Posted on 10/21/2012 5:03:15 AM PDT by NJRighty
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — George S. McGovern, a proud liberal who argued fervently against the Vietnam War as a senator from South Dakota and suffered one of the most crushing defeats in presidential election history against Richard Nixon in 1972, died before dawn Sunday. He was 90.
A spokesman for McGovern's family, Steve Hildebrand, told The Associated Press by telephone that McGovern died at 5:15 a.m. Sunday at a hospice in Sioux Falls, surrounded by family and lifelong friends.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
I am struck by the tone and tenor of respect on this thread. Can you picture Democrat Underground behaving like this?
He had pretty much gone through his entire life not realizing a business had expenses. He honestly thought a meal you paid for in a restaurant was almost pure profit for the restaurant.
And then there’s reply 22...
I was one of the few who voted for him, not because he would have made a good President, but because I was convinced Nixon and Agnew were crooks. Which they were.
That was an election with no good choices. None.
Hey CaribCarter, we don't play obit threads like that. If dude dies, leave him be on that thread. Other threads, fair game.
Dig it. Learn it. Love it.
It was a matter of character. The insecure and corrupt do it because they CAN. Power is dangerous in the hands of such men.
I wasn’t around back then but I’ve never understood why Nixon thought he had to pull the illegal stuff, when he was roundly kicking McGovern’s ass anyway.
In 1985, McGovern was lecturing at the University of Innsbruck. A director of Austrian television’s state-owned stationed contacted him to ask if he would do an interview for a documentary he was producing on Austria in World War II. He wanted McGovern to talk about what it was like bombing Austrian targets. McGovern was not inclined but finally let himself be talked into it. A woman reporter did the interview. She said that Senator McGovern was known around the world for his opposition to the war in Vietnam, and especially the bombing of South and North Vietnam. Yet he had been a bomber pilot in World War II. The reporter asked, “Senator, did you ever regret bombing beautiful cities like Vienna, Salzburg, Innsbruck, and others?”
McGovern answered, “Well, nobody thinks that war is a lovely affair. It is humanity at its worst, it’s a breakdown of normal communication, and it is a very savage enterprise. But on the other hand there are issues that sometimes must be decided by warfare after all else fails...I thought Adolf Hitler was a madman who had to be stopped.
“So, my answer to your question is no. I don’t regret bombing strategic targets in Austria. I do regret the damage that was done to innocent people. And there was one bomb I’ve regretted all these years.”
The reporter snapped that up. “Tell us about it.”
McGovern told her about the bomb that had stuck in the bomb bay door and had to be jettisoned, on March 14, 1945. “To my sorrow it hit a peaceful little Austrian farmyard at high noon and maybe led to the death of some people in that family. I regret that all the more because it was the day I learned my wife had given birth to our first child and the thought went through my mind then and on many, many days since then, that we brought a young baby into the world and probably killed someone else’s baby or children.”
When the documentary appeared on Austrian TV, the station received a call from an Austrian farmer. He said he had seen and heard McGovern. he knew it was his farm that was hit, because it was high noon on a clear day and exactly as McGovern described the incident.
“I want you to tell him,” the man went on, “that no matter what other Austrians think, I despised Adolf Hitler. We did see the bomber coming. I got my wife and children out of the house and we hid in a ditch and no one was hurt. And because of our attitude about Hitler, I thought at the time that if bombing our farm reduced the length of that war by one hour or one minute, it was well worth it.”
The television station called McGovern and told him what the farmer had said. For McGovern, it was “an enormous release and gratification. It seemed to just wipe clean a slate.”
You are right Laz. du threw a virtual cyber party when Reagan died.
Family press release in 3...2...1 —
George’s death-bed wish was that the country would “not turn back now” and reelect Barak Obama in November.
Furthermore, if you have been a freeper for 15 years, you already KNOW we don't beat up on the dead on the obit threads.
Also, if you have been a freeper for 15 years, you also KNOW that having more than one screen name is verboten.
Finally, if you have been a freeper for 15 years, you have access to a time machine. FR has only been active since late 1998.
I'm going to ping post 22 for removal.
I have to admit, I broke the informal FR rule, and posted a nastygram when Ted Kennedy died.
More or less like today’s, eh ?
Sleazy perps like Teddy deserve our contempt .... even in death.
Wars are waged by men with consciences.
This is why the next 100 years will usher in a horrible time. Machines have no conscience. And it will be machines who will wage war in the next 100 years. The results will be hideous.
That is a remarkable story! Thank you for posting this.
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