You’ve got your useful fools and then you got your

useful pinatas. I take a sadistic delight in watching him getting pummeled. Sometimes, I even think he’s a creation of Roger’s imagination for the purpose of getting everyones juices flowing.

Stop already, Clayton. As others have pointed out, if you’re going to troll, try to good at it.

Here’s a truth that even John Clayton can’t deny:

John Kerry didn’t take part in a single engagement during his (partial) tour of duty where an American serviceman was killed. Not one. Of course, Douglas Brinkley goes to great lengths to conceal this in his hagiography, with melodramatic chapter titles such as ” Death in the Delta,” and rhetoric-laced passages like these:

” Suddenly, being a junior officer assigned to Swift command was the easiest way to earn these medals – and death certificates – in Vietnam.” (pg. 321)

” Between January 30 and March 13, 1969, the Swift crew (Kerry’s) would execute eighteen missions in and around the Mekong Delta river system; in just one hellish eight-day stretch, their boat would participate in some dozen vicious firefights.” (pg. 281)

This is simply yet another element of Kerry’s gross distortion and exaggeration of his Vietnam service.

I won’t argue with you that Kerry saw people die. They were the Vietnamese civilians he carelessly killed because of his ineptitude, as documented by John O’Neil.

Before you troll again, do some reading, lightweight.

The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.

Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.”

This is from a link on Drudge regarding nasty voter registration tactics. I think the article must be planted and is bs because, yes, it makes no sense that a left group would rip up Democrat registrations.

Maybe Drudge should link that the group destroying Democratic registrations is a left wing group.

Re: Chickenhawk

I guess almost every WWII submariner who survived the war qualifies as a chickenhawk in your mind. When you serve in combat aboard submarines you either all come back or none of you do. You inflict pain and suffering without seeing the effects. Yes, you are terrrifiede when the enemy counterattacks, but there is no blood or shattered bodies until the final moments before your vessel’s destruction. Casualties in the Pacific Submarine force were 25%, so I guess that the other 75% are chickenhawks.

Oh, did I forget to mention that I was in Pentagon on 9-11?

Would similar comments have been accepted in an American paper about an American hostage – and if now, would they have been pre-9/11?

Starting with Billy Connolly’s smartcrack was a mistake. Connolly was mistaken to make it, Steyn is mistaken to re-use it.

I might hope to make an end with more dignity and defiance than Mr Bigley, but I still fear that I might not. It is difficult to imagine the man’s state of mind after the torment he likely went through. If Mark Steyn is confident he would do better, well, I envy him his assurance.

The phrase about Liverpool going into “Dianysian emotional masturbation over some deceased prodigal son with no inclination to return” is offensive, plain and simple.

Like PeterUK said.

Repeat that line in a Scouse pub and you’d be very lucky to exit intact at any time.

Right now Steyn would be lucky to exit alive. Seriously.

Liverpudlians, are, and always have been, clannish, emotional and communal about such things. Speaking as a Midlander who lived on Merseyside for several years, their responses to such things are, quite naturally, not those of Middle England.

This is not (or at least not just) BBC-style “feel the feelings” phoniness. And it his hardly their fault that the BBC, and other media chooses to use it in that context. I dislike phony media mawkishness as much as almost anyone. But Scousers ARE different.

While sending a Minister to comisserate with the family may be a mistake, Steyn’s comments on Pual Bigley are simply not appropriate while the family is in mourning.

Regarding the rumoured ‘feelers’ put out by the Foreign Office to Zaqarwi’s group, this would fit with denial of negotiation IF the FO were

a) trying to suborn one of the group

b) attempting to gain intel for an operation

What WAS happening cannot yet be certain. Steyn is being premature.

IF he is correct in his suspicion, I would first to attack the government for it. But at present all of it is just speculation.

As for British decadence and defeatism. Well, we shall see.

However, the Sun headline was “Get the Bastards!”

And one Liverpudlian of my aquaintance would likely have this message for Zaqarwi and his followers: “One day we shall find you, ‘When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind’.”

It’s worth noting that in the UK ever since Diana’s death there’s been this strange tendency in the public as a whole to degenerate into emotional hysteria when faced with high profile death. I suspect that the Telegraph decision was based more on fear of a backlash to their supposed lack of humanity in publishing the piece, rather than concern about what was being written.

Watching newscasters on the BBC talk about how ‘this son of Liverpool would never walk it’s streets again’. Might give you an idea of the theatrics that are being employed by the media as a whole over here. We even had a minutes silence for him before the bloody England game at the weekend.

This in honour of an ex-pat who chose to go and work in Iraq. Be nice if we could see that level of empathy for some of our soldiers.

Sorry to come back on topic

You are another in a long series of trolls who has attempted combat on this site and failed miserably.

You deploy debunked memes repeatedly. Your grasp of logic is almost as poor as your command of facts and history. Regularly we see from you ad hominems, circumstantial ad hominems, appeals to emotion, appeals to spite and question-begging, just to name a few.

Your choice.

The claim to the authority to say that jerry has been “stripped of his humanity.”

All right, if you don’t have sufficient shame to simply recognize your degradation, then explain to me how you can bear to remain in a country defended — as this one is at this very moment — by people who have been “stripped of their humanity”?

Or are you simply one of the moral cretins who is willing to be defended by a military that they none the less revile?

If you don’t have the money for a plane ticket, I’m sure we could take up a collection.

Charlie: What claim to moral authority? I’m just the kid watching the emperor walk naked down the street. That involves perception, not morality.

Stay.