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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (45365)	12/24/2003 10:37:58 AM
From: Fred Levine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50167

Thank you for the post. However, my issue is not whether one agrees or disagrees with Clark. I am not a Clark fan. My issue is the malicious slandering of someone's reputation without facts. However, Halderstam's book is absolutely positive about Clark and negative about the incompetence of the general staff. They have always fought the last war. As an aside, in the '91 Iraq war, a colonel came out with a plan, massive parallel bombing, which meant for the first time in history, the army was secondary to the air force. The colonel's boss, whom may have been Shelton, was on leave when the plan was submitted to Schwartzkopf, and when he returned, he tried to kill the plan. It was too late. Clark also used massive parellel bombing in the Balkans very successfully, with little, if any loss of American lives. People certainly differ on priorities and that is helpful. What is not helpful is character assasination without facts. Clark did meet with Milosovic to attempt a political solution before resorting to a military solution. What's wrong with that? He certainly did not appease Milosovic--quite the opposite. >>Left and liberals always appease<< When I read that leftists and liberal always try to appease, I think of Harry Truman in Korea and Japan, of Kennedy in Cuba and Berlin, and Clinton in the Balkans--against the wishes of Germany and france. Generalizations like that are useless. I left out FDR, a great liberal who could hardly be called an appeaser. fred

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (45365)	12/24/2003 11:36:04 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 50167

Hi IQBAL LATIF; Re: "Left and liberals always appease... Clark's what he says and what he does." You know zero about US politics. Clark is not now and has never been a "left" or a "liberal". He is a decorated American war hero. Here's how he got a Silver Star for bravery in Vietnam: Lt. Clark shipped out to the field to take command of the Army’s A Company, 1st of the 16th Infantry, a mechanized unit. Not long afterward, on February 19, 1970, Clark had “one of the two bad days of my time in the Army.” It was just before the Tet holiday, and some intelligence indicated that a major enemy operation was being planned. Clark’s battalion was ordered to block an infiltration route into Saigon that ran through a jungle and a mangrove swamp. The platoons of Clark’s company took turns pulling two-day patrols of their sector, and Clark often joined them to observe. On February 18, while trying to set up an ambush, the patrol took fire from local Viet Cong. No one was hurt. The next day, continuing the plan, the patrol moved through the forest up a wide, well-worn path that had once been the main route of Vietnamese woodcutters and charcoal makers. As Clark tells it, “the scouts who were leading the patrol said, ‘Sir, we’ve lost the trail.’ It was the dry season, and it wasn’t muddy, and we’d just crossed this little footbridge, and he says, ‘We’ve lost the trail.’ I said, ‘That’s impossible.’ I had a compass, and I had my rifle, and I knew what direction we were supposed to be going in, and I knew within a hundred meters where we were. And when I got up to the front of the column I said, ‘You’re right, there’s no trail there.’ And as I was thinking about what that meant, I dropped my rifle. It was on the ground in front of me. I looked down. I’d never dropped a rifle before. I’d been through Ranger school and, you know, a year or two in the Army, and in all that time at West Point I’d done practice patrols numerous times, and I’d never dropped a rifle. When I looked down I noticed there was a little chip of bone sticking out of my hand. I could hear hornets buzzing. I also saw a dark spot on my leg. And each of these were distinct thoughts and images. And so I finally connected the dots. It probably took me six-tenths of a second, but it’s the six-tenths of a second you’ll never forget in your whole life, and I turned to the guy behind me and said, ‘I’ve been shot.’ And he said, ‘Get down!’ I turned around and jumped backwards. It was a hard decision not to pick up the rifle.” Clark was shot three more times during that ambush, but still managed to direct a counterattack and successfully lead the platoon to safety, for which he was awarded the Silver Star. He then left Vietnam for the States, where he underwent almost a year of physical therapy before securing a teaching position in the Social Sciences department at West Point. -- Carl P.S. More and more of our decorated war heroes from Vietnam are calling Iraq a mistake. These are hard men, not leftists, liberals or appeasers. The simple fact of life on this planet is that sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you. The essence of military (and political) leadership is figuring which one is going to happen early enough to take advantage of the wins and to soften the losses.

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (45365)	12/24/2003 10:42:19 PM
From: JEB	Respond to of 50167

The communists are a class set apart by themselves. Indeed, I think they are such liars and cheats that even when they apparently recant and later testify against someone else for his Communist convictions, my first reaction is to believe that the accused person must be a patriot or he wouldn't have incurred the enmity of such people. So even when these "reformed" Communists have proved useful in helping us track down some of their old associates, I certainly look for corroborating evidence before I feel too easy in my mind about it. 11/04/1953, Memorandum For The Attorney General, President Dwight D. Eisenhower.