Freeper-type email - need help debunking

[nickgutierrez]

Oooooooook, got this email in my inbox, and, well... ugh. I tried fixing it (I did actually get rid of the carats, but there were five of them before most lines so I know this has been forwarded to death), but I said 'screw it' about halfway in.

I'm already going to rip the guy for not having a source, and I know there's something in Al Franken's book about Clinton's military handling, but I don't have it with me right now.

I've checked Snopes, and there's not much I can find on this. Or maybe I'm just not using the right terms.

Help?



------------------------------------------------------------
CAN YOU NAME THIS COUNTRY?


709,000 REGULAR (ACTIVE DUTY) PERSONNEL.

293,000 RESERVE TROOPS.

EIGHT STANDING ARMY DIVISIONS.

20 AIR FORCE AND NAVY AIR WINGS WITH 2,000 COMBAT AIRCRAFT.

232 STRATEGIC BOMBERS.

19 STRATEGIC BALLISTIC MISSILE SUBMARINES
WITH
3,114 NUCLEARWARHEADS
ON
232 MISSILES.

500 ICBMS WITH 1,950 WARHEADS. FOUR AIRCRAFT CARRIERS AND 121 SURFACE COMBAT SHIPS AND SUBMARINES
PLUS
ALL
THE SUPPORT BASES, SHIPYARDS, AND LOGISTICAL
ASSETS NEEDED TO SUSTAIN SUCH A NAVAL FORCE.
THIS COUNTRY IS:
RUSSIA?
NO
CHINA?
NO
GREAT BRITAIN?
NO
FRANCE?
WRONG AGAIN (WHAT A LAUGH!)

MUST BE THE USA?
WELL ... SORT OF
GIVE UP? THESE ARE THE AMERICAN MILITARY FORCES THAT WERE ELIMINATED DURING THE ADMINISTRATION OF BILL CLINTON AND AL GORE, AND THEIR ELIMINATION WAS SUPPORTED 100% BY NONE OTHER THAN JOHN KERRY!
(THESE HE DID
VOTE ON!)
SLEEP WELL!
THE FAR LEFT IS PROTECTING US, AS USUAL!
------------------------------------------------------------


This is what I have so far:
------------------------------------------------------------

Put slightly another way:

Almost 1000 US soldiers dead in Iraq.

26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX gas, 30,000 munitions to deliver these agents, unmanned aerial drones to deliver these agents, mobile biological weapons labs, and uranium 'yellowcake' from Niger for use in the development of nuclear bombs. Not found.

Osama bin Laden. Not found.

Saddam's ties to bin Laden. Nonexistant.

So where does this leave us? In an unjust war, in a region of the world where people hate us, fighting a war against an emotion?

You can't fight terrorism with war any more than you can fight fire with gasoline.

Sleep well! The far right is protecting us once again!
------------------------------------------------------------

But I'd like to give a link that debunks the claims made in the original email. Any help would be appreciated. :)

[Indiana_Dem]

1. I don't know if this will help but I found this in a google search.

http://democrats.senate.gov/~dpc/pubs/108-2-021.html

I put "military cuts under President Clinton" for a search

[Heyo]

2. With all due respect....

... if you wanna de-bunk that e-mail.. why not address what is said in it...

..while your points are valid, it's just another e-mail about a different subject. More of a retaliation than a debunking.

:toast:

Heyo

[nickgutierrez]

4. I know

I just tried to go with something similarly harsh, except true. :)

I want to address what's said in the email, and that's why I came here.

[ComerPerro]

3. Same old shit, with a new Kerry twist

This has been going around since 9/11, probably before that.

You have a pretty good rebuttal right there.

I would suggest asking how taking troops out of Afganistan to start an unnecessary war in Iraq based on lies makes us any safer. Ask why, if we are so safe thanks to Bush, are we still hearing about terror threats and threat levels? Why isn't Bush brave enough to come out unshielded in front of his own delegates? Why is the adminsitration telling us that there could be a terror attack before the election?

I sure as shit don't feel safer...

And, another point:

Bush won't even properly equip and arm our current forces. Imagine the clusterfuck it would be if our military was at cold-war levels, and was being mismanaged the same way. We would probably be another half a trillion in debt each year, and would be at war in two or three other places right now as well as Iraq and Afganistan.

Thank God that Bush doesn't have such a massive military that he can steer to every twisted whim he may feel. If he did, we would have seen the end of the world by now.

[nickgutierrez]

12. Nice

:)

I'll use some of this, if you don't mind.

[ClassWarrior]

5. Save yourself the coronary. Demand that the SENDER provide links.

Don't do his work for him. And click "Reply All," so that everyone who received this email sees there's no proof.

[nickgutierrez]

6. That's a good idea.

I was already replying to everybody, but yeah, demanding evidence should work.

Actually, these freepers are hit-and-run types, so I won't hear from him for a while, I'm guessing.

[Indiana_Dem]

7. Here might be another

The website redirected to the white house page for some wierd reason but I just clicked my "back" button and it went back to the page.

It talks about how Clinton took care of the WMDs pointing our way in Russia and Ukraine and his attempt to buy up these weapons.

Something Bush hasn't done.
http://www.perkel.com/politics/clinton/accomp.htm

on edit: forgot to add the website! LOL

[LiberalFighter]

8. Easiest way to remove those marks in emails...

use wordpad, notepad or MS Word and use REPLACE ALL

Find What: >>>>>
Replace With:

[nickgutierrez]

9. ACK!!! I'm an idiot :)

I knew this. I just didn't think to do it. Thanks, that's good to try and remember for next time.

[LiberalFighter]

13. I do it on a regular basis but usually not for email

Like for html and text files. I have to save html files as text files first so that notepad or word recognizes the paragraph marks. Then in most cases replace every occurence of 2 paragraph marks with [] and then replace single paragraph marks with a space so that incomplete sentences and paragraphs are combined. Then replace [] with 2 paragraph marks.

[HawkerHurricane]

10. George Bush (sr)'s drawdown.

George the Greater started the drawdown, Clinton just continued it. The plan was written by the then secdef, Richard Cheney.
Republicans have no sense of history. If it happened on Clinton's watch (WTC attack one), it's Clinton's fault. If it happened on Bush's watch (WTC attack two), it's Clinton's fault.

[0rganism]

11. Those were cuts requested by (duh,duhduhdaaaah!) DICK CHENEY

Not sure about all of the particulars, but Unca Dick came up with the proposed military scalebacks when he was Secretary of Defense during Bush Sr.'s regime.

[nickgutierrez]

14. Um... wow

This I didn't know. Where can I go to find a bit more on this?

[TlalocW]

15. Along with these cuts being requested by Cheney

And started under Bush, you have to remember that the economy was going gangbusters thanks to Clinton - There's less of an incentive to join the military when the economy is good, and most of the people have jobs.

Other fun things to point out - Clinton never sent a soldier into battle that didn't come back alive. Now when you tell him this, he'll bring up the clusterfuck of Mogadishu, but those troops were sent over by Bush I and also not very well armed.

All during the first 8 months of his term, George was wanting to defund counter-terrorism intelligence including.

In the 2000 debates, Bush promised the military that help was on the way, but what has he done? He sat on his butt for 7 minutes after learning America was under attack. He lied about Iraq's involvement with Al-Qaida and having weapons of mass destruction. Close to a thousand members have been killed because of his lies. He's cut benefits to active soldiers' families, hazard pay for active soldiers, as well as veterans' benefits. And the troops in Iraq have shortages of personal and vehicle armor as well as bullets in some cases and are not properly trained to be peace-keepers.

Ask your friend why he prefers having soldiers die for lies under republicans instead of staying alive under democrats.

TlalocW

[sampsonblk]

16. George Bush (sr)'s drawdown = DITTO

I was serving during the time of Poppy Bush. These are HIS drawdowns. My only complaint about Clinton is that he didn't go far enough.

[zmdem]

17. Was this spam ?

If so, why worry about it ? Maybe more importantly, why not deal with spam. Try www.spampal.org

Spampal is free and works well, for home users the Bayesian filter plugin is excellent. I run Spampal on our email server at work, sans the Bayesian filter, for obvious reasons. On my home pc I run it with the Bayesian filter and it works great.

Either way, you will see a drastic spam reduction.

I have no affiliation with Spampal, just a satisfied user. Since it's free, who cares anyway.

FYI - Our mail server at works processes several thousand emails/day. Spampal has no problem with that. It won't even break a sweat on your home pc.

[nickgutierrez]

18. I wish this was spam

No, I know the person who sent this.

[uhhuh]

19. How Bout This:

"

709,000 REGULAR (ACTIVE DUTY) PERSONNEL.

293,000 RESERVE TROOPS.

EIGHT STANDING ARMY DIVISIONS.

20 AIR FORCE AND NAVY AIR WINGS WITH 2,000 COMBAT AIRCRAFT.

232 STRATEGIC BOMBERS."



And we were at war with "who" during Clinton's Presidency?

Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld said we have more than enough troops to fight two wars at once, so reductions in the military, started under Bush, Sr., mean what exactly?



"19 STRATEGIC BALLISTIC MISSILE SUBMARINES
WITH
3,114 NUCLEARWARHEADS
ON
232 MISSILES.

500 ICBMS WITH 1,950 WARHEADS. FOUR AIRCRAFT CARRIERS AND 121 SURFACE COMBAT SHIPS AND SUBMARINES
PLUS
ALL
THE SUPPORT BASES, SHIPYARDS, AND LOGISTICAL
ASSETS NEEDED TO SUSTAIN SUCH A NAVAL FORCE."

How many nukes do we have left? One? Two?

How about over 10,000 as of this year.

Is that not enough? Oh my! What if we only had 2 or 3,000? We would be helpless!!!

Rational countries tend to disband unneccessary warmaking tools when they are not at war.

[fob]

20. DU needs a standard reply to all these bs e-mails. At this point it

should be 40% disdain, 40% disgust, 10% outright mocking and 10% add your own original witty comment.

Their boy's going down. A reply all with the same message over and over will eventually eat away at their confidence. Fuck these assholes with all the time on their hands for lies and no interest whatsoever in listening or an honest debate. Just fuck em.

Reply all with;

It doesn't matter that you forwarded this bullshit, a more desperate attempt I haven't seen since the e-mails of the 90's that claimed alternately that Hillary Clinton was Vince Foster's lover and had him mudered and that she was a lesbian. Good thing Al Gore invented the internet so dumbasses like you could forward this shit. Al should have made it necessary to have a functionally literate IQ to open an e-mail account, but alas, being a warm-hearted Democrat, any asshole can use it. Congratulations on qualifying. Please feel free to send any of the other 2 or 300 lie-mails that constantly hit my inbox so I may "Reply All" to the rest of your dumbass dittohead friends.

Sincerely,

Fuck You Too

PS - just remember a vote for bush* in 04 means President "Hellary Klintoon" in 08 - Enjoy!!

Assholes.


And that's all I gotta say about these effin things.

[uhhuh]

21. LOL!!!

"Al should have made it necessary to have a functionally literate IQ to open an e-mail account, but alas, being a warm-hearted Democrat, any asshole can use it."

That is the best thing I've read today.