Posted on 03/31/2004 2:29:48 AM PST by alloysteel
I transcribed this over in the live thread (also scroll down a couple messages for some background on the quotes):
I went to my video recording and made a transcript of the drunk mother portion. I've left out some "uhs" and repeated words:I think that what we're doing is we're trying, in a sense, to show where the country went wrong. And we believe, as veterans who took part in the war, we have nothing to gain by coming back here and talking about those things that have happened, except to try and say, "here is where we went wrong, and we've got to change."And I think that the attitude of the Vietnam Veterans For A Just Peace is really one, sort of, of, "my country, right or wrong," which is really, on the intellectual level I think, of saying, "my mother, drunk or sober." And I think that, just as when your mother is drunk, you take her and dry her out -- God forbid that she is -- you take your country, in the words of Senator Carl Schurz who said, "my country, right or wrong; when right, keep it right; when wrong, put it right."
I hope C-SPAN does post a full transcript. I haven't been able to find one elsewhere on the net. O'Neill responded to every point of Kerry's opening statement and eviscerated him with facts, often quotes from Kerry himself. Here's O'Neill's reaction just to the "drunk mother" portion:
Our attitude certainly isn't, "our country, right or wrong." We were all fifteen and sixteen years old [when] we happened to get into the Vietnam War. What's so interesting about many of Mr. Kerry's backers, including Clark Clifford, Roger Hillsman [and] a number of others, is that they happen to be exactly the same people who sent us to Vietnam. We certainly, obviously, would never support this country if we felt it were wrong. We just feel we need a rational way out of Vietnam.
The bigger issue at hand is the question, literally, of how the United States is going to get out of Vietnam now. And I have said again and again this evening that we can set a date, that we can bring the prisoners home.But the point is I think this administration is still seeking some kind of victory. It is still committed to the idea, totally, of a non-communist regime [in South Vietnam], and I think that is unrealistic in terms of the political forces that are in play in South Vietnam, in fact in all of South East Asia. And we have learned, if we haven't learned anything by now, that we simply cannot impose a settlement ourselves.
I just don't understand how they believe, or how this other group believes, that the Vietnamese are going to succeed in doing with 50,000 Americans what they haven't been able to do with 500,000 Americans. I'd like that explained.
Remember, in 1971, candidate Kerry thought it was "unrealistic" for America to be "seeking some kind of victory" over communism in SE Asia. IOW he didn't just think we should abandon the notion of total victory, but any kind of victory, even a negotiated one.
Today Kerry, and his supporters, insist that his quest to deny America, and South Vietnam, "some kind of victory" was noble and idealistic.
This is the man who wants to be President.
It's difficult to find *any* Kerry statement during this period that conflicts with the Hanoi / PRG talking points.
It looks like C-SPAN yanked the debate off their site with remarkable haste, and I haven't seen a full transcript anywhere yet...
I don't think it's a bias thing. I assume, rather, that they don't have the legal right to distribute the video. It wasn't pulled; it was never available for streaming, and the record for the program says "NS" where the price for a video normally appears.
Somebody needs to find out who has the rights to this. It should be rebroadcast on a major network or newschannel in prime-time along about September or October!
John E. O'Neill
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