You can tell when Harkin and his ilk are lying because their lips are moving.But I wonder how the question on the census form(s) was worded.I,for example,served (a full hitch,with an honorable discharge) during the Vietnam *era* but was never assigned within 7,000 miles of the region.Yes,some....like Harkin....would deliberately lie but perhaps many others misunderstood that question,perhaps because it was badly worded.
“Yes,some....like Harkin....would deliberately lie but perhaps many others misunderstood that question,perhaps because it was badly worded.”
Harkin understood...no misunderstanding there;
http://www.pajamasmedia.com/instapundit-archive/archives/017246.php
In 1979, Mr. Harkin, then a congressman, participated in a round-table discussion arranged by the Congressional Vietnam Veterans’ Caucus. “I spent five years as a Navy pilot, starting in November of 1962,” Mr. Harkin said at that meeting, in words that were later quoted in a book, Changing of the Guard, by Washington Post political writer David Broder. “One year was in Vietnam. I was flying F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaisance support missions. I did no bombing.”
That clearly is not an accurate picture of his Navy service. Though Mr. Harkin stresses he is proud of his Navy record — “I put my ass on the line day after day” — he concedes now he never flew combat air patrols in Vietnam. . . .
Mr. Harkin’s Navy record shows his only decoration is the National Defense Service Medal, awarded to everyone on active service during those years. He did not receive either the Vietnam Service medal or the Vietnam Campaign medal, the decorations given to everyone who served in the Southeast Asia theater. “We didn’t get them for what we did,” Mr. Harkin says. “It’s never bothered me.”
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005496
It turned out Mr. Harkin had not seen combat and was stationed in Japan. What’s more, Mr. Cheney isn’t the first Vice President to fall victim to Mr. Harkin’s acid tongue. In an editorial in 1988, we quoted “Senator Tom Harkin who served in Vietnam” (we thought at the time) saying of his Senate colleague Dan Quayle, who did not serve in Vietnam: “It’s so ironic; they get in Congress or the government and become big hawks. Don’t they have any shame at all?”