Closing Ranks - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Closing Ranks
by

WITHOUT BLINDERS
Re: Shawn Macomber’s You Load 380 Tons:

Great article about the uncanny timing of the “breaking news story” the mysteriously missing weapons cache. I couldn’t help but find it strange that two-thirds of the way through the article, the author injected his opinion that he actually thinks that the Bush administration’s handling of the weapons situation in Iraq has been quite poor. My basic inquiry is whether this magazine in particular and conservatives in general plan to come clean about their many and substantial gripes regarding the Bush administration after they win the election. Although I do believe that Bush is a better leader than Kerry would be, I’m ready for a return to the days when the conservative media wasn’t afraid to take the President to task for his sub-par performance in office. Before election season conservatives bemoaned his right-speak but leftish-action, and now he’s the new Ronald Reagan. Give me a break…I’m ready for the truth again.
Hasani Pippins

SMEAR SISTERS
Re: George Neumayr’s In Deep Qaqaa:

Thank you for allowing George Neumayr to say what has to be said. The N.Y. Times, CBS News, John Kerry, John Edwards, etc. all are dumping on our troops in the field. In their haste and hatred of President Bush, they will make up stories and tell lies, never mind how badly it reflects on the men and women that are keeping us safe. The Democrats have become totally despicable, and the main stream media outlets are even worse. I hope and pray that the majority of sane people in our country will do what is right for this country, and vote to keep our President in office. Thank you again for having the courage to stand up and tell the truth!
Bruce W. Opheim, Sr.
Fargo, North Dakota

The so called theft of the Iraqi museum archeological and art pieces was perpetuated by museum staff prior to the U.S. troops arriving on the scene.

Regarding Al QaQaa, the administration indicated that it would not support ElBaradei for another term with the IAEA in September. It is odd that this was “leaked” to CBS in October.

This is additionally part of the overall strategy by the U.N. to divert attention from its role in the Oil for Food program by attacking the U.S.
LS

Perhaps we should thank the New York Times and CBS for making President Bush’s case for war against the Hussein regime in this post 9/11 world in which we live — well, most of us, anyway. Senator Kerry obviously seems to prefer his pre 9/11 fantasy world. Remember during the Democratic primaries when he insisted that the threat of terrorism was being exaggerated by the President?

And, dear Senator Kerry, your feigned outrage over missing explosives isn’t going over. We all know that if you had your way Saddam Hussein would be making sure said explosives wound up in the hands of terrorists bent on destroying the United States and Israel. So, why don’t you do us all a favor and go work on your tan and get a manicure — and send TeRAYzuh out to do your bidding.
Yeah, let Mrs. Heinz speak — Please!
Cathy Thorpe
Columbus, Georgia

John Kerry has revived the tired old playbook from the 1960s and has epitomized what Jeane Kirkpatrick called the “blame America first” crowd with his cynical — no, dishonest — usurpation of the discredited “missing munitions” story. Leaving aside the fact that the information came from the usual suspects– CBS, the New York Times, and the United Nations — Kerry’s assumption that the United States, the administration, and the military were at fault sums up his character. One can only hope that this sham blows up in his face like the WMDs Kerry said didn’t exist in Iraq — after he said they were there.
Warren Mowry

PLAY THAT THUNE
Re: The Washington Prowler’s Senate Uplift:

Your Tuesday coverage of Senate races missed this shocker from daschlevthune.typepad.com (until this poll the two had been deadlocked at 49-49 with no undecideds):

New Poll Shocker: Thune 49%, Daschle 45%
John McLaughlin of McLaughlin & Associates conducted a tracking survey of 400 likely South Dakotan voters (MOE: +/- 4.9%) on Thursday, October 21st and Sunday, October 24th, for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). The key findings are as follows:

“If the election for U.S. Senate in South Dakota were held today, and the candidates were Tom Daschle, the Democrat candidate, and John Thune, the Republican candidate, for whom would you vote?”

Thune: 48.5%
Daschle: 44.5%
Undecided: 7.0%

Favorable 56.5%, Thune; 49.8%, Daschle
Unfavorable 35.0%, Thune; 44.0% Daschle

“Would you vote to re-elect Tom Daschle to the U.S. Senate, regardless of who ran against him?”

Yes: 38.3%
No: 61.8%

“If the election for President were held today, and the candidates were George W. Bush, the Republican candidate, John Kerry, the Democrat candidate, and Ralph Nader, the Independent candidate, for whom would you vote?”

Bush 54.5%
Kerry 32.5%
Nader 1.5%
Undecided 10.8%

Jameson Campaigne
Ottawa, Illinois

I find it very suspicious that the Prowler’s disappearance and subsequent return seem to closely coincide with our former president’s heart surgery and eventual return to public life.

After all, who is else is so well positioned to know all the inside scoops in the Democrat’s ranks and craves attention so acutely.
Teddy Crider
Apex, North Carolina

CHECK THIS OUT
Re: Shawn Macomber’s Our Reading of the Day:

The novel The Librarian sounds like a lefty version of The Turner Diaries. Every stereotype about conservatives and what “everybody knows what they think and do”

I hope it comes with pop-up pictures and scratch and sniff for all of the Ivy League graduates.
Paul Austin
Tempe, Arizona

APPEASE OF THE ACTION
Re: Jorge Amador’s No Truce With Terror:

I disagree with that “timed brilliantly” characterization. I believe it wouldn’t have changed the Aznar government, had that government not been so afraid to use the generic word terrorist. Timidly trying to place blame on the locals prior to making a strong statement of purpose against “terrorists who dare try to intimidate the Spanish people” was the political miscalculation that got Aznar’s party voted out of office.
G.B. Hall
Marietta, Georgia

I read with interest Mr. Amador’s piece about the continued terrorist activity in Spain. It underscores the determination of the Islamic terrorists to murder and maim in the name of Allah regardless of what any Western country does to appease them. Recently I read a column by Dr. Charles Krauthammer in which he asserted that if Kerry is elected, there is much evidence in his speeches and in the platform of his party to indicate that he will pull the plug on the United States’ support of Israel. After his cowardly behavior in opposition to the War in Vietnam, his refusal to support the first Gulf war, and his capricious self-serving poll driven positions (contortions?) on the present war in Iraq, I would think that any sane thinking person would realize that the safety of our nation and its people depend on Mr. Kerry losing the up-coming presidential election.…
Joseph Baum
Newton Falls, Ohio

MARAT SAID
Re: Marat Ryndin’s letter (“Bringing It On”) in Reader Mail’s Gut Feelings:

Thank you, thank you, thank you for publishing this interesting letter. It isn’t often that someone describes so completely the mind-set that plagues today’s “liberal.” I wonder just what it was that Mr. (I presume) Ryndin found so objectionable in Ms. Yates’s article? Perhaps it threatened his masculinity? It certainly must have threatened his political beliefs, especially in “unscrupulous lies” like “Bush’s missing year of service in the Texas Air National Guard.”

Sigh… I suppose it’s asking too much for the “Anybody But Bush” crowd to consider facts. I know many such people, and to a person they cannot tell me one sustainable fact as to why they hate Bush so blindly. I just hope there aren’t enough more like Mr. Ryndin out there in voter land to put Kerry in the Oval Office.
Bob Johnson
Bedford, Texas

I generally don’t like to comment on the nature of another soldier’s service, if such service was honorable, but Marat Ryndin’s letter regarding Pamela Yates’s “The Geek Factor” needs to be addressed:

A couple of weeks ago I was in Boston visiting my father. He asked me what I thought about Senator Kerry’s Purple Hearts, to which I responded that they appeared to have been awarded in accordance with military regulations. He scowled and pointed to the center knuckle on the middle finger of his right hand. The discussion below followed (Please excuse some of the saltier language, but it captures Dad’s tone, and at 84 years he’s excused.):

Dad: “Look at that!”
Me: “What?”
Dad: “THAT!”
Me: “Looks like scar tissue. What happened?”
Dad: “I got hit by shrapnel flying through some flak.”
Me: “That was sixty years ago. Did it bleed?”
Dad: “Of course it bled!”
Me: “For how long?”
Dad: “Who the hell knows? It dried up after a while.”
Me: “Well, I’m not surprised, since you were in an unheated B-24 at twenty thousand feet. So did you go to the flight surgeon after you landed and get it stitched up?”
Dad: “Stitches! You gotta be sh__ttin’ me! I put a bandage on it!”
Me; “Did you apply for a Purple Heart?”
Dad: “For THAT? For Ch__st’s sake…!”

Lt. j.g. John Kerry’s military exploits showed considerable bravery, but I do not believe they equal my father’s WWII heroics. Yet Dad rarely spoke about his wartime experiences, and would not even think about applying for a Purple Heart for a wound that, while minor, was easily more serious than those of Lt. Kerry.
Paul M. DeSisto, Lt. Col. USAF (Ret.)
Cedar Grove, New Jersey

Reader Ryndin has a problem with Bush’s war record as compared to Kerry’s. Well, Bush has been a war-time president for the last 19 months. That means quite a lot to me. It’s true that he can’t campaign on his war record, but neither could Clinton when he ran against Bush 41. Much too much has been made of Kerry’s war record anyway. The part of Kerry’s history that concerns me is his denigration of his fellow veterans, who served honorably, for his own personal agenda. Maybe he (she) could offer up an acceptable accounting for Kerry’s date of discharge in 1970 when his obligated duty didn’t end until 1972. My own feeling is that he received an Other Than Honorable discharge in 1972 because of his meetings with the North Vietnamese government while still under his unfulfilled service as a commissioned officer. His subsequent honorable discharge was in 1976 and was a result of Carter’s amnesty program for draft dodgers and others who had received other than honorable discharges. Regardless of who wins this election Kerry’s military service will continue to be an issue until he signs form 180 and releases all of his records as Bush has done. For my own two cents Kerry’s Senate record alone is enough to convince me he is merely an opportunist and not a serious candidate.
unsigned

Bona fide heroes do not flaunt their experiences as phony ones do. Mr. Kerry put in 4 mo. and hit beach. The rest of Swiftees put in full tours, got real Purple Hearts, came home and went about the business of every day life. Your hero came home and proceeded to insult the real heroes and that is why they detest him so. If the question is between believing Kerry or 250 plus others who were also there, I’ll go with the others. His phoniness is his badge of dishonor.
GMS

Marat Ryndin knows as much about military service (may I quote Harry S. Truman) “as a pig knows about Sunday.” True Democrat Kool-Aid drinkers think they found the perfect “anti-war” military candidate in Kerry (Wes Clark wasn’t “Deaniac” enough?). That he disparaged the valor of those he served with means nothing to those pseudo-intellectuals from Bean Town. To a true believing anti-war Democrat, being the pilot of a supersonic jet fighter (F-102A) — an obsolescent one at that, one with a built-in 500 foot altimeter error, one with among the poorest safety record of any modern era jet fighter — “is a safe place to sit out the Vietnam war.” Really? John Kerry went into Swift Boats when their mission was offshore patrol. Another safe place to sit out the war, Marat? Squealed like a stuck pig when he found out the mission changed to riverine warfare, wrote all his own citations and after-action reports on a personal typewriter he took into the war zone, wounded himself twice before killing a fleeing and wounded Viet Cong behind a hooch (in cold blood?) — all in 4 months and 11 days in country. Whew!

To say Swift Boat Veterans for Truth members never served with John Kerry is a stretch. Just because they were in his chain of command or on adjacent boats doesn’t count? Hmmm. Whats’s good enough for Dan Rather isn’t good enough for Marat Ryndin. On this I agree. But wait — one of the “Swifties” was John Kerry’s gunner (Steve Gardner)– on his boat… nah — he’s obviously a Republican plant. Only the Marat Ryndins of the world — and their ilk — can challenge Medal of Honor recipients and combat veterans on military affairs in the court of public opinion. The Internet is — indeed a great equalizer.

Thank you Marat and all like you — who’ve picked the scabs of Vietnam wide open on we who served after all these years. Thank you for your support of our military families. Thank you for championing our sorely needed improvements in base housing. Thank you for voting for all our little pay increases. Thank you for supporting candidates that fought in Congress for weapons and systems that kept us supreme and safe on the battlefield. Thank you for bravely standing up after the 1993 Twin Towers truck bombing, the 1996 Khobar towers truck bombing, the two East African Embassy bombings in ’98, the USS Cole bombing in 2000 — shouting and stomping on the floor of the Senate for increases in our intelligence budgets. Thank you for telling us that 58,000 of my military brothers died for a “stupid war”. Thank you for taking responsibility for the 2.5 million human beings the communists slaughtered in the aftermath of our military withdrawal from South East Asia. Thank you, thank you …

Never mind Kerry’s peace conference “honeymoons” in Paris. Never mind “Winter Soldier.” Never mind the Fulbright Senate Committee testimony. Marat Ryndin — never mind.
Mike Horn, LTC, US Army Reserve, ret
Tracy, California (Red City in a blue state)

To Marat Ryndin: Please read Unfit for Command. Then let’s have a discussion regarding John Kerry’s war record.
Brad Farr
Littleton, Colorado

P.S. Bring facts!

Sign up to receive our latest updates! Register


By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: . You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact

Be a Free Market Loving Patriot. Subscribe Today!