Posted on 11/06/2015 8:33:42 AM PST by GIdget2004
Ben Carson’s campaign on Friday admitted, in a response to an inquiry from POLITICO, that a central point in his inspirational personal story was fabricated: his application and acceptance into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
The academy has occupied a central place in Carson’s tale for years. According to a story told in Carson’s book, “Gifted Hands,†the then-17 year old was introduced in 1969 to Gen. William Westmoreland, who had just ended his command of U.S. forces in Vietnam, and the two dined together. That meeting, according to Carson’s telling, was followed by a “full scholarship†to the military academy.
West Point, however, has no record of Carson applying, much less being extended admission.
“In 1969, those who would have completed the entire process would have received their acceptance letters from the Army Adjutant General,†said Theresa Brinkerhoff, a spokeswoman for the academy. She said West Point has no records that indicate Carson even began the application process. “If he chose to pursue (the application process) then we would have records indicating such,†she said.
When presented with this evidence, Carson’s campaign conceded the story was false.
“Dr. Carson was the top ROTC student in the City of Detroit,†campaign manager Barry Bennett wrote in an email to POLITICO. “In that role he was invited to meet General Westmoreland. He believes it was at a banquet. He can’t remember with specificity their brief conversation but it centered around Dr. Carson’s performance as ROTC City Executive Officer.â€
“He was introduced to folks from West Point by his ROTC Supervisors,†Bennett went on. “They told him they could help him get an appointment based on his grades and performance in ROTC. He considered it but in the end did not seek admission.â€
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
And let's be honest here, is anyone really going to tell me that Carson would not have been encouraged by the General to apply to get into West Point? Isn't Carson exactly the kind of young man they want to recruit? He was an extremely intelligent African American young man who had gone through ROTC several years in high school and probably would have had a sterling application. I can hear that dinner conversation now.
LS, you know me and have seen me on this board for over 15 years. We've exchanged posts from time-to-time, I'm sure of it. You know I have no campaign agenda. I prefer Cruz point-by-point, and if Cruz is still in the game by the Tennessee primary, I will probably cast my vote for him. I also like Trump, though his pettiness in jumping into and piling on this feeds my suspicions that he is really a man of questionable character. But LS, I am sickened by the campaign operatives that have taken over posting on FR and trying to do a hit job on Carson amongst conservatives.
Look, I think we can discuss this reasonably on here, but our points for and against candidates should be substantive about issues. If someone wants to attach Carson, Trump, Cruz, or anyone else over not being strong enough on this or that to be a true-blue conservative, then great. That's what FR is for - it's a place for true-blue conservatives to post articles and discuss.
FR's Web site is so safe (and old) that it refuses to understand UTF-8. The UTF-8 character encoding method sometimes needs two characters to encode one - if those are foreign or special characters. Some quotes are special and require two consequent bytes to create one glyph. FR's software erroneously treats them as individual characters instead of composing them into one UNICODE codepoint. It is perfectly safe, though. Only ugly.
Don't you know that Politico is a left-wing rag. After Dr Ben Carson who will they go next after?
"I was the highest student ROTC member in Detroit and was thrilled to get an offer from West Point," he continued. "But I knew medicine is what I wanted to do. So I applied to only one school. (It was all the money I had.) I applied to Yale and thank God they accepted me. I often wonder what might have happened had they said no."Couple things to note: [1] He said he only applied to one school. The articles and headlines make it sound like Carson fabricated that he applied to West Point and was awarded a spot. He never said that, his statements are consistent with the conversation he said he had at dinner with Westmoreland. [2] I bet the guy who asked him that question on FB was a republican operative from another campaign, or a member of the media, trying to set a trap for him.
Thanks for the explanation. I thought it was just my ancient Safari browser.
After hearing the FULL reports, I take back what I said! It was obviously a HIT piece by Politico!! I wonder if the fact that Carson was starting to show him beating Hillary in a neck to neck match up had anything to do with it? Hmmmm.....there’s no limits to what the MSM will do to keep the status quo! Truly disgusting!!
They didn’t admit it. Note: Just because a reporter writes something, or an editor fashions a headline, does not make it true. They said that the campaign admitted it, but the campaign says that is not true. Who do you believe - Politico’s hack journalist, or Dr. Ben Carson?
Be interesting to see how many of them actually vote.
12.2%?
Good for you manning up!
I wished we had a thread full of mea culpas from people who jumped the gun.
Would they have been so quick if the story came from Media Matters?
In fairness to Carson, I think it’s best to retract my comments in the post I’m responding to.
If Carson only claimed to have been offered a scholarship, then his comments are honest and I was too quick to take him to task.
Politico in it’s article does admit Carson didn’t claim to have applied to West Point, so I have no idea why they think he lied.
The headline is inflammatory. The article tries to make too much of him making a dishonest statement which I’m not convinced that he did.
Until this shakes out more, I’ll issue an apology to Carson and refrain from taking him to task further.
Politico has really gone beyond the pale with this one. Unless it can back up it’s innuendo, it should be the one handing in it’s license to play.
As for CNN, and the inquisition it submitted Carson to, by MinuteGal’s account, it should be ashamed.
This would work out to Carson’s favor if people think he’s being treated unfairly, and they rally behind him.
He should be judged fairly, if we support him or not.
Sorry to have been so quick to chime in against him.
It’s from POLITICO where the truth fled a long time ago.
However, just for fun, try this on. Several years ago, POLITICO did a major article on the Nurses Union and labor problems/issues, with a focus on the far-left California Nurses Union (I don’t have the full name handy, but I’ll tell you where to find it).
Midway in the story were some quotes or statements by the CNU media director (or similar title), a man named Carl Bloice or his successor, Chuck Idelson.
Without having the story in front of me, I don’t remember if this story was about Bloice leaving and being replaced by Idelson, or whether there was a followup story that named Idelson as Bloice’s successor.
The key point here, totally missed, ignored, or deliberately withheld, is that both were veteran Communist Party USA writers (Bloice was their paper’s Moscow correspondent for year and then covered issues in the US; Idelson was a reporter and columnist in the US), for the CP’s newspapers (names changed) “Daily World”, “Peoples Daily World” and “Peoples Weekly World”.
You can find some more details at the political website “www.keywiki.org”, search under the names Carl Bloice and Chuck Idelson, for more details.
My point is that POLITICO, which once held out the possibility of being a good DC-based political news paper, turned sharply left and never came back, so its bias has been growing more visible in the last two years (as Mark Levin is saying now on his show).
Get a transcript (online) of the Rush Limbaugh Show today and read what various leftist and conservative newspapers “CLAIMED” that Carson said or did, and then compare it to the followup information about what REALLY happened.
As Sgt. Schulz would say, “VERY INTERESTING”.
Carson tarred and feathered for allleged school falsifications; Hillary gets a total pass on the Benghazi video fabrication.
Personally, I think he also lied about a republican... Just like Trump..!!!!
:)
My, my professor. It appears your judgment is questionable.
You’re right looking back on it this was a hit piece, but my gut tells me that this is the beggining of the end for Dr. Carson.
Don’t you have an Article V rally to attend? Let me know when that happens. :-)
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