SwiftVets.com

[one more captins mast]

Still have your "flying dog" story ready to tell one more time

Still ready to "pull the magic hat" out and show it.

Still want to tell of the "gun running " into Cambodia

Still want to have a "reunion " with the Navy Seals and CIA you "took

over the "fence"

Still proud of giving your daughter one of your "special dog tags"

"the recon kind" with the little rubber band around it. So she can

live the rest of her life knowing you "gave her a lie also"

Do you think the "ratman" and "skunk works" ( thats) you, awards

and citations office was worth it.

Do you think your past friend who got the "birthday note pads" from Julia

with the "musical" referance to Don Go/van/ie and the 1003

"Conquest in Spain" and wrote of it in the Jarkata Times Sept. 9, 2004

W. Scott Thompson , will come to your "looser party" ??


other than that have a nice day John Kerry.
_________________
the strange mr aj

[Guest]

[SBD]

Here's one from 1996, no quote, but still looking. I really liked this one though!!

Media & the Law November 8, 1996


Copyright 1996 Commanon Corporation
Media & the Law

November 8, 1996

SECTION: Vol 4, No. 20;

LENGTH: 590 words

HEADLINE: GLOBE COLUMN DIDN'T BELONG, OMBUDSMAN SEZ

BODY:
Two days before the Massachusetts senatorial election pitting incumbent John Kerry against Governor William Weld, ombudsman Mark Jurkowitz criticized both his boss and the paper's most serious-minded columnist.

Reacting to "outrage among scores of readers" (scores!), Mark Jurkowitz second-guessed columnist David Warsh's column challenging Kerry's war record. He also took on Boston Globe editor Matthew Storin's decision to allow the column to run (after holding it for several days pending an interview by Warsh with Kerry that never materialized).

Nine days before the election, Warsh focused a critical gaze on the wartime incident in which Kerry earned a Silver Star in 1969. After interviewing an eyewitness to the action, a former gunner on Kerry's river boat, as well as Kerry's commanding officer, Warsh suggested Kerry might have - perhaps - maybe - dispatched an enemy soldier who had already been wounded. Had he done so, that would have been a war crime. At the very least, Warsh speculated, the gunner's recollections (that he, the gunner, had winged the V.C. who was armed with a rocket launcher before Kerry applied the coup de grce) raised questions about the actions of a man who had used his war record (and his subsequent opposition to the war) to propel himself into national prominence. Warsh attacked Kerry for "parlaying four fleeting months in Vietnam into a political identity." The Kerry campaign stonewalled Warsh's repeated requests for an interview.

Warsh, who ordinarily writes about business and economic topics, had informed reasons for his conjecture. The unit to which Warsh was assigned in Vietnam during the war prepared recommendations for military decorations. Warsh knew the medal system was flawed, both vulnerable to exaggeration and bedeviled by the confusing fog of war.

Kerry reacted to the column with high moral indignation, defending his honor the next day at a press conference that was duly reported in the
Globe. Retired admiral Elmo Zumwalt, who ran naval operations in Vietnam, stood next to Kerry and defended him.

Jurkowitz, formerly the press critic for the Boston Phoenix, a freewheeling tabloid, decried the freewheeling atmosphere at the Globe that permitted a column like this to run only a few days before the election. "In theory," Jurkowitz opined, "this climate of freedom is laudable. In practice it requires more vigilance. For Globe columnists, the marketplace of ideas should be noisy, fractious, and diverse. But they must tread more carefully in the tabernacle of history and reputation." Yet Jurkowitz acknowledged that Warsh's column appeared the same day that a column by Mike Barnicle gloried in Kerry's wartime heroism, and he added that two days later, Globe columnist James Carroll attacked the decision to run the column on the op-ed page.

Warsh regretted imputing a war criminal tag to Kerry, he told Jurkowitz. Were he to write the column anew, he would eliminate the phrase "war criminal nonetheless" from the piece.

Bottom

We applaud Jurkowitz for having the courage to question Globe editorial decisions. Personally, though, the editors of this newsletter (one of whom was a Vietnam combat platoon leader) are tired of Kerry's posturing about his war record. A man vainglorious enough to capture his combat exploits on his own hand-held movie camera, as Kerry did, should be challenged. Mostly, therefore, we're glad that Warsh took on the conventional wisdom, and happy that Storin let the column run. (By the way, Kerry won anyway.)


SBD

[happyday]

Ok, I came in late on this one, which means I've got a few thoughts to express.

One, special thanks need to go to everyone that, at peril of their reputations, their livelihoods, and/or their personal safety, have stepped up to the plate to make sure a traitor to this great nation is never elected President and CIC. Not the easy thing, but the right thing, and everyone should be commended for it, especially those who are publically turning their lives over for the unbearable scrutiny and slander going on. I simply can't think of adequate words to express my gratitude, my humility or my admiration for them.

Two, it seems to me that if we can beat Kerry and break Sorro's bank at the same time, the victory would be even sweeter after all the damage he had tried to do from behind the scenes.

Three, hang onto your hats, I don't think this is going to be over Nov. 2. If Kerry isn't declared the winner of the election, do you really think they are just going to go away? I'm anticipating lawsuits and even worse Bush bashing if he wins. They are playing so dirty now, trying to "insure" their candidate wins, I don't think they are just going to drop it, MSM included.

Just some thoughts, respectfully submitted.
_________________
God Bless America, and God Bless the Swiftees!

[Katie'sda]

I don't think that I've seen this question anywhere else so here goes. I wonder if all those "Band Of Brothers" guys who are supporting kerry, including those who were on his Boat, have given any thought to the fact that when he was testifying at the Congressional hearings about seeing war crimes committed and having participated in them himself, he had to have been accusing his own crew?Who else would he have been talking about except those he served with? He was only over there 4 months and if I remember correctly not involved in any major operations that required large numbers of ground troops. So who were all these people he witnessed who were running around burning, raping, and looting if not the men he went on misssons with, including those in his own crew who now are saying he walks on water? Who the hell do they think he was talking about if not them?

Bob
_________________
Us Army '66-'69

[Truegrit]

Let the extreme Left, soft left -- the anti-Americans and their defeatist allies -- go into the streets. We'll meet them there.

It won't be like the late 60's and early 70's when they were allowed to take over the mall with their Viet Cong flags and chants of allegiance to Ho Chi Minh (who Kerry compared to George Washington, neglecting to note that Washington didn't murder 50,000 American farmers after coming into power, unlike Ho Chi Minh who brutally massacred peasants in his country).

No, if the Left tries to organize against our returning Vets, from Iraq and Afghanistan, they will face our organized response. Never again will we allow our returning troops to be defamed and smeared the way they were in the early 70's by Kerry and his band of leftwing brownshirts and bombthrowers.
_________________
Ted Harwood, Ph.D.
Enlisted, U.S. Army ('57-'60)

[SBD]

[Uisguex Jack]

http://www.namebase.org/xtho/W-Scott-Thompson.html

W. Scott Thompson is adjunct professor at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at the Asian Institute of Management.

Champagne in Jakarta; Challenges in the U.S.


By: W. Scott Thompson
October 22,, 2001
Reprinted from the LA Times


"When we heard the news from New York, we broke out a bottle of champagne," the U.S.-educated Muslim couple e-mailed from Indonesia Sept. 11. Not only U.S.-educated, but indirectly U.S.-employed. "It served you right--supporting that terrorist [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon."

Muslims in other parts of the world have a different global perspective. And although Islam is much less intense in the world's fourth-most-populous country--they were drinking champagne, after all--these friends in Jakarta view the war against terrorism through the same lens as most educated Muslims in Nigeria, Senegal, Algeria or Syria.

The connections in Southeast Asia are much closer to Al Qaeda than is generally realized. An Osama bin Laden brother-in-law lived in the Philippines for two years and helped found the Abu Sayyaf, an Al Qaeda affiliate that has decimated Philippine tourism with its kidnappings and murders. But whereas Islam's following is a small minority in that nation, it's a vast majority in Indonesia. It is claimed that as many as 30,000 young Indonesians went to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Soviets. More than 1,000 went to Egyptian universities in the same period and at least that number to the same Pakistani schools--the madrasas --from which most of Bin Laden's associates emerged.

But Indonesia is secular and historically moderate. President Megawati Sukarnoputri, in Washington last month, promised to join the coalition against terrorism. Back home, however, her vice president expressed the hope that the Sept. 11 atrocities would "cleanse" the United States of its sins. She couldn't deliver on her commitment to President Bush. There are two reasons.

First, the secession movements in Indonesia, especially in Aceh: Military repression there has caused a tilt toward Islamic fundamentalism and fueled radicals. More directly, the founding last year of the extremist Laskar Jihad, with thousands of members, gave unemployed youth a mission.

Laskar Jihad may not be an explicit Bin Laden affiliate, but it's a distinction without a difference. Its leader, Ja'far Umar Thalib--another Yemeni by family origin--has been in touch with Bin Laden since 1987. Roaming through Java recently, its members demanded that hotels hand over Americans, and it was simply good luck that blood didn't flow.

Americans have been evacuated from Indonesia, and the State Department has advised them not to travel there. But explicit threats intercepted by intelligence agencies made the danger to visibly placed U.S. citizens palpable.

The second reason for the hostility to U.S. policies in Indonesia is the policies themselves. Throughout the Islamic world, U.S. policy is seen as leaning toward Israel. As long as the peace process was moving, it was possible to have intelligent discussion of U.S. policy in Islamic countries. Once Sharon, whose brutalities in the 1982 war in Lebanon were well-publicized throughout the Islamic world, came to power and the process came to a halt, Indonesians hardened in their attitudes.

True, much of the opposition to U.S. policies comes from jealousies and frustrations in countries that have not found the U.S. formula for success.

And Washington has done a poor job of communicating.

The fact is, though, that while most Indonesians just want their economy to recover and to get on with their lives, the direction of policy comes increasingly from the radicals. The Laskar Jihad may have only a few thousand hard-core members but it is growing and, through its demonstrations and threats, puts huge pressure on Megawati.

The longer the war on terrorism goes on, the stronger the Laskar Jihad will grow, and with it the now-routine demand for Sharia (Islamic) law and a far more militant commitment to the religion and its perceived interests worldwide.

One influential Jakarta official argued, however, that a quick war and a breakthrough in the peace process in the Middle East might dramatically undercut Laskar Jihad's appeal. "The Laskar Jihad lives in the psychic space created by our own failures and by all our frustrations at American policies in the Middle East.

"For our own sake, we hope we can come back together with you. We are finished as a great nation if we don't remain secular and moderate, a magnet for investment and tourism. Our young democracy is also at risk."

That's a lot to worry about, and the champagne well symbolizes the challenge.

W. Scott Thompson directs the Southeast Asia program at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

http://fletcher.tufts.edu/news/2001/october/thompson9.htm

I like this guy, here's a link to another great article:
http://www.andover.edu/publications/2002winter_bulletin/reflections/thompson.htm

[SBD]

The President today announced his intention to nominateW. Scott Thompson to be a member of the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace for a term of 4 years expiring January 19, 1989. This is a new position.

Dr. Thompson is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He was a research fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University in 1979--1980. In 1975--1976 he was assistant to the Secretary of Defense while serving as a White House fellow and was also a member of the State Department Promotion
Board.

Dr. Thompson is a founding member of the board of the Committee on the Present Danger and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He serves on the Board of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and the Institute for Strategic Trade. He is the author of many books on U.S. global strategy.
He graduated from Stanford University (B.A. 1963) and Oxford University (Ph.D., 1967). He is married, has three children, and resides in Washington, DC. He was born January 1, 1942, in Providence, RI.


It looks like we now know where Kerry got his "Wrong War" quote from as well.


HEADLINE: Iraq: it's the right war, but at the wrong time
BYLINE: The Nation.
BODY:
Iraq: it's the right war, but at the wrong time

Let's start with the most important point -- Saddam Hussein is a monster. Any man who uses a chain saw to cut a cabinet minister into pieces and delivers the pieces in separate body bags to the surviving wife hardly deserves an anti--war demonstration.

An international coalition to rid the region and the world of a monster is a good thing. Why then does Washington have so little international support for its imminent war to achieve "regime change" in Iraq? Why are the only supporters apparent "rentals" as some call them -- countries who badly need American backing for their own objectives, for example
the new states of East Europe? There are many good reasons that help to explain the opposition -- by French and German governments, by diplomats and crowds in Jakarta and Manila, Cape Town and Seoul.
But there is also a real reason. The good reasons are obvious but often unstated. Paris, Berlin, Moscow and Beijing are reluctant to see Washington get its way, unilaterally to assert its right to intervene militarily anywhere it sees an implicit or explicit threat to its interests. There is no superpower to countervail against America as there was during the cold war; but that doesn't mean there aren't ways major powers can trim the sails of the superpower, to send it a message that it can't just bust into any port and have its way.

An additional good reason is that Iraq, however nasty a regime it has, hardly poses a threat to Europe or the United States. Some of us recall how Nasser, dictator/leader of Egypt, was built up in Europe and America as a "new Hitler" on the Nile, who must not be appeased. This laid the popular basis for Israel, Britain and France's failed "tri--partite
aggression" against Egypt in late 1956. But Nasser had no Ruhr, no industrial base to threaten the West. It was a silly analogy. We have the same case today -- Saddam Hussein also is no Hitler. He may have weapons of mass destruction but these days anybody can have those if they have enough anger and a willingness to risk the wrath of the West.
The real reason why America can't get support for its war can be summed up in one word, Palestine. We have to review where we stand to see why this is so.

Meantime a man came to power in Israel who had a long history of making nasty statements like "the only good Arab is a dead Arab". The present phase of intifada II started because this man, Ariel Sharon, insisted on provocatively ascending the Temple Mount, sacred to Muslims. My own awareness of him came when, as an adviser to the US delegation to the United Nations in 1982, I read American government reports of his brutality in the Israeli attack on Lebanon and Beirut.

Indeed some American senior officials, allies of the group of Israeli friends now all but running US foreign policy, bragged about "Arik's" brutality. It became clear that for all intents and purposes, Ariel Sharon was a terrorist. Now once again he has let loose the dogs; his troops destroyed the computers and files of the Palestinian authority, bulldozed its headquarters and held Yasser Arafat at cannon point at his Ramallah headquarters. So American policy has been to protect Israel throughout this phase, tapping its wrist occasionally for "overreacting". But American leverage on Israel is absolute. Even while hypocritically condemning Palestine for trying to bring in a small boatload of arms with which to defend itself, the US government continued to deliver vast shiploads of arms to Israel.

Every missile lobbed into the Gaza strip by Sharon's army says "made in America", butWashington has not threatened to tighten the spigot to bring about Israeli compliance with UN resolutions or just to comply with past American policies of maintaining a peace process. Small wonder governments around the world object to Washington's hypocrisy in going
after Saddam while letting Israel off for its aggression in the region.
Had the United States had an even--handed policy in the Middle East and achieved a Palestinian state -- which it would have had to impose on Israel, let's face it -- it wouldn't have meant that terrorism would have dried up overnight. But it would have begun the process. The seedbeds for terrorism -- Islamic hatred around the world for Israel and America's
imbalanced support thereof -- would begin to dry up in a few years, and one would see the decline of Muslim mobs around
the world. The balance would have tipped against Muslim terrorists: again not overnight. But bit--by--bit those engaged in
building a legitimate Palestinian state would present to terrorists a viable alternative to targeting civilians throughout the
world.
On a broader front the creation of a Palestinian state would remove the sting that young Arabs have felt so poignantly.
And then, instead of seeing the West's inevitable victory over Saddam Hussein in Iraq as yet another humiliation, they
could look to the building of new foundations of -- we hope -- democratic Arab states throughout the Middle East. It
certainly beats seeing Muslims in Kuala Lumpur and Lagos burning US flags.
W Scott Thompson

This guy looks like the perfect friend for John Kerry...

SBD

[fortdixlover]