The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Peter Pace, has his priorities in order:
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday he considers homosexuality to be immoral and the military should not condone it by allowing gay personnel to serve openly, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Marine Gen. Peter Pace likened homosexuality to adultery, which he said was also immoral, the newspaper reported on its Web site.
“I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way,” Pace told the newspaper in a wide-ranging interview.
Pace, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and a 1967 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, said he based his views on his upbringing.
Oh, goodness! It’s based on his upbringing! Well, of course then! You know what, my folks brought me up to believe that if a man or woman is willing to shoulder a rifle, to stand post, to wear the uniform, well… it doesn’t much matter who they sleep with.
Here’s my favorite bit:
The newspaper said Pace did not address concerns raised by a 2005 government audit that showed some 10,000 troops, including more than 50 specialists in Arabic, have been discharged because of the policy. [emphasis mine]
These guys, I tell you. It’s like they want to lose the war.
UPDATE (–Goldy):
Gen. Pace’s statements are ripe for ridicule, but Will missed an opportunity to zero in on the most ridiculous statement of them all:
Marine Gen. Peter Pace likened homosexuality to adultery, which he said was also immoral,
I can’t seem to find “Thou shall not take it up the ass” anywhere in the Ten Commandments, but I’m surprised Gen. Pace missed this particular moral proscription: “Thou shall not kill.”
Hmm. Homosexuality is immoral, but apparently, the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians in a preemptive war of aggression is not. A soldier openly loving another man… that is a sin. But a soldier unavoidably inflicting “collateral damage” — killing men, women and children — that is not.
I fully understand that the Seventh Commandment is only a prohibition against illegal killing, and that the morality of war is a complicated and nuanced subject. But I find it ironic that a man whose job it is to turn teenage boys into killers would claim to possess such moral clarity on issues of human sexuality.
A real hero asks WHATADICKCHENEY a tough question…
“Where the hell were you in the Vietnam War? If you had gone to Vietnam like the rest of us, maybe you would have learned something about war. You can’t keep troops on the ground forever. You gotta have a mission. You gotta have a purpose.”
You can’t keep sending ’em back and back and back with no mission and no purpose. As a matter of fact, the real enemy is Al Qaeda, it’s Al Qaeda stupid, it’s not in Iraq. ”
Max Cleland
Ever notice how Saddam’s army was called the “Republican Guard?” An appropriate name for a group that’s in bed with that coward Bush.
The American Religious Right cannot ever decide if it should fight secular American society or Islamists more fiercely, because both form a threat to Christianist hegemony. At least religious fanatics can understand each other, on a gut level; they can neither stand nor understand independent thinkers. Hence their ongoing war against both foreign religious terrorism, and homegrown equality. Sometimes they shoot at one target, sometimes at another, without heed to the damage they do to their other cause.
On May 21, 2003, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W. Va., said “Truth has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts to obscure it. Distortion only serves to derail it for a time. No matter to what lengths we humans may go to obfuscate facts or delude our fellows, truth has a way of squeezing out through the cracks, eventually.”
Ain’t that the truth! Amen to that.
— Gary Clark, Marysville
What Byrd meant to say is “truth has a way of squeezing through the sheets”. hehehehehe
Unless I’m mistaken, we pay Gen. Pace to give us his military expertise, not his personal opinions.
@3 Maybe the reason Bush doesn’t shoot at Osama is professional courtesy — from 1 religious fanatic to another.
@4 No, what he meant to say was “squeezing out through the cracks”; and there’s a lot of truth coming out now that Democrats control congressional subpoenaes and hearings. But you wingnut assholes knew this was coming when you woke up last Nov. 8, didn’t you? There will be more and more revelations about the corrupt and criminally incompetent Republican regime as the year progresses. Truth will be oozing out everywhere, and it ain’t gonna be pretty, wingnuts.
Intolerance of Intolerance
Pace is right, so to speak.
So what do we do when we have a believer in office? Do we have a litmus test? Are all baptists to be made ineligible for the military or do we say it si OK to be believer, just do not tell anyone about it?
the new “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy” membership in fundi religious sects is OK as long you do not tell anyone else what you believe!
Goldie: At least some right-wing fundies are okay with taking it in the ass:
http://ifuckedanncoulterintheasshard.blogspot.com/
http://backinanncoultersasssad.....gspot.com/
that the morality of war is a complicated and nuanced subject.
GOLDY THESE WINGNUTS LIKE THEIR DEAR LEADER DON’T DO NUANCE.
LMAO!!!
The morality of war is a simple and straightforward subject: War is evil.
The necessity of war is a bit more complicated: If you are attacked, you have to fight.
Achieving victory in war is more complicated yet: It requires strategy, generalship, resources, planning, logistics, good soldiering, and no small amount of luck.
We pay Gen. Pace to excel at the third; if he’s doing that properly, he doesn’t have time to worry about the first two.
EXPLOSIVE REVELATIONS IN U.S. ATTORNEY FIRINGS INVESTIGATION!
The Seattle Times published a story this morning containing blockbuster revelations about the firing of U.S. Attorneys, revealed by emails and internal documents the White House will provide to Congress today, including:
— WH Counsel Harriet Miers wanted DOJ to fire all 93 U.S. Attorneys
— The 8 U.S. Attorneys were fired after Bush told AG Gonzales he had received complaints that some U.S. Attorneys had not pursued voter-fraud investigations “energetically”
— The firings were personally approved by Gonzales, but the details were left to an aide, Kyle Sampson
— Sampson resigned yesterday after acknowledging he misled other DOJ officials about the extent of his communications with the White House, who in turn gave “incomplete information” to Congress
— The emails and documents, which Congress requested as part of its investigation into whether the firings were politically motivated, show “the White House and other administration officials were more deeply involved in the dismissals, and at an earlier date, than they have acknowledged”
— Bush and Rove were personally involved in passing on complaints to Gonazales that “some U.S. attorneys were not doing enough to prosecute certain crimes, such as voter fraud”
— Sampson sent Harriet Miers an e-mail ranking all 93 U.S. Attorneys as “strong” or “weak” performers, and these rankings were based on party loyalty, not prosecutorial effectiveness or management ability
— The 8 fired U.S. Attorneys were on at least two separate lists that Sampson gave to Gonzales at different times
— Complaints from Sen. Pete Dominici about U.S. Attorney David Iglesias were directly responsible for Iglesias, who was not originally on either of list, being fired; and the reason for Iglesias’ firing was that “he was not prosecuting enough voter-fraud cases”
— An e-mail from Miers’ deputy sent on the day Iglesias was fired said Sen. Domenici’s chief of staff “is happy as a clam” about Iglesias being fired
— In a followup e-mail, Sampson described Domenici’s eagerness to provide names of possible replacements as “not even waiting for Iglesias’s body to cool”
— Sampson “strongly urged bypassing Congress in naming replacements”
Quoted under Fair Use; for complete story and/or copyright info see http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....eys13.html
Damn Voice of Chalk Scratching, you whip out a piece of the Old Testament when convenient and you forget the rest. How libtardy of you.
What did God tell Saul to do just before he lost his kingdom? Do you remember? Take a few minutes and look it up!
–
–
–
He told Saul to kill everything because the people were an abomination to Him. But Saul didn’t kill everyone or everything. He kept the king and the spoils. So what did the Prophet Samuel do? Look it up stuuuuuuuupiiiiiiido! Then what happened to Saul? Figure that out too.
Again I bring up what God told Moses in Leviticus. If one of the smartest liberals here GBS can figure it out… wow an epiphany… GBS I commend you. You figured it out. A man taking it up the ASS from another man is an abomination to God in the Old Testament. I guess the lesser life forms like Ol’ Scratchy Voice can’t. Since Voice of Chalk Scratching’s religion does not accept the New Testament, he chooses to forget those specific Levitical laws on purpose! Hmmm… very interesting dichotomy in his mind! Yes, if Voice of Chalk Scratching only lived the 10 Commandments instead of using them for his political pedestal when trying to make another lib statement!
So Voice of Chalk Scratching, did you mentally throw out Moses last speeches in Deuteronomy too? Just checking.
Don’t worry I won’t expect an answer from you.
I heard a fantastic rumor last night that the cowardly Handjob Hannity was thinking of running for the Publican nomination. How fucking fun would that be?
Here are some things that would be fun to toss around when Handjob didn’t have control of the dialog like he does on Fox Nothing Channel….
1) Handjob Hannity recently posed for a photo with a gay porn actor and called the man a “hero.”
That will play well in middle-America – NOT!
2) Handjob Hannity was of perfect fighting age during the first Gulf War. Yet, mysteriously, this guy who claims that the war against Iraq is the “most important conflict in our history” didn’t see the need to volunteer to do his part when he was an able-bodied, red-blooded young American.
This is obviously just another case of a Publican chickenhawk who runs from military service while at the same time claiming to be pro-war.
3) Handjob Hannity had a roommate in college (male) who claims Handjob wasn’t the good Catholic boy he’d like us to believe.
Once again, not good in the fly-over states.
P – L – E – A – S – E let it be Seanboy. PLEASE! The fact that the Publicans are talking about running everyone and there brother shows they don’t have a real candidate they think can win. There’s panic in the air over there. HE HE!
Speaking of boys kissing boys:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03.....38;emc=rss
“But part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.
“I don’t want to pick on Al Gore,” Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. “But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.””
Clueless: It’s from the NY Times!
@13 Now Pudding Head will share with us his expert knowledge of Christianity, in which a vengeful God tells Republicans to kill everyone they can lay hands on, especially Muslims.
@13 The Great Mother Rabbit Spirit told me to tell you to go fuck yourself!
Speaking of Libtards kissing Libtards, http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....ss_opinion
How about Cut & Run V 18.3
PelletHead: If you only read the Bible, you’d know if God was vengeful. Wait… is that the peal of thunder I hear over your burrow?
Golly: This speaks well for the tolerance of Libtards:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new.....een211.xml
One can ALWAYS find the truth overseas!
“Scientists threatened for ‘climate denial’
By Tom Harper, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:24am GMT 11/03/2007
Scientists who questioned mankind’s impact on climate change have received death threats and claim to have been shunned by the scientific community.
They say the debate on global warming has been “hijacked” by a powerful alliance of politicians, scientists and environmentalists who have stifled all questioning about the true environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions.
Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, has received five deaths threats by email since raising concerns about the degree to which man was affecting climate change.”
When you leave the Libtard Reservation, the Libtard thought police will find ya!
@19 “Wait… is that the peal of thunder I hear over your burrow?”
Check this blog tomorrow to find out if I’m still around. If I am, your take on the Old Testament is full of shit, just like your politics.
Speaking of Boys Kissing Boys, it looks like Kucinich just told John Edwards and Barack Obama where to kiss him:
“If you want to be the President of the United States, you can’t be afraid to deal with people with whom you disagree politically,” Kucinich said. “No one is further removed from Fox’s political philosophy than I am, but fear should not dictate decisions that affect hundreds of millions of Americans and billions of others around the world who are starving for real leadership.”
Kucinich said “the public deserves honest, open, and fair public debate, and the media have a responsibility to demand that candidates come forward now, before the next war vote in Congress, to explain themselves.”
“I’m prepared to discuss the war, health care, trade, or any other issue anytime, anywhere, with any audience, answering any question from any media. And any candidate who won’t shouldn’t be President of the United States.”
While I detest his politics the little guy does have balls!
@20 “Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, has received five deaths threats by email”
Are you sure he isn’t running an abortion clinic? This sounds like a rightwing terrorist operation.
PelletHead: Again you are so stupid you miss the point.
If God was vengeful you’d be missing by your dissing!
What a MORON!
Deflection, the only way PelleHead@23 holds his readers in check!
How do you think Pace got his job? Military achievement or Religious wingnuttery? Knowing how Bush operates, my money is on his being another fake christian.
Bush’s “generals” worry about gays far more than catching Bin Laden…..
Republicons are a disease.
Anyone still supporting Chimpus Minimus should be required to immediately enlist, or re-inlist! Their corpses are needed for Bush’s legacy….
What are we now at? Two scandals a day? And the investigations have just barely gotten started. Only a couple subpoenas have been issued. Many, many, many more to come.
Pressuring Prosecutors to go after Democrats while ignoring the crimes of Republicons? Elections were coming…. Sounds about right.
I will tell you how stupid these Republicons are. They are so stupid they thought they wouldn’t get caught, because of their stranglehold on our government, and ability to keep from being investigated.
Till now.
Cya in Sing Sing GOPers. Your supporters belong in different cages, in the funny farms.
Jack Cafferty: “If you look up the word weasel in the dictionary, you will see Alberto Gonzales’s picture”.
Notice how much Puffybutt likes to talk about boys kissing boys? It’s because his wife left him for me. She said he’s queer as a three dollar bill and she was tired of letting him put his one-inch dick in her asshole and calling her Mike!
Anyone who wants to stand in the way of a piece of hot lead flying my direction is welcome to do so, gay or straight!
PUDDY LINKS TO THE NYTIMES BUT NOT WITHOUT CHECKING FIRST WITH WINGNUT CENTRAL, E.G. BRENT ‘HOZELL OR SOME OTHER SCAIFE OR MURDOCH FUNDED BULLSHIT
HE WOULDN’T WANT ALL HIS NUTWING BUDDIES DUMPING HIM!!
I am once again impressed by the high level of discourse on HA.
We are all sinners….we are human beings.
I happen to agree with General Pace’s basic premise which is the Military should not condone sin.
Many people believe the ACT of homosexuality is an abomination and a sin. Same thing with adultery. Same thing with unjust killing…..which makes it imperative our military do everything in their power to avoid killing innocent people AND never condone/and fully punish those in our military who intentionally kill or harm innocent civilians. Frankly, I think we do an amazing job…sometimes at the high cost of losing American soldiers lives.
I have a very high regard for General Pace. I hope people will consider his comments in the context in which they were intended….the Military should not condone sin….of any kind.
Impressed,
I think your comments will generate lots of verbal attacks. Get ready for them!
@ 32
The military’s job is to not condone sin? Huh?
The military’s biggest job is to fight and win war. They are not serving this ibjective by kicking out 50 Arabic speakers who may be gay.
My upbringing tells me that we shouldn’t have bigots making public policy.
On a more urgent note, the US Attorney scandal appears about ready to burst like the bloated gut of Karl Rove….
I hope Waxman, Conyers, and Leahy are ready to do a little ‘House cleaning!
HEY PUDDYBUD,
HERE’S ONE OF YOUR PEEPS WHO GOT AN AWARD AT THAT WHACKO CONFERENCE WHERE COULTER USED THE “F” WORD:
Pierre LaBranche!
LMAO!!!!
Hey Goldy, do a ride along with the cops yet?
I have to admit, I do agree, kinda with Goldy on this issue. Gen. Pace has admitted that he was offering his personal Opinion. He was in Uniform and he should have focused on the issue. The fact is, he can’t change the Policy it is in place and he doesn’t get to change that.
As far as him being a Bush General, he was promoted to the Brigadier General in 92, Major General in 94, Lieutenant General in 96 and General in 2000. Note the years, all but one promotion came during the President Clinton Years. General Officers serve at he pleasure of the President. In fact President Clinton dismissed a few while he was in office.
He just issued a statement saying he should have focused on policy not on his personal views.
Huh ,
Maybe the military should cave in on this one , just think of all the liberal support for our troops the left would be willing to give …… Not
@32
Whose sin, by whose standard? Pace is taking about status not actions taken. If inappropriate sexual actions are made – gay or straight – the offending member of armed services should be out. Period. It is also inequity of the highest order to tax American Patriots to fund a war and then deny them the ability to defend this nation on the basis of some status derived from an ancient and so-called holy text.
The good General should have kept his lips shut and stuck to policy. I couldn’t care less about what his god(s) may or may not say in his religious texts about the abomination of homosexuality, hair-clipping, the eating of crickets, menstruating women attending church, the sacrifice of turtledoves, or enjoying a bowl of clam chowder.
Oh, yes, Shrimp Cocktails are an ‘abomination,’ too.
@39
Merely bring back the Draft, and we’ll see just how wide and deep the conservative support for these same troops will be.
The Wealthy conservative mantra:
“Not with my son or daughter, you won’t!”
re 39: What besides lip service and a magnet on your car have you done to “support our troops”?
What do you mean by “support our troops”? Do you support them by sending them on useless and deadly missions and then compound the stupidity by insisting that we all pretend to support the idiot in chiefs misbegotten plan?
Spare my child your “support”.
I understand Pace has already issued some sort of apology/retraction/”clarification”/obfuscation about his earlier comments. Can’t help but wonder whether he actually had some pangs of conscience or (more likely) some of the brass considered the prospect of 10,000 (or a whole lot more) combat personnel “outing” themselves and taking DD’s rather than face a second, third or fourth deployment in Cheney’s Folly.
The military has been conflicted about this for a number of years, and it is often less about the actual Sailors and Soldiers than about the public and the politicians.
(I remember one cook onboard a ship I was stationed aboard. The man was openly gay. He was also the best cook onboard. We kept him.)
This actually illustrates one of the biggest problems. There is little or no consistency in the treatment of gays in the military. That cook had about 15 years in when I met him. If we had a Commanding Officer that wished to push matters, this man’s career would have been over, and we would have lost the best Navy cook I’ve ever met.
Oh, and just for everyone’s information. People discharged because of sexual preference receive an Honorable (or whatever their service records rate) Discharge, and get all their benefits.
So a man who tortures and murders people for a living thinks that my relationship with my partner is immoral?
Pfffffftttt…
As a gay man, I can’t fathom why the thousands of gay men or lesbians currently in the service would even want to serve in the military. I understand that some people need job training and money for college, but there’s no reason why we should willingly serve a hypocritical, right wing kakistocracy like the United States that hates us, condemns us and denies us equal rights.
And for you Bible literalists out there, I assume you’ll be reporting to our town square to be stoned to death for eating shellfish or working on the Sabbath?
So, they let go of 10,000 homosexuals because they were immoral.. I only hope that when General Pace deceides to discharge all the immoral adulterers, we will have enough troops left to bring home….. If GOD had wanted to get rid of Gays, don’t you think he would have done it by now? I don’t think he has waited all this time, to leave it up to the U.S. military……
19, 21, 24, 25 – I’m still here, neener neener
38, 39 – Thought I would just mention that a late relative of mine fought in the Korean War, and he was … um, gay. In fact, LOTS of gays have served in the military, and some died in the line of duty.
This whole gays-in-the-military thing is an echo of how the military used to treat blacks. As recently as WW2, they were put in segregated units led by white officers. In WW2, not one Medal of Honor was awarded to a black soldier … not until Clinton’s presidency were the medals of black WW2 heroes upgraded to that level.
Discrimination in the military against gays, like the military’s past discrimination against blacks, is morally wrong, chuckleheaded, and based on emotional reaction to bigots in our society. It, too, will someday be regarded as a historical wrong, like the military’s treatment of blacks and Native Americans, as our society evolves to a higher moral standard.
Gays are people just like the rest of us, and don’t deserve the hatred and discrimination directed at them. Those who claim homosexuality is a “lifestyle” that gays choose, are just plain wrong. If that’s so, why is homosexuality so widespread in the animal kingdom? Biologists have long known that male-female traits in individual specimens of many species (including ours) are not uniform but scattered over a sliding scale of maleness-femaleness. People of limited intellect just can’t deal with the notion of sexual ambiguity, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, any more than quantum physics doesn’t exist simply because they don’t understand it.
@46 Interesting point. Wonder if Gen. Pace thinks all his married Marines are celibate during their overseas deployments? You know — never fraternize with the indigenous female population, never patronize whorehouses … if they aren’t, is he gonna kick ’em all out of the Corps? And what about fornicators? You know, all the unmarried Marines who are NOT practicing virgins??
When he starts mentioning adultery and homosexuality in the same sentence, he’s sliding down a slippery slope, because if he gives adulterers and fornicators the same treatment he metes out to gays, he won’t have any Marines left.
Does anyone here remember Dr. Thomas Dooley? Navy doctor, Big Dog in the propaganda leading the U.S. into Vietnam?
Queer as a fistful of $3 bills.
I love shrimp cocktails! So what’s a little abomination?
So they cashiered 50 Arabic language specialists for being gay? At a time when there is a three-month backlog of untranslated al Qaeda intercepts? These are the same great minds that brought about the smashing victories in … uh … er … somewhere, I think.
General Pace, where is Bin Laden?
You need to concentrate on your performance and less on the bedroom.
This is perhaps a distraction from the intellectual discourse that precedes me, but I’m wondering where this understanding comes from. One of the things that appeals about the Ten Commandments is their unambiguous simplicity. I don’t understand how there is a codicil to “Thou shalt not kill” which allows a Christian to conduct war.
Note that I’m not arguing against warfare. I’m just hoping someone can explain how a Christian can proclaim to follow the commandments and the teachings of Jesus and still endorse war.
dondo @ 53,
They can’t. You may have noticed that our country has a major problem with denial, lying and hypocrisy. We also have the largest population of fundamentalist religious fanatics outside the Middle East. Coincidence? I think not.
Dondo ,
I don’t think Christianity ever endorses war .. But say we were defeating Nazism it would be easier for you to understand my logic .. Killing Nazis meant less people would die … It is the same concept with terrorists , actually they are worse then the Nazis . The Nazis from what I read were actually family oriented , itjust they would go to work and murder millions . Terrorists will even use their own children as a bomb …They lack the means to kill as the Nazis did , not the desire.
Of course I happen to think the way this war was conductedbeen a disaster , but being a Believer has nothing nothing to do with disagreeing with me. Or a non believer for that matter. But non believers really seem to be unable to grasp the mindset and resolve of the terrorist, and believe somehow being nice , providing economic aid will change their hearts . Maybe many Muslim hearts , but not the terrorists . Give me millions and I will still be pro life , give a terrorist what he wants , and he will still want to kill you .
I have learned that a more accurate translation is thou shall not murder , even the Apostles carried swords with them to protect themselves .