Posted on 09/16/2004 12:46:59 AM PDT by kattracks
Remember when a Harkin staffer secretly videotaped a private strategy meeting of Harkin's 2002 opponent Greg Ganske?
-PJ
During his service in the Navy, Harkin told Washington Post reporter David Broder, “One year was in Vietnam. I was flying F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaissance support missions. I did no bombing.”
But as the late Senator Barry Goldwater (R.-Arizona) was first to notice, nothing in Harkin’s military service file showed that he ever served in Vietnam.
Challenged by Goldwater, an Air Force General, to explain why he was awarded neither the Vietnam Service Medal nor the Vietnam Campaign medal (decorations given to everyone who served in the Southeast Asian theater), Harkin changed his story.
Harkin claimed that he instead had flown combat sorties over Cuba during the 1960s.
This was another Harkin lie.
Harkin actually served as a ferry pilot who flew aircraft in need of repair between the Philippines and his base in Atsugi, Japan.
Harkin at last acknowledged that he never flew air patrols in Vietnam.
He began describing himself in speeches as “a Vietnam era veteran.”
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