PAUL1405...

Don't blame you, or people like you ? What are people like you, like PAUL1405 ?

It all happened (for me at least) a fraction over forty six years ago. For you PAUL1405 (with the greatest respect), it's yet to happen ?

Dear o sung wu,

It is now evident to me that you do indeed have a mobility problem.

I had raised the electric scooter as part of the caricature I was building around you in the same tone as the one you have directed at me.

I have no intention of ridiculing your current disability and will henceforth withdraw it from the repertoire. My hope is that if possible you speedily regain your independent movement.

As clarity is something you desire I am happy to furnish it.

You started delivering some big hay makers at paul1405 and others at the start of this thread. I've tapped you on the shoulder and invited you to take a swing. We have thrown a few, none have really landed and where has it gotten us? If has helped you let off some steam then I suppose that is one thing but in the wash up nothing has been resolved nor is it likely to be.

So the message my friend is if you want to start threads with the only intention is to vent your spleen at posters you do not like then we can do this dance ad nauseum. Plus if the truth be known I might just know a few more steps than your good self, not that it is something to be proud of.

Cont..

Cont..

You see mate you are on a hiding to nothing in this discussion. Having said “if Mr Hicks were to be caught in Vietnam, during my tour, attired and armed as he was, as the enemy, the least of his worries would've been, spending too much time locked-up without due process” the implication which you haven't refuted is that he would be killed.

You stand justly accused of being prepared to murder an unarmed prisoner. There is no honour in it, there is no recourse to 'well you haven't served so you wouldn't understand', no defence at all.

Further by implying that most of the Australians who served over there would have been complicit in such an act justly attracts condemnation that you are besmirching and slandering Australian Service personnel.

So you have a choice, you could admit you were being a blowhard and that if a Mr Hicks type was captured in Vietnam he is unlikely to have been murdered by yourself or other Australian troops and we can then continue the discussion, or if that is too big an ask you can scamper off and live to fight another day.

Otherwise you are up the proverbial without a proverbial my friend and you will keep getting a hiding.

Wu, by 1970 the opposition to the war in Vietnam had grown to the point where the majority of the adult population were opposed and the nightly news footage of death and destruction was too much. You as who were people like me? they were students, trade unionists, mums and dads, ordinary Australians from all walks of life and some vets as well. We protested in the streets an unpopular war. There were those that blamed the soldiers for their participation, calling them "baby killers". That was not my personal view, I never blamed the "sappers" as we called them, (hence the term 'sap' being someone easily fooled) they were as much the cruelly treated victims of that war, as anyone was, by a deceitful conservative government.

The song 'I Was Only 19' puts to music the lot of those kids that served in Vietnam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urtiyp-G6jY

Paul 1405, "There were those that blamed the soldiers for their participation, calling them "baby killers". That was not my personal view, I never blamed the "sappers" as we called them"

Yet you quite deliberately chose to repeat the groundless insult here! I have never heard of that insult in Australia.

It is part of that rather obvious and clumsy name-calling and sledging you do, isn't it? Always trying to attach a label to poison the well.

Further, your "sappers" and "saps" as you rudely have them is another of your inventions. No-one ever referred to Australian Diggers as "saps".

You don't have much time for the military, police and 'authority', do you? An oppositional, problematical history insofar as the law is concerned, perhaps?

Hi there PAUL1405...

Before I deal with STEELEREDUX'S last narcissistic little rant, I must, with some obvious reluctance, agree with some of the matters you've raised in your last thread.

I've NEVER asserted the Vietnam war was either 'just or moral'. I believe I mentioned my Mother was opposed to it, in her own quiet way. She never took part in any overt demo., nevertheless she was opposed to it, absolutely. She was even opposed to me joining the Army. It took the combined efforts of both my grandfather's (maternal, WW 1 & paternal, Anglo Boer war, British Army) to coax her into signing the papers, giving me permission to join the Regular ARA, as I was seventeen years at the time.

There were many blokes over there who were vehemently against it also. Mainly when they saw the awful effect AND fear of the civilian population, whenever we entered their small rural villages in platoon strength, searching out evidence of the NVA or Cong ? Not a great feeling to observe people recoiling from you with a mixture of wretched fear together with hatred when you enter the privacy of their little huts, searching for evidence of the enemy. And you know PAUL1405, we were supposed to be the good guys !

You draw my attention to a song 'I was only Nineteen'. I'm not entirely sure if the lyrics contained in that composition was an accurate reflection of many who served over there ? I would however like to draw your attention to the word 'served'. As I've 'bleated out' ad nauseam, in the Military (Army, Navy or RAAF) you must do as you're told, particularly when on 'active service' ! You don't have to agree with it, just do it.

PAUL1405 I'm nearly at my 350 word allowance ? That 'only 19' song did accurately reflect the emotional feelings of some of the younger conscripts, who hitherto led a fairly 'sheltered' youth, and I mean NO disrespect to ANY of them, they were able soldiers and legitimate Veterans, no matter how they may've felt deeply inside.