And I'm not allowed to do that or something?
I mean, I've made no secret of it.
Far as I know I'm allowed to make any value judgements I want about any situation I want based upon pretty much anything I want.
I will concede that I am not allowed to use an idiom that has a particular meaning and then get butthurt when someone tells me that what I said doesn't mean what I think it means, or what I intended to mean.
And that's why I've explained myself.
I think it's kind of petty that you would fixate on that and harp on it for page after page after I explained to you what I actually did mean but, hey, we've all got our proclivities.
I'm calling it what it is.
That's not an opinion, it's clearly what you're doing.
YOu mean now? He should not be extradited till the U.S. can agree to a life sentence instead of the death sentence. This has everything to do with the death penalty most countries that do not have the death penalty will not extradite people to countries with it.
Alight, but there's a time and place to diplomatically voice that concern. This case has nothing to do with the death penalty. Holding justice for the little girl and her family hostage hardly seems right.
I agree. He's a convicted rapist who is not facing the death penalty. The French action here makes no sense because I know for a fact that they extradite people to the US.
U.S. Fugitive Extradited From France - ABC News
When was the last time we killed a pedophile? We give them like 13 years in jail then put them on a list when they get out.
Money and fame. That's gotta be why.
Virtually all of that is half truth, if that. They are not now, nor have they ever been our "buddies". And that anti-French sentiment isn't confined to the right alone, never was. In fact just about every member of the greatest generation felt just that way about France. They haven't been much of a reliable ally and they showed up once to help us in the Revolutionary War (Yorktown), the Dutch did far more for us. Oh, and they SOLD us weapons. Not to mention they'd been killing us before and after.
The answer to the question is - no, they are not now, nor have ever been a close ally.
Peter, remember when we landed in North Africa it was not German troops shooting at our soldiers but French troops.
In 1942 the Free French wouldn't allow American troops to set foot on New Caledonia. Admiral Halsey sent his personal Marine rifle platoon ashore and threw the French Governor out of his house and Bull Halsey moved in. The French weren't the best allies during WW ll.
Don't even want to get into the French Indochina War where the French having an inferiority complex by now refused to listen to our military advisor's until it was to late.
France doesn't like America or Americans because they are jealous of America and they want to return to the days of being a world power if not a super power.
>"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion."<
If what I've read is true, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, Polanski has, in effect, served his time - charges were dropped against him all except one charge that he agreed to plead guilty on and he was sentenced to a 90 prison term for "evaluation" - he served 42 days of that term and was deemed not to be a threat to society or to have any mental health reason for him to remain in prison and he was released. The judge in the matter objected to his release and issued a bench warrant to have him rearrested at which time he fled the country.
Sounds to me like those who are refusing to honor the request to extradite are on the moral high ground here. You can bitch and moan about the leniency of the original plea deal and settlement, but it's a little like double jeopardy, wouldn't you agree, to serve the time you agreed to and then have the judge turn around and say he wants another shot at you, likely because he got grief from the public for his lenient sentence.
He is now. He has lived there so long that he has been naturalized. He was an American citizen when he fled.
I actually did a double-take.
Did you just say that the French should have listened to American military advisors... In Vietnam?
You can not be serious. The Americans lost Vietnam worse than the French by a country mile. Look at the statistics!
A bit of background. Roman Polanski, a famous American film director, drugged and raped a 13 year old child. The child was an aspiring actress, and he was a powerful film director.
He was 43 years old when he forced himself on the little girl.
After being found guilty in a California court, Polanski fled to France hours before he was to be formally sentenced. The sentence was expected to be jail time.
To this day, France refuses to extradite Polanski. Polanski lives a comfortable life in a French chateau, drinking wine and continuing to direct movies. Meanwhile a young girl's life was forever scarred.
The French will not extradite him because they disapprove of the fact that the USA allows the death penalty (even though this is not a case where the death penalty would apply). They say they will extradite him only after the USA makes the death penalty illegal.
How, if at all, does this case affect your perception of France?
Lets put it this way, JFK like the French ignored a former five star general and his military advisors and got us in a shooting war in Southeast Asia.
If you ever took War 101 and looked at a topographical map of Dien Bien Phu, what in #### were the French thinking ?
BTW:
We didn't militarly loose in Vietnam. The American soldier was never defeated on the battlefield. Even Gen. Giap in 1968 after his defeat during the Tet Offensive aknowledge that he could never defeat the Americans on the battlefield. The American soldiers knew how to read a map.
When the last American combat troops left South Vietnam in 1973 every providence in South Vietnam was secured and left into the hands of ARVAN.
How, if at all, does this case affect your perception of France?
Here is an entire list of Vietnam War battles that the Americans lost:
Lost Battles of the Vietnam War
I hear this myth bouncing around a lot, that American soldiers never lost a battle, as if they're somehow invincible, despite more than 50,000 of them dying in that country. I think it propagates the myth that America's 'hands were tied' in that war, and they wouldn't have lost if only for those damn hippies and politicians holding them back.
That's ridiculous. For the better part of a decade, the US was trying its absolute hardest to bring North Vietnam to its knees -- and along the way, they, like every other nation, lost plenty of battles. It's only to be expected: They were fighting a well-organized and well-equipped enemy that was being supplied by the (then) arguably most powerful nation in the world.
I think it's a dishonor and a disservice to those military men who died there, to claim that they were hamstrung by their own politicians. They were fighting huge, pitched battles and they died by the thousands, in a brutal war that saw a superpower beaten both politically and militarily. It is morally reprehensible to try to whitewash Vietnam by changing the facts to fit your ridiculous agenda.
Just about all that were listed where NVA actually did win a firefight were ARVAN. Because there were a few American advisor's present doesn't mean they were American troops.
The author seems not to know the difference between a fire fight and a battle which during the Vietnam War were referred to as "operations."
The article is nothing more than leftist revisionism.
(The definition of "operations" differed from the U.S. Army and U.S. Marines. I wont get into the difference between the two.)
Being over run doesn't mean you were defeated, it meant it got down out dirty and personal, hand to hand combat. Usually fixing bayonets in which Obama claims hasn't happened in a hundred years.
NVA or VC attacking an American air base or fire base and then running away isn't considered to be winning a battle.
Even when "Special Forces" (Green Beret) camps were over run, unless the enemy occupied the camp and held the ground, they didn't win.
BTW: Special Forces camps were not U.S. military. they were South Vietnamese who had American advisor's.
I'm very familiar with Marble Mountain. It was never occupied by the VC.
>"12. Attack on Marble Mountain - Some 90 Viet Cong sappers infiltrated this huge Marine Corps airfield and destroyed 19 helicopters and damaged 35 (11 of them severely). After this 30 minute rampage, the Viet Cong withdrew, leaving behind 17 dead and 4 wounded. American casualties were 3 killed and 91 wounded."<
It seems the VC fled not the Marines.
The DaNang air base just west of Marble Mountain was attacked almost every night.
This one is an eye opener. I was there and I didn't know we were defeated. I must be one of the walking dead. I'm a real live zombie.
>" 40. Battle of No Goi Island - The Viet Cong liked to fortify ambush sites and wait for the Americans to discover them. During Operation Allen Brook, three battalions of Marines swept through No Goi Island and found lots of Viet Cong ready to fight from bunkers near the village of Le Bac. During several days of bloody assaults, the Marines suffered 138 killed and 686 wounded (576 seriously) before the surviving Viet Cong fled. The extreme heat resulted in another 283 Marines evacuated due to heat stroke. Having suffered 50% causalities, Allen Brook was halted until fresh Marine units arrived."<
During the Battle of the Bulge during WW ll there were many U.S. Army units that were completely wiped out, thousands of soldiers who were captured. Who won the battle ?
If we are to use the authors examples of aircraft shot down, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a victory for the USA.
Just another example of revisionism.
We do not the support the death sentence, we do not support eye for an eye.
Refusing extradition doesn't mean condoning the crime. It doesn't follow.
If letting this matter die is what will bring her peace then that's what America owes her.
Have you not heard of Hamburger Hill? Or the Battle of the Slopes? Or any of the other American defeats in Vietnam?
I am incredulous that you would accuse ME of historical revisionism. Why do you believe this nonsense? What purpose does it serve?
If Hamburger Hill was an American defeat, explain how the NVA were defeated and abandoned their position and the hill ended up being occupied by American soldiers ?
Your article mentioned that when the VC attacked the Marine air base at Marble Mountain and the Marines were defeated doesn't explain why I was able to fly out of Marble Mountain a half of a dozen times when I was in-country. I can assure you those weren't Charley's helicopters.
You and your revisionist don't know the definition of a "battle." There are fire fights and there are battles.
A battle is an engagement of two or more seizable forces conducted with in a defined geographic area and time limits. Before the twentieth century battles rarely exceeded beyond 100 square miles and with in a few days. But today a battle can take place within over a thousand or more square miles and a duration from weeks or even months.
During a battle numerous if not hundreds of fire fights take place. If one side is defeated in a fire fight, the battle isn't lost.
Your revisionist author definition of battles and defeat would mean that the U.S. Marines were defeated on Tarawa and Iwo Jima, the Japanese were defeated on Wake Island and on Dec. 7th, 1941 at Pearl Harbor and the Germans won the battle for Stalingrad and the Allies lost the Battle of the Atlantic.
When the last American combat troops left the RVN in 1973 the NVA and VC didn't control one single Provence in all of the RVN. All were in control of ARVAN troops when that last freedom birds took off from DaNang and Tan Son Nhut Air Base.
Some times a battle is confused with a campaign, two different things. A campaign could be one battle or dozens of battles. It could take place with in a week or last as long as a couple of years. But there's a definition for what a campaigned is just as there is for a battle.
A bit of background. Roman Polanski, a famous American film director, drugged and raped a 13 year old child. The child was an aspiring actress, and he was a powerful film director.
He was 43 years old when he forced himself on the little girl.
After being found guilty in a California court, Polanski fled to France hours before he was to be formally sentenced. The sentence was expected to be jail time.
To this day, France refuses to extradite Polanski. Polanski lives a comfortable life in a French chateau, drinking wine and continuing to direct movies. Meanwhile a young girl's life was forever scarred.
The French will not extradite him because they disapprove of the fact that the USA allows the death penalty (even though this is not a case where the death penalty would apply). They say they will extradite him only after the USA makes the death penalty illegal.
How, if at all, does this case affect your perception of France?
It means France is sticking to their values, Canada and other the civilized countries in the world would do the same.
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