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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! May 18, 2008 Hark, another phony soldier speaks...By GreyhawkLet's set the wayback machine for August, 2004. In the heat of a Presidential campaign pitting a Vietnam combat veteran against a former Air National Guard fighter pilot, Democrats used one of their other veterans to launch an attack on the Vice President... Harkin also lashed out at Vice president Dick Cheney who last week accused Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry of lacking the basic understanding of the war on terrorism to protect Americans.That CNN story has disappeared off the internet, but Fox coverage is still available: DES MOINES, Iowa — Sen. Tom Harkin pushed the name-calling in the presidential race to a new level, calling Vice President Dick Cheney a coward for not serving in Vietnam and cowardly for his criticism of John Kerry.But Donald Sensing (first link above) raised some questions on Harkin's own service record. And Glenn Reynolds found the story compelling enough to spend part of his lunch hour fact checking... In a book called Stolen Valor : How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History, I found this passage, which is considerably worse for Harkin than Sensing's short summary. I'm reproducing it as an image for the benefit of doubters.As professor Reynolds noted... Two things bother me about this. One is that Harkin seems a rather odd choice for the Democrats as an attack dog. As Sensing notes, what are they thinking? Yeah, funny, that. And it often bothers me, too. But anyhow, that was 2004, and this year the Republicans are nominating a Vietnam combat veteran. In fact, he's a Navy fighter pilot (though unlike Harkin he flew combat missions). Since neither of his potential opponents has any military experience (though Hillary Clinton once fabricated a story about being under fire in a combat zone and has that in common with Harkin) guess which veteran Democrats called on to insult him... Republican presidential candidate John McCain's family background as the son and grandson of admirals has given him a worldview shaped by the military, "and he has a hard time thinking beyond that," Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., said Friday.I expect politicians to lie a little bit, but liars of Harkin's caliber are no better than the Jonathan Apontes of the world. My December, 2003 look at Stolen Valor here. It really is a great book - get yours here Posted by Greyhawk / May 18, 2008 12:30 AM | Permalink 18 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
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substitute "military experience" with "service to the nation" or "service to the constitution" and you'll see why the democrats don't understand the military.
I wondered what the argument would be when "chickenhawk" became obsolete.
I wish John McCain, true hero and real Navy attack pilot with a combat record, would just go up to Tom Harkin and cold-cock him. I don't know if he can even do this anymore since he can't raise his arms much more than shoulder high due to the torture and beatings he got in N. Vietnam.
Of course, the press would go bonkers about McCain and his temper but I think the rest of us would be cheering loudly. It would worthy of a million plus hits (no pun intended) on YouTube.
John
'Hawk and all,
I can second (or third or fourth) the recommendation for Stolen Valor. Burkett and Whitley have written the indispensable guide to these whiners and no-hopers. And the narrative-blinded mediots fall for them again and again.
Harkin is not the only phony in Congress by any means. Stolen Valor eviscerates a Republican fraud artist named Wes Cooley, who's now retired due to ill health (voters got sick of his lies). In the 2006 election, Massachusetts Congressman Bill Delahunt was exposed as a phony of extremely long standing.
He has claimed veteran status for his entire long and undistinguished career), but when his '06 opponent called him on his absence from the National Archives' and Records Administration's military records, Delahunt first used all the usual wannabee dodges ("who are you to question me" and "my records burned in a fire!"). Finally he came to the point where he now stands where he says he was in the Coast Guard Auxiliary for a week but they "gave him an honorale discharge" because he got seasick.
I don't know diddly about the Coast Guard -- I'm an Army guy -- but I've been on a farm and know what bull smells like.
The greatest of all Dem phonies, ever, was probably LBJ. He managed to award himself, through Macarthur's offices, the Silver Star for "valiant action" in a "combat mission" that never came within 200 miles of enemy territory or enemy aircraft. In many ways, notably character, JF Kerry was more like Johnson than his hero, Kennedy.
This particular form of resume inflation really irks me. I've buried friends who died with their face to the foe, and no valor award, because they were just doing their duty. If Harkin wants to say he's a combat pilot let's strap him in the back seat of an F/A-18F for a couple of Gulf cruises. And if Delahunt wants to claim vet status, he'd make a great sandbag on the floor of a HMMWV in IED Alley.
I note I didn't mention Delahunt's party, except indirectly -- the entire Mass. congressional delegation is Democrat.
So what were Harkin's lies? What's so ignoble about flying reconnaissance missions?
There's nothing ignoble about flying recon missions, it takes courage and skills beyond what the average person will ever know.
Harkin lies included claiming he flew recon missions in a combat zone. Read again, carefully.
Skyler and Greyhawk:
You give Harkin too much credit. About the only thing that's truthful about Harkin's military record is that he was a pilot.
Harkin did not fly recon missions. He was a ferry pilot stationed in Japan, flying aircraft to be repaired from Atsugi, Japan to the Phillipines.
Very true: Harkin did not fly recon missions. He was a ferry pilot stationed in Japan, flying aircraft to be repaired from Atsugi, Japan to the Phillipines. Senator Goldwater called him on this lie.
I sent this to the DesMoines Register newspaper which carried the story. Comment at desmoinesregister.com
You forgot this bit of history. Sen. Tom Harkin is correct in saying he didn’t serve in Vietnam, but let us not forget that he had once claimed when he was considering a run for the Presidency and previously when running for the senate that he was a fighter pilot who had fought in the skies over North Vietnam. I can’t believe he was allowed to remain a senator after that bit of lying, but now to attack Senator McCain. Has he no shame? If I was him I would count my blessings and keep my mouth shut.
Your but is well taken, but -- not to nitpick, well, yes, to nitpick -- McCain was an attack pilot, not a fighter pilot.
Yet the Bantam Bomber was nimble enough to simulate MiG-17's in dissimilar air combat training at TOPGUN. Whether one is an attacker or a fighter often depends merely on what day it is.
Although the A-4 was never intended as a fighter, it did achieve an air-to-air "kill"-- during a sortie against an airfield in North vietnam on May 1, 1967, LCdr Theodore Swartz of VA-76 in 148609 shot down a MiG-17 with air-to-ground rockets. This was the only air-to-air kill by an A-4 during the Vietnam conflict.
I'm not surprised the Dems use Harkin for things like this. He's practically all they have that can comment at all. And they know most of the media will let him get away with it and the vast majority who hear his comments will know nothing to contradict him.
When you aren't capable of shame you can do anything.
What should really bother you is the fact that Harkin continued on in the Reserve System long enough to qualify for a Pension. He is a lying self serving prick of the worst order!
Sen. Harkin just proves Democrats are all image and no substance. Being a ferry pilot is not the same as a fighter or attack pilot. Harkin never went downtown in Route Pack VI or VIa dealing with SAMs, MiGs, or Soviet/PRC gunners on merchant ships that were off-limits.
The thing that has probably skewed McCain's worldview the worst would probably be that he's been in the Congress since 1982.
Our current president was a non-combat fighter (interceptor, actually) pilot who did not shine his resume'.
And who gets the crap?
Let's play Name That Party.
As an Iowan I can't figure out how this lying POS keeps getting re-elected, except that in 2002 he became a poser and re-invented himself as a moderate for the campaign. The lib rag DM Register abetted his misrepresentation. After the election he came out with his left-wing gun blazing.
Harkin is typical of the FAR LEFT who supports Obama
Harkin should be ashamed of himself!!! How did this idiot ever become a senator? Like the unpatriotic cowards in Berkely, CA ... Harkin demeans the Americans who put their lives on the line in order to provide ingrates like Harkin with the precious unique freedoms this country has to offer its citizens.
Harkin is typical of the FAR LEFT who supports Obama
Harkin should be ashamed of himself!!! How did this idiot ever become a senator? Like the unpatriotic cowards in Berkely, CA ... Harkin demeans the Americans who put their lives on the line in order to provide ingrates like Harkin with the precious unique freedoms this country has to offer its citizens.