No (means no) profanity! No personal insults or name calling!
Harkin himself claimed to have battled Mig fighters over North Vietnam while a Navy pilot.
Um... what? Where did Harkin claim this?
It doesn't appear in his biography, in the CNN article you linked, or in any page I can find via Google.
Source, please.
It was so long ago it's not online. But it was well covered by major media at the time. I remember it very well.
Other readers may chime in!
The uniform (pun intended) absence of military service on the Clinton foreign policy team was striking. What were the odds? The article is incorrect, however, in stating that William F. Buckley (Army, 1944-46) was not in the Armed Forces.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/ar..._15/
ai_58170595
"(though Harkin in his earlier political campaigns was notable, if that's the word, for claiming to have flown combat missions in Vietnam and then having to admit that he had not, as recorded in the book Stolen Valor, by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley)"
Stolen Valor is published by a vanity press in Dallas. Amazon's reviews of the book break down into vets or sons of vets who love it and others who see it as sloppy. Being an elitist snob this does not cut it as a source for me. But I am not out to kill the messenger even though he has weak legs.
Any other source?
Do your own homework, Charles.
It's like my Momma said to me, "You don't like what I cook, YOU cook."
I've located a highly biased source that at least confirms there was an election-year controversy about Harkin's Vietnam service... wayy back in 1984 during Harkin's very first Senate campaign.
It's not clear from this source whether Harkin ever really claimed he was something he wasn't, or whether he was just the subject of yet another election-year GOP smear campaign -- one that's now being revived and updated, since Harkin called out Cheney as a coward this week. Harkin was a Navy fighter pilot who flew F-4s and F-8s in missions over Vietnam, but he didn't fly in combat missions; he just shuttled the planes in and out of Vietnam.
[continued]
My highly biased source also declares Harkin was lying when he claimed to have spent time in Vietnam on foot, since that isn't something a Navy pilot would do. However, the source fails to note that Harkin lost his job as a congressional staffer in 1970 -- for publishing photos he took, while on a fact-finding mission, of the South Vietnamese torturing their POWs in the "tiger cages" at Con Son prison.
Deja vu?
My husband is a WWII vet.
He doesn't brag.
And I am old enough to remember that when Hubert Humphry Sr. ran against Nixon, he was not a WWII veteran, and it mwas not an issue. (He had a hernia and was 4F--even though he could have had surgery to fix it).
Cheyney having children during VietNam and Bush joining a unit of the NG at a time when that unit was actively serving in Viet Nam doesn't count either...
But I am angry that the media doesn't mention Kerry's actions calling our Viet Nam veterans baby killers. If you didn't see C span, you would not even be aware of this fact...
hmmm....and just how many of the listed as Army were draftees? A lot of males in the 1950 to 1973 timeframe will have something in their resume to reflect the reality that men didn't have a right to their own body either.
This is good,...."demonstrated against his own country while living overseas." I have demonstrated against my own country in my own country. Does this make me unpatriotic or a traitor or something? What is your point? Pointless blather Rev. Sensing.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Take it from an Iowan, Harkin is an idiot. He cares nothing about Iowa. He is a puppet of the East Coast liberal elite.
Harkin nailed misleading on his service - http://www.worldnetdaily.com/
new...RTICLE_ID=38529
In an interview with the [Boston] Globe, Harkin said that as Vietnam veterans he and Kerry "bring perspective to the situation here in Central America that perhaps others not involved in the Vietnam War might not have."
'Stolen Valor' says that Dan Rather actually failed Marine bootcamp.
Guenter Lewy, in America in Vietnam, is pretty harsh on Harkin's misrepresentations about the tiger cages. He implied they were below ground (they weren't)and understated their size. He also left out the fact that they were originally built by the French, not the "corrupt" SVN gov't.
Lewy also calls into questions many of the points made in the Van Deerlin article. Army doctors found no evidence of paralysis, prisoners were only shackled at night, the cells were actually 10 feet high, etc.
I wouldn't pay a lot of attention to the list of Marines. Steve McQueen was a "merchant" marine, not in the Marine Corps.
Dan Rather flunked out in boot, couldn't take it. He was/is a wuss.
What's most interesting to me is that Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan are listed as Conservatives. So mainstream conservatives are strongly in support of gay marriage and would, respectively, either like to vote for Kerry if he were more credible in fighting WW IV or will vote for Kerry regardless. Apparently having a foot over the Party line on any issue qualifies one as conservative. No wonder Big Media thinks anyone to the right of center is an extremist right-wing nutjob.
Here is the Clinton quote from his letter. I am unable to pick out of it that he said he loathed the military:
"And that is where I am now, writing to you because you have been good to me and have a right to know what I think and feel. I am writing too in the hope that my telling this one story will help you to understand more clearly how so many fine people have come to find themselves still loving their country but loathing the military, to which you and other good men have devoted years, lifetimes, of the best service you could give. To many of us, it is no longer clear what is service and what is disservice, or if it is clear, the conclusion is likely to be illegal."
Scott, some relatively unbiased articles on harkin's "Vietnam service"
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLIT...ez.dean.harkin/
quote: "A Navy veteran who served in Vietnam, he first went to Washington in 1974 as a member of the House, where he served for 10 years."
http://www.texnews.com/
abilene20...launch0801.html
quote: "Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, a Vietnam veteran and sometimes-mentioned possible running mate for Al Gore, said Cheney “had other priorities in the ’60s. So did a lot of other young men who went over there and didn’t come back.”"
http://www.findarticles.com/p/ar..._v56/
ai_9257255
quote: "Subsequently, he served as a Navy fighter pilot in Vietnam."
Seems like a lot of non partisan sources seems to have bought his vietnam service story.
HH (on John Cole's site comments) found this one detailing Harkin's on and off claims.
Read below to see what a piece of work this guy is.
http://groups.google.com/groups?
...e.cc.purdue.edu
sorry for the length 
Tom Harkin of Iowa has not been so careful.
Harkin first lost face in 1984, during a closely contested bid for the Senate seat he now holds. Harkin was, at the time, a 10-year incumbent in Congress. He claimed to be a former Navy combat pilot who flew F-4 and F-8 jets on missions over Vietnam. During the 1984 Senate contest, another senator, Barry Goldwater (then a major general in the Air Force Reserve), knew the truth and decided enough was enough. He publicly denounced Harkin as a fake.
continued ...
One of the most interesting things about that list was Dick Gephardt's National Guard service at almost the exact same time as W's. I don't seem to hear anyone complaining about it though (Note: I'm not complaining, I was just pointing out the similarities)
continuation
Harkin's people at first responded with a hilarious explanation that their man had actually been in combat in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from 1965 to 1966, when he flew the F-4 and F-8 missions. But Harkin finally came out and said that he had never been a Vietnam combat pilot, contradicting his own numerous published claims. The issue seemed settled once and for all when he set the record straight; he was in fact a ferry pilot, transporting crippled aircraft out of Saigon to repair facilities in Japan.Coming clean did Harkin a world of political good --- he won the race. Within months of being sworn in, however, he again made false claims, this time intimating he had walked the jungles of Southeast Asia.
continued ....
continuation
After viewing controversial photos which purported to show Nicaraguan contras slitting the throat of a Sandinista spy, Harkin vouched for their authenticity. "The pictures show graphically the same kind of thing I saw in Vietnam," he said.
The claims slipped by relatively unnoticed. Now, with a run for the presidency looming on his horizon, Harkin is once again being touted as a Vietnam combat pilot. It remains to be seen whether his service will become an issue in the coming campaign.
I'm no Cheney fan but it really grinds my grits when he's criticized for taking a perfectly legal and perfectly honorable deferment. Both Harkin and Kerry took student deferments. Was it immoral for them to do so?
So let's have it. Were student deferments immoral (they certainly weren't considered so at the time)? Or are they just immoral for some.
I've got a recent 4-parter on Harkin and his latest hypocritical comments - just follow me over.
Well, while the AzRep article may be technically incorrect about Dan Rather, they are "in-spirit" correct.
Ole Dan was found medically unfit for the Marine Corps and never made it out of boot camp. Thus, he never earned his Globe and Anchor.
Personally, I don't consider every Tom, Dick and Harry who ever signed up for, but didn't make it through bootcamp to be Marines.
Rev Sensing, you have a powerful advocate on this. Glenn Reynolds did some research at lunchtime, and came up with both a photo of the Stolen Valor page, and a WESTLAW citation of a WSJ article about Harkin's lies.
Will this stolen valor stuff never end?
Steve Bragg
DOUBLE TOOTHPICKS--WORLDVIEWS Behind The NEWS
Tom Harkin and Micah Ian Wright: birds of a feather?
Heh. Check out Wonkette's entry in the AZCentral listing.
capt joe... if you're going to paste in long excerpts from a source I've already linked (scroll back up to the words "highly biased source" and click them), could you at least address the problem I raised with this particular author: That he accuses Harkin of lying about his personally seeing mistreatment of captives in Vietnam... when in reality Harkin's photos of the Con Son "tiger cages" appeared in Life magazine?
"And, as countless bloggers and other commentati have observed, John Kerry is running for president based almost solely on his Vietnam service."
I'm sure that you meant to write "...countless pro-Bush bloggers and other commentati..."
quote: "A Navy veteran who served in Vietnam, he first went to Washington in 1974 as a member of the House, where he served for 10 years."
quote: "A Navy veteran who served in Vietnam, he first went to Washington in 1974 as a member of the House, where he served for 10 years."
quote: "Subsequently, he served as a Navy fighter pilot in Vietnam."
I’m no Harkin fan but none of those quotes claim that he was a “combat pilot” or are inconsistent with his service as “a ferry pilot, transporting crippled aircraft out of Saigon to repair facilities in Japan”.
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