Rubio Holds Shear Nomination

Sen. Marco Rubio has placed a hold on David Shear's nomination as ambassador to Vietnam. Rubio's issue is not with Shear but Americans having trouble adopting children from Vietnam.

Last week Senator Rubio placed a hold on the nomination in an effort to get assistance for American families whose children are stranded in orphanages in Vietnam. His hold follows that of Senator Dick Lugar, Republican from Indiana, who initially placed a hold on Shear nomination last month amid concerns.

"Senator Lugar placed a temporary hold on Ambassador-designate Shear’s nomination in an effort to secure information about the status of assistance to American families with pending adoption cases in Vietnam,” explains Andy Fisher, a senior aide to Lugar. “This included responses to requests made by the families to obtain copies of their respective adoption files from the Departments of State and Homeland Security. Unfortunately, the families had encountered innumerable roadblocks in this regard.”

What happened to the Republicans agreeing to filibuster reform? This is the second hold on Shear. How does Rubio and Lugar expect changes in Vietnam's adoption policies with the United States holding up the confirmation of its ambassador? Republicans are literally looking for creative ways to block Shear's nomination.

My question is does America really want to encourage Vietnam becoming a for-profit adoption industry? I am sure there are Americans that sincerely want to help these children? Unfortunately, selling a child for adoption is profitable in the third world. Adoption can cost $25,000 with no guarantee that the child will be allowed to leave the country.

Virginity Test

File this under you got to be fucking kidding me: acupuncturist Pham Thi Hong helped free three rapists. The evidence she gave the court was she checked their ears and pulse. Hong declared that the men were virgins.

"They all had small red spots on the back of their ears," said Hong, 54. "The spots should have disappeared if they had had sex. My many years of experience told me that these men did not have sex before."

The horror of the story is the Vietnamese took Hong seriously. President Nguyen Minh Triet order the release of the men. It is scary that there are parts of the world still living in the Dark Ages.

Walter Cronkite RIP

Walter Cronkite died yesterday in his New York home. Watching Cronkite read the news was an American tradition. No newscaster ever earned the trust Cronkite had with the American public. Long before there were partisan cries of media bias - the public could count on Cronkite giving the facts. If Cronkite said it was true then it was gospel.

No other television journalist had a better pulse beat on the significance of world events. Cronkite used a 1963 interview with John F. Kennedy to question America's role in Vietnam.



In an interview, Cronkite said he understood the South vietnamese government was corrupt. His hope was that if the United States could hold the South then a democratic government could be built. The Tet Offensive changed Cronkite's perception of the war.



Cronkite was a national tressure. In our current media age, we will unlikely to be graced with such a majestic presense. If there is a Heaven, Cronkite will be treated to superior news media.

Giuliani's Unrealistic Foreign Policy

It is really bad when conservative blogger James Joyner calls Rudy Giuliani's foreign policy vision "dangerously stupid."


The first thing that bothered me is how horribly written Giuliani's op-ed is. The Slate's Fred Kaplan remarked, "Had it been written for a freshman course on international relations, it would deserve at best a C-minus with a concerned note to come see the professor as soon as possible." A perfect example is Giuliani's confusing sentence structuring.

"Achieving a realistic peace means balancing realism and idealism in our foreign policy," Giuliani writes. "America is a nation that loves peace and hates war."

Giuliani's poison pen doesn't get better. I seriously wonder the America's Mayor paid a high school sophomore to write this shit. Another example is "The first step toward a realistic peace is to be realistic about our enemies." Was Giuliani under the impression that the American people have been living in a dream-like state the past six years since 9-11?

Giuliani engages in revisionist history.

"America must remember one of the lessons of the Vietnam War. Then, as now, we fought a war with the wrong strategy for several years. And then, as now, we corrected course and began to show real progress. Many historians today believe that by about 1972 we and our South Vietnamese partners had succeeded in defeating the Vietcong insurgency and in setting South Vietnam on a path to political self-sufficiency. But America then withdrew its support, allowing the communist North to conquer the South."

Vietnam was not going to become a democracy, no matter how long the United States remained militarily engaged. To suggest otherwise is revisionist history at best and utter batshit insanity at it's worse. Giuliani contends if Iraq and Afghanistan (already) fell that the consequences would be as disastrous as Vietnam. Conservative blogger Dan Drezner points out that Giuliani accidently debunks his own argument.

Actually, the fall of Saigon was, in the end, the final falsification of the domino theory that Giuliani's essay unconsciously accepts. South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia collapsed. That was it. The Soviet Union's subsequent expansionism proved to be its ruination, as it found itself bogged down in Afghanistan.

There is the question of how Giuliani expects to get enough recruits for ten more ten new combat brigades" with a volunteer. He makes it very clear he has no intention if leaving Iraq. Ever. That doesn't entice young men and women to enlist. Even if Giuliani got enough recruit, ten brigades is only an "appropriate baseline." We may need more soldiers. Perhaps he can use clones like Emperor Palpatine.

I could go on, but I don't have the time. This foreign policy paper is Gigli bad.

Quote of the Day

Mitt Romney really wanted to serve his country in Vietnam. It's that pesky draft deferral to do missionary work in France that got in the way.

"I really don’t recall thinking about political positions when I was knocking at the door in France" as a missionary, Romney said. "I was supportive of my country. I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there and in some ways it was frustrating not to feel like I was there as part of the troops that were fighting in Vietnam."

It would have been more convincing if Romney did missionary work in Sudan or some other third world hell hole. France isn't exactly toughing it out. A reporter should ask Romney if he wanted to serve so bad than why didn't he enlist. It's a fair question.

I don't blame any person of draft age for not serving in Vietnam. Johnson and Nixon both thought the war was a lost cause. What is amazing is that Republican candidates can't admit the obvious. Besides, their egos being bruised for coming off as wusses. It says much about their judgement on military policy matters.

Hat tip to Liberal Avenger.