Is this a wise place to go?
There should be some cartoons done with purple heart bandaids on Murtha's face. No Republican should mention it and should denounce anyone who points it out - just for the record. : )
This is what Bush called "the politics of personal destruction" I call it character assasination.
The unfortuneate part is that character assasination is the only thing the democrats know how to do. I say we must retaliate in kind. I don't like it because most people are doing good things 99% of the time and to focus on the other 1%, well, it can get ugly, especially since none of us are saints and even if we were, most things can be spun to look ugly.
but the democrats want a no holds barred knife fight, so we have to do the same.
If you run on your war record, and use it to castigate the present administration, you damn well better be able to back it up!
No. Military personnel records are notoriously inaccurate.
Yes.
It's john kerry redux and the public has a right to know, especially since Murtha has become the dem attack dog against the administration's conduct of the war, and policy, regarding Iraq.
I don't understand why not. Why should these guys get a free pass? They often appeal to their military experience to try to discredit the President or to hide behind to denigrate our military so if their records are less than what they claimed, it's open season.
I don't understand why they would even appeal to their military service when it didn't matter when Bill Clinton, a TRUE draft-dodger, was the president. We were told, by Senator Kerry no less, that it didn't matter whether a person served in Vietnam or not. So why does it matter now??
There are two questions here: what is right, versus what is politically sound.
I think it is a political mistake to attack Murtha because the MSM is so dedicated to the "Murtha the war hero" meme.
It has been Murtha's signal claim that has put him into office, and it has protected his flanks from his career-long lust for cutting and running.
Remember, he:
1. Betrayed our VN dead by cutting and running
2. Betrayed our Lebanon dead likewise
3. Betrayed our Somali dead likewise
4. Now wants to betray our GWOT dead...
That last group includes many of my friends, and none of his. He never saw a threat he wouldn't appease or submit to. The man is a moral coward.
Frankly, once I learnt Murtha was an intelligence officer I knew instinctively the purple hearts were bogus. I don't know why but MI weenies have always been disproportionately represented among those who claim false honors.
So -- while it probably is politically unproductive for us to expose this phony, for those of us who ARE combat vets it is a moral necessity, however tactically unsound it might be.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Absolutely yes. He's an elected representative who can dispel any doubt about his Purple Hearts by releasing his military records in their entirety.
Any doubt cast on Murtha's record emanates from his own shadow.