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Senator Who Lied About His Own Military Record Challenges McCain (Comrade Tom Harkin)
Holy Coast ^ | May 22, 2008 | Rick Moore

Posted on 05/22/2008 4:46:28 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa is an embarrassment, both to the Senate and to the citizens of his home state of Iowa. It is Harkin that you can see cheering on Howard Dean has he makes his famous "I Have a Scream" speech in 2004, and Harkin is the guy shouting "DO IT FOR PAUL!" as he turned a memorial service into a crass political rally when he exhorted the thousands of mourners to elect Democrats because that's what the recently dead Senator Paul Wellstone supposed would have wanted.

Harkin is also known for lies about his own military experience, and now he's making the ridiculous claim that John McCain is unfit to serve as president because he comes from a military family: Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin is catching grief for suggesting John McCain’s family history of military service makes the presumptive Republican presidential nominee unfit to be commander-in-chief.

Harkin, who has a history of embellishing his own military record, told Iowa reporters last week that McCain’s background as the son and grandson of Navy admirals creates a “dangerous” situation because he can only view the world through the prism of the military.

“He has a hard time thinking beyond that,” Harkin said, according to The Des Moines Register. “I think he’s trapped in that. Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous.”

The paper also quotes Iowa’s junior senator telling reporters, “It’s one thing to have been drafted and served, but another thing when you come from generations of military people and that’s just how you’re steeped, how you’ve learned, how you’ve grown up.”

And what about Harkin's own military service? Harkin, who noted in the conference call with reporters that difficulty recruiting has led to more high school dropouts and felons entering the military, has a long military record of his own.

He served in the Navy on active duty for five years, and remained in the reserves until 1989. But while running for president in 2004, he was forced to admit that he never did combat air patrols or photo reconnaissance in Vietnam as he had claimed.

According to The Wall Street Journal, which acquired his military records at the time of his presidential bid, Harkin ferried damaged aircraft between repair stations in Japan and the Philippines, and ran test flights of the planes after they were fixed.

These comments by Harkin simply underscore the reality that most Democrats have little respect for the military and for those who make the armed services their career.


TOPICS: Iowa; Campaign News; Issues; Parties
KEYWORDS: 2008; democrats; election; elections; ia2008; mccain; military; tomharkin; vietnam
JFK, Truman, FDR and LBJ wouldn't recognize today's commu...er, democratic party. Tom is lucky "Stolen Valor" wasn't the law yet when he lied about his service!
1 posted on 05/22/2008 4:46:29 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I think FDR would.


2 posted on 05/22/2008 4:54:20 PM PDT by rocksblues (Folks we are in trouble, "Mark Levin" 03/26/08)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
The only thing lower than a dimocrat is one that lied about his Military service!

Scumbag extrordinaire!

3 posted on 05/22/2008 4:56:54 PM PDT by PROCON (Hillary '08)
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To: rocksblues
I think FDR would.

The fact of the matter is, FDR's administration was shot through with Communists at practically every level, up to and including the useful idiot/crypto-comrade Henry Wallace, who was FDR's Vice President until the '44 election, fortunately FDR was wise enough to get rid of Wallace and put Truman on the ticket, otherwise America might well have had a CBAON as Chief Executive from '45 on ('Commissar-By-Any-Other-Name').

When Truman became President, he had the problem of dealing with thousands of Communist sympathizers throughout the government, and as we now know from the released archives of the former Soviet Union and East Germany, Senator Joe McCarthy was RIGHT about Communist infiltration into our government.

64 years later after George W. Bush was sworn in as President, a similar problem existed and for the most part remains unsolved to this very day, the problem of entrenched Clintonistas (might as well call 'em Communists for all the similarities that exist) throughout the federal bureaucracy, all working to thwart, delay and sabotage the directives of the Executive Branch, and our illustrious President hasn't done diddly about it. He kept that idiot Norman Mineta at Transportation, that other idiot George Tenant at CIA, and "the hits just kept on coming" because too many of the political hacks and appointees of the Clinton/Gore years were not only left in place, they were allowed to further advance their own careers, gain additional power and influence, and that is why the final years of this Administration are ending with impotence and nothing but whimpers and whining.
4 posted on 05/22/2008 5:03:43 PM PDT by mkjessup
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To: mkjessup

Can’t disagree with that statement.
Well said.
Sadly.


5 posted on 05/22/2008 5:17:19 PM PDT by acapesket
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To: mkjessup

Ann Coulter’s book talks at length about the commies in Roosevelt’s administration, and how even Truman, who is thought to be a hard liner, was quite friendly with Stalin.

Anyway, Harkin got elected in part because he said you can’t question my patriotism, I fought in Vietnam, blah blah blah. Yet he was always known to be soft on communism, and a far lefty. He managed to get elected to the Senate in the Reagan landslide year in part because the incumbent senator was involved in some kind of scandal. Just maybe if the GOP had dumped him and gone with a better candidate, Harkin would never have disgraced the Senate.


6 posted on 05/22/2008 6:18:57 PM PDT by TNCMAXQ
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
McCain is steeped in military tradition.

Harkin is steeped in Iowa pig crap.

7 posted on 05/22/2008 9:35:34 PM PDT by TigersEye (Berlin 1936. Olympics for murdering regimes. Beijing 2008.)
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