The USS Gridley DID call on the port of Danang, Vietnam, in the spring of 1968.

Rood’s version of the SIlver Star incident agrees with Kerry’s crew’s version, Kerry’s version, and it agrees with my version.

Unfit for Command uses a Silver Star citation that was issued years after the incident. The book uses this citation for a reason — it is inaccurate. The original citation, and the after action report, are quite detailed, and accurate. The agree with the versions Rood, etc, I mentioned above.

The Swift Boat Veterans for “truth”, and their book don’t use lies to make their point(s). They use misrepresentation, omission of pertinent facts, and spin. My mention in the book is a perfect example of this — if you knew what I told them (actually, the private investigator they hired), and then read what is in the book, well, misrepresentation, omission, etc, to the max.

OK, I feel better now . . . .

Doug Reese

The TOTAL TRUTH about Hanoi John Kerry as told by POW’s who suffered the Hell that resulted from his lies. Send it to every Military Veteran you know.

Watch Film Clips of Stolen Honor. It is The Truth about John Kerry.

Assuming one could cobble together a “newspaper,” or maybe a “viewspaper” for you based on aggregation of blog content + wire services stuff, would you pay subscription fees for such a “viewspaper”?Would you be willing to let such a blog install software on your PC in order to automatically customize that viewspaper based on your previous click-throughs? In other words, “learn” your preferences and serve up appropriate blog commentary, web articles, wire services stuff etc?

Short answer: More likely than not. Tell me more.Personally, I haven’t used an aggregator yet. (I understand they work best with full-time access, and I’m stuck with a 28.8K dialup.) Having said that…The “viewspaper” idea sounds promising, the devil being in the details of how it handles preferences. No problem for the 10 or so blogs/news sites that I usually visit every day (some multiple times). But I worry that an algorithm-driven aggregator could miss Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns;” the things of interest (or importance) to me that I don’t already know I’m interested in. That’s where sites like Instapundit come in (as knucklehead notes above), and that why I read the New York Times every day; for the interesting stories about topics I didn’t know about before I started. (And preference-based narrowcasting has its social hazards, too: How well-informed can a voter be if he gets all his news from ESPN?)(shift gears) What about something that simply tracks my surfing and gives each site I visit 1¢ per visit per day? That is, I visit Roger’s site today, he gets 1¢. If I come back (even multiple times) within (say) 24 hours (e.g., I’m following this discussion thread), it’s free (I’ve already paid), but anytime after hour 25, he gets another penny. (I’m trying to follow the Jakob Nielson suggestion that “ambisinistral” pointed out above: The incremental cost of visiting one more site should be so low as to be ignorable.)Of course, there are issues: Big aggregators like Instapundit would suddenly get even more power in the blogosphere, as “Instalanches” begin to put cash in bloggers’ pockets, not just numbers on their hit counters. Privacy: Even if it doesn’t require the sort of advertising-related demographic-information extraction that every site registration page seems to feature, do I really want records detailing my daily visits to (say) erosblog, or Indymedia, or LGF becoming part of a court case (or a pre-job investigation)? How can you transfer an enormous (and varying) number of tiny payments from an enormous (and varying) number of surfers to an enormous (and varying) number of web sites without the adminstrative cost eating up everything? And how can it be made secure enough that it’s difficult to cheat? (Steal a penny from 100,000 people and most won’t even notice, but do so and you’ve got $10,000!)All these issues are what the geeks at Slashdot would call “a small matter of programming:” difficult, but probably solvable. And if they’re solved, I’ll buy in. To echo Hepzi above, I’d like to see bloggers get something beyond a warm feeling of self-esteem for all their work.—-And later thought: I see this arrangemet as an answer to some of “stumbley”‘s concerns above: A good part of blogger “revenue” would come from the pageviews, not from the advertising the page carried. Successful bloggers might make a good income with no advertising at all. Quite a different model from a newspaper, where the subscription price barely covers the raw printing and distribution costs.

France’s triangulation policy is falling apart now, and the French are seriously despondent. The bestseller lists there are full of titles about France’s decline and overreaching.

The reasons for this are clear. France no longer dominates the EU, the jihadists don’t make for a very appealing or reliable rival pole, and there’s no other rival in sight. China’s not really interested. The French nuclear force de frappe was a good and reliable deterrent vs the Soviets but it doesn’t offer any help vs the jihadists.

All of the above indicate that France’s anti-Americanism actually peaked in the 1990s, when the first wave of hysteria about a unipolar post-Cold War world crested, and that, ironically, France during the Bush presidency is actually moving, slowly and inexorably, toward acceptance of its true place in the world.

So much for the notions that a) anti-Americanism is driven primarily by US foreign policy and b) the Bush foreign policy has increased anti-Americanism in France. Wrong on both counts. France will never be much of a friend but perhaps they’ll cease playing the triangulation game in the middle east. Aside from the Iran issue, I’m not sure we should really care one way or the other.

Like a salon host, these blog moderators make sure the discourse is stimulating and civil. If the blog host gets exhausted, spread too thin, or too partisan–things rapidly degrade. And people move onto the latest hot spot.

And like the great intellectual salons, the Blogs really influence the MSM press and “raise the bar” on accuracy and analysis. Not to mention the politicians. What’s cool is its global!!!

Not sure I think the Blogs will replace the MSM. But I do think they could eliminate the Op Ed writers and really dilute the clout of the talking head types. Its no mistake that those guys are getting increasingly histrionic IMO–they are threatened. And they deserve it too–some of em are really quite lazy (from a investigative reporting standpoint) and god knows they all have virtually the same opinions…BORING.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the successful Bloggers are not approached for some sort of business arrangement (similar to Op Ed columnists or talking heads) by the MSM. Perhaps this is already happening, as seen with Andrew Sullivan and the Washington Times?? Maybe they work out exclusive portals for hot blogsites from the MSM internet newslinks??This business strategy would also perhaps open the door for blogger ad revenues too….

Frankly, I would welcome it, because I think the bloggers deserve a fair living for their wonderful analysis and service.

If this should happen, I feel comfortable that the freewheeling competition of the internet will force the MSM editorial staff to be “hands off”–otherwise people will leave and move on to good amateur blog sites.

To those who opine that blogs will succeed when they are financially viable, I say “be careful what you wish for.”

IMHO, one of the biggest problems with the MSM is that it’s a business, more interested in eyeballs on the screen, page views, and space sales than anything else, because ad revenue pays the freight.

For instance, when I worked for the WaPo (mid 90′s) a full-page ad ran about $15,000. “Giant” Supermarkets (one of the Post’s largest advertisers) had about 17 pages *a day*! Presumably, they received a volume discount, but in any event, were spending millions a year in advertising, a sizeable chunk of the Post’s revenue. Does anyone seriously think that a story highly critical of Giant would run in the Post, to the detriment of $$$?

We ran numerous “editorial supplements” to the paper that were really fluff stories designed to feature a theme that would appeal to certain advertising segments, designed to increase revenue and attract advertisers that weren’t regulars. The stories weren’t “news” in the traditional sense, and were often written not by reporters but by PR flacks from the advertisers themselves. This is what you get when advertising revenue becomes more important than actually reporting the news of the day.

Those of us in the advertising department were looked on as “untouchables” by the editorial staff, who still believed that there was a separation of the two sides of the house, but I was aware of editorial slants based on ad revenue on a number of occasions.

If money is bad for political campaigns, it’s equally bad for “news” organizations.

This of course is not to say that I hope Roger, Glenn, Andrew and others don’t do well; I would miss them if they were gone, and I have contributed what small amounts I can to ensure their survival. But I would rather they *not* count on advertising to keep going. It’s the “labor of love” quality, I think, that keeps them all honest.

Europeans have enjoyed “free rider” status for 50 years under the US deployments–at least deGaulle understood the implications of that.

You criticize Kerry for favoring the nuclear freeze? …Reagan himself had idealistic visions of not only a nuclear freeze but a reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. He almost took the zero-option at Reyjavik

A half-truth, like each of the points you make. The zero option of 1982-83 was not at all equivalent to a freeze. It was predicated on a tough either-or proposition to Andropov and then Chernenko: either accept a sharp escalation of US nuclear posture in W Ger and UK (Cruise missiles) or scrap your SS-20s. Though you’re right to point out that Reagan had an idealistic vision of an end state with no nuclear weapons, the path to that end state was for the Soviets to back down and remove their aggressive, destabilizing SS-20s from E Ger.

The freeze would have had the exact opposite effect of allowing the Soviets to keep the SS-20s while preventing us from countering and equalizing. The broader lesson from this is one that Scoop Jackson liberals recognize but Kerry-Kennedy-Carter libs do not: diplomatic overtures not buttressed by a real and credible threat of military pressure are useless.

As numerous Soviet officials from the SU’s USA-Canada Institute made clear to me in the early 1990s, the CPSU accepted the capitulation ideas promoted by a hick southern Russian party hack named Gorbachev only because their fear of SDI and what it represented. In their view, they had failed to catch up in the “third industrial revolution” with even the Asian Tigers, much less the US, and were now on the brink, thanks to SDI, of falling so hopelessly far behind the US as to require a truce. Again, I’m merely repeating the prevailing Soviet view, which echoes Peggy Noonan’s remark: “The Soviet Union didn’t ‘fall’; it was pushed.” It’s very unlikely that an accomodationist US policy based on a nuclear freeze would have convinced the politburo to gamble on redneck Gorby’s “New Thinking” (= Soviet capitulation in the arms race in order to stimulate the economy).

I am glad that Ortega et. al. are no longer in charge there, because like many revolutionaries they were far better at deposing the dictator than having any clues about how to govern. But you should remember that they lost power because they set up a system of free and fair elections

Again, you misunderstand the causes of leninist party and leader behavior. yes, the contras were nasty, and of course Central America is a fourth world basket case, but these problems, like the essentially racial civil war that’s lasted several centuries there are secondary to the main point, which was preventing yet another leninist regime from popping up in our back yard. Even Jimmah Carter recognized that this required severe pressure on the Sandinistas, who, like the politburo, would not and did not voluntarily retreat from their leninist doctrines of dictatorship and subversion of neighboring states. They were forced to do so by a combination of factors that, crucially, included US military support for their enemies.

To say that “modern Nicaraugan democracy is the Sandinistas’ creation” is like saying that Microsoft created open source. Well, in a way they were responsible, but only because it was forced down their throats.

One can distort Kerry’s words, when he speaks of police action, but everyone who is serious about the struggle against the jihadists recognizes that much of the struggle is based on police work, diplomacy, intel gathering and only occasionally standard military force.

Of course that’s true, but my entire point is that when you look beyond words to Kerry’s actual behavior over the past several decades, you see a very clear opposition to the application of US military pressure or force. A freeze that ratifies the Soviets’ escalation rather than an either-or proposal that threatens to match it with US escalation. Support for Ortega rather than support for his opponents. Carrots but never any sticks.

Re. Iraq, the notion that granting the president authority to wage war confers only what you characterize as diplomatic “leverage” is simply doublespeak. If you give Bush the authority to wage war, then you give him a green light to, uh, wage war. Kerry is trying desperately to avoid the obvious fact that the threat of war is meaningless unless the president can actually carry out the threat, not just “leverage” it at the negotiating table. Kerry’s position makes as much sense as a mother giving her daughter a diaphragm and then scolding her for actually having sex.

Finally, re inspections and the Franco-Russian charade, by end of 2002 there was utterly no chance that Saddam would allow the inspectors back in. He was already in material breach, and more importantly, he knew that Chirac and Putin were determined to break the sanctions and do business with him. France’s TotalFinaElf, which as Elf Aquitaine acted for thirty years a slush fund for the French political class, signed a deal with Saddam in November 2002 for exclusive rights to develop one-third of Iraq’s entire reserves in the W. Qurna oilfields! That’s 20 billion barrels, ie the deal of the year, bar none. LUKoil of Russia also signed a mnulti-billion $ deal with Saddam in 2002.

Add to this the evidence of oil-for-fraud collusion with Saddam by elements within or tied to the Kremlin and the Elysee and you have a Franco-Russian policy that clearly was designed to thwart not only the overthrow of Saddam but continued pressure on him. Chirac’s policy was identical to Putin’s policy, which was to ignore or talk down the threat posed by Saddam and do business with him.

This is expected and normal behavior from our erstwhile enemy, Russia. But from France? Actually, this is totally consistent with every French strategic paper, every Le Monde editorial, every foreign policy strategy statement I’ve seen. As Hubert Vedrine put it, “France is a mouse forever trying to avoid being crushed by the [US] elephant.”

France since the fall of the Soviet Union has been desperate to find another anti-US pole so as to continue the grand De Gaulle strategy, upheld with great consistency over four decades, of triangulation. Now that there is no other pole, the only way to sustain this policy is for France, with Germany’s help, to assume the role of balancer vis-a-vis l’hyperpuissance. In the middle east, however, France along with Russia can readily find such opportunities by triangulating between the US and Iraq, Iran, and Syria.

These points are obvious to every Frenchman. Why are they so hard for Americans to understand?

Finally, as a side issue, I disagree with your comments about France. The French have been fighting along side us in Afghanistan throughout all of this. They cooperate fully with the war on jihadis.

Hate to disrupt your fantasy with some unpleasant facts, but a few weeks ago Chirac refused– in the face of unanimous support from all other Alliance members including Germany– to allow additional NATO forces to help ensure that elections take place in Afghanistan. As I say, the French game is triangulation weherever possible as a way of keeping some benefits from cooperation with the US while thwarting and countering US power wherever possible. This is no more the behavior of an ally than Clinton’s triangulations in 1994-1998 were the behavior of a Republican president.

Again, the French do not consider themselves our ally. Why do we keep impoing on them a label that they themselves refuse to accept?

Finally, please do think about the absurdity of talking up the need for sensitivity to French and German concerns while fully embracing that Israeli whom most Frenchmen and Germans consider the prince of darkness in the middle east.

rgds,

thibaud

I don’t know if this thread has run its course or not, and I can’t begin to catch up with it, but it is, IMO, an excellent example of discussion.

It seems to me that it will be a generation or so before we can even begin to assess the impact of the internet as a whole or blogs. So much has been discussed just in this thread… here’s some knuckleheaded observations.

Thibaud, it seems to me, is on to something important re: blogs and the MSM. To get at the revenue that the MSM has requires advertisers to have a solid demographic understanding of the “eyeballs” that are tuned in. That may be geographic or economic or socio-economic or whatever, but so far the only thing, it seems to me, a would be advertiser can get at for particular blogs is some common level of interest among that blogs participants. Blogs like Instapundit overcome this, it seems, by sheer volume of eyeballs. But he’s an aggregator, or a “did you see this” sort of operation rather than an “interest group” sort of operation. What those of us who pop in to Instapundit several times per day go there for is to see if there’s something we might be interested in going to look at. He’s a clearinghouse of sorts. Very valuable, but the demo advertisers can get there is sheer volume. Since quantity has a quality all its own, that’s good enough.

A blog like this here at Roger’s Place, to me, serves an odd sort of function. A “neighborhood” tavern, if you will, where those who comment get to “know” one another over time and trade thoughts and share bits and pieces of expertise. Charlie or somebody else mentioned how much he enjoyed the health care discussion that was a subthread at The Party while Roger was away. I did also. Part of our problem, as a nation, is that none of us can get our minds around the full extent of such issues and the MSM cannot or will not help us. Blogs can help because they draw a wealth of experience and exposure and expertise into the discussion. We’ll get people who know something about providing health care services, people who know about insuring, people who know about the law, malpractice, alternative medicine, and so on. Those who join such discussions with anything approaching an open mind can get at some of the expertise that is beyond their own experience.

Which brings up the “echo chamber” issue. There are a lot of people here who agree on much about the current political situation, but that doesn’t mean that just because folks who disagree get hammered that what we are witnessing is an “echo chamber”. When certain memebots or new participants come in with stuff that makes little or no sense when given something more than cursory levels of thought, or is early in the evolution of the discussion, that is more a reflection on where the “dissenting voice” is than where the “audience” is.

The overall effect of how the internet will change the way people communicate is a fascinating thing to observe. And it is changing how people communicate. Somebody above mentioned that their young child has a blog. Its not only blogs. Watch how today’s yutes use instant messaging and the like. They keep in touch in ways that were impossible when I was their age. It just couldn’t be done or, at least, nobody was going to put the money into that many phone calls or the time into that much snail-mailing. Kids today have some general idea of what many of their former friends are up to even if they haven’t directly communicated with them. They parse “away messages” fercryinoutloud. They pop in and look at the sorts of stuff acquaintences are putting up on their websites. And they do this with a level of “sophistication” that is beyond what even those of us who have watched this thing develop have any hope of matching.

JMO, but I believe it will ultimately have a very good effect. One of our problems, as a society, is that the past couple generations have wrought such enormous change that we haven’t come to grips with how to deal with one another. To paraphrase Dorothy: Oh my, people come and go so quickly here! Well, people may still come and go quickly, but the tools we are seeing develope around the internet are allowing them to stay in touch and aware of what is developing in one another’s lives much more easily. I believe it will be for the good once its shaken out a bit more and stabilizes.