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Originally Posted by Mr Mephisto
Another way of putting it was that he attended the Paris Peace Talks. He didn't spy for the NVA. He didn't commit acts of sabotage. Opposing the war and working towards its end is not treason in my opinion. If he is honestly guilty of treason, don't you think he would have been charged?
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He had no authority to attend the peace talks, and military regs prohibited him from meeting with the enemy. We don't know if he was charged, but certain discrepancies in his military records that HAVE been released suggest that he may have in fact received a discharge under less than honorable circumstances in 1972.
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I'm not familiar with Vallandigham, but am very interested in the history of the American Civil War. If you think the current environment is divisive, it pales into comparison with what happened during the Civil War. I don't believe the analogy fits today's circumstances. The Rosenbergs were tried and executed. I don't think that was right, but it happened.
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Vallandigham was a congressman from Ohio who was one of the leaders of the "Copperhead" movement that favored coming to an arrangement with the Confederacy. Basically, he said "Wrong time, wrong place, wrong enemy." He was arrested, tried by a military tribunal, convicted, stripped of his citizenship, and deported. I'm curious why you think the execution of the Rosenbergs was wrong. They were in fact guilty of the crimes that they were charged with. There's more than just the trial record to support this, records obtained after the fall of the Soviet Union verified that in fact they were in the employment of the USSR, and did what they were accused and convicted of.
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If you honestly believe Moore and Penn are guilty, or deserve to be charged with, treason then there's not much I can do to change your mind. We simply disagree.
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Moore is a close call. I'm not sure how that would go down. But Penn and Jane Fonda are, IMHO, guilty of treason beyond a reasonable doubt.
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By these same lines, Oliver North and many of his cohorts in the Reagan Administration (up to and including the President) should have been charged with treason and taken out and hanged.
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I disagree. they were acting in accordance with the NCA. Reagan WAS the NCA. Now, if Kerry had gone and talked with the NVA as part of a sanctioned move by the State Department or other government agency implementing properly formulated foreign policy, that would NOT be treason. But that's not what happened.