murdoconline.net/archives/005097.html
http://www.murdoconline.net/2007/vietnam_memorial_defaced.jpg
I wonder if the people who did this frequent this forum.
To those who bleat, “I support the troops but I oppose the war,” I say as I have said before, there is no such animal.
Dispicable!
That just totally breaks my heart. 
Yep - we do indeed live in a world of three-year-olds.
~Liza
If I lived closer I would volunteer to help clean and restore the memorial.
I dont know how anyone could have the idea in their head let alone act out on it this way.
I oppose the war…I oppose all war, not just the war in Iraq. I opposed the Vietnam war…I oppose the mistreatment of those soldiers who returned.
While I can support the troops in their decision of conscience to participate in a war I oppose, I do not oppose the men. The Friend’s Meeting I attend has had to come to grips with how to handle those members who choose to deny the Peace Testimony and participate in this war…we hold them up in our prayers and commend them to the Light…as we commend those they fight against…they are all held before the Light.
Vandalism is also against the Peace Testimony.
It appears it can’t be cleaned. The oil has soaked into the marble.
I suspect it is no coincidence that there is an antiwar rally in Washington, DC this weekend. But they support the troops.
I agree with Vern, that is despicable.
I support and respect the troops-just not the war.
No matter how much a person may hate what the current administration is doing in Iraq, or what the three administrations did in Vietnam, defacing the monument to those who gave their lives unselfishly is utterly contemptible.
I think I will do some research on that, I recall there was a statue in Europe that was cleaned with bitumen, a clay that absorbed all the gunk off.
I wonder if it should be left alone though, to serve as a reminder to humans how very ill we are and need God.
Could be-they had a problem at Gettysburg a few years back where some kooks "annointed’ some of the monuments with vegatable oil. IIRC they also used bitumen. I hope it can be fixed.
I get your point but I don’t think that’s a good idea. If you leave it up, more people will copy it.
If you’ve ever worked retail or in a restaurant you know that if you don’t keep cleaning the vandalism, it ratchets up worse and worse. People are less likely to vandalize something clean than something someone else already vandalized. Most people are followers.
I wouldn’t have brought us into this war either, but I mean, come on! What the heck is wrong with people? :mad:
You guys are over-reacting.
First no one is even sure it was intentional. Since whatever it was was “spilled mainly along the base” of the monument. It appears to be simply an accident. And the NPS expects to be able to clean up the all of the substance.
nbc4.com/news/14092461/detail.html
washingtontimes.com/article/20070911/METRO/109110043/1004
Second, the NPS was informed of the spill on Friday 7 Spetember. So much for those who jumped to the conclusion that anti-War protesters had perpetrated this “vandalism”, which of course might not even be vandalism.
This is what comes of getting one’s news from “blogs” and taking at at face value without troubling oneself to check ones facts.
We humans are prone to becoming strident and self-righteous. In such a state some persons will feel entitled to violence.
I don’t have any photos to show, but it seems that the memorial was successfully cleaned. star-telegram.com/national_news/story/234874.html
So tell us-how could spilling oil on 40 feet of the monument be an accident? What possbible reason could anyone have for carrying that amount of oil down to the monumet? Did you see the picture i posted shwong one panel was smeared across its center- how does a spill get that high?
Since this weekends anti-war protestors are already using the dead from that war to make cheap political points(to the disgust of the soldiers families) desecrating a monument honoring the dead deos not sem to be a stretch.
It was deliberate vandalism. Res ipsa loquitur.
It happened on a friday right? Fish and chips could be to blame.
French fry vendor lost control of his 55 gallon drum of saturated fatty oil? It became hard to push the dolly because the poor guy rolled over some litter and then the drum rolled off and no one got any french fries that day.
something smells fishy here.
There is no plausible scenario that this could be an accident. The reason the blogs picked it up is because the mainstream media is ignoring it. The NPS, who is responsible for the monument, just wants a controversy to go away.
You may be onto something. On the other hand maybe George Bush did it.
Why don’t you ask the NPS, you know ther guys who are actually THERE? They’re the ones who can’t tell whether or not is was an accident.
You should also try reading the articles instead of just assuming things. First no one said it was oil. It was “an oily substance”. You chose to characterize it as “oil” because that made YOUR INTREPRETATION of intentional vandalism more likley
What possbible reason could anyone have for carrying that amount of oil down to the monumet?
That’s called a strawman Bob. And it is not an effective arguement technique.
The point is, NO ONE knows what happened. The fact is, the blog you quoted jumped to a conclusion about it being vandalism, then went on, completely untroubled by evidence or facts, and assigned blame to anti-war protesters to call into quetion their patriotism, their morality and their maturity.The blogger did that with a reckless disregard for the truth in a manner that I find despicable and morally reprehensible. (Something about bearing false witness against one’s neighbor??)
I find it an intellectually bankrupt way to demonize people whose opinons he doesn’t agree with, yet he doesn’t have the facts to argue against.