Posted on 11/10/2004 3:35:05 PM PST by mykdsmom
Since when do you get certified as an expert witness?
Thanks for the research. It is much appreciated.
Hmmmmmm ... I couldn't find him on the staff there,
No matter. When I joined ROTC in '72 I was publicly reviled on a daily bassi. Maybe I was having an out of body experience.
>"The other day I pulled Radical Son out of the bookcase to read again. I would recommend that EVERYONE read that book. Thanks for mentioning it."<
...and thanks for the ping to this article!
This prof has probably gotten an ear-ful from a lot of Vietnam vets at FR, I'm guessing. he deserves to be run up a flagpole, imo.
Regards
How about talking to the VETs who were spat upon. There out there, and there is more than one, since this was not an isolated incident. Or wait, those are conservative conspirators who are making it up!?
You got to love the revisionist liberal idiots who will go to any length not to see themselves today for what they were then. Kerry now denies throwing "medals" and did what he did because he loves his comrades so much. Jane Fonda really didn't mean it either. Wow, Vets were not even spat upon. Sorry, but the crowd you associate with and ideas you hold true were those people who did those things. There are people that deny the Holocaust too. They too don't want to be seen nor see themselves as low lives just as you don't want to see yourself and crowd this way. But it is the John Kerrys, Jane Fondas who did there things and peacenik liberal who spat on their own service member/countrymen in Vietnam. Something which at that time people like you were probably were even proud of! Now its not hip anymore to have done this, so lets rewrite history.
Red6
229 Years of A$$ kicking & name taking! Perhaps some of us "myths" should "improved" this d*&KH%#^&$'s research?
My reply:
Dr.
Just for your information, I am a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the first weekend I had a bumper sticker on my car pronouncing such, my car was spit on at the movie theatre.
If in this day and age, there are still people so hateful at the military for giving them the right to be abusive punks to inanimate objects, I can only surmise that the stories of the 18 Vietnam veterans, and their return to the US, can only be true.
If you are truly a Doctor, then you would know that you have to research the topic you are writing about. It is painfully obvious that you did not do that basic step.
You sir, are a disgrace to your 'profession'.
Happy Veterans Day to you...now go shopping.
SFC Washington
OIF 1 and 2
Mar '03- Jun '04
If this happened, can you dig out the record and send it to this alleged "journalist".
It appears from this thread that one spitter-hitter, and perhaps two, escaped that fate.
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/10151361.htm?1c
A MORE WELCOME HOME
Tom Seuberling, an ex-Green Beret who grew up in Greensboro, survived three tours in Vietnam, but after his combat was over in 1971 received a harsh homecoming. In a United Airlines hangar in San Francisco, Seuberling stood in line waiting to board a plane home when he was cornered by a group of "peace activists."
"They spit on me and called me names like `baby killer,' " he recalled. "I couldn't take it and just cold-cocked one of them. During Vietnam, the military prepared us for nothing for returning home.
"They just thanked us for our service ... gave us a ticket and sent us home."
On this Veterans Day, the nation's latest combat veterans are finding a vastly different transition from the battlefield to civilian or noncombat lives.
Seuberling knows. A command sergeant major in the Charlotte-based 812th Transportation Battalion, his unit of Army reservists just returned from eight months of running supplies along a 900-mile front from Kuwait to northern Iraq.
They are finding a military that learned lessons from Vietnam and anxious to make sure this homecoming is smooth and painless -- not only for the troops, but their families.
Even before the unit left Kuwait late last month, each reservist was given a card with questions to answer.
Did you see combat?
Are you returning to marital problems?
Do you have any pent-up anger?
Do you sleep well?
"The cards provided a snapshot of what each reservist went through," said Seuberling, who commanded more than 1,700 reservists.
When the unit reached Fort Stewart in Georgia, they were met with a band-playing "Welcome Home" ceremony with speeches, and drinks and snacks.
Each reservist then met with a social worker, who used the cards to start a discussion on needs and problems they might be experiencing.
Next month, the military is sending Seuberling and his wife to meet with other returned veterans and spouses for a weekend of counseling.
"It's all a process of readjusting to civilian life," he said. "Everybody has been really nice and welcoming. People I don't even know shook my hand in the airport. A man at a Panthers game came up, slapped me on the back and thanked me for my service.
"That never happened after Vietnam."
Learning from hindsight
The military is operating from 20-20 hindsight, with military doctors, psychologists and chaplains buried in the work of unwrinkling the lives of troops who are on the battlefield one week and home with spouses and children the next.The transition is especially hard for reservists and National Guard members. Once they are home and their active duty ends, they have little support from comrades and neighbors who don't understand what they've experienced.
Military doctors are finding the wounds inflicted in Iraq and Afghanistan weren't just physical.
Earlier this year, a study by Army doctors showed that nearly 17 percent of returning Iraq veterans suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression or anxiety.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, said that fewer than half have sought mental health care.
Military officials say they are taking the report seriously and are dispensing more services for Iraq and Afghanistan vets than for veterans of any other conflict.
"The military is concerned about these issues," said Lt. Cmdr. Breck Bregel, a Navy chaplain at Camp Lejeune. "When you fly someone out of the combat zone and four days later you're with your spouse, there's bound to be problems."
Counseling services
The Department of Veterans Affairs offers a range of counseling services for returning veterans -- including six months of counseling for reservists and National Guard members. The Department of Defense formed a Seamless Transition Task Force to identify veterans suffering from disorders triggered by combat.
The military is helping departing active duty troops with résumés and techniques to find jobs.
The programs are offshoots from the ones started during late stages of the Vietnam War as a crush of troops returned with drug problems and battle fatigue and stress disorders -- and little help available.
The Marine Corps enlisted the Navy's chaplain corps to help drug-addicted veterans. The program remains, renamed Chaplain Religious Enrichment Development Operation.
Bregel has spent recent months helping returning Marines find stability through a spiritual grounding.
He urges them to seek support from other Marines.
"The best way to transition back is just to be able to get together with your own buddies and talk in your own groups," he said. "No matter what kind of combat you saw, or if you were just over there, there's going to be at least some anxiety. But 99 percent of all combat vets can heal from combat stress and fatigue given the proper tools.
"We provide them with the symptoms everyone who goes through combat feels. They can't sleep. Wake up in cold sweats. They're anxious. And we tell them not to come back and unload everything on their spouse or friends. They won't understand."
90 days to relax
Seuberling knows from his post-Vietnam experiences -- he couldn't keep a job or a girlfriend and kept mostly to himself -- that many of the troops he commanded in Iraq are feeling some of the same stresses.
The 812th saw considerable action, running 1,200 convoys that moved everything from water to ammunition along the most dangerous routes through the war zone.
Snipers shot at them. Highway booby traps hindered their travel, and they encountered an Easter Day ambush that left 40 insurgents dead and five U.S. soldiers wounded.
"We had some bad nights," said Seuberling, who was badly wounded in Vietnam. "We had a lot of injuries and a lot of guys who saw some combat."
The unit has been given 90 days to relax before members have to report to the Charlotte base.
Seuberling plans to meet with each member.
"I just want to make sure they're doing fine," he said. "If some aren't, I will make sure they get the services they need. That's really critical."
ON HOMECOMING IN 2004
"We tell them not to come back and unload everything on their spouse or friends." TOM SEUBERLING SERVED IN VIETNAM AND IN OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM MORE COVERAGE
PARADE SATURDAY
2B | Uptown Charlotte will host its annual Veterans Day parade Saturday. Details inside.
VETERANS DAY CLOSINGS
2A | How local institutions will observe the holiday today.
ARTIFACTS OF WAR
8A | Smithsonian exhibit goes beyond 'great man' image.
VETERANS DAY PROGRAMMING
1D | WSOC-TV decides not to show "Saving Private Ryan."
Reach David Perlmutt: (704) 358-5061; dperlmutt@charlotteobserver.com.
Thanks.
This is the liberal damage control machine at work - they know the way the U.S Military were treated is starting to become a huge issue and they wish to distance themselves from it - i.e. claim it never happened. People still need to be tried for treason, and the left are worried justice may at last be done.
Sounds like he only communicates with John Kerry and Jane Fonda.
Seems like Veterans Day is a good day to have some Veterans start planning the rest of what his week will be.
He may not be a tenured professor, so alumni of Wake Forest and the President's office would be a place to start.
This guy needs to be FREEP'D big time.
Or rather educated.
The same people "Cronkite" and others like him RUN the TV networks, newpapers, magazines, and cable networks as we post.. A hard rain NEEDS to fall(Dylan)
Me too. That's why I was surprised to see 1980's.
While I was not a Vietnam Vet, I distinctly recall seeing TV news of some of the soldiers returning home and being subjected to a gauntlet of abuse... including obvious spitting and being pelted by objects. I spoke to some of my high school classmates (class of 67) who HAD gone and endured that gauntlet. They were all bitter.
These reports DID exist... but that is past tense. Most TV stations of the period reused their tapes because they were so expensive. Once the report was aired, the tape would likely be erased and reused. Very little of this "non-news" (as judged by the liberal editors of the TV station news) was archived. That being said, I still think this idiot did not look very hard.
But there is a very important point that needs to be said:
This academic puke understands something that all the impugned Vets do not.
Someday, all the witnesses WILL BE DEAD AND SILENT! He knows that his "research" and "writings", printed as fact, will outlive the eyewitnesses that can refute his tripe. Other researchers in the future will seek out "authoritative" source material to write history... and they will find HIS work. They will find the work of similar liars that seem to support his contentions as his supportd theirs. This agreement will appear to be consensus... and consensus is awfully hard to deny.
The anacdotal stories of those actually experienced the atrocious "welcomes" of the spitters and abusers WILL NOT BE FOUND because acedemics like him will not have archived those stories. Most of those who experienced it did not write it down, did not file complaints, and like yourself, restrained themselves from newsworthy reprisal attacks on the abusers. What will be found in the libraries are the "carefully" researched negative refutations of those stories written by "professional," "certified" experts whose words can be credited BECAUSE they are professional and certified... and corraborated by other "professional certified experts."
His lies will be "sanctified" by being enshrined in libraries of historical research... to be relied upon by future researchers who WILL NOT HAVE ACCESS TO PRIMARY SOURCES because they are all gone.
You, and your fellow vets, now that successful opposition to Kerry has united you, should continue this battle to regain your stolen honor. Do it by writing YOUR stories of your homecomings and your stories of how you were treated. Publish them. Get them placed on the shelves alongside tripe such as Llewelyn's so that future historians WILL have primary source material, written by the eyewitness and the victims of the leftists to let them SEE the tripe for what it is!
Posting on FreeRepubic is a good start... but the records of your posts on the internet are ephermeral. They need to be written in book form. Collect these stories, have those who tell them write them in first person and document what can be documented, AND PUBLISH IT. I bet there is a market for such a book. Regnery would probably publish it.
Good Luck
BTTT!!!!!!!
BTTT!!!!!!
Oh, Horsesh!t.
I have a clear memory of people talking about spitting on soldiers while I was in elementary school in the early 1970s. I remember where I was and who I was talking to about it, and we moved from that place and I never saw that person again in 1976. Just because Dr. Llewellyn can't google up a written reference before 1985 does not mean it didn't happen.
'Cause we all know those returning soldiers were a bunch of crazed baby-killers...
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