SOLDIERS ANGER OVER DEAN BROTHER MILITARY HONORS

Drudge Report ^ | 11/26/03 | Matt Drudge

[anoldafvet]

I'm with you. Sounds like another RAT plan to denigrate the military. Take a special ceremony applicable only to military, apply it to non-military, and somehow it's not so special anymore. This smells as bad as the RAT contributor who got himself buried in Arlington.

[ken5050]

I believe that the "thousands" of remains refers to bone fragments...which may in fact come from less than a hundred MIA...assume a plane crashed, know to have three souls on board...the crash, animal predation, decomposition, might yield several hundred bones and fragments scattered over the search area...the military attempts to use DNA testing to identify every fragment..they just don't divide them up...

[dwilli]

There's somethings about Dean's brother we don't know. He had to be on the government payroll in some capacity at the time of death.

[adam_az]

With full military honors, no less!

At a time they can't find buglers to play at funerals of US servicement dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[sonsofliberty2000]

Unbelievable. If he served that is one thing. He did not and does not deserve something we do only for those who served. That is part of their reward for their duty and sacrifice. This will only lessen the specialness of the ceremony.

Patriot Paradox

[Cicero]

Dean isn't in a position to order this ceremony himself. He has no official status. So, the question once again is, who gave the orders?

It is indeed a travesty. As an American citizen, it's reasonable that his body should be brought home. But ordinarily if one of your relatives dies overseas and is not there on some official business, it's your responsibility to pay to bring him back. The embassy might help expedite the process, but the government wouldn't pay for it.

Since the brother was over there to express solidary with the North Vietnamese, I fail to see why the government should pay to bring him back at all, still less with military honors. Sure, you would bring a civilian back if he was over there on government business, but not someone who went over there as a war protestor. As I understand it, Dean has plenty of money and is perfectly capable of paying the tab if he wants his brother buried at home.

[dead]

If his brother was CIA, it's time to let the cat out of the bag. Even Dean claims he doesn't know if that's the fact.

I think his brother was just a hippy photojournalist, looking for some atrocities to smear the American soldiers with. I could be wrong, but that's how it looks to me.

I think this special treatment he is getting now is only because his brother is a big time politician. And that's really scummy to the ordinary soldiers who died for both Dean and his hippy brother. And me.

[adam_az]

Doesn't sound like a CIA agent to me, more like an SDS type:

By DAVE HART, The Chapel Hill News

CHAPEL HILL -- In 1968, Charlie Dean, one of four brothers of a prominent New England family, supported Richard Nixon in his campaign against Hubert Humphrey because, a colleague said, he believed Nixon's campaign pledge to end the war in Vietnam.

When Nixon failed to live up to that promise immediately, Dean bolted. He was a freshm an at UNC-Chapel Hill that year, and, as the conflict in Vietnam ground on, Dean threw himself into the antiwar movement.

By the 1972 presidential campaign, he had become a fierce devotee of the Democratic candidate, George McGovern. He served as chairman of the local student McGovern campaign, where he led, by all accounts, an energetic and effective effort.

"Charlie was very much against the war, and when Nixon didn't end it, Charlie felt terribly betrayed," said Karen Gray, who served as the financial coordinator of the local McGovern campaign. " Orange County was the only county in the state that went for McGovern, and I think Charlie Dean had a lot to do with that."

More than 30 years after Charlie Dean worked in support of a Democrat running for president with an antiwar message, his older brother, Howard Dean, is himself a Democrat running for president with an antiwar message.

That Charlie Dean met a mysterious, tragic end halfway around the globe just two years after he led the local McGovern campaign only heightens the juxtaposition. His loss was what Newsweek's Howard Fineman called "the defining crisis" of Howard Dean's life, a blow that may have played a role in nudging Howard toward public service in the first place.

"Charlie's death focused his older brother and gave him a sense of mission that he carries with him to this day," Fineman wrote in a July profile.

Passion for politics

Charlie Dean arrived in Chapel Hill as a freshman in 1968. Gerry Cohen, a Raleigh lawyer who lived in Hinton James dormitory with Dean in 1969 and 1970, said that when the voting age was lowered to 18 in 1971, Dean became deeply engaged in electoral politics. When McGovern emerged as the Democratic candidate in 1972, Dean moved to the forefront of the local campaign effort.

"He had an enormous amount of energy," said Cohen, who credited Dean's Orange County voter registration drives for helping elect Cohen to the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen in 1973. Cohen now is head of bill drafting in the N.C. General Assembly.

Dean was the only paid staffer in the McGovern organization, Gray said. He promptly signed every paycheck back over to the campaign.

In the election of 1972, McGovern fell to Nixon in a landslide, losing 49 of the 50 states. Charlie Dean, Gray said, was devastated. "He was very upset, very disillusioned," she said. "He had applied to go into the Peace Corps and do work with them in Nepal, but he'd deferred his entry to work on the campaign.

"When it was over and he was so disillusioned, he decided to travel for a while before he went to Nepal. I knew it was cold there, so before he left I made him a hand-embroidered scarf to help keep him warm."

She and most of Dean's other friends lost track of him after he left the United States. Evidently he took a freighter to Japan, made his way to Australia and eventually wound up in Laos. In fall 1974, he and an Australian friend were on a boat going up the Mekong River when apparently they were seized by members of the Pathet Lao, the communist government of Laos.

"I completely lost track of him after he left until the summer of 1974," Cohen said. "I was working with the Orange County Board of Elections when this application for an absentee ballot arrived from Charlie. It asked that a ballot be sent to Kat mandu, Nepal. So apparently he was on his way to Nepal when he was captured. We sent the ballot, and I wrote a letter and sent it, too. I never received a reply, and the ballot never came back."

A friend told Cohen that Charlie Dean was missing, and Cohen wrote to the State Department for information. Early in 1975, he said, he received a reply: According to the best information, Charlie Dean and his companion had been executed by the Pathet Lao in late 1974.

[Archangelsk]

Pressure from who/where?

Good question since the WH, Senate and House are held by the Rs, where is the pressure coming from? I suspect that there is more to this story than seem at first glance. As soon as the emotional, sensitive types calm down maybe we'll get it.

[Polybius]

His brother was not a soldier. He does not deserve military honors.

He may have been a hippie trekker.

He may have been someone that, if we knew what he actually was, "they" would have to kill us. ;-)

[adam_az]

I fail to see why the government should pay to bring him back at all

The government isn't paying - WE ARE PAYING. It's our money. Too bad the Republicans seem to forget that these days, and defecit spend our money that we haven't even earned yet.

[Arkinsaw]

p.s. if he actually was on duty and killed by the enemy then he earned the honor. We should be quite careful to make sure that we know for sure that he did not earn the honor before opening our mouths. It would be quite sad to find out that he did actually die in service undercover and then got called names like "putz" on FR for it.

I don't care if he is Howard Dean's brother or Al Sharpton's grandpa. If he died in service he deserves the honor and until I know for sure, I'll give the DOD the benefit of the doubt.

[dead]

We should be quite careful to make sure that we know for sure that he did not earn the honor before opening our mouths.

You’ve got that exactly backwards.

If they want to use our money to do this, they have an obligation to let us know why he deserves this treatment.

[adam_az]

read this and tell me what you think

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1029372/posts?page=28#28

[Oldeconomybuyer]

First, wait for all the facts to come in.

Second, this isn't the first time a high profile matter received special treatment from a government agency or the military.

Third, I'm much more concerned over Deans tax increase proposal and his whining over the War on Terrorism than wanting to pull the scab off Vietnam again.

Fourth, there are no winners here. Dean lost his communist brother. Some in the military may be humiliated and other veterans families may have to wait for word on their loved ones.

Fifth, Dean is losing on his own lack of merit. Don't bash the pinhead and give him and his parasitic followers an issue that the media would love to run with.

[adam_az]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1029372/posts?page=28#28

el fatto chanceo.

[metalboy]

Is this true? His brother never served? I can`t believe it! Nooooo way! If this is true, it`s just one more example of how Demon-rats are able to abuse our military without any consequences. Let us not forget Larry Lawrence who was buried in Arlington cemetary! Time served in military? Zero. Money paid to Bubba? Lots. And what happened? When it was found out, he was quietly dug up and it was never mentioned again!

[Cicero]

"The government isn't paying, we are paying."

I understand that.

[Arkinsaw]

I could be wrong, but that's how it looks to me.

It doesn't look like he was to me either. But I don't know for sure and I would not want to risk it unless I did. But I can't see the DOD favoring Dean and so it makes me wonder why they draped the coffin. Usually the military is a stickler for that sort of protocol. Maybe it was a low-level mistake. In any event, I don't know so I will refrain from calling him a "putz" at least.

[Flux Capacitor]

----Smacking Dean upside the head on the issues is fine. Family, however, should be off limits even under these trying circumstances.----

This is every bit within limits. I, for one, consider it an issue when a man who didn't serve -- a man who just happens to have been the brother of the front-runner for the Democrat nomination for President of the United States -- is buried with all the ceremony and recognition ordinarily afforded those who gave their all for their country.

I know that I, a civilian, could never rest in peace if I were buried with honors I didn't earn. Regardless of how the Brother Dean might have felt about it, Howard has no business and no right to cheapen those honors, that most everyone else paid for in blood.

-Dan