Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (1844)	5/4/2005 7:41:02 PM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 224691

PROOF: Here is Kerry's war diary, Christmas going to Cambodia. Notice he writes he's on his way to Cambodia and it is Christmas Eve. A different diary entry later has him on the border of Cambodia surveying Cambodian territory from his boat, the river being the borderline. Now was he IN Cambodia on Xmas day? No, but he never said Xmas DAY, he said "christmas" meaning the general season. he was in Cambodia. So the smearvets are once again proven liars. "John Kerry's Vietnam War journal Excerpt from a type-written journal kept by John F. Kerry during his tour of duty in the Vietnam War: You wake up with a start thinking that something is wrong and you grab the bars over your rack and swing down onto the metallic deck in the main cabin. Suddenly you are really awake and realize sheepishly that the startled concern that consumes you is prompted only by the conglomeration of noises that fill POF 44 and the fitful sleep that has characterized the nights on patrol. This is the fourth time during the night that sleep has been startled into movement - and each time the boat was riding smoothly and quietly. Once you were so sure of danger that you ran up into the pilot house and grabbed the throttles only to laugh with you men at your over-concern and reaction but deep inside you know and understand the pressures that are being brought to play with the mind and the body. And once you laughed at the Captain who talked in his sleep and who demanded that he be notified of any and all changes. Sleep is probably one of the biggest battles of all on patrol. There is the constant temptation just to let go and relax and sleep all night -- trusting to the enth degree the young men who man your boat and who make up your watch sections. Eventually you begin to succumb and leave you life and that of the boat in your mouth and with eye lids that cascade down over dirty cheekbones, the sleep is light and restless. The radio cracks "Priority" and you are awake; loud explosions that rock the boat from the distance and the not-too-distant make you jump with a start ; ; but in a day you will be back in port and have a bed in which to lose completely the last three days of your life -- and then you think (unable to read 2 words) if you will lose these days. A shower is two days behind you and two days hence but some how dirt doesn't (unable to read) you at all. It's good to be alive and to see the small ducks following their mother to food somewhere in the mangroves that line the bank of the river. Ducks remind you of geese and geese bring back the cold of Massachusetts and the memories of warm fires and chestnuts and houses that have been turned into Christmas lights and the feeling of warm skin meeting cold leather as you climb into a frosted automobile that will skid and slide and precariously take you to the even more precarious Christmas shopping. You are running on one engine to preserve gas because your station is at the mouth of the Co Chien River and there is no outpost to give you fuel and no LSP to (unable to read) with milk and warm food. Today though luck is with POF 44 and her small generator is still running; still capable of warming the hotplate and giving you fried eggs for breakfast. For some reason though you don't feel like fried eggs and so you open a O-ration can that has peanut butter in it -- (unable to read) 11 which is smooth -- and also a can of strawberry preserve and a sandwich satisfies an already deranged stomach. Today you move to the northern end of the area -- towards Cambodia -- and excitement tingles the nerves that appreciates the new and the unexplored and you enjoy starting the other engine, hearing the deep throb of the diesel engine and the hums as the boat reaches for the step and shoots spray out on both sides as she moves up the river. The (unable to read) shows you where you are and where you are going and you trust the mesmeric sweep that illuminates islands and boats and jumps and sandbars. The (unable to read) hasn't been working very well and without it speed can be dangerous but you have moved over this part of the river before and nothing can stop you now. A (unable to read) sweeps by on one side and you feel large and protective(?) compared to this small fiberglass hull. The patrol officer warns you of a sandbar ahead in an area that you haven't traversed and you thank your wisdom for stopping and asking advise about the upper reaches of the river. Everything you around you is quiet and the only humdrum breaking an otherwise still southeast Asian morning in the now high whirl of your engines. All across the river, in splotches of green, are pieces of mangrove that have eroded away from the banks which are now plying a drifting and uncertain route with the tidal current that sweeps through the Co Chien.. It makes you think of the story of the wooden seagull that followed the air currents of the world and that saw the movements of all the world's people below its graceful and motionless wingspan. You wish that you could be transformed into that itinerant nothingness that lets you watch the world pass by with all its gross trimmings but which demands nothing of you. To be free so that you can comment or not comment as you see fit and then just hop on a breeze and be blown restlessly to some new horizon with new hope and new strength. You think for a moment of Pogo and cartoon characters who have all the freedom of the world and whose audience, it seems, pays acute attention to his pronouncements while he is really quite free from their criticisms - that is at least his ears aren't scorched by the vulgarities of people who know nothing and so nothing and sense nothing. Lucky Pogo you think and then your boyish reverie come quickly to a close. Ahead lies the APL from which you will refuel and steal a morning meal. Both operations completed you pass from the Navy and again enter the world of beauty that surrounds you as you move up the meandering channel of the main water route to Cambodia. Its daylight now and moving with you are junks and barges and swamps of all sizes and shapes and colors and within each person with a world of his own fears and hopes and aspirations. Simplicity characterizes everything around you and because of this an unassuming peace envelopes the fatigue with which you (were) traveling). A small canal looms up on the left and methodically, as though the chart by your side were slave to the wheel, you turn the boat into it and enter still a more perfect world of shapes and colors.