RONALD REAGAN: ABORTION AND THE CONSCIENCE OF A NATION

What part of "necessary demoralization" doesn't seem a legitimate war aim?

"...The history of the IJN is replete with many of their pilots knowingly making one-way trips. Unfortunately, there isn't a comperable situation in the USAAF or the USN....

...None of these people faced the dangers or knowledge that they were facing one-way flights like Lt. Kobyashi or the Kamikaze pilots knew they were taking....

You are wrong. And you are counting upon everyone here at this forum to be so infected by our general cultural implosion that we are unable to defend our American "fathers". But we are. However, theirs was not the nihilistic "one way trip" that is so admired by the sophisticated modern mind. They had a longing to live. And yet, they offered themselves up. I wonder if any of them thought: "Father take this cup from me."?

Here is a description of the "American way of self-sacrifice" in War and Remembrance:

".......Warren could not know---happily for him--what a sorry farce the whole American attack was degenerating into.

In the Japanese strike on Midway, one-hundred-eight aircraft from four carriers---fighters, dive-bombers, Type-97s---had joined up and flown out as a single attack group, performed their mission like clockwork, and returned in disciplined formation. But in this American strike each carrier had sent off its own planes at odd times. The slow torpedo squadrons had soon lost contact with the fighters and the dive-bombers. no American pilot knew what other squadrons than his own were doing, let alone where the Japanese were. Disorganization could go little further......

....Only one eccentric element--as it were, one wild card--remained in this all but played-out game; the three slow American torpedo squadrons. These were operating out of sight of each other, in a random and quite unplanned way. No torpron had any idea where another torpron was. The commanders of these weak and outmoded machines, three tough mavericks named Waldron, Lindsey, and Massey, were doing their own navigation. It was they who found the Japanese.

"Fifteen torpedo planes, bearing 130!"

Nagumo and his staff were not caught by surprise, though the absence---again!--of fighter escort must have astounded them. The bearing showed the planes were coming from the carrier Nagumo was closing to destroy. Fifteen planes, one squadron, naturally the Yank carrier would try to strike first. But the vice admiral, with an advantage, as he believed, of four to one ships and planes, was not worried. ....

...The fifteen aircraft sailing in against Nagumo were Torpedo Squadron Eight of the Hornet. Their leader, John Waldron, a fierce and iron-minded aviator, led his men in on their required straight slow runs---with what feelings one cannot record because he was among the first to die---through a thick anti-aircraft curtain of smoke and shrapnel, and a swarming onslaught of Zeroes. One after another, as they tried to spread out for an attack on both bows of the carriers, Waldron's planes caught fire, flew apart, splashed in the sea. Only a few lasted long enough to drop their torpedoes. Those who did accomplished nothing, for none hit. in a few minutes it was over. Another complete Japanese victory.

But even as the fifteenth plane burst into flames off the Akagi's bow and tumbled smoking into the blue water, a strident report from a screening vessel staggered everybody on the flag bridge.

"Fourteen torpedo planes approaching!"

Fourteen MORE? The dead, risen from the sea as in some frightful old legend, to fight on for their country in their wrecked planes? The Japanese mine is poetic, and such a thought could have flashed on Nagumo, but the reality was plain and frightening enough. American carriers each had but one torpedo squadron; this meant that at least one more carrier was coming at him. ...There might be four more carriers. Or seven. ...

Speed all preparations for immediate takeoff!"

The panicky order, abandoning cooridated attack, went out to the four carriers. The air raid bugles brayed, the thick black-puffing AA thumped out from the screen, the carriers broke formation to dodge the attackers, and the Zeroes, halting the slow climb to combat patrol attitude, dove at this new band of unescorted craft. These were Gene Lindsay's squadron from the Enterprise. The scarred, unwell commander had led them straight to the enemy while McCluskey groped westward. Ten planes went down. Lindsey's among them. Four evaded the slaughterers.....If any torpedo hit, it did not detonate.

Another big victory! But all steaming order was now gone from the Carrier Striking Force. Evasive maneuvering had pulled Hiryu almost out of sight to the north, and strung the Akagi, the Kagaand the Soryuin a line from west to east. The screening vessels were scattered from horizon to horizon, streaming smoke and cutting across each other's long-curved wakes. The sailors and officers were working away on the carrier flight deck with unabated zest. They had already cheered the flaming fall of dozens of bombers from Midway, and now two waves of Yank torpedo craft had been minced up by the Zeroes! The four flight decks were crammed with aircraft; none quite set for launch, but all fueled and bomb-loaded, and all in a vast tangle of fuel-lines, bombs and torpedoes, which the deck crews were cheerfully sweating to clear away, so the airmen could zoom off to the kill.

"Enemy torpedo planes, bearing 095!"

This third report after a short quiet interval. The Zeroes were heading up to the station whence they could repulse dive-bombers from on high, or knock down more low skimming torpedo planes, whichever would appear. The four carriers were turning into the wind to launch, but now they resumed twisting and dodging, while all eyes turned to the low-flying attackers, and to the combat patrol diving in a rush for more clay-pigeon shooting. Twelve torpedo planes were droning in from the Yorktown. These did have a few ecort fighters weaving desperately above them, but it made little difference. Ten were knocked down; two survived after dropping torpedos in vain. All three torpedo squadrons were wiped out, and the Nagumo Carrier Striking Force was untouched. The time was twenty minutes past ten.

At that very moment the almost unrecognisable voice of a staff officer uttered a scream which perhaps rang on in Nagumo's ears until he died two years later on the island of Saipan....

"HELL DIVERS!"

The two slanting lines stretching upwards into the high clouds, unopposed by a single fighter, dark blue planes were dropping on the flagship and on the Kaga. The Zeroes were all at water level, where they had knocked down so many torpedo planes and were looking for more. A more distant scream came from a lookout pointing eastward.

HELL DIVERS!

A second dotted line of dark blue aircraft was arrowing down towards the Soryu.

I was the perfect coordinated attack. It was timed almost to the second. It was a freak accident.

.....In a planned, coordinated attack, the dive-bombers were supposed to distract the enemy fighters so as to give the vulnerable torpedo planes their chance to come in. Instead the torpedo planes had pulled down the Zeroes and cleaned the air for the dive-bombers.

What was not luck, but the soul of the United States of America in action, was this willingness of the torpedo plane squadrons to go in against hopeless odds. Theirs was the extra ounce of martial weight that in a few decisive minutes tipped the balance of history.

Perhaps, kobyashi1942, if you ever feel like a bit of diversity you will choose a nom de guerre from one of these self-sacrificing--NOT suicide---American warriors.

Whatever we have become; however far we have fallen as a people; do not presume to bulldoze the graves of our dead in order to make your points--however accurate they may be concerning the undoubted ruthlessness of our ruling elite.....

Just which side is your bread buttered on, pal? You admire Kamikaze pilots over and above American pilots?

Kamikaze pilot=Suicide bomber

Unfortunately, there isn't a comperable situation in the USAAF or the USN.

You're one disgusting individual, you know that?

I can't believe that Kobyashi1942 is posting on this forum and denigrating our country and our WWII vets, while defending the Japanese who attacked us.

I also can't believe that someone who posts with such atrocious grammar and spelling would claim to have once published a newspaper.

Well, he won't be doing it on FR anymore, that's for sure.

Thanks, Jim!

My hero! THANK YOU!

Thank you, Jim. I must tell you it is good to know that you won't allow the uncommon valor exhibited by our men in uniform to be spit upon. You bring tears to my eyes.

Somebody needs to sit down and read a couple of Medal of Honor citations, IMHO. This entire episode has been sickening. I'm glad it's over.

Well, well...Kobyashi1942, emulating his heroes, flew his FR membership towards the USS Freerepublic, but gunner Jim Robinson shot him down before he could crash himself into the ship. Good work, and great aim!

LOL wimpy...that's a great way to put it. (No small feat making my laugh right now, either.)

The Divine Windbag sacrificed himself on the altar of his country...I mean, on the altar of...I don't know what, but it's the sacrifice that is so admirable.

I wonder what it feels like getting your ___ handed to you by men you find so inferior and cowardly. Funny how that works, huh?

Please, give me a brake

Sure.

Japanese Americans are white?

everything tastes like chicken these days.

I'm going to avoid the obvious Cheese Nips joke...

I see you're still beating your usual drum. LOL.

If my enemies are of a different race and I hate them...in fact perhaps I wish them dead then I am by default a RACIST.

OK, KobeSteak, I AM RACIST BY YOUR DEFINITION. SO???

We racists should have shown our noble Jap foes the same benevolence they showed us. We could have killed all their males and turn all the women into "comfort women" like they did. Japan would have made a nice bigger Hawaii for us....with snow skiing to boot.

You seem to confuse bravery and zealotry as one in the same.

A brave man dies for his fellow brothers or his family or country.

A zealot dies for himself.

I know you admire President Reagan. It was Reagan's pro-life eloquence that re-animated a moribund Republican Party by attracting refugees from families who had always voted Democrat until the Dems became the party of rich white women baby killes and their wimpymale consorts. The Republican Party has feasted upon the hopes (and sweat) of pro-life voters. But unlike the Democrat base, which DOES demand a few scraps from the table from time to time, pro-lifers have received nothing from the Republicans except---rhetoric.

While Reagan's rhetoric may have signified a genuine decency in the man, its main effect was to put the Republican Party back in the game, NOT move the country away from its culture of human sacrifice.

The reallignment of certain portions of the population with the Republican Party--probably impossible without the Reagan persona-- has served the Party well. But, I think in the long run we can see that it has destroyed "conservatism". Maybe those twenty years since Reagan eloquently welcomed the poor, the tired, the meeeming tasses into the loving embrace of the Republican Party, could better have been spent forming a movement with teeth.

Also--and perhaps rudely on this thread that has already been torn to shreds once--did you see this article? It might be useful to examine the record of history in other areas. An interesting foreign policy for a man who so brilliantly spoke of abortion and the conscience of a nation. Perhaps feminists and their enablers will argue that abortion is just realpolitik by other means-----

Yahoo! News Mon, Sep 30, 2002
White House - AP Cabinet & State

U.S. Supplied Germs to Iraq in '80s
Mon Sep 30, 6:34 PM ET

By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Iraq's bioweapons program that President Bush wants to eradicate got its start with help from Uncle Sam two decades ago, according to government records getting new scrutiny in light of the discussion of war against Iraq.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent samples directly to several Iraqi sites that U.N. weapons inspectors determined were part of Saddam Hussein web 's biological weapons program, CDC and congressional records from the early 1990s show. Iraq had ordered the samples, claiming it needed them for legitimate medical research. The CDC and a biological sample company, the American Type Culture Collection, sent strains of all the germs Iraq used to make weapons, including anthrax, the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and the germs that cause gas gangrene, the records show. Iraq also got samples of other deadly pathogens, including the West Nile virus .

The transfers came in the 1980s, when the United States supported Iraq in its war against Iran. They were detailed in a 1994 Senate Banking Committee report and a 1995 follow-up letter from the CDC to the Senate. The exports were legal at the time and approved under a program administered by the Commerce Department ( news - web sites).

"I don't think it would be accurate to say the United States government deliberately provided seed stocks to the Iraqis' biological weapons programs," said Jonathan Tucker, a former U.N. biological weapons inspector.

"But they did deliver samples that Iraq said had a legitimate public health purpose, which I think was naive to believe, even at the time."

The disclosures put the United States in the uncomfortable position of possibly having provided the key ingredients of the weapons America is considering waging war to destroy, said Sen. Robert Byrd , D-W.Va. Byrd entered the documents into the Congressional Record this month. Byrd asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about the germ transfers at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. Byrd noted that Rumsfeld met Saddam in 1983, when Rumsfeld was President Reagan's Middle East envoy.

"Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?" Byrd asked Rumsfeld after reading parts of a Newsweek article on the transfers.

"I have never heard anything like what you've read, I have no knowledge of it whatsoever, and I doubt it," Rumsfeld said. He later said he would ask the Defense Department and other government agencies to search their records for evidence of the transfers.

Invoices included in the documents read like shopping lists for biological weapons programs. One 1986 shipment from the Virginia-based American Type Culture Collection included three strains of anthrax, six strains of the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and three strains of the bacteria that cause gas gangrene. Iraq later admitted to the United Nations that it had made weapons out of all three. The company sent the bacteria to the University of Baghdad, which U.N. inspectors concluded had been used as a front to acquire samples for Iraq's biological weapons

The CDC, meanwhile, sent shipments of germs to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission and other agencies involved in Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. It sent samples in 1986 of botulinum toxin and botulinum toxoid Ñ used to make vaccines against botulinum toxin Ñ directly to the Iraqi chemical and biological weapons complex at al-Muthanna, the records show.

Botulinum toxin is the paralyzing poison that causes botulism. Having a vaccine to the toxin would be useful for anyone working with it, such as biological weapons researchers or soldiers who might be exposed to the deadly poison, Tucker said.

The CDC also sent samples of a strain of West Nile virus to an Iraqi microbiologist at a university in the southern city of Basra in 1985, the records show.

BTTT

Do I miss that guy.