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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (61365)	8/18/2004 2:11:43 PM
From: gamesmistress	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793698

Here's another blast from the past: Instapundit on Tom Harkin's err.. lapse of memory back in 1991, which I'm sure he thought everyone had forgotten by now. He reckoned without the blogs: August 18, 2004 TOM HARKIN, FAKE WAR HERO: In an update to an earlier post, I noted some comments by Donald Sensing about Sen. Tom Harkin, most recently seen attacking the patriotism of Dick Cheney. Sensing observed: "Harkin himself claimed to have battled Mig fighters over North Vietnam while a Navy pilot. He was a pilot, but never went to Vietnam." A reader emailed to say that he didn't think Sensing's sourcing was good enough for a charge of that magnitude. It seemed to me that I remembered some Harkin truth-stretching from back then, and I trust Sensing, but in keeping with Walter Cronkite's warnings about poorly sourced stories on the Internet, I decided to do some research at lunchtime. In a book called Stolen Valor : How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History, I found this passage, which is considerably worse for Harkin than Sensing's short summary. I'm reproducing it as an image for the benefit of doubters. [image omitted, found at instapundit.com ] I also found an article from the Wall Street Journal, entitled "Harkin Presidential Bid Marred by Instances In Which Candidate Appears to Stretch Truth," dated December 26, 1991, p. A12. (Sorry -- I got this via WESTLAW so I can't post a link, but the WESTLAW page number is 1991 WL-WSJ 578809.) It supports the above. Here's an excerpt: 1979, Mr. Harkin, then a congressman, participated in a round-table discussion arranged by the Congressional Vietnam Veterans' Caucus. "I spent five years as a Navy pilot, starting in November of 1962," Mr. Harkin said at that meeting, in words that were later quoted in a book, Changing of the Guard, by Washington Post political writer David Broder. "One year was in Vietnam. I was flying F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaisance support missions. I did no bombing." That clearly is not an accurate picture of his Navy service. Though Mr. Harkin stresses he is proud of his Navy record -- "I put my ass on the line day after day" -- he concedes now he never flew combat air patrols in Vietnam. . . . Mr. Harkin's Navy record shows his only decoration is the National Defense Service Medal, awarded to everyone on active service during those years. He did not receive either the Vietnam Service medal or the Vietnam Campaign medal, the decorations given to everyone who served in the Southeast Asia theater. "We didn't get them for what we did," Mr. Harkin says. "It's never bothered me." Two things bother me about this. One is that Harkin seems a rather odd choice for the Democrats as an attack dog. As Sensing notes, what are they thinking? The other is that I managed to do this research over my lunch hour, but it doesn't seem to be noted in the press treatment of Harkin's charges by the people who get, you know, paid to do this stuff. (Take that, Walter!) And it would seem that when Harkin -- who didn't serve in Vietnam combat but who lied about it, and whose actual military service seems rather similar to Bush's -- calls Dick Cheney a "coward" because he didn't serve in Vietnam, well, it ought to be worth mentioning. Shouldn't it be? Instead, CNN calls Harkin a "former Navy fighter pilot," (though it at least gets the details of his service correct). Calling Harkin "a Senator who, like President Bush, flew fighter jets during the Vietnam era without seeing combat but who, unlike President Bush, lied about it," would be more accurate, but it would kind of change the story. Wonder why nobody looked into this? Or, if they knew, bothered to note it? As with the Kerry Christmas-in-Cambodia story, this is probably more significant for what it tells us about the sorry state of political journalism this campaign season than for what it tells us about the speaker. UPDATE: Roger Simon has more thoughts on today's political journalism, and Harkin.