This is so common, beginning with John Kerry’s “Winter Soldier” farce in the 70s, that is shouldn’t surprise anyone anymore but watch out for veterans who support left wing Democrats. Until Vietnam, this was a rare circumstance. The occasional politician inflated his resume, like Senator Tom Harkin and even a couple of “oldest Civil War veterans.”
The same year, Iowa Senator (and later presidential candidate) Tom Harkin boasted that he had flown F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaissance support missions in Vietnam. No, wait, it was combat sorties over Cuba, he corrected himself when challenged by Senator Berry Goldwater. Harkin finally acknowledged that he had never seen combat — that his military experience consisted of ferrying damaged aircraft for repairs from Japan to the Philippines.
Kerry started the current wave of anti-war “veterans” with his treasonous conduct in 1972. His “winter soldier” media circus, the name taken from “The Crisis, a pamphlet by Thomas Paine, was supposed to indicate that these anti-war veterans were the real patriots. Except:
Enemy documents from 1971 show that Vietnamese communists guided the American antiwar movement via meetings between the communist delegations to the Paris Peace talks and American antiwar activists. John Kerry and the VVAW were working toward the exact goals set forth in the communist directives.
Well, the present anti-war veterans seem to have an agenda, as well. Elect anti-war Democrats who will lose the Iraq War.
Rick Strandlof, executive director of the Colorado Veterans Alliance and the man most colleagues knew as Rick Duncan, was front and center during the 2008 political campaigns in Colorado.
He spoke at a Barack Obama veterans rally in front of the Capitol in July, co-hosted several events with then- congressional candidate Jared Polis and attacked Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer in a TV ad paid for by the national group Votevets.org.
And the mostly Democratic candidates he supported — looking for credibility on veterans issues and the war — lapped it up appreciatively.
Now, politicians are dealing with news that the man they believed to be a former Marine and war veteran wounded in Iraq by a roadside bomb, in fact, never served in the military — but did spend time in a mental hospital.
Oh well, another Democrat veteran. It may have elected Clare McCaskill to the Senate in 2006.
There may be a problem with one of the most effective television ads being run by Democrat for U.S. Senate candidate Claire McCaskill. Her campaign can’t prove it is true, KMBC’s Micheal Mahoney reported.
The commercial is called “Josh.” It is named after Kansas Citian Josh Lansdale, a medic who served and was wounded in Iraq. “I returned from Iraq with a busted ankle and post-traumatic stress. It was six months before I could see a doctor,” Lansdale said in the McCaskill ad.
Officials with the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Kansas City said Iraqi vets like Lansdale are priority veterans. “We see them within 30 days of their entry into our system,” said Jane Alley of the VA Medical Center.
…Mahoney reported that he went to one of the addresses for Lansdale, and for more than a week, Mahoney and the McCaskill campaign tried to contact Lansdale. Mahoney said he even asked Lansdale’s mother to have him call KMBC.
In one brief telephone conversation, Lansdale praised the VA’s mental health program, but he complained about how his ankle problem was treated. Mahoney said that indicates some sort of contact, but if, when and for how long cannot be determined.
…Mahoney reported that since Lansdale would not meet with him to answer questions or take phone calls from the McCaskill campaign, he was unable to prove the accuracy of Lansdale’s claim. The commercial is no longer airing on KMBC-TV.
But she won the election. Her credentials ? She was the widow of a former governor.