Senator Harkin, McCain and Military Service

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080517/NEWS09/805170330/1001/NEWS

Washington, D.C. — Republican presidential candidate John McCain's family background as the son and grandson of admirals has given him a worldview shaped by the military, "and he has a hard time thinking beyond that," Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., said Friday.

"I think he's trapped in that," Harkin said in a conference call with Iowa reporters. "Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous."

Harkin said that "it's one thing to have been drafted and served, but another thing when you come from generations of military people and that's just how you're steeped, how you've learned, how you've grown up."

 

This is the same Tom Harkin that said:

"One year was in Vietnam. I was flying F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaissance support missions. I did no bombing."



http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1642

"But as the late Senator Barry Goldwater (R.-Arizona) was first to notice, nothing in Harkin's military service file showed that he ever served in Vietnam. Challenged by Goldwater, an Air Force General, to explain why he was awarded neither the Vietnam Service Medal nor the Vietnam Campaign medal (decorations given to everyone who served in the Southeast Asian theater), Harkin changed his story. Harkin claimed that he instead had flown combat sorties over Cuba during the 1960s.

This was another Harkin lie. Harkin actually served as a ferry pilot who flew aircraft in need of repair between the Philippines and his base in Atsugi, Japan. Harkin at last acknowledged that he never flew air patrols in Vietnam. He began describing himself in speeches as "a Vietnam era veteran."

 

Appeasement minded democrats do consider patriotism some sort of illness, I believe.