Inquiring minds want to know.
Posted on 09/20/2004 5:27:26 AM PDT by DJ Taylor
Dan Rather is Not an Ex-Marine
Dan Rather cannot call himself an Ex-Marine, and he must stop referring to himself as such. To be a Marine, a recruit must graduate from boot camp, and Dan Rather did not; he was medically discharged before graduation. According to him, he was medically discharged from the Marine Corps due to a medical disability caused by a childhood case of rheumatic fever.
I went through Marine Corps boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD) San Diego about the same time Dan Rather was there, and here’s my take on his brief tour in the Marine Corps. First of all, I find it highly unlikely that the Marine Corps would allow Dan Rather to enlist in spite of a known disability. At the time, a childhood case of rheumatic fever would have made him ineligible for enlistment in the Marines. So, if Dan Rather did not simply medically "wash out" through no fault of his own, as he says, then how did he manage to enlist and then leave the Marine Corps in such a short period of time (three months)? I cannot say with certainty that I know how he did it, but here is how I saw others do it at the time:
I remember well that my recruit-training platoon consisted of about 50 recruits. About 20 of us were high school graduates, about 20 were high school dropouts and about 10 were college boys in their third or fourth year of college. However, come graduation day, none of the college boys were there for graduation; they had all dropped out along the way, as did Dan Rather. I knew at the time how they did it, but I had to think about it for a while to figure out why.
In the Marine Corps of the 1950s, it was not easy to simply quit once you entered recruit training. A recruit quickly learned that it was much easier to go through to graduation than it was to attempt to quit. For a recruit to attempt to quit, he revealed that he lacked motivation. If a recruit required additional motivation, he was removed from his platoon and sent to the Special Training Platoon (STP). In STP, a recruit’s life was a living hell until he could show that he was properly motivated, and then he was sent back to a training platoon. All that attempting to quit would gain a recruit was an additional few weeks in STP before he could return to a training platoon, complete training, graduate and leave.
A medical discharge from recruit training due to a preexisting disability was seldom attained, simply because the enlistment physical was so thorough that very few recruits were admitted with existing physical defects. A medical staff who had seen it all could easily identify recruits who attempted to fake injuries or infirmaries, and these recruits quickly found themselves doing time in STP. So how did Dan Rather receive a medical discharge from the United States Marine Corps in May 1954? In all likelihood, he did it the same way the college boys did in my recruit-training platoon.
There was one so-called medical condition that the Marine Corps would not put up with, or even question, and that was bed-wetting. If a recruit wet the bed, you never saw him again. He was gone, out, no STP, no second chance, no counseling, he was quickly medically discharged and sent home, as was Dan Rather.
The reason for these rapid medical discharges for bed-wetting was simple. If a man truly could not control his bladder, he did not belong in the Marine Corps for obvious reasons. If a man wanted out of the Marine Corps so badly that he would wet the bed in order to leave, then no Marine wanted to breath the same air that such a man breathed. He was removed from the Marine Corps and good riddance.
I believe Dan Rather received one of these bed-wetter medical discharges just as the college boys did in my recruit-training platoon, and he probably did it for the same reasons. The college boys in my platoon had avoided the draft throughout the Korean War by claiming student deferments, as did Dan Rather. Now, they were soon to graduate from college and would no longer be eligible for a student deferment. However, if they were to obtain a medical discharge from the Marine Corps, they would no longer be eligible for draft into the U.S. Army. So, they dropped out of college for a semester, enlisted in the Marine Corps, wet the bed, received a medical discharge and no longer had to worry about the draft after graduation from college.
If you ask why these bed-wetters didn’t simply allow themselves to be drafted and then receive a medical discharge for bed-wetting, it just didn’t work that way. You must remember that, at that time, the Marine Corps was all volunteer and it was into the U.S. Army that a draftee was inducted. If a draftee wet the bed in Army basic training, he was simply issued rubber sheets and he continued on with basic training. There was always a job in a unit somewhere in the vast U.S. Army that even a bed-wetter could do, but he Marine Corps was too small and too proud to even consider trying to place such a person in any Marine unit.
In my over 30 years of military service, I found only one type of man more scurrilous than a bed-wetter, and that was a man who would feign wounds in combat in order to receive Purple Hearts. Yes, any man who will use fake awards to abandon his comrades in combat is even more shameless than a man who will wet the bed in order to avoid service to his country in time of war. Dan Rather is in his true element defending John F. Kerry’s traitorous conduct while amateurishly and feloniously forging official U.S. Government documents in an attempt to damage the reputation of the President of the United States during an election year.
I believe that Dan Rather is a bed-wetter, and I will continue to believe that until he releases his medical records and proves me wrong. If he has nothing to hide, he will fill out and sign Standard Form 180 and release his military records to the news media just as he has demanded of our Commander in Chief, President George W. Bush.
Donald J. Taylor Semper Fi
Rather is a fake. He's tried to pass himself off as ex-military for years.
Thank you for your service to our country.
Well Dan?
I love it!
Fact is, there are a LOT of VERY serious issues that should be pushed HARD about the documets.
1. The widow and son were IGNORED
2. Document experts were IGNORED
3. Hodges was MISLED
4. The old secretary was NOT INTERVIEWED until afterward
5. The opinions of the experts were MISREPRESENTED
6. The swift boat veterans were MALIGNED
7. George Bush's roomate DURING HIS GUARD YEARS, who AGREED TO SPEAK TO THEM WAS TURNED DOWN BECAUSE HE WAS TOO "PRO BUSH"...
And the list goes on. Fact is, this was a HIT PIECE ON BUSH. And just because dnCBS owns up to fake documents does NOT CLEAR THEIR PROPAGANDA / DNC REPORTING!!
If the documents were the ONLY ISSUE in this, without all of the other plainly propaganda driven results, it wouldn't be such an issue.
THE DOCUMENTS ARE JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG! THE ICEBERG IS THE MANIPULATION AND DECEPTION OF THE PUBLIC!!
He'd better not have wizzed in one of the racks that *I* had to sleep in when I was there!
Inquiring minds want to know.
ping
They both should be in jail. Rather now, Kerry long since.
!! Wow. BTTT. I found the story of "washing out" because of rheumatic fever ridiculous. Didn't Rather join one of the services after college?
By "washing out"--Maybe Dan was talking about laundering his sheets daily?
Interesting...Make sure you send this to the usual....Rush, Drudge, Hannity....
Thanks for your service, and for the hearty laugh. Semper Fi!
However, he is an ex-Texan!
Did you see Ollie North Last night on War Stories?
He showed an assembly of Marines in Iraq, 11 of whom were receiving Purple Hearts, and he took SPECIAL CARE to say that even though many could have gone home, they ALL chose to stay with their buddies. These wounds were not of the band-aid type. Good for Ollie!
I'm PING'ing a few dignitaries to this thread, for analysis and comment. Should this be considered collateral damage for Rathergate?
CBS = Clammy Bed Syndrome
I find FreeRepublic very refreshing to the American public.
I hope more and more of the TV watching people will discover the truth lying herein on this forum!
FREEREPUBLIC as a breath of fresh air, will be a guard that the MSM has to deal with in the future!
cbsnbcmsnbc and sometimes fox, have to be concerned about this explosive issue.
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