argh

[jazzfish]

No, Walden's in the mall does not have Unfit for Command. We don't have it because corporate didn't send us any. I, personally, suspect that this is because Regnery, being a small press, either couldn't keep up with or vastly underestimated demand, and corporate thus sent their limited supply to places they expected would sell.

When you accuse us of having political motivations for not carrying the book, you are engaging in rampant ideological blindness of the worst kind. We carry a pretty well-balanced collection of political books. Currently we've got a lot of Michael Moore because, guess what? After F-9/11 came out he became a big seller. We had a lot of Hannity and O'Reilly when they first came out as well. Hell, we've got Michelle Malkin's screed about how all the hanky-heads ought to be locked up just like the Japs during WWII.

Please don't be an idiot. Thank you.

[As an aside, Atrios has a transcript from The Daily Show that's of some relevance.]

And the Washington Post gives us a few more bad apples. Hey, you folks who don't think anyone above the rank of sergeant bears any responsibility for Abu Ghraib &c? All of you can go to hell.

Comments

[rubinpdf.livejournal.com]

You seriously wish to question Bob Dole war wounds? You have gone insane. Whether or not he deserved Purple Hearts, Kerry's three wounds did not require hospitalization. There is just no comparison to the injuries that Bob Dole received.

While trying to assist the downed radio man, Dole was hit by Nazi machine gun fire in the upper right back and his right arm was so damaged that it was unrecognizable. Dole was immediately given morphine by an Army field medic to alleviate the pain, and his forehead was marked with an "M" in his own blood to alert medics. He was not expected to live.

Dole waited nine long hours on the Italian battlefield before he was finally taken to the Fifteenth Evacuation Hospital. After a brief stay in a field Army hospital in Italy, he was transported back to the United States and to Topeka's Winter General Army Hospital, where he continued his painful recovery and endured a kidney operation. Then, he was transferred to Percy Jones Army Medical Center in Michigan, where he survived his second brush with death -- blood clotting.

It took about three years and nine operations for Bob Dole to rehabilitate. He learned to strengthen his injured arm, and also had to learn how to write with his left hand, as the doctors could not rebuild the excessive damage done by the Nazi machine gun fire.

To paraphrase Emperor Palpatine, "Your hate has not made you powerful."

[jazzfish]

I can only assume that you didn't bother clicking on the link to read the text behind it. I will therefore cut-and-paste the appropriate text from the link:

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."]

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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.