I finally got a copy of that freakish freeper letter. who has the rebuttal

[GreenPartyVoter]

WHAT SENATOR JOHN GLENN SAID

Things that make you think a little:

There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq in January.
In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the
month of January.That's just one American city,
about as deadly as the entire war-torn country of Iraq.

When some claim that President Bush shouldn't
have started this war, state the following:

a. FDR led us into World War II.

b. Germany never attacked us; Japan did.
>From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost ...
an average of 112,500 per year.

c. Truman finished that war and started one in Korea.
North Korea never attacked us.
>From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost ...
an average of 18,334 per year.

d John F. Kennedy started the Vietnam conflict in 1962.
Vietnam never attacked us.

e. Johnson turned Vietnam into a quagmire.
>From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost ...
an average of 5,800 per year.

f. Clinton went to war in Bosnia without UN or French consent.
Bosnia never attacked us.
He was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three
times by Sudan and did nothing. Osama has attacked us on
multiple occasions.

g. In the years since terrorists attacked us , President Bush
has liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled
al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran, and North
Korea without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who
slaughtered 300,000 of his own people.

The Democrats are complaining
about how long the war is taking
But ..
It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno
to take ! the Branch Davidian compound.
That was a 51-day operation.

We've been looking for evidence for chemical weapons
in Iraq for less time than it took Hillary Clinton to find
the Rose Law Firm billing records.

It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the
Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard
than it took Ted Kennedy to call the police after his
Oldsmobile sank at Chappaquiddick

It took less time to take Iraq than it took
to count the votes in Florida!!!!

Our Commander-In-Chief is doing a GREAT JOB!
The Military Morale is high!

The biased media hopes we are too ignorant
to realize the facts

But Wait there's more!

JOHN GLENN (ON THE SENATE FLOOR)
Mon, 26 Jan 2004 11:13

Some people still don't understand why military personnel
do what they do for a living. This exchange between
Senators John Glenn and Senator Howard Metzenbaum
is worth reading. Not only is it a pretty impressive
impromptu speech, but it's also a good example of one
man's explanation of why men and women in the armed
services do what they do for a living.
This IS a typical, though sad, example of what
some who have never served think of the military.
Senator Metzenbaum (speaking to Senator Glenn):
"How can you run for Senate
when you've never held a real job?"
Senator Glenn (D-Ohio):
"I served 23 years in the United States Marine Corps.
I served through two wars. I flew 149 missions.
My plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire on 12 different
occasions. I was in the space program. It wasn't my
checkbook, Howard; it was my life on the line. It was
not a nine-to-five job, where I took time off to take the
daily cash receipts to the bank."

"I ask you to go with me ... as I went the other day...
to a veteran's hospital and look those men
with their mangled bodies .. in the eye, and tell THEM
they didn't hold a job!
You go with me to the Space Program at NASA
and go, as I have gone, to the widows and Orphans
of Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee...
and you look those kids in the eye and tell them
that their DADS didn't hold a job.

You go with me on Memorial Day and you stand in
Arlington National Cemetery, where I have more friends
buried than I'd like to remember, and you watch< waving>
You stand there, and you think about this nation,
and you tell ME that those people didn't have a job?

What about you?"

For those who don't remember ..
During W.W.II, Howard Metzenbaum was an attorney
representing the Communist Party in the USA.

Now he's a Senator!

If you can read this, thank a teacher.
If you are reading it in English thank a Veteran.

[JAbuchan08]

1. Well to start off I believe Germany declared war on us before we attacked

that's my contribution.

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. Where is that letter from the troop that was read in Congress recently?

It was posted here at DU yesterday or the day before

[JAbuchan08]

21. I'm not the one to ask that I just lurk

and spout stupid one-liners....
and rant...
and try not to say anything that would get me kicked off...
I'm surprised I haven't been.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

2. Germany declared war on the U.S.

http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/germwar.html

December 11, 1941

The President's Message

To the Congress of the United States:

On the morning of Dec. 11 the Government of Germany, pursuing its course of world conquest, declared war against the United States. The long-known and the long-expected has thus taken place. The forces endeavoring to enslave the entire world now are moving toward this hemisphere. Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization. Delay invites great danger. Rapid and united effort by all of the peoples of the world who are determined to remain free will insure a world victory of the forces of justice and of righteousness over the forces of savagery and of barbarism. Italy also has declared war against the United States.

I therefore request the Congress to recognize a state of war between the United States and Germany, and between the United States and Italy.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

[MindPilot]

3. I had to craft a response to that a couple days ago...

Here's what I sent:

"Well, that’s a piece of rightwing claptrap that’s been circulated for some time. Apart from being dated and historically inaccurate, it all seems little silly in light of how Iraq has turned out to be exactly the quagmire those who cautioned against invasion said it would.

John Glen actually delivered that “speech” during the 1974 senate race in a debate, not from the floor. It was a prepared statement, not an impromptu retort. Glen retired from the Senate in 1988 and Metzenbaum in 1994 making it a little difficult for them to spar in the Senate in 2004. The charges leveled at Senator Mezenbaum regarding his support of Communism have never been substantiated. He is most well known for his work in anti-trust legislation, consumer advocacy, and women’s rights."

Check snopes and scuttlebutt for reference when replying to these things.

[GreenPartyVoter]

22. May I steal your second paragraph?

[evermind]

4. Iraq is not "liberated", the Taliban and Al Qaeda are not "crushed"

... for a start.

[malmapus]

5. We were in Vietnam while Ike was President too

Years before JFK, like by 3 I think (56/57?)

[MindPilot]

10. Right, the US had "advisers" in Vietnam for close to a decade

before the Tonkin Gulf incident with the USS Maddox supposedly taking fire from North Vietnamese gunships escalated into full-scale combat.

[Stand and Fight]

16. 1957 n/t

[ET Awful]

6. I still want to know at what point in history the US was in danger of

having English no longer be it's primary language.

Plus, very little of the text there actually came from John Glenn.


As to Bosnia, that was a NATO action, not merely a Clinton action. The action was to stop genocide and was pursuant to our treaties, unlike Bush's little war which is contrary to our treaty obligations.

[Gormy Cuss]

7. always start with snopes when trying to rebut these things

The John Glenn emails are classics of part true, part trash. The "job" incident is essentially true. Poke around snopes for a bit will tell you if there's any proof he said the rest.

www.snopes.com

Search on his name.

[SledDriver]

8. Inspectors in N Korea ?

[GreenPartyVoter]

11. I need pics of the devastated wortorn Iraq and broken Iraqi kids

[MindPilot]

17. www.ogrish.com

careful, that place can give you nightmares.

[GreenPartyVoter]

27. I am looking specifically for one of the Napalm babies. Do you

know where I can find one?

[DemonFighterLives]

12. I can't even read the whole thing -they are so stupid

I need a shower now!
:freak:

[GreenPartyVoter]

13. Also need list of changing reasons why we went into Iraq, please

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

14. Make sure, when you send the rebuttal, with all appropriate links etc.,

that you send to "Reply All" assuming that the chain sender was dumb enough to include all the email addresses in the header.

[The_Casual_Observer]

15. "slaughtered 300,000 of his own people"

Is it 250,000 or 500,000 or what? It seems to change depending on what spam letter you get.
Anyway, what is the point of this letter? The Iraq mess isn't improving, is the point of this to make everybody feel better about it?

[MindPilot]

20. Yeah, whatever the number, he did it with weapons the US gave him. n/t

[formerrepuke]

18. Japan attacked us, we declared war on them; they were allied with

Germany.. there really was no way to avoid the Germans. It wasn't Kennedy in 1962 (where the hell did that come from?) that got us 'into' Vietnam... it was Eisenhower, several years earlier. And.. I seriously doubt John Glenn and Howard Metzenbaum were on the Senate floor in January of 2004; they're both long-retired from the Senate. The whole letter is typical Freeplish: badly researched and written.

[Redstone]

19. That's just so extraordinarily stupid and childish and shot full of

factual errors that it's not even worth wasting time on a reply.

Andyone who swallows that crap is a lost cause. Don't waste your breath.

Redstone

[ironman202]

23. Howard Metzenbaum has been out of office

and I think, dead, since 1994....That's quite an accomplishment to have had a conversation with John Glenn, also out of office for over a decade, on Jan 26, 2004....

[Niccolo_Macchiavelli]

24. my reply

WHAT SENATOR JOHN GLENN SAID

Things that make you think a little:

There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq in January.
In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the
month of January.That's just one American city,
about as deadly as the entire war-torn country of Iraq.

When some claim that President Bush shouldn't
have started this war, state the following:

a. FDR led us into World War II.

b. Germany never attacked us; Japan did.
>From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost ...
an average of 112,500 per year.

**Germany declared war and sunk a measurable amount of freighters.

c. Truman finished that war and started one in Korea.
North Korea never attacked us.
>From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost ...
an average of 18,334 per year.

**Just so they wouldn't run to China

d John F. Kennedy started the Vietnam conflict in 1962.
Vietnam never attacked us.

**What's America without a war going on eh? and you don't even know half...

e. Johnson turned Vietnam into a quagmire.
>From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost ...
an average of 5,800 per year.

**Tradition gotta start somewhere doesn't it? all because of a fake incident but one gotta test those fancy new weapons and clearing out the old ones...

f. Clinton went to war in Bosnia without UN or French consent.
Bosnia never attacked us.
He was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three
times by Sudan and did nothing. Osama has attacked us on
multiple occasions.

**Crimes ain't the sole domain of republicans (cowardice and greed i'd add) neither are repugs the only crminals. But after all Clinton treated the serfs..um citizen better than bush.

g. In the years since terrorists attacked us , President Bush
has liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled
al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran, and North
Korea without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who
slaughtered 300,000 of his own people.

**yes opium beeing produced again for the CIA, Oil for Cheny and Arms for Rummy. Free game women, men and children for the perverts that made it to the army in Iraq. Target practice for the terrorists-in-spe (aka rebels, patriots, fanatics, iraqis etc...)Iran is breaking the IAEA seals and everyone agrees no one deserves to be in americas crosshairs without beeing armed with the biggest stuff avaiable.

The Democrats are complaining
about how long the war is taking
But ..
It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno
to take ! the Branch Davidian compound.
That was a 51-day operation.

**yeah rushed work is seldom good. that campaign serves to underpin this.

We've been looking for evidence for chemical weapons
in Iraq for less time than it took Hillary Clinton to find
the Rose Law Firm billing records.

**she's still lokking for it?

It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the
Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard
than it took Ted Kennedy to call the police after his
Oldsmobile sank at Chappaquiddick

**Bank transfers are quick nowadays dude...ever heard of electronic banking?

It took less time to take Iraq than it took
to count the votes in Florida!!!!

**well thats when one meets on resistance...

Our Commander-In-Chief is doing a GREAT JOB!
The Military Morale is high!

**Umm what is his job? holidays? counting his oil money? or the contributions of big pharma, MIC and big energy

The biased media hopes we are too ignorant
to realize the facts

**Obviously, regarding you, their hopes are beeing fulfilled.

But Wait there's more!

JOHN GLENN (ON THE SENATE FLOOR)
Mon, 26 Jan 2004 11:13

Some people still don't understand why military personnel
do what they do for a living. This exchange between
Senators John Glenn and Senator Howard Metzenbaum
is worth reading. Not only is it a pretty impressive
impromptu speech, but it's also a good example of one
man's explanation of why men and women in the armed
services do what they do for a living.
This IS a typical, though sad, example of what
some who have never served think of the military.
Senator Metzenbaum (speaking to Senator Glenn):
"How can you run for Senate
when you've never held a real job?"
Senator Glenn (D-Ohio):
"I served 23 years in the United States Marine Corps.
I served through two wars. I flew 149 missions.
My plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire on 12 different
occasions. I was in the space program. It wasn't my
checkbook, Howard; it was my life on the line. It was
not a nine-to-five job, where I took time off to take the
daily cash receipts to the bank."

"I ask you to go with me ... as I went the other day...
to a veteran's hospital and look those men
with their mangled bodies .. in the eye, and tell THEM
they didn't hold a job!
You go with me to the Space Program at NASA
and go, as I have gone, to the widows and Orphans
of Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee...
and you look those kids in the eye and tell them
that their DADS didn't hold a job.

You go with me on Memorial Day and you stand in
Arlington National Cemetery, where I have more friends
buried than I'd like to remember, and you watch< waving>
You stand there, and you think about this nation,
and you tell ME that those people didn't have a job?

What about you?"

For those who don't remember ..
During W.W.II, Howard Metzenbaum was an attorney
representing the Communist Party in the USA.

Now he's a Senator!

**so what? The Bush Clan were Nazi Bankers and they got 2 of them in the white house!

If you can read this, thank a teacher.
If you are reading it in English thank a Veteran.

**If you believe this, thank the M$M

[Johonny]

25. well

a. FDR led us into World War II.

And history shows he was right about the threat of fascism in the world. History also shows that Republicans in congress where taking Nazi bribes to stay out of the war.

b. Germany never attacked us; Japan did.
>From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost ...
an average of 112,500 per year.

And Japan and Germany had a mutual protection treaty. When Japan attacked us and declared war on us their partner followed suit. German declared war on the USA. In general it’s shown to be ok to fight wars against countries that DECLARE WAR ON YOU!!!!!!! What a moran!


c. Truman finished that war and started one in Korea.
North Korea never attacked us.
>From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost ...
an average of 18,334 per year.

It was a UN war.


d John F. Kennedy started the Vietnam conflict in 1962.
Vietnam never attacked us.

If start he means sent in advisors well then you have to blame Eisenhower for the war. The real "war" started after Kennedy was dead.


e. Johnson turned Vietnam into a quagmire.
>From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost ...
an average of 5,800 per year.

Majority of the lives were lost under Nixon.

f. Clinton went to war in Bosnia without UN or French consent.
Bosnia never attacked us.
He was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three
times by Sudan and did nothing. Osama has attacked us on
multiple occasions.


It was a NATO peace keeping mission. And it actually seems to have worked. All I remember is when Clinton attacked targets in Afghanistan the Republicans cried "No war for Monica". So someone had their priorities wrong and it wasn't Clinton.


g. In the years since terrorists attacked us , President Bush
has liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled
al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran, and North
Korea without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who
slaughtered 300,000 of his own people.


What two countries? Certainly not Iraq now run by chaos or Afganistan now run by the same warlords who ran it before. Taliban still exists. If al-Qaida is so crippled why have they been able to make such huge in roads in a country (Iraq) that they never where in before. And why are the same al-Qaida leaders still able to make video threats! But he ignored the inspectors in Iraq! So what good are inspectors if we ignore their reports! What terrorist? Saddam was a dictator yes, a terrorist? By that definition GWB would be a terrorist for the 150,000+ people he's killed in the middle east so far.

[malmapus]

26. Didn't most of the deaths take place during Nixons "Vietnamization"

With his whole "Peace with honor" stuff, Bush must have read up on that. It sounds about akin to the same shit we're trying to do in Iraq (build a military and staying until the Iraqi's can "take care of themselves").

[GreenPartyVoter]

28. Here is my letter back. How is it?

>>>>>WHAT SENATOR JOHN GLENN SAID

He said these things in a 1972 senate race speech, not from the floor. It was a prepared statement not and some off-the-cuff response.

>>>>>It took less time to take Iraq than it took
to count the votes in Florida!!!!

Counting votes in this country is pointless as long as we have voting machines that are not open to public scrutiny. You think ballot box stuffing is bad, electronic voting is worse and easier to control.

http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/electionreform.htm


>>>>The biased media hopes we are too ignorant
to realize the facts.

The media and government are both corporate owned. Don’t expect any accountability from a group who is reporting on itself. (Such as NBC, which is owned by GE which is a major member of the military industrial complex, which Ike so wisely warned us about: “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development.

Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html )


>>>>>> In the years since terrorists attacked us , President Bush
has liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled
al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran, and North
Korea without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who
slaughtered 300,000 of his own people.

And now opium production in Afghanistan is going great guns. So are they warloards, who keep the population so terrified they are no more free than when they were under the Taliban. Iraq is on the brink of civil war and in fact the Mayor of Baghdad was thrown out of office by people with guns just this past week. And Iran is scrambling to become a nuclear power in order to protect itself from having us bring democracy to it cowboy style.


>>>>There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq in January. In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the month of January. That's just one American city, about as deadly as the entire war-torn country of Iraq.

Detroit doesn’t look like this:

And does that account for only American lives? What about the Iraqis, or do they not count? Even after we finish democratizing them and leave, we’ll still be killing them with all the depleted uranium we will have left behind. (Not to mention the scars from using new and improved Napalm. )


>>>>> When some claim that President Bush shouldn't
have started this war, state the following:

It is true that Viet Nam never attacked us, but
Iraq never attacked us, either. However Saddam was on our payroll and those 300,000 Kurds he gassed (not his own people by the way) were killed with weapons sold to him by the USA.

Osama bin Laden attacked us. (Remember when we sent the CIA to train him how to fight in Afghanistan?)

Lessons learned: Don’t train people or give them money or weapons if they are not members of a stable, democratic nation.


Why did we go into Iraq, anyway? To liberate the Iraqis? There are other horrible regimes in the world, and many others are breaking UN resolutions. And what if, by the end of this war we have killed more Iraqis than Saddam did? Will we still be the good guys? I am not one who believes in breaking a few eggs to make an omelet, not when the eggs in question are people. (And yes I know Saddam was horrible. He truly was but we have not given them a better situation, and the atrocities that occurred at Abu Ghraib is proof of that.)

No, we went there to “protect American Security”. Except there is a problem with that:

1) They never attacked us
2) There were no WMDS there
3) The threat of a “mushroom cloud as the smoking gun” was a lie. That threat did not exist from Iraq.

Once Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald wraps up his grand jury we may hear more on the origins of the war and whether or not they were legitimate since his investigation centers around the blown cover of a CIA agent who dealt in WMD security, a memo from Britain which stated that the USA was attempting to fix the intelligence around the policy of waging war in Iraq, and a falsified report on Iraq trying to purchase yellowcake uranium which the President cited as evidence even after being alerted to the fact that it was not true.


>>>>Our Commander-In-Chief is doing a GREAT JOB!
The Military Morale is high!


Not everyone in the military agrees:

“I am a concerned veteran of the Iraq war. I am not an expert on the vast and wide range of issues throughout the political spectrum, but I can offer some firsthand experience of the war in Iraq through the eyes of a soldier. My view of the situation in Iraq will differ from what the American people are being told by the Bush administration. The purpose of this message is to voice my concern that we were misled into war and continue to be misled about the situation in Iraq every day. My opinions on this matter come from what I witnessed in Iraq personally.”

Complete letter by this brave soldier: http://www.antiwar.com/orig/bruhns.php?articleid=6902


You may wonder how someone who ran the church Support the Troops care package drive can write all this. In all honesty I never supported this war. My feelings on it have been the same since day one. But as the daughter and granddaughter and cousin of veterans and currently serving members, as a relative of one of the first American service members to die in Iraq, as one who lived peacefully next to a beautiful Muslim family for several months I can tell you that it is entirely possible to support the troops and the civilians members of the “enemy” nation and still hate the war itself.

Thanks for taking the time to read all the way to the end of this rebuttal.

P.S. If you could read this, thank heavens for the public education system. (If only we had publicly funded education from cradle to grave and even a third of the DoD budget…)

[GreenPartyVoter]

30. I sent the letter. I could get in trouble for this because it went out to

several people from the church we attend. (Remember hubby's a conservative evangelical) If word gets back to him that I am sending out offensive things like this he and I may have a huge fight over it.


I did sen it with a disclaimer at the beginning, though...

If you are interested in a different view on that
Interesting Statements note, I am willing to offer one
here. Otherwise you may want to save time and delete
it now since it contains what some might consider
offensive opinions and material. (But then I consider
the war offensive, so....)

[zbdent]

29. The point I usually make when they do the "murder" comparisons

is this:

We are the "cops" over there.

If there were that many cops murdered in any place (even a place the population size of California), there would be massive outcries.

Just watch the media go nuts every time a policeman or woman is killed in action . . .

[The Magistrate]

31. Locking

Asked and answered....