Nozzle on May 19, 2008 at 9:08 PM

Sorry, but that’s completely untrue…it isn’t a made-up job to keep misfits busy. The need for ferry pilots doesn’t go away if everybody gets along or everyone has the potential to be an ace. Besides, the pilots entrusted to fly aircraft not yet certified as safe (functional check flights) are usually the best sticks in the squadron because these jets have a higher potential for mishap.

James on May 19, 2008 at 9:57 AM

James, nothing wrong with support roles. I served in plenty myself over the years…However, Harkin’s Vietnam experience ferrying planes to/from Japan is significant in this respect. Any pilot worth two hundred pounds of jet fuel would not have been ferrying aircraft for a living during wartime unless he was flagged for poor airmanship, discipline, or his squadron couldn’t stand to have him around and got rid of him. Once again, there is nothing wrong with a support role but you have to read between the lines in this instance. Informed speculation on my part I know…

The Left is twisting itself into pretzels trying to figure out how to neutralize McCain’s war record in this election.

I hope and pray that McCain’s campaign is smart enough to make an ad out of all these obnoxious quotes from the likes of Harkin and Rockefeller. Most Americans are highly offended when anyone’s military service is attacked. Much less that of a certified war hero.

It seems very funny to me that when the Democrats run a candidate who served (for however long, 3 months or a full tour), being in the military matters. When they don’t have a candidate who was in the military, being in the military either makes the person too war-like to be President, or it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make a bit of sense to anyone with half a brain.

The rest of America grew up. People stopped drinking the New Left Kool-aid a long time ago and quit treating veterans like baby-killers and Dr. Strangelove. – Ed.

Unfortunately, not true that the rest of America grew up. There are many many (all liberals) that fear and loathe the military. I know this first hand living in Colorado Springs where we have a very large Military presence. My liberal friends often make comments about being “scared” to go down near Ft. Carson because of the Army “goons” down there. Makes me want to scream, and yes I do correct them. Bezerkley thinking is everywhere.

So go ahead and call Harkin out on his lies and his idiotic statements, but don’t denigrate the job he was assigned to do.

Agreed. I heartily agree that the support roles are demanding, risky, and require every ounce of energy, intelligence, duty, and honor from their servicemembers. The same goes for reservist/guard duty too.

Harkin does deserve condemnation for inflating his military experience for political gain. I would advance the notion that Harkin himself does not sufficiently respect support duty, as evidenced by his reluctance to honestly portray his military experience but instead to falsely associate himself with the presumed glory of being a combat pilot.

Recollecting Harkin’s earlier falsehoods on military service, his latest gaffe really exposes him (to anyone watching) as just an unethical opportunist. A typical lying politician (is that redundant?) who richly deserves to be put out to pasture.

Longhorn Six on May 17, 2008 at 11:15 AM

funky chicken on May 17, 2008 at 12:18 PM

pocomoco on May 17, 2008 at 12:32 PM

(In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve been a ‘REMF’ for 17 years. Go on, tell me I ‘didn’t accomplish anything’ or something similar.)

I grow increasingly weary of and irritated with people on this blog and others who cast aspersions on servicemembers who perform support roles. Military service isn’t all about glory, it’s about getting the job done. That cannot be accomplished without the efforts of those who know they’ll never get a chance to do anything that will be viewed as heroic, and yet continue to do it anyway.

So go ahead and call Harkin out on his lies and his idiotic statements, but don’t denigrate the job he was assigned to do.

And for the record, if I were exposed to 1 tenth of 1 percent of what the residents of the Hanoi Hilton got (McCain, Denton, or any of them), I would confess to:

Killing the Russian Royal Family
The Lindbergh Kidnapping
Assassinating Lincoln, Kennedy and Trotsky
Inventing AIDS as a high school science project
and Faking the Moon Landing

… all in the first 5 seconds.

….Harkin eastern Iowas’ fool!

In 2004, Tom Harkin was one of those condemning Navy veterans who served in the same unit as John Kerry for daring to raise questions about his details of his military service, his seditious conduct after his return to the……

Once upon a time in our history – and throughout most of the history of most of the great nations that ever were – there could be no finer compliment to a man’s character than that he came from a long line of soldiers and warriors.

What has happened to us? To Americans, and to all humanity?

I returned from my second drill with the Tennessee National Guard just a few hours ago; I leave for Fort Mcclelland, Alabama on June 13th for the official start of OCS.

I spent my day today listening to the sergeants and staff sergeants and specialists around me, to former sailors and Marines – all of us exhausted already, all of us educated, all of succeeding elsewhere in life.

We started with 60. We’re already down to 44. Not 30 will get to the start of the first real phase of training. We might graduate 15.

But I sat there with them today, and listened to an endless stream of speeches and lectures from lieutenants and captains and colonels and even a general and not one thing I’ve said matters except this:

History is right. Harkin – and all those who think like him – are forever wrong.

McCain’s service, his family’s service, is a national treasure. All who share such a tradition are our finest citizens. All who serve, especially those who lead, those who volunteer, those who choose to deal with endless bullshit for no reason other than love of country … they are America.

Don’t hate Harkin and those like him. Pity him and pity them.

My day sucked today and a bunch more will suck a lot worse, yet I know something Harkin will never understand, and it makes me and everyone who understands it infinitely more important.

Harkin isn’t worth your time. Ignore him and go fly a flag.

Oh, and my USAF husband says that if Harkin wants to fear the military, he’s sure they can work something out.

He has never been held responsible for either the Pork in the Farm Bills or the lies He has told about His Military Service, he stayed in the Reserve system long enough for a Military Pension!

He is a total waste of media attention and tax dollar$!

Hey Harkin – how much would you like to live somewhere that you wouldn’t have the US military to protect your butt 24/7? I didn’t think so.

Blackfive has some amusing and insightful stuff, as usual.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiCph97vRSU

Buy Danish on May 17, 2008 at 6:38 PM

Exactly. And with apologies to the term limits comments, the job of removing scum like Harkin from the public eye is one for the voters of Iowa, just as the job of removing scum like Dick Durbin is mine, as an Illinois voter.

Although these traits are foreign to us, we humbly stood in harm’s way, we left our families behind for years at a time, we watched fellow Americans brothers die for your right to speak your mind without the fear. We, and millions of others like us, stand the wall for people like you.