Tag Archives: Vietnam War

national news

Support Mueller’s work, however . . . let’s see more of it

I feel the need to reiterate with emphasis: I accept special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings regarding the president of the United States, that he didn’t “collude” with Russians who hacked our electoral system in 2016.

I trust Mueller as a man of high integrity.

However, all the work and the public expense that went into Mueller’s findings compel the attorney general to release the bulk of that effort to the public.

AG William Barr’s four-page summary of what Mueller has concluded reportedly has created an ebullient mood in the White House. At one level, I, too, am glad to know that Donald Trump didn’t commit any crimes related to collusion with Russian government goons.

Mueller, though, has concluded that the president is not “exonerated” from questions about obstruction of justice. So, let’s see the whole thing, shall we?

I have no intention of impugning Mueller’s integrity. I have sought to defend this good man, former FBI director, a combat veteran of the Vietnam War against attacks by those on the right — starting with the president of the United States. I do not believe there is anything in the details of what he uncovered that will change my view of Mueller and the effort he put forth in making his determination.

Americans just have the right to see his findings in as much detail as possible for themselves.

national news

GOP remains silent as Trump trashes a party statesman

Donald Trump has taken the Republican Party hostage, tossed its leaders into a dungeon and is disparaging one of its longstanding, long-serving and long-admired political figures.

The president keeps hammering away at the memory of the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, the former Vietnam War prisoner and two-time candidate for president of the United States.

He said most recently that he never received a “thank you” from the senator’s family for granting him the funeral he deserved. Yeah, sure thing, Mr. POTUS. Except that you had nothing to do with the funeral McCain received. Yep, you lied about that one, too!

It just baffles me that the late senator’s friends in the Senate and elsewhere have remained largely silent about the classless, crass and juvenile attacks against him by the drafter dodger in chief.

Yes, some of them have offered some pulled-punch rejoinders. Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Sen. McCain’s best friends in the Senate, has been largely mute; Arizona GOP Sen. Martha McSally, who is sitting in the seat McCain once occupied, has offered tepid criticism.

GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia has spoken out, as has Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

But the vast bulk of the nation’s Republican establishment keeps enabling the president to keep up his idiotic bitching about a senator who died of brain cancer in August 2018.

McCain developed many friendships over the course of his three decades in Congress. His Democratic friends have been quite outspoken against the president’s rants; but that’s to be expected.

I would have expected more outrage from Republicans as well, given the stated and understood admiration for a man who endured five-plus years of torture as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam before being elected to Congress.

These chicken-hearted politicians act like they fear the president who took over their party by storm in 2016 without ever devoting a single minute of his prior life to public service.

Someone needs to launch a rescue mission to free those GOP hostages, release them from their dungeon and tell them it’s OK to speak ill of the guy who captured them in the first place.

Oh, wait! We have an election coming up. Maybe that’ll do the trick.

medical news, military news

Show us the bone spur records, Mr. POTUS

Bob Kerrey has pitched a perfectly logical notion for the president of the United States, who has been plagued by doubters who question his assertion that “bone spurs” kept him out of military service during the Vietnam War.

Show us the medical record, Mr. President. That is the suggestion offered by Kerrey, a former Democratic U.S. senator from Nebraska. Oh, I also must point out that Kerrey is a former Navy SEAL, a Vietnam War combat veteran and a Medal of Honor recipient who lost one of his legs fighting the enemy during that horrible time.

Bone spurs don’t heal themselves, Kerrey said. You need surgery to repair them. The president has never mentioned surgery.

The bone spur issue keeps recurring because Trump keeps yapping about military matters in ways that bring these questions to the forefront.

Such as his ongoing and crass attacks against the late Sen. John McCain, the former Vietnam War prisoner who died of cancer this past August. Trump once denigrated McCain’s POW status, saying he was a “hero only because he was captured.”

Trump got several medical deferments during the Vietnam War. He has cited bone spurs. Well, just like the tax returns he keeps saying are under audit by the Internal Revenue Service, he has not provided a shred of evidence that he even had bone spurs; he also hasn’t produced a letter by the IRS declaring that it was auditing his tax returns, which he said has precluded him from releasing those returns for public review.

The president also reportedly told his former lawyer/confidant Michael Cohen that he had no intention of going to Vietnam. “Do you think I’m stupid?” Cohen said Trump asked him. Kerrey has taken offense at that notion, saying that Trump “sees all of us who went to Vietnam as fools. We were the suckers. We were the stupid ones. We were the ones that didn’t have the resources to be able to get out of the draft.”

Kerrey said this, as reported by the Huffington Post: “While John McCain was flying combat operations in Vietnam, you were, I think, falsifying that you had bone spurs in order not to go to Vietnam,” said Kerrey, a 1992 presidential candidate who retired from the Senate in 2000. “Now I know lots of people who avoided the draft, but this isn’t what he’s saying. He said ‘I physically couldn’t go,’ Well, Mr. President, get your feet X-rayed and let’s see those bone spurs. I don’t think he has them.”

Frankly, neither do I.

national news

Unity becoming a signature issue among Democrats

I have heard a lot of talk of the “u-word” among those who are running for president of the United States.

They want to bring unity to the country. They want to bridge the divide that is growing between and among various ethnic, religious, racial and political groups.

They say we are living in (arguably) the most divisive period in our nation’s history. I agree with their goal. I favor a more unified country, too. The divisions that have torn us apart have created nations within the nation.

I am going to disagree with the implication I have heard from some of the Democrats running for president that this division is the worst in our history.

We had that Civil War from 1861 to 1865. The nation fought against itself, killing 600,000 Americans on battlefields throughout the eastern third of what is now the United States of America.

The Great Depression brought about huge division, too. Americans tossed out a president and brought in another one who promised a New Deal. It took some time for the economy to recover. Indeed, it’s been argued that World War II was the catalyst that sparked the nation’s economic revival.

Then came two more wars: in Korea and Vietnam. Those conflicts produced division as well. Vietnam, particularly, brought death in our city streets as well as in far-off battlefields.

The divisions today are severe. Donald Trump campaigned for the presidency pledging to unify the nation. He has failed. Indeed, his rhetoric only has deepened the divide.

The white nationalist debate that has flared with the New Zealand massacre allegedly by someone associated with white supremacists has underscored the division.

So now we have a huge and growing field of Democrats seeking to succeed Donald Trump as president. One of the themes that links them all is their common call for unity. One of them, Beto O’Rourke, says he wants to “restore our democracy.” OK, but . . . how?

Seeking unity is a noble and worthwhile goal. I applaud any candidate who says he or she wants to make that a top priority.

However, I am no longer in the mood for platitudes. I need some specifics on how to achieve it. I know that Donald Trump is a lost cause. He cannot unify his own White House staff, let alone a nation he was elected to govern.

The rest of the field needs to lay out their plans to achieve what Trump has failed to do.

In . . . detail!

national news

‘I was never a fan’ of John McCain

Oh, Mr. President. Can’t you just end this bashing John McCain idiocy?

A reporter asks you to comment on your repeated attacks on the late Arizona senator and you have to say you’ve “never been a fan” of your fellow Republican and that you “never will” be a fan.

And of course it only escalates the feud you’re having with the senator’s family, notably his daughter, Meghan, who continues to pile-drive you with comments about how you cannot measure up as a man to her beloved father.

Mr. President, you can stop this right now. When reporters ask you to comment, just ignore ’em. Or, you can say something like this:

“I am no longer going to comment on Sen. John McCain. I have said all I intend to say. You know how I feel. I am done commenting. I now intend to move on. I am going to make America great again.”

OK, the last part is a joke. But you get my drift, Mr. President.

You started this feud in 2015 with that ghastly denigration of Sen. McCain’s heroic service during the Vietnam War when he was taken captive and tortured for more than five years. That you — who avoided military service during that time — would stoop to such hideous criticism is repulsive in the extreme.

Enough is enough, Mr. President.

We all get that you’re mad that Sen. McCain voted “no” on repealing the Affordable Care Act. We get that his insistence that you stay away from his funeral chaps your hide. We also get that you’re doubly incensed that he asked Presidents Obama and Bush to eulogize him.

I, for one, have heard enough from you regarding Sen. McCain.

His daughter is right. You cannot measure up to the man he was. He stood at the gates of hell and survived to serve the country he loved while you served yourself and your quest for more personal enrichment.

Just end this idiocy.

national news

Trump keeps blurring the line of decency

I cannot let Donald Trump’s incessant, relentless and utterly classless attacks on a genuine American hero pass without comment.

The president launched the Mother of Twitter Tirades over the weekend. One of Trump’s targets, not surprisingly, was the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, the war hero who got under the president’s skin because of his fearless resistance to the president’s policies and pronouncements.

McCain died in August 2018 of brain cancer. He voted dramatically against a plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He also has challenged Trump’s style of confrontational governance and sought to restore a semblance of what he called “regular order” to the U.S. Senate.

Trump continues to attack the late senator. Why he persists is absolutely beyond me.

His latest attack against McCain challenged the senator’s release of information related to the “dossier” related to allegations that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russians who attacked our electoral system. Trump lied about the timing of when McCain leaked the dossier information to the FBI, saying he did so to harm Trump’s presidential campaign; the leak came after the November 2016 election.

Trump infamously declared in 2015 that McCain is “not a war hero. He’s a hero only because he was captured. I like people who aren’t captured. OK?” McCain served the nation heroically by any measure possible during the Vietnam War. He was shot down over Hanoi, taken captive and held for more than five yeas as a prisoner of war.

For the president of the United States — the commander in chief — to denigrate a war hero after avoiding military service during that war because of the questionable existence of bone spurs wreaks of indecency of the lowest order.

The McCain-Trump relationship went downhill from that moment.

And now that the senator has succumbed, the president continues to attack him. He continues his assault on the memory of a fellow Republican who contributed more in service to this country than the president ever will contribute. Ever!

Quite obviously none of us is privy to the president’s personal thoughts. We instead get to read his public pronouncements that, I’ll presume, put many of his private thoughts on the public record.

Donald Trump has shown us time and again what many of us already believe . . . that he disgraces this country.

national security

Tough talk betrays history of, um, non-toughness

I just cannot get past Donald Trump’s history as I listen to his tough-talk in the moment.

The president told Breitbart News that the military is on his side, as are the police, and — of course! — the “Bikers for Trump.” He said they don’t usually play tough, but they might if things don’t go their way — and favorably for the president.

Then it would get “very bad, very bad,” he said.

Do you remember the president’s reaction to the massacre at Parkland, Fla., when a gunman opened fire, killing several high school students and teachers? He criticized the deputy sheriff on duty at the campus who reportedly waited outside while all hell was breaking loose. Then the president said he would have gone in with guns-a-blazin’.

Imagine that, will ya?

This is the same fellow who when he was much younger had the chance to take up arms against our nation’s enemies in Vietnam, but then developed a case of bone spurs. A doctor issued him permission to obtain several medical deferments that kept him far away from the Vietnam War.

Oh, and then we heard just recently from his former lawyer/fixer/confidant Michael Cohen, who said Trump once told him, “Do you think I’m stupid? I wasn’t going to Vietnam.” Those of us who did go to ‘Nam when the guns were shooting and the bombs were falling well could have taken offense at the “stupid” remark.

Donald Trump’s toughness, I will venture to say, is a figment of his own narcissism.

national news

Democrats take page from Republicans

It wasn’t that long ago when congressional Republicans were clawing at each other. You had the TEA Party wing vs. the Establishment wing.

The TEA Party cadre was far more ideological, far more zealous in pursuit of its agenda. The TEA Party wing ended up driving John Boehner out of the speaker’s chair and out of public office. They tore a page out of the Democrats’ playbook that called the shots during the 1960s, when the Hawks battled the Doves over whether to fight the Vietnam War.

A decade later, Republicans have (more or less) settled in behind the president of the United States, Donald Trump.

Which brings me to the Democrats’ current state of play. The progressive wing is battling the Democratic version of the establishment wing.

The progressives want to impeach the president now. The more seasoned of them say “no.” They’re fighting openly with each other.

One big difference? I do not expect Speaker Nancy Pelosi to give up the fight. She doesn’t want to impeach the president, at least not  yet. The progressives in her caucus aren’t hearing the last part of it; they seem to hear “no impeachment” and go ballistic.

My own advice to the Democrats’ far-left wing is to wait for the special counsel, Robert Mueller, to finish his job. Attorney General William Barr is going to let his collusion probe finish under its own power.

If Mueller produces the goods, then they can talk openly about impeachment. Not beforehand.

International news, medical news, military news

‘Do you think I’m stupid? I wasn’t going to Vietnam’

Donald John Trump might have insulted the intelligence of millions of Americans of a certain age, according to his former lawyer/confidant Michael Cohen.

Cohen testified today before the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee. He covered a lot of territory during the seven or so hours of testimony he gave.

One of the things he disclosed was the medical deferment that young Donald Trump received from a doctor who managed to keep him out of military service, which might have sent the young man to Vietnam to fight in the war many of us remember.

Cohen attributed a statement to Trump who reportedly said, “Do you think I’m stupid. I wasn’t going to Vietnam.”

Darn. I thought I was a smart guy, even though I went to Vietnam in the spring of 1969.

You see, the U.S. Army brought me into its fold in August 1968. It taught me basic soldiering at Fort Lewis, Wash., then sent me to Fort Eustis, Va., to learn how to maintain OV-1 Mohawk aircraft. My advanced individual training company got orders for Korea, but I had my orders canceled so I could deal with an injury I suffered during training.

What did I do then? I asked for duty in Vietnam. Wouldn’t you know it? The Army granted my request and sent me to Marble Mountain, Da Nang, South Vietnam.

Trump? He stayed home, getting deferments for bone spurs the doc supposedly said he had. Cohen told committee members that he needed the medical records to show to reporters who would ask about the deferments. Cohen was a spokesman for Trump when he was campaigning for president.

The two men exchanged some conversation about those records, which reportedly — according to Cohen — was when Trump asked whether Cohen thought he was “stupid.”

A lot of us who did go to war a half-century ago might think of another pejorative term to hang on the president.

The word “coward” comes to mind.

military news

Oh, how the nation’s attitudes toward vets have evolved

My retirement journey has produced a lot of revelations.

One of them involves the payback being offered to our nation’s military veterans. It’s still making my head spin, given how I have witnessed up close how our country’s feelings toward veterans have evolved over the past half-century.

Here’s an example . . .

I got off the phone this morning with the wireless telephone provider with which my wife and I are doing business. We’re about to terminate our TV/Internet service at one location and move it to another residence. The young woman on the phone informed me of additional discounts provided to military veterans. “Are you a vet?” she asked. I told her yes.

I called another number, got connected with another service representative, told her about my veteran status and then was told I could qualify for an additional discount on my phone service. It was simple, given that TV/Internet service comes from the same company that provides us with phone service.

We encounter this kind of “love” all the time. We walk into a restaurant and end up paying a little less for our meal because I am a veteran; we hired a moving company to haul our furniture to our new home and received a discount because of my veteran status; discounts pop up all over the place.

I understand this isn’t really a big deal to many younger Americans. The country has ratcheted up its appreciation for veterans since about the time of the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91.

Take my word for it, the nation didn’t express itself in this manner.

I served for two years in the U.S. Army. I entered military service in August 1968, one of the most tumultuous periods of the past half-century. I went to Vietnam, served some time there, came home and then in August 1970, I drove home to re-start my life as a civilian. The Vietnam War was raging when I went in, it was still raging when I got out. Americans were still angry over the conduct of the war and also at those of us who were following lawful orders.

Businesses weren’t offering veteran discounts for meals or for any other service provided to citizens. Those of us of a certain age know how our fellow Americans felt about veterans in those days. It wasn’t pretty.

I am grateful for the change that has occurred.

None of what we’re experiencing now is a surprise. It’s just that it continues to boggle my mind each time I encounter the rebirth of our nation’s generous spirit.