"There are few sins less forgivable in American politics than claiming unearned military valor. Richard Blumenthal...may consider his false claim to have served in Vietnam to be "a few misplaced words,"...but, in fact, this deception seems to have been part of a larger pattern of misleading voters.
"There is nothing wrong with having received multiple military deferments during the Vietnam period, as Mr. Blumenthal did, and neither those deferments nor the details of his service in the reserve have any bearing on his fitness to become a senator.
"But his embellishments do. Mr. Blumenthal, who has an exemplary record as attorney general, has only a few months to demonstrate that they are an aberration and not a disqualifying character trait."
Chicken Hawk Chris Shays has actually dared to criticize Dick Blumenthal about his comments on his military service. Incredibly, New York Times reporter David Halbfinger has written an article titled "Ex-Congressman Saw Blumenthal's Claims Evolve" in which Shays suggests that he:
"watched with worry as Mr. Blumenthal gradually embellished his military record over the years."
It's incredible that Halbfinger uses Shays as a source regarding Mr. Blumenthal's military record in light of the fact that Mr. Shays has been lying about his military record for many years. Shays has repeatedly over many years responded when questioned as to why he didn't serve in the military that, "I didn't enter the military; I served in the Peace Corps." Though he doesn't actually insert the word "instead", he certainly implies it. The problem is that Peace Corps service was never considered as the basis for granting a deferment or an exemption by the Selective Service Administration.
I, too, served in the Peace Corps from 1978 to 1981, and I recall Peace Corps officials telling us that the Peace Corps did not exempt anyone from the draft, and that, indeed, PCV's were regularly pulled out of their overseas sites and inducted into the military. And when Mr. Shays repeatedly used the excuse of Peace Corps service, I wrote to the Selective Service Administration directly and received back written confirmation that Peace Corps service was not considered the basis for a deferment or exemption from the draft.
Shays received the extremely low lottery number of 5 in December 1969, which should have insured that he was drafted. But he wasn't. And as recently as two months ago, Shays told Nick Keppler, editor of Fairfield County Weekly, that he wasn't drafted in 1969 because he was serving in the Peace Corps in Fiji.
Chris Shays then filed for and was granted conscientious objector status in 1972, but wasn't required to perform any alternative service whatsoever, an unusual out for a CO. But again, no one in the Connecticut press corps has ever asked Mr. Shays to explain how he got out of military service, or about the morality of claiming CO status, but supporting enthusiastically the war in Iraq.
So it's absolutely hypocritical and shocking that Chris Shays would dare to comment on Mr. Blumenthal's military record when Blumenthal actually did serve in the military and Shays first avoided the draft in some way that he won't disclose, and then claimed that he was morally against all wars as a CO. And it's incredible that anyone in the media would take Chris Shays seriously about anyone's military service.
Perhaps it's finally time that the media started to ask Chris Shays some pointed questions about his own draft record, and stopped accepting his lies.
Bush is going to give a speech comparing Iraq to Vietnam. This diary is a reference for the press, to highlight the past mentions of this analogy by the Bush Administration, all mocking the same comparison. The examples below from a Google search of 'Iraq + Vietnam' on whitehouse.gov:
1) Q Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, April is turning into the deadliest month in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad, and some people are comparing Iraq to Vietnam and talking about a quagmire. Polls show that support for your policy is declining and that fewer than half Americans now support it. What does that say to you and how do you answer the Vietnam comparison?
THE PRESIDENT: I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops, and sends the wrong message to the enemy. Look, this is hard work. It's hard to advance freedom in a country that has been strangled by tyranny. And, yet, we must stay the course, because the end result is in our nation's interest.
If ever proof was needed that the president's "surge" plan in Iraq is actually a ruse, a guise for something else, it came yesterday.
Five American soldiers were killed when a group of Iraqis dressed in American army uniforms penetrated a secure government compound in the Baghdad suburb of Karbala. The insurgents drove an armored GMC SUV - standard US government issue - through multiple checkpoints to enter the compound, one of the most protected areas in Iraq.
Once inside, they drove directly to a building housing security officials planning counter-insurgency activity. They opened fire on a meeting in progress, targeting only Americans. After 20 minutes of exchanged gunfire, the attackers got back in their SUV and drove away. Iraqi officials noted that the attack was striking for the sophistication of its planning and execution.
Amid all the carnage and chaos that is Iraq, why is this attack noteworthy? And what does it say about the plausibility of the president's "surge" strategy?
The attack is noteworthy because it mirrors some of the reasons for failure of the American war in Vietnam. Simply put, the US could never get the Army of South Vietnam (ARVN) to carry the burden in fighting the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army. That is why in 1965 Lyndon Johnson decided that if the war was to be won, he would have to pour in hundreds of thousands of US troops to do the fighting themselves.
The reasons for ARVN's refusal to fight were straightforward. They perfectly presage the problems with the Iraqi army today.
First, many of the soldiers in the South Vietnamese Army were themselves either indifferent or even hostile to the U.S. presence in Vietnam. They saw the damage the war inflicted on their country and wanted the U.S. to leave. They took every opportunity - sometimes passive, sometimes active - to sabotage their government's cooperation with the Americans.
Second, because promotion in the army was based not on experience or leadership but rather on loyalty, corruption, or family connections, the quality of the officer corps was exceptionally poor. Soldiers refused to put their lives at risk under the direction of inexperienced, cowardly, or corrupt officers. They routinely failed to show up for important missions and showed no initiative in the field, holding back under fire to avoid injury or death.
Finally and most importantly, the whole of the army (and the civilian bureaucracy as well) had been infiltrated by the Viet Cong. As a consequence, army maneuvers were routinely disclosed to the enemy before they ever began. This made it a near certainty that aggressive operations would be ambushed, that fighting would be fierce, and that losses would be high.
The U.S. military understood this infiltration well.
Thus, whenever possible, to preserve its own element of surprise and protect its own forces, the U.S kept ARVN out of the loop of planning for field operations.
All of these conditions apply literally unchanged in Iraq. When over 80% of the population want the Americans to leave, when more than 60% believe it is acceptable to target Americans, it is quite literally impossible to constitute an army that does not contain much of the same poisoned sentiment.
The "surge" plan has always been a fraud. If, as president Bush has claimed, loss in Iraq would be "catastrophic for the U.S." does 21,000 troops begin to rise to the level of the purported threat? Before the war began, General Eric Shinseki told Donald Rumsfeld it would take 500,000 to 600,000 troops to secure the country. There are now 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and the bedlam vastly exceeds what it was going in. Can raising the troop level to 161,000 now possibly make any difference? It is patently a sham.
Whatever the "surge" is really for - whether it's to support an attack on Iran or just a cynical ploy to not "lose" the war on Bush's watch - it is clearly not about winning. We need to end the charade and demand an immediate reversal before the escalation becomes worse
There's a powerful piece by Keith Burris, Editorial Page Editor, in today's Journal-Inquirer that will blow your socks off.
It's far and away the best reasoned and most damning indictment of Joe Lieberman and his incestuous relationship with the morally bankrupt Bush regime that has appeared in the so-called Mainstream Media to date. And it's a persuasive endorsement of Ned Lamont.
After sketching in the history of the Vietnam era, itself a valuable contribution to the dialogue, Burris turns his attention to what's happening today. (Emphasis added)
So once again there is a peace movement in America, albeit a quieter one. The war in Iraq has brought a lot of us home - back to the presumption that you think before you bomb; back to rational skepticism about those who have power; back to the doctrine of accountability.
In a constitutional democracy, the people, under law, are sovereign, and the people can take the government back. When the government goes wrong, we need not sink into cynicism and despair. We can change the government. We can change its direction and change the personnel. This is not a goofy "leftist" idea, but a profoundly conservative and American one. It derives from the Federalist Papers, Jefferson, and Paine.
There is an alternative to helplessness or nihilism. It is possible to take action.
And, interestingly, in this peace movement, as during the Vietnam peace movement, some of the most articulate and passionate voices are essentially conservative ones - calling America back to its principles.
We begin with a simple core principle: That our government must remain a democracy during war. And there is a corollary: The president is not a king during war.
Even if the current fight against terrorists, and against the new enemies we have made, is a war, and not a matter of policing, intelligence, and diplomacy, our country must remain a Republic. Dissent must not only be allowed but treasured. Wiretaps require warrants. Intelligence analysts must not be pressured to "cook" their work to fit an ideology, or a whim.
Last Friday, some of us at the JI spent 90 minutes with Ned Lamont, a former Democratic selectman from Greenwich, who is challenging Joe Lieberman for the Democratic Senate nomination this year. Lamont is for real. Believe it. But he's not running against Lieberman so much as he is running for the Republic - for the proposition that we retain our citizenship and adhere to the Bill of Rights, even if bad guys attack us.
Of course, Joe Lieberman is to Connecticut politics what Toyota is to the auto industry. He has rolled along, flawless, unperturbed, and inviolate for so long that it is hard to imagine that he could ever really be challenged.
And yet something is happening.
There is a rumbling out there, and Lieberman himself hears it. Indeed, he has become uncharacteristically petulant and defensive.
And I think the reason for the rumble and the senator's ire is the same: Lieberman cannot make sense of his own defense of U.S. government policy in Iraq.
Read it. Clip it. Print it out. Photocopy it. Email it. Share it with your friends and neighbors.
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