Adventures in Mamboland
"Jazz Fish, a saxophone playing wanderer, finds himself in Mamboland at a critical phase in his life." --Howie Green, on his book Jazz Fish Zen
Yeah. That sounds about right.
Yeah. That sounds about right.
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Date: 2004-08-27 09:24 pm (UTC)In a 1988 campaign-trail autobiography, here's how Dole described the incident that earned him his first Purple Heart: "As we approached the enemy, there was a brief exchange of gunfire. I took a grenade in hand, pulled the pin, and tossed it in the direction of the farmhouse. It wasn't a very good pitch (remember, I was used to catching passes, not throwing them). In the darkness, the grenade must have struck a tree and bounced off. It exploded nearby, sending a sliver of metal into my leg--the sort of injury the Army patched up with Mercurochrome and a Purple Heart."
Seems to me that Bob Dole believed in 1988 that his Purple Heart wound was about as bad as John Kerry's. Do I want to question Bob Dole's war wounds? Hey, you're the one who started questioning duly awarded medals. [No. I think that the US Armed Forces are not in the habit of awarding medals for no reason. I do not question the worthiness of anyone's medals. "You get a Purple Heart because you might have been killed. Sometimes your family gets it because you were."]
I notice you have nothing else to say about the Swift Boat Liars. Perhaps because another report contradicting their version of events has surfaced. Specifically, the after-action report filed by Roy Hoffman, Swift Boat Liar, five days after the incident in which Larry Thurlow claims that no shots were fired. Curiously, Hoffman's incident report supports the stance that yes, the boats were under fire.
Also of particular note is the last sentence in the article: "The anti-Kerry group has not produced any official Navy documents supporting its claim." In the case of old Dr Who episodes, we can now in some cases watch the episodes and say yeah, they weren't as great as we remember them. In the case of Viet Nam, there are tons of reports filed. If there were actually any question about the facts, one would expect some of these reports to support Kerry and some to support the Swift Boat Liars. So far, the only support for the Swift Boat Liars are 1) the timing of Kerry's trip to Cambodia, and 2) the severity of the wound for which Kerry received one of his three Purple Hearts.
Perhaps every witness starts out equally credible, but after someone's been caught out in this many lies, rational people stop believing their next one.