Posted on 01/17/2006 8:32:14 PM PST by Calpernia
Since November, the media have carried around Rep. John Murtha around on their shoulders like a conquering hero for his opposition to the war in Iraq. They’ve thrown around the words “war hero” like clowns throwing candy at a parade. Murtha was broadcast far and wide attacking Vice President Cheney for his five deferments from Vietnam, suggesting these chicken hawks don’t like any suggestions about how to fight a war.
If Murtha were a Republican accusing a Democrat like this, we know what would happen. The so-called nonpartisan, objective, “mainstream” media would either (a) totally ignore him as an irrelevant, obscure House wacko, or (b) investigate his own military record to see if he earned all the “war hero” talk. And if discrepancies were found, all hell would break loose. And if you don’t believe me, just ask John O’Neill and the Swift Boat Vets for Truth, who underwent first (a) and then (b) when they challenged John Kerry.
But Murtha is a Democrat accusing a Republican. So it fell to the Cybercast News Service, (CNSNews.com, which I founded), and reporters Marc Morano and Randy Hall to look into the Murtha military record. What they found were a lot of similarities to the military record of John Kerry.
Like Kerry, Murtha’s medals came for surface wounds that never caused his evacuation from the battlefield, and like Kerry, he attempted to get his medals by political manipulation, in Murtha’s case, through then-Rep. John Saylor. But Saylor’s office felt it was odd for Murtha to seek medals for “superficial lacerations.”
Murtha also told differing stories about when and where he was wounded in action. A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story reported in 2002 that Murtha had facial lacerations. In 1994, the Uniontown (Pa.) Herald-Standard quoted Murtha saying he was “wounded in the arm” for one medal and “my knee was banged up and my arm was banged up when a helicopter was shot down” for the other. Then, Morano and Hall uncovered a June 1, 1967 report in the Johnstown (Pa.) Tribune-Democrat quoting from a letter from Murtha to his wife describing his injuries as being "struck in the ankle" by a "shot that ricocheted off the helicopter."
Since there were so many similarities to Kerry – including the fact that author Morano was also one of the first reporters on the Swift Boat Veterans story – the left predictably threw an ugly fit. It was not long, then, for Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne to load his air-rifle for rhetorical battle. “I underestimated the viciousness of the right wing,” he began.
Even before he gets started, we know where he’s going, don’t we?. Liberals want to insist when they tout a “war hero” making their anti-liberation of Iraq talking points, it’s 100 percent beyond the pale of decency to investigate him. They want the world to know that when a “war hero” acceptable to them disagrees with President Bush, everyone must stop, shut up, and listen like an old E.F. Hutton commercial.
Dionne sounds just like his hero Bill Clinton as he proclaims to be maddened by “the unblushing hypocrisy of the right wing and the way it circulates...personal vilification to abort honest political debate.” As if that weren’t enough, there’s also this: “Moreover, the right has demonstrated that its attitude toward military service is entirely opportunistic.”
Now here is where we should all acknowledge our partisanship – I oppose the Clintons and the Kerrys, and Dionne favors them. But can Dionne honestly state that the left wing (and “objective” smearers like CBS) have not resorted to “personal vilification” on the military record of George W. Bush? Can he honestly ignore that the left has vilified the World War II military service of Bob Dole in 1996 (Robert Ellis in The Nation) and George H. W. Bush in 1992 (Sidney Blumenthal in the New Republic)?
More importantly, how dare anyone on the left accuse any conservative of attitudinal opportunism where military service is involved. Military service didn’t matter a bit to them when Bill Clinton was running, but was vitally important when Kerry was their man in 2004. They felt George W. Bush’s National Guard record was a scandal in 2000, but also didn’t want the media poring over Al Gore’s Vietnam service as a journalist. Four years later, there they were again, poring over Bush’s Vietnam-era service record.
It’s fair to state that on some investigative stories, only conservatives want the tough, thorough report, and on others, only liberals are really jazzed about it. But what about the public interest? A media revering the words “objective,” “nonpartisan,” and “mainstream” would investigate both Republicans and Democrats when politicians start dragging out their war records.
Murtha’s Mangled Medal Stories
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1560074/posts
"Murtha also told differing stories about when and where he was wounded in action. A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story reported in 2002 that Murtha had facial lacerations. In 1994, the Uniontown (Pa.) Herald-Standard quoted Murtha saying he was “wounded in the arm” for one medal and “my knee was banged up and my arm was banged up when a helicopter was shot down” for the other. Then, Morano and Hall uncovered a June 1, 1967 report in the Johnstown (Pa.) Tribune-Democrat quoting from a letter from Murtha to his wife describing his injuries as being "struck in the ankle" by a "shot that ricocheted off the helicopter."
I have a question,who is in charge of Purple Hearts.My Dad had one.
Each branch of the service handles their own.
And you should hear them bitch about how Bob Dole was never court martialed for his failure to salute after getting the Purple Hearts, too.
[quickly ducks flames]
Seeing that I'm very proud of a full head of hair at almost 60, I'm loathe to shave it. Besides, any man who claims medals for superficial wounds after seeing badly wounded,true American Heroes is a p*ssy and coward in my book. Maybe someday I'll tell you what I really think of them and not hold back.
Nam Vet
If Murtha was such a war hero and all that, why didn't the rats consider nominating him for higher office than the house? Why wasn't he considered for VP over Algore or as Algore's running mate?
No one ever heard of him before the left found out how he hates the thought of our troops winning a war.
My husband who fought in Korea had two 2 inch scars that were 1/4 inch wide. He had no purple hearts, and he would never tell me how he got them, unlike other boyhood scars he did talk about. He suffered for many years from PTSD. Not all scars show unfortunately.
As to Murtha, Kerry, Cleland, Dole, etc., I don't know what is the truth of their situations. We do know they were in a warzone. Pres. Bush and VP Cheany were not. Their choice.
ping
BTTT
More about this here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1557630/posts
You sound like someone that would have been all for the American Freedom Memorial
I don't know or question the validity of Murtha's purple hearts or war record. He has used it for years to further his political career. I believe that any politician using his military service to actively do that should open that record for public scrutiny.
He reminds me of John McCain.
<< John Murtha and John Kerry .... far more resemble two piles of dog poop sitting in the park drawing flies with their foul odor than ..... >>
Didn't want the word "heroes" in the same sentence as "Murtha" and "Kerry."
The "military records" of both are overwhelmingly more the products of treasonous "Democrat" politics than they are in any way related to reality and/or connected to the military.
His own sedition, subversion and treason-related less-than-honorable-discharge record politically sanitized by the traitor, Jimmy-Bubbah Carter, Kerry's "Vietnam 'service' record" was an even more delusionally fantasized work of fiction than was that of the world's most dangerous dullard, the bible-school failure and way-too-typical functionally-illiterate "journalist," Al-Fredo Gore-leone.
And Murtha's much-vaunted "37 years of service" and "rank of colonel" turns out to have been a couple of years of doing what he was told followed by 35 years in the reserves spent essentially pursuing the machinations and fabricating the elements that came together in the entirely political creation of his present legend-in-his-own-play-lunch-time war-hero status.
Meanwhile, except when he is busy treasonously, mindlessly and bitterly critiquing his superiors, suborning dissent, and treasonously giving aid and comfort to our enemies -- and while even the corrupt, criminal-alien-"elected" racist-bigot, Loretta "Sanchez" Brixey and the idiot savant racist-bigot, Cynthia McKinney, sit on the house's Armed Services Committee -- the "Democrat" potty's genius military strategist "Lt Col" Murtha's, big bum but burnishes the back-bench.
Bah! Humbug!
Bull***t!
I read recently that Murtha, like Kerry, had requested these medals about 10 years later, after having been refused them by a commanding officer at the time.
>>>> want the word "heroes" in the same sentence as "Murtha" and "Kerry."
I don't want the word "heroes" in the same sentence as "Murtha" and "Kerry" either. But did you see the rest of post 9 or did you get tripped up on this sentence?
Not only is Murtha and Kerry being called heroes; but entrapped cowardess and personal struggle is being compared to Noble actions.
Here you go:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1557630/posts
Murtha's War Hero Status Called Into Question
>>>World War II Navy veteran Harry M. Fox, previously indicated that Murtha in 1968 personally asked Fox's boss, then-U.S. Rep. John Saylor (R-Pa.), for assistance in obtaining the Purple Hearts, but was turned down because Saylor's office determined that Murtha lacked sufficient evidence of wounds. Murtha later challenged Saylor for his House seat in 1968 and lost. Fox said he personally viewed Murtha's military records in 1968 as Saylor's aide.<<<<
Looks like those guys who dodged Vietnam were the smart ones. No war record to question = no problem.
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