad Catholic' for holding the
views that I do of those in authority that suppress the truth. It does not
in any sense diminish my faith in the 'renaissance' of my own church but
strengthens it.
An American patriot is not one who suppresses the truth but is one made
stronger by acknowledging the truth. Mr. Bush cannot in any way
acknowledge the truth nor can the American people accept the truth. Being
led to war in the aftermath of 9/11 is not unlike Hitler's leading Germany
into war in 1938 to redress the grievances of an unjust peace imposed on
Germany in the aftermath of WW One.
We can only hope that the Sinclair program will win a Palme D'or like
Michael Moore did with Fahrenheit 9/11. If not, better to run Leni
Reifenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" at the risk of being labelled a
'neo-nazi'. I would suggest changing the title to "Staying The Course".
Please! Please! Let's get off of this diabolical thread !
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Aitken" <maitken@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2004 5:30 PM
Subject: [opendtv] Re: SINCLAIR TO AIR "A POW STORY: POLITICS, PRESSUREAND
THE MEDIA"
> I can assure you that what is aired on the News Special "A POW STORY:
> POLITICS, PRESSURE AND THE MEDIA" has been researched. Bob, I look
> forward to your commentary after viewing its content. Until then, all is
> speculation on your (and others) parts. Let freedom reign, and let truth
> be told. All else is fodder for the masses...
> Dewey Weaver wrote:
>
> >Bob - thank you for your service to this country. Bush was honorably
discharged. Flying F4s over the GOM was not exactly a risk free endeavor.
John Kerry volunteered and put himself in the line of fire then gave comfort
to the enemy in Paris while he was still an officer in the Navy. Aren't you
interested in seeing the 100 or so pages of his military records that he
refuses to release? Bush released all of his... why doesn't John Kerry do
the same? What does he have to hide?
> >
> >
> >
> Dewey: A hint regarding your question from a New York paper. Bob, do you
> have your views on the questions asked? Perhaps Kerry ought to speak for
> himself, and let all be seen...
>
> http://www.nysun.com/article/3107
>
> <http://www.nysun.com> <https://www.nysun.com/subscribe.php>
>
> *October 13, 2004 Edition > Section: National
> <http://www.nysun.com/section/2> > Printer-Friendly Version*
>
>
> Mystery Surrounds Kerry's Navy Discharge
>
> BY THOMAS LIPSCOMB - Special to the Sun
> October 13, 2004
> URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/3107
>
> An official Navy document on Senator Kerry's campaign Web site listed as
> Mr. Kerry's "Honorable Discharge from the Reserves" opens a door on a
> well kept secret about his military service.
>
> The document is a form cover letter in the name of the Carter
> administration's secretary of the Navy, W. Graham Claytor. It describes
> Mr. Kerry's discharge as being subsequent to the review of "a board of
> officers." This in it self is unusual. There is nothing about an
> ordinary honorable discharge action in the Navy that requires a review
> by a board of officers.
>
> According to the secretary of the Navy's document, the "authority of
> reference" this board was using in considering Mr. Kerry's record was
> "Title 10, U.S. Code Section 1162 and 1163. "This section refers to the
> grounds for involuntary separation from the service. What was being
> reviewed, then, was Mr. Kerry's involuntary separation from the service.
> And it couldn't have been an honorable discharge, or there would have
> been no point in any review at all. The review was likely held to
> improve Mr. Kerry's status of discharge from a less than honorable
> discharge to an honorable discharge.
>
> A Kerry campaign spokesman, David Wade, was asked whether Mr. Kerry had
> ever been a victim of an attempt to deny him an honorable discharge.
> There has been no response to that inquiry.
>
> The document is dated February 16, 1978. But Mr. Kerry's military
> commitment began with his six-year enlistment contract with the Navy on
> February 18, 1966. His commitment should have terminated in 1972. It is
> highly unlikely that either the man who at that time was a Vietnam
> Veterans Against the War leader, John Kerry, requested or the Navy
> accepted an additional six year reserve commitment. And the Claytor
> document indicates proceedings to reverse a less than honorable
> discharge that took place sometime prior to February 1978.
>
> The most routine time for Mr. Kerry's discharge would have been at the
> end of his six-year obligation, in 1972. But how was it most likely to
> have come about?
>
> NBC's release this March of some of the Nixon White House tapes about
> Mr. Kerry show a great deal of interest in Mr. Kerry by Nixon and his
> executive staff, including, perhaps most importantly, Nixon's special
> counsel, Charles Colson. In a meeting the day after Mr. Kerry's Senate
> testimony, April 23, 1971, Mr. Colson attacks Mr. Kerry as a "complete
> opportunist...We'll keep hitting him, Mr. President."
>
> Mr. Colson was still on the case two months later, according to a memo
> he wrote on June 15,1971, that was brought to the surface by the Houston
> Chronicle. "Let's destroy this young demagogue before he becomes another
> Ralph Nader." Nixon had been a naval officer in World War II. Mr. Colson
> was a former Marine captain. Mr. Colson had been prodded to find "dirt"
> on Mr. Kerry, but reported that he couldn't find any.
>
> The Nixon administration ran FBI surveillance on Mr. Kerry from
> September 1970 until August 1972. Finding grounds for an other than
> honorable discharge, however, for a leader of the Vietnam Veterans
> Against the War, given his numerous activities while still a reserve
> officer of the Navy, was easier than finding "dirt."
>
> For example, while America was still at war, Mr. Kerry had met with the
> North Vietnamese and Viet Cong delegation to the Paris Peace talks in
> May 1970 and then held a demonstration in July 1971 in Washington to try
> to get Congress to accept the enemy's seven point peace proposal without
> a single change. Woodrow Wilson threw Eugene Debs, a former presidential
> candidate, in prison just for demonstrating for peace negotiations with
> Germany during World War I. No court overturned his imprisonment. He had
> to receive a pardon from President Harding.
>
> Mr. Colson refused to answer any questions about his activities
> regarding Mr. Kerry during his time in the Nixon White House. The
> secretary of the Navy at the time during the Nixon presidency is the
> current chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Warner.
> A spokesman for the senator, John Ullyot, said, "Senator Warner has no
> recollection that would either confirm or challenge any representation
> that Senator Kerry received a less than honorable discharge."
>
> The "board of officers" review reported in the Claytor document is even
> more extraordinary because it came about "by direction of the
> President." No normal honorable discharge requires the direction of the
> president. The president at that time was James Carter. This adds
> another twist to the story of Mr. Kerry's hidden military records.
>
> Mr. Carter's first act as president was a general amnesty for draft
> dodgers and other war protesters. Less than an hour after his
> inauguration on January 21, 1977, while still in the Capitol building,
> Mr. Carter signed Executive Order 4483 empowering it. By the time it
> became a directive from the Defense Department in March 1977 it had been
> expanded to include other offenders who may have had general, bad
> conduct, dishonorable discharges, and any other discharge or sentence
> with negative effect on military records. In those cases the directive
> outlined a procedure for appeal on a case by case basis before a board
> of officers. A satisfactory appeal would result in an improvement of
> discharge status or an honorable discharge.
>
> Mr. Kerry has repeatedly refused to sign Standard Form 180, which would
> allow the release of all his military records. And some of his various
> spokesmen have claimed that all his records are already posted on his
> Web site. But the Washington Post already noted that the Naval Personnel
> Office admitted that they were still withholding about 100 pages of files.
>
> If Mr. Kerry was the victim of a Nixon "enemies list" hit, one might
> have expected him to wear it like a badge of honor, like many others
> such as his friend Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers,
> CBS's Daniel Schorr, or the actor Paul Newman, who had made Mr. Colson's
> original list of 20 "enemies."
>
> There are a number of categories of discharges besides honorable. There
> are general discharges, medical discharges, bad conduct discharges, as
> well as other than honorable and dishonorable discharges. There is one
> odd coincidence that gives some weight to the possibility that Mr. Kerry
> was dishonorably discharged. Mr. Kerry has claimed that he lost his
> medal certificates and that is why he asked that they be reissued. But
> when a dishonorable discharge is issued, all pay benefits, and
> allowances, and all medals and honors are revoked as well. And five
> months after Mr. Kerry joined the U.S. Senate in 1985, on one single
> day, June 4, all of Mr. Kerry's medals were reissued.
>
> *October 13, 2004 Edition > Section: National
> <http://www.nysun.com/section/2> > Printer-Friendly Version*
>
>
>
> >---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
> >From: Bob Miller <bob@xxxxxxxxxx>
> >Reply-To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 17:18:30 -0400
> >
> >
> >
> >>Here is my "hero" scale. Many of us had to weigh the different paths
we=20
> >>could take and those taken by others at the time of the Vietnam war.
> >>
> >>When the Vietnam era dawned most of us were pro war. Heroes at that time
=
> >>
> >>were such as Bush senior who went unblinking into a war that was
truly=20
> >>lethal.
> >>
> >>As the various stages of Vietnam played out we got student deferments=20
> >>for college, being married, getting a good number, knowing someone
who=20
> >>could get you into the National Guard, conscientious objector status and
=
> >>
> >>running off to Toronto.
> >>
> >>The heroes were the ones who volunteered for Vietnam because they=20
> >>believed it was the right thing to do, the ones who ran off to
Toronto=20
> >>because they thought it was the right thing to do and the
conscientious=20
> >>objectors like Ali who went to jail and suffered ridicule.
> >>
> >>Heroes in order...
> >>Volunteers for Nam
> >>Those who actively apposed the war on principle especially the early
ones=
> >>
> >>Conscientious objectors
> >>Toronto runaways
> >>
> >>Good guys...
> >>Those who enlisted or were drafted or got lucky, its OK in my book to=20
> >>get lucky
> >>Married types who married for love not to dodge the draft
> >>
> >>Scum..
> >>Those who dodged the draft by joining the National Guard because of=20
> >>connections
> >>Those who used their family doctors in a conspiracy to avoid the draft
> >>
> >>That is what I thought then and it is what I think now.
> >>BTW I was one who allowed himself to be drafted after checking our=20
> >>Toronto. My dad said he would rather see me dead at his hands. Didn't=20
> >>volunteer for NAM and declined officer candidate school. Did participate
=
> >>
> >>in one candle lite march against the war after. Definitely not a hero=20
> >>but in my book Kerry was on the top two counts, volunteered for NAM
and=20
> >>then flip flopped and went against the war on principle.
> >>
> >>We need someone who can flip flop like that.
> >>
> >>I couldn't vote for Bush for one overwhelming reason. I think he has and
=
> >>
> >>is and will continue to lie about almost all aspects of his National=20
> >>Guard duty. I think he still owes at least two and possibly four
years=20
> >>of his six year enlistment. I think he got into the guard by special=20
> >>treatment, served with special treatment and got out early with
special=20
> >>treatment.
> >>
> >>I voted for his dad twice after voting for Reagan twice. I don't=20
> >>recognize any aspect of this Republican party.
> >>
> >>Bob Miller
> >>
> >>
> >>
>
> --
>
> Regards,
> Mark A. Aitken Director, Advanced Technology
>
> ***********************************
> Sinclair Broadcast Group
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> ===================================
> "There never was a good war
> or bad peace...."
>
> ~ ~ ~ Benjamin Franklin ~ ~ ~
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