Paul Galanti on Hannity & Colmes: Kerry "aided and abetted the enemy"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

Colmes is interviewing him.

Said Kerry "aided and abetted the enemy by testifying and telling what he knew while we were still at war."

Colmes asked him about the number of vets, specifically those who served directly with Kerry, who respect him. Galanti (Commander, U.S. Navy, Retired) replied "I don't think very many respect him at ALL."

[Fenris]

1. He's full of shit.

And Colmes is a muppet.

[Monte Carlo]

2. Well I know I'M convinced.

Leave it to Alan Colmes to pitch a softball while Hannity is aiming for the batter's head.

[Newsjock]

3. I see the talking points memo as gone out

This afternoon on local hate-talk radio, that was all the caller after caller could go on about. Kerry's "still" an officer, and therefore should be court-martialed. I've really got to stop listening to such crap during lunch hour; it puts me in a foul mood for the rest of the day.

[WMliberal]

4. why are you even watching that show?

you're just giving them another household to their ratings...

[CanIgonow]

5. Did he also say that Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bush,Perle, Feith,

and others aided and abetted the enemy by not fighting at all?

[DoBotherMe]

6. It was the shock of decorated Viet Nam Vets

throwing their medals at Congress that turned the citizens against the war and pushed Nixon to start the withdrawal. Even so, 30,000 troops were killed in VN during Nixon's presidency.

[Jacobin]

7. That may be true

What is also true is that there is no possible way that the U.S. could have ever won that war, unless we destroyed it with nuclear weapons and then occupied it for ten years with the few people left who were willing to be conquered and occupied. That would not have been justified, as indeed the invasion was never justified.

Had Kerry and other vets who spoke out against the war NOT done so, it is certain that hundreds of thousands of US soldiers would have been chewed up in that quagmire and we would STILL be stuck in that jungle.

I applaud Kerry for his leadership against the Vietnam more than I do his killing Vietnamese and getting medals for it. His stance was in the very best interests of this country. We had to be saved from our crazed military industrial complex, just as we need to be saved from them this very minute in IraqNam.

[BootinUp]

8. He claimed to recognize Kerry's voice saying

"...reminiscent of Ghengis Khan..."

from when he was a POW in Hanoi, making the suggestion that his captors used Kerry's 1971 testimony against POW's. Then a few minutes later he said that torture had pretty much stopped by '69.

There's no question that these vets can't accept Kerry's antiwar activities, but I sure smell some lying.

[tishaLA]

9. Good catch!

Wish I'd seen that. I tried to watch that suckfest show tonight but I decided I'd rather hear about Amber than hear more swift lies.

[Ready4Change]

10. False or true...

I know several Vietnam vets who have extremely negative views of Kerry's post service activities. They feel a very strong sense of betrayal. I can feel it in their voices when they say they don't want Bush to have a second term, but they just can't stomach Kerry sitting in the White House.

It's not an opinion I share, but I find it hard to argue strenously with a combat vet.

[gratuitous]

13. Then what Kerry and the other vets attested was untrue?

They were eyewitnesses to the worst of what was going on. While several million Americans were against the war, it was the returning veterans (and Kerry was only one of them) who provided the firsthand accounts of America's shame.

Apparently, though, there are still a number of Vietnam veterans for whom 58,000 names on that wall is not enough. How many more deaths would have been sufficient for them to admit that the U.S. was making a mistake?

[goddess40]

14. Franks and Powell

Both Tommy Franks and Powell admitted there were atrocities committed in Viet Nam.

[Placebo]

11. Right-Wingers LOVE to say that Kerry said soldiers committed war crimes.

But they always fail to mention, even when playing clips of his speech before the senate, that he was repeating what he had been TOLD by OTHER soldiers of what they engaged in and saw in Vietnam.

But I guess when you're a republican it's alright to slice and dice history to fit your needs.

[jimshoes]

12. This is getting to be such bullshit

It's the same chickenhawk rightwing Nixonian warmongering that went on in the 60's. They can flog that dog till the cows come home and it won't change the fact that the Viet Nam war was a mistake and a policy failure that cost America 58,000 of its young men and women. We are embroiled in another failure of policy in Iraq and no amount of deflection or revisionist history will change the fact that the Viet Nam war was not necessary and was mostly a construct of the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about. Now many of the same despicable characters who helped fashion the Viet Nam war are setting us up for another fiasco in Iraq while trying to validate a mistake they made 35 years ago.

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