Originally posted by Nash
There's that O'Dell guy again....
"The John Kerry that I know is not the John Kerry that everybody else is portraying. I served alongside him and behind him, five feet away from him in a gun tub, and watched as he made indecisive moves with our boat, put our boats in jeopardy, put our crews in jeopardy... if a man like that can't handle that 6-man crew boat, how can you expect him to be our Commander-in-Chief?"
Lemme repeat the gist of his argument:
"If a man like that can't handle that 6-man crew boat, how can you expect him to be our Commander-in-Chief?"
We are talking about a 20 year olds' impression of another 20 year old... And the President of the United States of America some 40 years later.
Let me translate:
"I am such a retard".
Once again, Van Odell did not say that, Steve Gardner said it.
Now, the problem with YOUR argument in this case is that not only is Kerry running on his performance in Vietnam, but rpm and others are saying that Kerry's Vietnam experience makes him infinitely more qualified to be the CinC of the military and makes him less likely to be a loose cannon.
Read what you posted again, and when you do, understand that Gardner was not some snot nosed kid, but in fact had six times more experience in swift boats than Kerry did. Gardner was at the end of his second tour, and Kerry was in the middle of his first and only four month tour.
See, if Kerry is going to run at least in part on his military background as a leader of men, then the fact that a seasoned veteran, along with the majority of his peers (brother officers) and superiors (commanding officers) say that as a leader and a sailor he sucked, was unreliable, and a liar, is a pretty significant fact.
