vietnam war

There is so much spin and rewriting of history this morning that my head is ready to explode. I think it’s time for a quick refresher on what lead us up to this victorious point today, including how the Republican presidential candidate in 2008 went after then candidate Obama when it came of Osama bin Laden.

The following is from the transcript of the October 7, 2008 debate between John McCain and Barack Obama in Nashville.

QUESTION: Should the United States respect Pakistani sovereignty and not pursue al Qaeda terrorists who maintain bases there, or should we ignore their borders and pursue our enemies like we did in Cambodia during the Vietnam War?

OBAMA: [snip]

But I do believe that we have to change our policies with Pakistan. We can't coddle, as we did, a dictator, give him billions of dollars and then he's making peace treaties with the Taliban and militants.

What I've said is we're going to encourage democracy in Pakistan, expand our nonmilitary aid to Pakistan so that they have more of a stake in working with us, but insisting that they go after these militants.

And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden; we will crush Al Qaida. That has to be our biggest national security priority.

The response John McCain gave to this was:

MCCAIN: You know, my hero is a guy named Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt used to say walk softly -- talk softly, but carry a big stick. Senator Obama likes to talk loudly.

In fact, he said he wants to announce that he's going to attack Pakistan. Remarkable.

In an op-ed today, John Kerry takes on the useless embargo we have against Cuba:

For nearly 20 years after the fall of Saigon, the Vietnam War took a less bloody but equally hostile form. The United States and Vietnam had no diplomatic relations. Vietnamese assets were frozen. Trade was embargoed. But in 1995 the United States normalized relations with Vietnam. The Cold War had ended, and we even signed a trade deal with a country where 58,000 Americans had given their lives.

The result? A Vietnam that is less isolated, more market-oriented, and, yes, freer — though it has miles to go.

Yet when it comes to a small impoverished island 90 miles off the coast of Florida, we cling to a policy that has manifestly failed for nearly 50 years.

While our Cuba policy has largely stood still, reality has changed dramatically. Today, the Cuban "threat" is a faint shadow, change is afoot in the Cuban leadership, and — importantly — Cuban-Americans increasingly seek broad, far-reaching interaction across the Florida Straits.

We need a Cuba policy that looks forward, brings our strengths to bear, and builds on what works to help the Cuban people shape their country's future.

Democracy in Cuba rightly remains an American policy goal. But for 47 years, our embargo in the name of democracy has produced no democracy at all. Too often, our rhetoric and policies have actually furnished the Castro regime with an all-purpose excuse to draw attention away from its many shortcomings. We have played to Fidel Castro's strengths, not ours.

Read on

Bill has really lost it. Now he is trying to repeat the lies Hillary told about her Bosnia trip:

Former President Clinton has added to the falsehoods surrounding his wife's tale of her trip to Bosnia 12 years ago.

In Indiana on Thursday, Bill Clinton defended his wife's mistake in claiming that she landed under sniper fire in Bosnia, accusing the media of treating her like "she'd robbed a bank" for confusing the facts.

The AP article even lists the facts he got wrong:

Bill Clinton has many of the facts wrong.

His wife didn't make the sniper fire claim "one time late at night when she was exhausted." She actually told the story several times, including during prepared remarks on foreign policy delivered the morning of March 17.

It's also not true that she "immediately apologized for it." Clinton has never apologized for the comments and only acknowledged that she "misspoke" a week after the March 17 speech when video of her peaceful tarmac reception emerged.

It's also not true that she was the "first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone" - a claim that Hillary Clinton has also made when talking about the trip. Pat Nixon traveled to Saigon during the Vietnam war and Barbara Bush went to Saudi Arabia two months before the launching of Desert Storm.

The trip also was not in 1995, but 1996.

Bill just harmed Hillary's chances. The media was letting this story die out, but now he has reignited it. Maybe Hillary should send Bill off with Penn.

Since John Murtha became outspoken against the Iraq War last fall, conservatives could not wait to "swift boat" him. Now we are finding out one of the examples he used as a problem in Iraq is in fact true:

US lawmaker and former Marine colonel accused US Marines of killing innocent Iraqi civilians after a Marine comrade had been killed by a roadside bomb.

"Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood," John Murtha told reporters. The November 19 incident occurred in Haditha, Iraq.

"There was no firefight" that led to the shootings at close range, the Vietnam war veteran said, denying early official accounts, which said that a roadside bomb had killed the Iraqis.

"There were no (roadside bombs) that killed these innocent people," he said.

Time magazine reported the shootings on March 27, based on an Iraqi human rights group and locals, who said that 15 unarmed Iraqis died, including women and children, when Marines barged into their home throwing grenades and shooting.

"It's much worse than reported in Time magazine," Murtha said.

At least three Marine officers are under official investigation, and no report has been released, Army Times said Tuesday.

Now this story came out two days ago. When it was released, I posted it as a news item but decided to hold off on blogging about it because I wanted to give the right wing blogs a couple of days to comment on it. To my shock (not really), the right has been relatively quiet on this story. I found one diary on RedState that addressed it (somewhat):

Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham has pleaded guilty in federal court
to income tax violations.

This  from the

AP:

Rep. Cunningham Pleads Guilty

Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax
violations after an investigation of the California Republican's home sale.

Cunningham has been under investigation since his sale of his home to a
defense contractor at an apparently inflated price in 2003 attracted the
attention of federal investigators.

He made his plea known at a hearing in federal court in San Diego on
Monday.

Cunningham, 63, is an eight-term congressman and Vietnam War flying ace.

In November 2003, he sold his Del Mar, Calif., home to defense contractor
Mitchell Wade for $1,675,000. Wade put the house back on the market and sold
it after nearly a year for $975,000 — a loss of $700,000 in one of the
nation's hottest housing markets.

Cunningham and his wife, Nancy, used the proceeds from the sale to buy a
$2.55 million mansion in ritzy Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.

Wade also let Cunningham live rent-free on his yacht, the Duke Stir, at
the Capital Yacht Club. His firm, MZM Inc., donated generously to
Cunningham's campaigns.

Around the same time, MZM was winning valuable defense contracts at a
time when Cunningham sat on the House Appropriations subcommittee that
controls defense dollars. In 2004 the little-known company based in
Washington, D.C., tripled its revenue and nearly quadrupled its staff,
according to information posted on the company Web site.