Corbis, DMCA, And John Kerry Photos

Phronesis writes "Photo District News is running a story reporting that three historic photos of John Kerry from the early 1970s, including the one used for the Jane Fonda forgery, were pirated from Corbis. The photographers who own the copyright on the photos are asking Corbis to use its fancy watermarking technology to find the culprit. Corbis hopes either to track the responsible people down using watermarks, or to invoke DMCA if the watermarks were removed."

Comments

/. sums it up nicely for once

[Shakrai]

Hmm, I was going to make a comment on how ironic it would be to turn the DCMA against the rich people who are in power and would like to torpedo Mr. Kerry (or anyone who is a threat to them for that matter) but the /. subject line summed it up quite nicely: "from the forgery-and-lebel-were-already-criminal dept."

Still it would be a nice amount of irony wouldn't it? A wonderful example of what happens when you pass draconian laws -- they come back to bite you in the ass no matter how "good" your intentions were.

On a somewhat offtopic sidenote here's this quotation from the article:

"So many of the captions attached to this photograph were totally inaccurate," Skoogfors says. "At the actual event, [Kerry] was a pretty low-key player and it was only a year later that he became a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War

So much for our clean 2004 election - as if any of us thought it would actually happen anyway.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[subrosas]

Well, Kerry probably qualifies as one of the "rich people" who are in power, and he did vote for the DMCA.

He helped pass a draconian law, and when someone tried to slander him, that law's being used to help nail the people who did the forgery.

Where's the irony?

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[Cajun Hell]

how ironic it would be to turn the DCMA against the rich people who are in power and would like to torpedo Mr. Kerry

Mr. Kerry was in the Senate when DMCA passed unanymously, thus he voted for it. Would it be ironic if a law that a senator voted for, turned out to be useful to him? Not really.

And as for contrasting "rich people" with Mr. Kerry, that's a very interesting spin you have chosen.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[leifm]

I know you're not really referring to the election, but politics is a lot like /. polls, when all the answers suck vote for the least offensive (CowboyNeal).

Clinton IMHO was tons better than Bush, but he still signed the DOMA and the Telecommunications Act, which if I recall correctly contained the CDA.

So DMCA proponent or not Kerry '04!

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[LostCluster]

So much for our clean 2004 election - as if any of us thought it would actually happen anyway.

Even if the candidates promise to keep things clean, candidates can't control their supporters. And, we've seen that even though there are tight regulations on what political groups can put out in traditional paid media, it seems like the campaign reform laws have completely overlooked the Internet, and people have discovered that if you put something contraversial on the Internet, it'll get discussed on TV for free. Even the infamous "blocked by CBS" MoveOn.org Super Bowl spot, which complied with all of the campaign law rules, got more free runs on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News during discussions of it than paid ones.

So, even if both candidates shake hands and promise zero negativity from their own people, there will be people on both sides of the ball who they can't stop that'll go negative in their name anyway. The media's going to have its work cut out trying to verify claims made by such groups this year...

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[Anonymous Coward]

Kerry probably qualifies as one of the "rich people" who are in power

In fact, if Kerry is elected, he will the the 3rd richest US president ever (behind George Washington and JFK).

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[techno-vampire]

I must admit that it doesn't sound like Bush's style; it sounds more like something Tricky Dick Nixon would have done. What I'd like to know is, how many of you are upset because it's wrong, not because it's being done to Kerry? If somebody put out a faked photo "proving" Bush was AWOL, how many of you would cheer?

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[YrWrstNtmr]

Forbes. Kerry was not poor before he married the Heinz heir.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[DustMagnet]

Mr. Kerry was in the Senate when DMCA passed unanymously, thus he voted for it.

You are not required to vote in the Senate, but I checked and Kerry did vote yea .

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[AhBeeDoi]

And you DO know his wife's maiden name, right? A well known condiment.
What sort of condiment is Simoes-Ferreira?

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[mapmaker]

And you DO know his wife's maiden name, right?

No. And clearly, neither do you. Her current last name, which she got from her first husband, is Heinz.

I have no idea what her maiden name was.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[LostCluster]

Mr. Kerry was in the Senate when DMCA passed unanymously, thus he voted for it.

Sorry your premise doesn't lead to that conclusion... A bill can pass unanimously by a score of 97 to 0 in the Senate. It's still unanimous because nobody voted "no", but that doesn't lead to the conclusion that all of the senators in office were present or that everybody that was present agreed, the losing 3-person side may have just chose to abstain.

What happened in the Senate is that the Senate voted by "Unanimous Consent", which is to say not one senator spoke up to object to the bill being passed and/or request that an on-the-record vote be taken. This is often done for sure-to-be-disliked legislation because nobody has to vote "yes" either.

Now, the thing is, to call for debate and a recorded vote on an issue that you're opposed to, but you're sure the other side has the votes it takes to pass is a waste of the Senate's time, and sure to make you some enemies who might start to do their best to muck up an unrelated issue that you're in favor of. Therefore, there's a downside to objecting, the only real thing you have to gain is to get your objection onto the record.

Kerry, being a Senator, is going to be confronted with a lot of questions about the activities of the Senate and when he took action and didn't take action on them throughout the campaign. Candidates who run for a higher office after ahving any legislative position always have these questions... that's why it's more common for a former govenor to run for the office, they have far fewer on-the-record actions they have to justify, and total control of their own agenda rather than having to fight other legislators for control of a schedule.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[NearlyHeadless]

You DO know what the F. in John F. Kerry stands for, right? Hint, it's not Field&Stream.

And you DO know his wife's maiden name, right? A well known condiment.

Her maiden name was Teresa Simoes-Ferreira. She did inherit millions from her first husband, John Heinz. Kerry's middle name is Forbes, but he's not related to the Forbes magazine publishers.

He does come from a wealth family, too

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[Phronesis]

how ironic it would be to turn the DCMA against the rich people who are in power

Of course, you might ask, "who owns Corbis?"

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[KlomDark]

So people will be chanting "No blood for ketchup" (Or "No Ketchup for Blood" :) ) instead of "No Blood for Oil"?

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[nexex]

The top 5 richest senators are:

John Kerry, D-Massachusetts: $163.6 million
Herb Kohl, D-Wisconsin: $111 million
John Rockefeller, D-West Virginia: $81.6 million
Jon Corzine, D-New Jersey: $71 million
Dianne Feinstein, D-California: $26.4 million

list

so much for the 'rich republicans'

more
According to a recent article on cnn.com, there are 40 millionaires in the U.S. Senate, according to their own financial statements.

Of these, the 5 richest are Democrats. Of the dozen richest, 10 are Democrats and 2 are Republicans. The richest (Democrat) senator is worth more than 6 times as much as the richest Republican senator.

Finally, since the remaining 60 senators must be worth less than $1M each, we can compute that the 3 richest senators (all Democrat) are worth more the the rest of the Senate combined!

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[aborchers]

I don't recall the argument being that Republicans were rich. It was that they are the tools of the rich...

Besides, 9 out of 10 people know you can use statistics to prove anything!

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[ichimunki]

Besides, 9 out of 10 people know you can use statistics to prove anything!

No. You can't. Statistics is a very rigorous mathematical process. Most of what you see in the media, however, is not valid statistics. Further, even if valid statistics are to be found, there almost always logical fallacies involved that direct the reader to conclusions that are not supported by the data. The most common fallacy I see is confusing correlation with causation, followed closely by the false dichotomy.

As to which party serves the rich? The way I see it, they both do.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[d34thm0nk3y]

so much for the 'rich republicans'

I was suprised when I saw these numbers too, but then I realized that most people probably don't put bribes on their tax return.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[nomadic]

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once (Score:2, Informative)

Don't forget the "stupid" argument. As was so well documented in a book called "Slander" it would appear Bush is not the dummy that the Democrats would have us believe! In fact, he blew away Al Gore's school record. A synopsis: Bush= A's, B's and the Occasional C Gore= A few C's many D's and a none to rare F. Oops, it looks like another cherished stereotype has been thrown to the wind!

Nope, it hasn't.

Slander was written by Ann Coulter. Coulter is an inveterate liar. I mean, all political pundits stretch the truth a bit, but Coulter lies shamelessly, frequently, and implausibly. She'll claim anything about anyone she hates, she'll fabricate insane facts that can be disproven in 5 minutes on lexis-nexis, and she is constantly being caught in her idiotic lies. Hell she fabricates footnotes constantly, gets caught in her lies, but nobody really says anything a) because her loyal readers tend to be on the stupider side of the species, so they eat the lies and believe them, and b) she's so much of a joke that none of her enemies wastes too much time with her. Don't believe me? See if anyone ever corroborated her little idiocy over Bush and Gore's grades. To call any Coulter book "well-documented" betrays an incredible misunderstanding about how this frothy-mouthed, right-wing, borderline psychopath works.

Pretty Funny

[firstadopter.com]

I think we're going to see more of this in the future. Remember the famous shark in san fran harbor pic?

Watermarks

[Cajun Hell]

If the infringers took the photo illegally and digitally removed the watermark, Croan says that in itself is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

No it isn't. (Though passing along such a derivative work may indeed be a violation of copyright.) Unless the watermark effectively limits access to the picture (and obviously, it doesn't), I don't get how DMCA applies at all. DMCA is a nasty law, but it's not like it reads, "Thou shalt not do anything we don't like."

That aside, though, this is a neat use of watermarks. Much better than that stupid the-watermark-determines-the-restrictions crap that the music companies were playing around with, a while back.

Re:Watermarks

[GMFTatsujin]

it's not like it reads, "Thou shalt not do anything we don't like."

Are you sure about that? It's in the fine print. Really fine print, as it turns out -- it's in microtext in the dot over the second "i" in "millennium."

Re:Watermarks

[lynx_user_abroad]

I don't get how DMCA applies at all.

The other part of the DMCA says stripping copyright information or other identifying marks from a copyrighted work in an attempt to avoid proper attribution is also a violation.

It's in that part none of us got really upset about because most of us (even those who "pirate" regularly) still think the creator should get credit (just not control).

Re:Watermarks

[Salsaman]

Actually, it is a crime under the DMCA, section 1202. There was an article on this very issue on groklaw.net. All they need to do is say that a watermark is copyright management information.

Sec. 1202. Integrity of copyright management information

. . . (b) REMOVAL OR ALTERATION OF COPYRIGHT MANAGEMENT INFORMATION- No person shall, without the authority of the copyright owner or the law--

(1) intentionally remove or alter any copyright management information,
(2) distribute or import for distribution copyright management information knowing that the copyright management information has been removed or altered without authority of the copyright owner or the law, or
(3) distribute, import for distribution, or publicly perform works, copies of works, or phonorecords, knowing that copyright management information has been removed or altered without authority of the copyright owner or the law,

knowing, or, with respect to civil remedies under section 1203, having reasonable grounds to know, that it will induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal an infringement of any right under this title.

In other words "Thou shalt not do anything we don't like."

Re:Watermarks

[jpmjpm1]

Actually, the DMCA doesn't apply because you CAN'T remove a watermark, unless you have the original image! If you had the original image, why would you send out the one that has a watermark in it??? You would get caught...that would be stupid.

Watermarking an image is pretty basic signal processing (go talk to your EE friends about it). You add a small amount "noise" to the signal (in this case, an image). This "noisy" image is then sent to people. To prove where a watermarked image came from, you subtract the original image from the watermarked/noisy image and you get the noise that you added. You compare this to your records and see who you you gave that noise pattern to.

The problem with removing the watermark is that you don't know what noise was added, and there isn't a way to find out, unless you have access to the original. Another way of putting it is that A+B=C. If you only know C (the watermarked image), you can't find out what A and B are! (unless you know A (original image) or B (noise you added).

Damn that photoshop

[ArmenTanzarian]

TotalFarker's give a collective "yeee..." and pull at their shirt collars.

Re:Damn that photoshop

[Jeremy Erwin]

I think you need to read Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music (92-1292), 510 U.S. 569 (1994).

Parody is a defense against copyright infringement, however, the infringing work must qualify as a parody.

Not a bad forgery.....

[BWJones]

Yeah so this is the problem with folks who don't ask questions. A quick examination of the forged image reveals differing light angles. However, other than that, the forgery (based upon an interpretation of the low resolution image from the link) is pretty decent. The cut lines are well concealed, and the brightness has been rather nicely matched. Of course the highlights in her hair have been darkened to match the background of trees and such, but here is(are) my question(s)..... 1) Who would be stupid enough to obtain a copyrighted image in a forgery attempt? 2) Unless this is an attempt by a right wing organization to discredit Kerry, why waste your time? Especially when you are lying?

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[Bender Unit 22]

As far as I understand, the fight to be the president now revolves around same sex marriages.
It seems to me that no-one has high thoughts about the voters.
As an outsider, these American elections seems rather silly and I have never understood why the public allows this circus which seems to be all about avoiding important national issues.
But then again, that might why explain the low number of people voting.

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[shark72]

"But could someone explain the Jane Fonda thing? What did that forged photo purport to show?"

Many people consider Jane Fonda to be a traitor.

That's why this forgery is significant: it isn't some innocent and harmless Fark-style "let's put him with Barney the Dinosaur and make a funny image." It was designed to instill hatred of the candidate by associating the two. The rationale is likely that while the fact that both protested the war might not be enough to convey a sense of guilt by association, it might make all the difference in the world by providing a photo of the two speaking together.

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[techno-vampire]

She did mnore than that. She sat in the seat of an AA gun and said that she wished she could shoot it against an American B-52. If we had declared war, it would have been treason as defined in the Constitution. Those of us that were serving their country in Vietnam in those days still remember.

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[Skjellifetti]

But could someone explain the Jane Fonda thing? What did that forged photo purport to show?

Jane Fonda is an actress, daughter of Henry Fonda, formerly married to liberal media mogul Ted Turner and also to SDS activist Tom Hayden. She was an opponent of the Vietnam War who made a trip to North Vietnam at the height of the war thus earning the sobriquet "Hanoi Jane." The political right in the U.S. hates her guts. By placing John Kerry with Fonda, they seek to make Kerry appear as a left wing traitor.

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[YrWrstNtmr]

"very vocal", as in donning parts of an NVA uniform, and posing for pictures at the controls of a NVA AAA gun.

"very vocal", as in lying about the treatment of US POW's.

"very vocal", as in christening her son Troy after a Viet Cong hero, Nguyen Van Troi, who later tried to assassinate SecDef McNamara.

"very vocal", as in "I would think that if you understood what communism was you would hope, you would pray on your knees, that we would someday become communists." - Jane Fonda, MSU, 1970

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[sfjoe]

Well, at least she got closer to the VietCong than George Bush.

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[That's Unpossible!]

The political right in the U.S. hates her guts.

Ummm, no, more than just the political right hate her guts. Anyone ever associated with the military hates her guts. Any (informed) patriotic American probably hates her guts.

You see, she did not just "make a trip" to N. Vietnam. She ENCOURAGED them to shoot down Americans. She visited an anti-aircraft battery that was used to shoot at/down American planes. She encouraged the enemy to continue fighting, and encouraged the Americans (over the radio) to essentially "give up." She even asked to pose in videos with American POW's, and some of those POW's later testified that they were tortured if they did not want to appear in the videos with her. Like a previous poster said, if war had been officially declared, she could have been executed for treason. As it stands, most people who know all the facts consider her a traitor to this day.

This is why any photo showing Kerry at an anti-war rally with her is extremely damaging to his campaign. This is also why Jane Fonda has been trying to distance herself from him in recent interviews, because she knows she is so hated it could torpedo the Dem's campaign.

Here is some more info from Snopes.

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[2short]

I'll take a crack at it...

Jane Fonda was also a prominent opponent of the Vietnam war. Some people think she went too far, to the point of actually supporting the North Vietnamese (I'll not go into whether this was actually the case, as I don't know or care). So by linking Kerry with Fonda as closely as possible, they try to say Kerry is a wacko like Fonda. All without going into the fact that Kerry made a principled stand against the war only after serving in that war with considerable distinction.

Frankly, I don't think this approach has much traction. The rabid Fonda-haters are all on the right-wing fringe anyway. I would hope that for most Americans, having opposed the Vietnam war in the considered way Kerry did makes you look smart. You'd have to be pretty out there to say that in retrospect the Vietnam war was still a good idea when Kerry came out against it. I think it just makes it obvious that his critics on this issue are fully in the "all independent thought is treason" camp.

Anyway, a lot of people opposed the Vietnam war, and at this point, most people probably think they were right to do so. The demographic that still thinks of Vietnam war protesters as hippie-commie-pinko-scum is pretty small now, and they're not voting for Kerry anyway, so I don't see this fake photo mattering much.

On the other hand, there are plenty of real pictures of current members of the Bush administration being all buddy-buddy with Saddam Hussein...

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[Skjellifetti]

Ummm, no, more than just the political right hate her guts. Anyone ever associated with the military hates her guts. Any (informed) patriotic American probably hates her guts.

Um, I used to be associated with the military. I'm more informed than most Americans (probably including yourself) and am pretty damn patriotic. I don't really want to refight the Vietnam war here, but the behavior of the U.S. government and military during that war towards those who chose to dissent was at least as shameful as what Jane Fonda did. That war, and the stupid "anyone who opposes our enemies is our friend, no matter how evil they are themselves" mentality still haunts America today. Like it or not, 9/11 happened because our illustrious leaders thought (and still think) that fomenting military coups in Guatemala, Iran, and Chile, helping Saddam Hussein against Iran, shipping weapons to Egyptian and Saudi dictators, etc, etc, etc is good foreign policy. Our leaders (of both Republicrat and Democan parties) speachify about all of the great things (capitalism, freedom) Amerika offers, but simply cannot grasp the hatred that those actions have provoked among the have-nots of the world who hear the speaches but end up on the receiving end of American bullets when they try and put those American ideals into practice in their own nations. It is sometimes very hard to be a patriotic American, and Fonda's actions have to be seen in that light.

Volunteering

[lukewarmfusion]

"Pardon me. Would the person responsible for forging the photos, removing the watermarks from the source images, and distributing a libellous claim please come to the Principal's office? Thank you."

Wait a second...

[LostCluster]

Corbis hopes either to track the responsible people down using watermarks, or to invoke DMCA if the watermarks were removed.

If the watermarks were removed, the DMCA won't be able to help much, they'll have a hard time figuring out who did the forgery...

Re:Could it be?

[Gherald]

A bad law used in a decent way is still a bad law; the ends do not justify the means...

I keep reading...

[cartzworth]

...infringers - don't they mean thieves? Oh wait, this isn't an RIAA related article.

Who?

[JohnGrahamCumming]

/. please explain some of these difficult to understand terms: I mean I know what GIMP, DMCA, MP3, PARC, DSL, DRM, DVD and NSA mean, but who's this John Kerry and this Jane Fonda?

John.

Open-Source Watermarks?

[kruczkowski]

Does anyone know if an open-source (cheap) watermark solution exists?

I like to take photos and post them on my site, but I would like to also have them watermarked in case someone takes the photo and starts making money of it.

I looked into the one that comes with Adobe products, but it was way to expensive. Something like $75 for 10 photos.

Just wondering what options are avalible...

Re:Open-Source Watermarks?

[LostCluster]

This level of watermarking needs to be done every time an image is downloaded. The whole point is that they want to embed the IP address the image was sent to along with the timestamp so that there's enough to take a subpeona to the ISP to find out under what ISP account it was downloaded.

That might not get us down to what person did it, but it very certainly would narrow the number of suspects into a very tight group...

Well they do have a history of lying

[Anonymous Coward]

Iraq for example. As well as job creation (Where are those 3.6 million jobs bush was talkin' about a while ago?) Also, witness Rove/Bush's strategy against other candidates, like McCain, where they mercilessly decimated him in South Carolina with accusations he had a black baby, etc. It's not just the repubs either; both sides are guilty of lies. It's all part of the game. We just like to believe our government is all nice and happy and gets along fine together in a big fluffy friendly world.

Sorry to rain on your parade...

Re:Well they do have a history of lying

[YrWrstNtmr]

Well they do have a history of lying

They, meaning politicians in general, not just Republicans.

On free speech and fair use

[onyxruby]

I don't think this would be covered under free speech as a fair use application. Instead this could be construed as defamation or slander. When these cases have come up in court before, the defining standard always has been that it must be obvious that the picture is either satire (Hustlers famous example of some evangelical priest) or being used to illustrate a political point (W with horns on his head or some such).

In this case what was done was not obvious until the original photographer looked at the picture and said "that's not right" and even he had to look at his original to be sure. It's certainly a good enough photoshop that it would easily fool most people who will give this only a scant few seconds before concluding Kerry did associate with Fonda. Since it depicted him side by side with Jane Fonda, with no way for the public to readily know it was a forgery, the only intent has to be slander.

Background On Photo from Guardian

[ackthpt]

Not necessarily. Heard that it was helping Kerry soften his pro-Iraq war support.

That would seem ironic, considering it's apparent origins:

From the Guardian

Ms Fonda is reviled by many Vietnam vets for her wartime visit to Hanoi, and the image was widely aired over the internet by a fringe group of Vietnam veterans who have pursued a vendetta against Mr Kerry for years.

In less than a week, the forgery travelled from a message board on a rightwing website to a Vietnam veterans' mailing list to mainstream organisations. Two British national newspapers - the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday - used the photograph in editions on Friday last week and at the weekend.

Re:Interesting

[Blic]

Parody and "pranksters" is one thing - no one lost any sleep over this one or the pic of Dubya wearing the One Ring - but this is different. This was passed off as a legitimate AP photo to news organizations complete with fabricated story.

And if you RTFA (I know, this is Slashdot) it's Corbis going after them for copyright violations, not Kerry.

Two Kerry photos, one real, one fake

[Stonent1]

Real

Fake

Re:An awful lie by right-wing nuts!

[xTown]

The real photo is not a picture of them together. It is a picture of them in the same place at the same time. Yes, there's a difference--Kerry is basically background in that picture; he's not talking to Hanoi Jane, he's not looking at her, nothing.

I attended a Republican convention once. One of the many speakers was Pat Robertson. By your logic, I therefore believe everything that Pat Robertson believes. Pete DuPont spoke at the same rally. By your logic, Pete DuPont and Pat Robertson therefore have no differences.

Re:Interesting

[khendron]

It's not not Kerry going after them for libel. It's the photographers, and they are trying to protect their copyright.

Here's the guy who did it.

[1729]

Sheesh, 2 minutes on google and I found the guy who did it. A user called "registered" unleashed it on a message board www.freerepublic.com:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1075317/p osts

(Scroll down to post 47.) The original link was at:

http://members.aol.com/registered/private/freep/ke rryfonda.jpg

though it's gone now. "Registered" admits elsewhere on the board to creating the photo.

Apropos posting.

[erik_fredricks]

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that this article directly follows the one announcing Gimp 2.0?

Just wondering...

Re:Evil, evil Jane

[techno-vampire]

But they both opposed the war, and that makes them both traitor-liberal-bleedingheart-(add your own insult here).

Not so. Kerry didn't go to Hanoi, Kerry didn't broadcast speaches designed to harm soldier's moral, Kerry stayed here and worked within the law for what he believed in. I have no respect for Hanoi Jane, but I do for Kerry.

Nobody "placed" him anywhere...he was really there

[bonch]

www.snopes.com/photos/politics/kerry.asp

Re:Veterans Protesting Against A War? Of course!

[MooseByte]

Just Some Guy wrote:

It's a lot different then the action movies you've grown up on. In fact, when I was serving in Somalia, the situation was closer to "Blackhawk Down" than "Stripes".

---

Well that's nice. I was serving in SWA/Kuwait a few years prior to your stint. When Bush Sr. realized that going into Baghdad would result in a dangerous power vacuum that could lead to a fundamentalist Islamic state. Not to mention civlian casualties and general chaos.

I'm pro-military. I'm vehemently against the current debacle launched in Iraq. And I can definitely see where a Vietnam vet coming home just might have something to say about how pointless that war was.

So again there, Mr. Somalia: What makes you think one cannot simultaneously be pro-military and yet still protest against a war?

Here's a dillema -

[JimmytheGeek]

Suppose you were on the scene at the My Lai massacre, when American troops were murdering civilians. Would it be treason to urge them to stop? No. Would it be treason to use force to try to stop them? Maybe. Would it be wrong? Certainly not. Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson ordered his crew chief to "open up on the Americans" if they fired on Vietnamese civilians he was shielding with his helicopter.

If you view the Vietnam War as one big massacre, you have a moral obligation to do what you can to stop it. That view is one reasonable people could hold. The U.S. dropped more tonnage of bombs on agricultural N. Vietnam than on Nazi Germany and Japan. The B52 crews Hanoi Jane was hoping would be shot down were following lawful orders and yet perpetrating massacres. It's a problem.

I have a lot of respect for the troops. I have no respect for the current CIC. If my own brother were shooting civilians, I'd stop him if I had the chance. Would you stand by just because of the uniform?

I'm confused.

[CausticPuppy]

I don't recall the argument being that Republicans were rich. It was that they are the tools of the rich...

So basically you're saying that Republicans are the tools of the Democrats?

Brain... hurting! Must... vote... Libertarian!!