Whose history?
How many unborn toddlers were murdered today because of the humanistic, paganish decisions of the United States Supreme Court?
Stop the
Murder of
Unborn
Toddlers
“Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” James 4: 17 (NIV)
The following letter to the editor was printed in the Peoria Journal Star on May 5, 2007, page A4. I am posting it in its entirety and then will make comments on it. Judge for yourself who is telling the truth about historical events.
“Please inform yourself how and who extricated the United States from the Vietnam quagmire. Most people are deluded that Nixon, Kissinger or the Republicans ended U.S. involvement in that war. However, the Nixon administration’s vicious Christmas 1972 bombing of North Vietnam showed that some very strong arm-twisting was needed to get them to stop.
Electoral politics, not street demonstrations and coercion (so-called ‘civil disobedience’ and ‘direct action’) which only gave peace a bad name, brought the Vietnam War to an end. President Lyndon Johnson was dumped as a result of door-to-door canvassing for Eugene McCarthy, and George McGovern’s success in electing peace delegates to the Democratic National Convention put pressure on Democrats in Congress to cut off funds for the Vietnam War.
On January 2, 1973, the Democratic Caucus of the House voted 154 to 75 to cut off funds. Two days later the Senate Democratic Caucus voted 36 to 12 to cut off funds. On January 15, 1973, Nixon announced the suspension of offensive action in Vietnam. He announced a peace agreement on Jan. 23, 1973. The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27, 1973. The first U.S. prisoners were released on Feb. 11, 1973. U.S. soldiers were ordered to leave by March 29, 1973.
Republican claims that cutting off funds for war is unprecedented is just another of their big lies. Cutting off funds for war was exactly how we got out of Vietnam. It is just a shame that the Democrats are so spineless that they are not willing to take credit for it.”
I’m not going to get into the whole Vietnam Conflict debate. It is, however, necessary to point out the obvious lies, invalid conclusions, and misrepresentation of the facts presented in this letter.
Starting with this incorrect statement: “President Lyndon Johnson was dumped as a result of door-to-door canvassing….” Sorry, but this individual is twisting history. Lyndon Johnson was not dumped by anyone including the Democratic Party. In March of 1968, months before the Democratic convention, Lyndon Johnson announced on national TV that he would not seek or accept the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency. Did the primary campaign of Eugene McCarthy influence him in his decision? Maybe. However, this writer does not know that unless he was a major advisor to President Johnson or some how was able to get into President Johnson’s mind. Consider this. Eugene McCarthy did not win the presidential nomination of his party. Hubert Humphrey, President Johnson’s Vice President, did. It seems reasonable to believe that if President Johnson would have sought the nomination; he would have received it since his Vice President did. Libertines love to twist history because they think no one actually knows it!
The writer continued his sentence with this statement: “… George McGovern’s success in electing peace delegates to the Democratic National Convention put pressure on Democrats in Congress to cut off funds for the Vietnam War.” What! That is a major stretch from reality and is impossible to prove. The Democratic National Convention selects the Party’s nominee for President and presents a party platform. Congressmen do not have to and often do not pay attention to the party platform. They run on issues that are important in their districts and States. The Democratic National Convention disbands after the convention and has no means to “put pressure” on anyone! Libertines love to twist history because they think no one actually knows it!
Also, consider this. George McGovern lost the election of 1972 to President Nixon badly. George McGovern won only 17 electoral votes out of a total of 537! Tell me how that lopsided loss put pressure on Congressional Democrats in 1973? Libertines love to twist history because they think no one actually knows it!
The supposed conclusive proof of his argument is this declaration: “On Jan. 2, 1973, the Democratic Caucus of the House voted 154 to 75 to cut off funds. (By the way, the new term of office for Congress begins on January 3rd in the year after the general election—Amendment 20 of the United States Constitution [January 3rd of 1973 for the 1972 election]. Therefore, unless the old Congress was in special session on January 2, 1973, it would have been Constitutionally impossible for the House of Representatives to vote to cut off funds or for that matter to vote on anything!—my addition) Two days later the Senate Democratic Caucus voted 36 to 12 to cut off funds. The conclusion, as the writer seems to allude to, is that the Democrats cut off funds to end the Vietnam Conflict.
FALSE! FALSE! FALSE! A vote in a Democratic Caucus is not a vote in Congress! A Democratic Caucus is just that. It is a vote of members of the Democratic Party to help guide them in policy decisions. IT IS NOT A VOTE OF CONGRESS. Libertines love to twist history because they think no one actually knows it!
Notice that the writer makes no mention of an actual vote in Congress. There are 435 members in the House of Representatives. If 154 Democrats were in favor of cutting off funds (his figures; not mine) the Democrats would have needed approximately 60 Republican votes to actually do so (a majority vote is 218 votes of 435 if all members voted). A similar situation is true in the Senate. With 100 Senators and everyone voting, they would need 51 votes. In caucus, they only had 36 votes by the writer’s own admission. Then, of course, President Nixon could have vetoed the bill which would have required a 2/3rds vote to override the veto. I’m sorry, but if CONGRESS actually voted to cut off funds and sent that bill to the President, why didn’t he say so. The only logical conclusion. CONGRESS DID NO SUCH THING!!! Libertines love to twist history because they think no one actually knows it!
Also, because process A occurs and then is followed by process B, it does not necessarily mean that process B was the result of process A occurring. For example, if I observe a stork landing on the rooftop of a hospital and a baby is developed in that hospital immediately thereafter, it does not mean that the stork developed the baby to the hospital! Libertines also love to draw false conclusions based upon illogical thinking!
The writer seems to imply that the peace accord between the United States and North Vietnam would not have occurred without the supposed vote to cut off funds. Once the vote occurred, the peace accord quickly took place and the United States almost immediately left Vietnam—January 15 through March 29, 1973—according to the implied comments of the writer.
This is what Encarta ® says about the process. “(President) Johnson had initiated peace negotiations after the first phase of the Tet Offensive. Beginning in Paris on May 13, 1968, the talks rapidly broke down over disagreements about the status of the NLF, which the Saigon government refused to recognize.”
“In the spring of 1972, with only 6,000 combat troops remaining in South Vietnam, the DRV leadership decided the time had come to crush the ARVN.”
“After the 1972 elections, Kissinger attempted to revise the agreements he had already made. North Vietnam refused to consider these revisions, and Kissinger threatened to renew air assaults against North Vietnam unless the new conditions were met. Nixon then unleashed at Christmas the final and most intense bombing of the war over Hanoi and Haiphong.”
“On January 27, 1973, a cease-fire agreement was signed by all the participants in the Vietnam War. United States president Richard Nixon announced the terms of the agreement in a televised address. Although the agreement provided for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam, it did not resolve the conflict. Fighting continued until South Vietnam surrendered in 1975.” “Vietnam,” Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007 [DVD]. Redmond, Wa: Microsoft, Corporation, 2006.
What are some of the relevant comments from these quotes? The peace negotiations started in 1968 before President Johnson left office and before President Nixon was first elected. The peace talks continued off and on from 1968 to the conclusion in 1973. By the spring of 1972 the United States, which had been removing combat troops from Vietnam already, only had about 6,000 combat troops left in the country. Note that according to Encarta ® most of the American combat troops had already been removed from Vietnam, long before the so called “arm-twisting” vote of the Democratic Caucus in January of 1973. And remember, this was a caucus vote NOT A VOTE OF CONGRESS!!! In 1972 before the election, agreements between the North and the U.S. had been reached. The Christmas bombings after the 1972 election were an attempt by the United States to try to get an even more favorable agreement between the two countries. It did not seem to work and by January a final agreement was approved. Would you agree that the actual history of the events is a far cry from the implied nonsense proclaimed by the letter writer? Libertines love to twist history because they think no one actually knows it!
Remember this concluding paragraph by the writer? “Republican claims that cutting off funds for war is unprecedented is just another of their big lies. Cutting off funds for war was exactly how we got out of Vietnam. It is just a shame that the Democrats are so spineless that they are not willing to take credit for it.”
I agree with one statement in this paragraph. Present day Democrats are spineless. They want to retreat and surrender in Iraq because the going got tougher than originally thought. Most of them were all for the fight when they believed victory would be with little effort. I can’t speak for Republicans, but I can speak for myself. I’ve said all along that the only Constitutional way that Congress can end the fighting is to cut off all funds. I stand by that. I also said that I know of no instance when Congress has cut off funds for a war. I stand by that statement too. The letter writer has NOT established that Congress has ever cut off funds for a war. The best he can come up with is that two Democratic Caucuses voted to cut off funds. The two votes are NOT THE SAME! Therefore, “Cutting off funds for war was” NOT “exactly how we got out of Vietnam.” Libertines love to twist history because they think no one actually knows it!
How many unborn toddlers were murdered today because of the humanistic, paganish decisions of the United States Supreme Court?
Stop the
Murder of
Unborn
Toddlers
“Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” James 4: 17 (NIV)
The following letter to the editor was printed in the Peoria Journal Star on May 5, 2007, page A4. I am posting it in its entirety and then will make comments on it. Judge for yourself who is telling the truth about historical events.
“Please inform yourself how and who extricated the United States from the Vietnam quagmire. Most people are deluded that Nixon, Kissinger or the Republicans ended U.S. involvement in that war. However, the Nixon administration’s vicious Christmas 1972 bombing of North Vietnam showed that some very strong arm-twisting was needed to get them to stop.
Electoral politics, not street demonstrations and coercion (so-called ‘civil disobedience’ and ‘direct action’) which only gave peace a bad name, brought the Vietnam War to an end. President Lyndon Johnson was dumped as a result of door-to-door canvassing for Eugene McCarthy, and George McGovern’s success in electing peace delegates to the Democratic National Convention put pressure on Democrats in Congress to cut off funds for the Vietnam War.
On January 2, 1973, the Democratic Caucus of the House voted 154 to 75 to cut off funds. Two days later the Senate Democratic Caucus voted 36 to 12 to cut off funds. On January 15, 1973, Nixon announced the suspension of offensive action in Vietnam. He announced a peace agreement on Jan. 23, 1973. The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27, 1973. The first U.S. prisoners were released on Feb. 11, 1973. U.S. soldiers were ordered to leave by March 29, 1973.
Republican claims that cutting off funds for war is unprecedented is just another of their big lies. Cutting off funds for war was exactly how we got out of Vietnam. It is just a shame that the Democrats are so spineless that they are not willing to take credit for it.”
I’m not going to get into the whole Vietnam Conflict debate. It is, however, necessary to point out the obvious lies, invalid conclusions, and misrepresentation of the facts presented in this letter.
Starting with this incorrect statement: “President Lyndon Johnson was dumped as a result of door-to-door canvassing….” Sorry, but this individual is twisting history. Lyndon Johnson was not dumped by anyone including the Democratic Party. In March of 1968, months before the Democratic convention, Lyndon Johnson announced on national TV that he would not seek or accept the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency. Did the primary campaign of Eugene McCarthy influence him in his decision? Maybe. However, this writer does not know that unless he was a major advisor to President Johnson or some how was able to get into President Johnson’s mind. Consider this. Eugene McCarthy did not win the presidential nomination of his party. Hubert Humphrey, President Johnson’s Vice President, did. It seems reasonable to believe that if President Johnson would have sought the nomination; he would have received it since his Vice President did. Libertines love to twist history because they think no one actually knows it!
The writer continued his sentence with this statement: “… George McGovern’s success in electing peace delegates to the Democratic National Convention put pressure on Democrats in Congress to cut off funds for the Vietnam War.” What! That is a major stretch from reality and is impossible to prove. The Democratic National Convention selects the Party’s nominee for President and presents a party platform. Congressmen do not have to and often do not pay attention to the party platform. They run on issues that are important in their districts and States. The Democratic National Convention disbands after the convention and has no means to “put pressure” on anyone! Libertines love to twist history because they think no one actually knows it!
Also, consider this. George McGovern lost the election of 1972 to President Nixon badly. George McGovern won only 17 electoral votes out of a total of 537! Tell me how that lopsided loss put pressure on Congressional Democrats in 1973? Libertines love to twist history because they think no one actually knows it!
The supposed conclusive proof of his argument is this declaration: “On Jan. 2, 1973, the Democratic Caucus of the House voted 154 to 75 to cut off funds. (By the way, the new term of office for Congress begins on January 3rd in the year after the general election—Amendment 20 of the United States Constitution [January 3rd of 1973 for the 1972 election]. Therefore, unless the old Congress was in special session on January 2, 1973, it would have been Constitutionally impossible for the House of Representatives to vote to cut off funds or for that matter to vote on anything!—my addition) Two days later the Senate Democratic Caucus voted 36 to 12 to cut off funds. The conclusion, as the writer seems to allude to, is that the Democrats cut off funds to end the Vietnam Conflict.
FALSE! FALSE! FALSE! A vote in a Democratic Caucus is not a vote in Congress! A Democratic Caucus is just that. It is a vote of members of the Democratic Party to help guide them in policy decisions. IT IS NOT A VOTE OF CONGRESS. Libertines love to twist history because they think no one actually knows it!
Notice that the writer makes no mention of an actual vote in Congress. There are 435 members in the House of Representatives. If 154 Democrats were in favor of cutting off funds (his figures; not mine) the Democrats would have needed approximately 60 Republican votes to actually do so (a majority vote is 218 votes of 435 if all members voted). A similar situation is true in the Senate. With 100 Senators and everyone voting, they would need 51 votes. In caucus, they only had 36 votes by the writer’s own admission. Then, of course, President Nixon could have vetoed the bill which would have required a 2/3rds vote to override the veto. I’m sorry, but if CONGRESS actually voted to cut off funds and sent that bill to the President, why didn’t he say so. The only logical conclusion. CONGRESS DID NO SUCH THING!!! Libertines love to twist history because they think no one actually knows it!
Also, because process A occurs and then is followed by process B, it does not necessarily mean that process B was the result of process A occurring. For example, if I observe a stork landing on the rooftop of a hospital and a baby is developed in that hospital immediately thereafter, it does not mean that the stork developed the baby to the hospital! Libertines also love to draw false conclusions based upon illogical thinking!
The writer seems to imply that the peace accord between the United States and North Vietnam would not have occurred without the supposed vote to cut off funds. Once the vote occurred, the peace accord quickly took place and the United States almost immediately left Vietnam—January 15 through March 29, 1973—according to the implied comments of the writer.
This is what Encarta ® says about the process. “(President) Johnson had initiated peace negotiations after the first phase of the Tet Offensive. Beginning in Paris on May 13, 1968, the talks rapidly broke down over disagreements about the status of the NLF, which the Saigon government refused to recognize.”
“In the spring of 1972, with only 6,000 combat troops remaining in South Vietnam, the DRV leadership decided the time had come to crush the ARVN.”
“After the 1972 elections, Kissinger attempted to revise the agreements he had already made. North Vietnam refused to consider these revisions, and Kissinger threatened to renew air assaults against North Vietnam unless the new conditions were met. Nixon then unleashed at Christmas the final and most intense bombing of the war over Hanoi and Haiphong.”
“On January 27, 1973, a cease-fire agreement was signed by all the participants in the Vietnam War. United States president Richard Nixon announced the terms of the agreement in a televised address. Although the agreement provided for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam, it did not resolve the conflict. Fighting continued until South Vietnam surrendered in 1975.” “Vietnam,” Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007 [DVD]. Redmond, Wa: Microsoft, Corporation, 2006.
What are some of the relevant comments from these quotes? The peace negotiations started in 1968 before President Johnson left office and before President Nixon was first elected. The peace talks continued off and on from 1968 to the conclusion in 1973. By the spring of 1972 the United States, which had been removing combat troops from Vietnam already, only had about 6,000 combat troops left in the country. Note that according to Encarta ® most of the American combat troops had already been removed from Vietnam, long before the so called “arm-twisting” vote of the Democratic Caucus in January of 1973. And remember, this was a caucus vote NOT A VOTE OF CONGRESS!!! In 1972 before the election, agreements between the North and the U.S. had been reached. The Christmas bombings after the 1972 election were an attempt by the United States to try to get an even more favorable agreement between the two countries. It did not seem to work and by January a final agreement was approved. Would you agree that the actual history of the events is a far cry from the implied nonsense proclaimed by the letter writer? Libertines love to twist history because they think no one actually knows it!
Remember this concluding paragraph by the writer? “Republican claims that cutting off funds for war is unprecedented is just another of their big lies. Cutting off funds for war was exactly how we got out of Vietnam. It is just a shame that the Democrats are so spineless that they are not willing to take credit for it.”
I agree with one statement in this paragraph. Present day Democrats are spineless. They want to retreat and surrender in Iraq because the going got tougher than originally thought. Most of them were all for the fight when they believed victory would be with little effort. I can’t speak for Republicans, but I can speak for myself. I’ve said all along that the only Constitutional way that Congress can end the fighting is to cut off all funds. I stand by that. I also said that I know of no instance when Congress has cut off funds for a war. I stand by that statement too. The letter writer has NOT established that Congress has ever cut off funds for a war. The best he can come up with is that two Democratic Caucuses voted to cut off funds. The two votes are NOT THE SAME! Therefore, “Cutting off funds for war was” NOT “exactly how we got out of Vietnam.” Libertines love to twist history because they think no one actually knows it!
posted by Christian Gunslinger at 5:02 AM
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