A Vietnam vet—former Marine Peter W. Davis of Wills Point, Texas—wrote a comment here that I felt deserved its own post:

This Viet Nam vet is minimally interested in The Hee-row's exploits, whatever they really were, in Viet Nam. What interests me is how, after having run for office as a war hero, and lost, he gathered a bunch of 'veterans,' many of whom never wore Uncle's suit at all--many others not having set foot in Southeast Asia--and used their 'experiences' to go before a United States Senate Committee and slime every other man that served. Including the dead.

I'm no more a hero than I am a war criminal. I'm just a guy who wore a uniform and did a job that most people wouldn't. My war had far more to do with loneliness, homesickness, exhaustion and fear than John Wayne-style shooting of some big machine gun from the hip. Yet I served alongside some genuine heroes. A whole lot of them traded their jungle ripstops in and came home wearing shiny aluminum boxes.

John Kerry slimed the names of those men with lies. He deliberately, for political gain, harmed some 58,000 families. He may as well have gone to those 58,000 homes and pissed on every one of those neatly-folded flags. Now he's returned to those homes and is parading around wrapped in those same flags.

I do not consider myself fit to speak for those men; there are others with far more right to do so. Compared to some of the men who are speaking out I can stand in the shade of a dime, comfortably, at high noon. There is, however, one man next to whom I consider myself infinitely more qualified to speak of my comrades: John Kerry. Unlike him I've never slimed them. He is not fit to speak of those men, much less speak for them.

Thank you, Peter, for your four years of service. Thank you for sharing your perspective with us now. If anyone's right of free speech is endowed by the Creator, it is yours.

Posted by: Attila at 02:04 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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