Jim Webb Verbally Eviscerates Romney During Virginia Beach Remarks

AP Photo

I haven't always been a happy supporter of Jim Webb even though I did vote for him six years ago when he ran against my former law school roommate, George "Macaca" Allen.  A case in point is when Webb was waffling on DADT repeal and I was contacted by his communications director after slamming Webb in a blog post.  Webb went a long way to wipe out any displeasure I might have had with him when he eviscerated - or perhaps castrates is a better term - Mitt Romney while speaking at Barack Obama's campaign stop in Virginia Beach today.  The thrust of Webb's remarks: castigating Romney for lobbying in support of the Vietnam War and then using a special exemption from service for Mormon missionaries and spending critical war years in Europe. I understand where Webb is coming from.  I'm 60 years old and only missed the draft because I had a high lottery number (269 as I recall).  Unlike Romney, I never sought an exemption.  And I never agitated in support of the Vietnam fiasco.  And, yes, I lost childhood friends in that fool's errand that is similar in so many ways to the ongoing disaster in the Middle East.    Politico has details on Webb's statements.  Here are highlights:

Webb’s bladework today on Mitt Romney was as unexpected as it was memorable.  From Webb’s introductory remarks before Obama’s Virginia Beach appearance:

Governor Romney and I are about the same age. Like millions of others in our generation, we came to adulthood facing the harsh realities of the Vietnam War. 2.7 million in our age group went to Vietnam, a war which eventually took the lives of 58,000 young Americans and cost another 300,000 wounded. The Marine Corps lost 100,000 killed or wounded in that war. During the year I was in Vietnam, 1969, our country lost twice as many dead as we have lost in Iraq and Afghanistan combined over the past 10 years of war. 1968 was worse. 1967 was about the same. Not a day goes by when I do not think about the young Marines I was privileged to lead.

This was a time of conscription, where every American male was eligible to be drafted. People made choices about how to deal with the draft, and about military service. I have never envied or resented any of the choices that were made as long as they were done within the law. But those among us who stepped forward to face the harsh unknowns and the lifelong changes that can come from combat did so with the belief that their service would be honored, and that our leaders would, in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, care for those who had borne the battle, and for their widows and their children.

Those young Marines that I led have grown older now. They’ve lived lives of courage, both in combat and after their return, where many of them were derided by their own peers for having served. That was a long time ago. They are not bitter. They know what they did. But in receiving veterans’ benefits, they are not takers. They were givers, in the ultimate sense of that word. There is a saying among war veterans: “All gave some, some gave all.” This is not a culture of dependency. It is a part of a long tradition that gave this country its freedom and independence. They paid, some with their lives, some through wounds and disabilities, some through their emotional scars, some through the lost opportunities and delayed entry into civilian careers which had already begun for many of their peers who did not serve.

And not only did they pay. They will not say this, so I will say it for them. They are owed, if nothing else, at least a mention, some word of thanks and respect, when a presidential candidate who is their generational peer makes a speech accepting his party’s nomination to be commander-in-chief. And they are owed much more than that — a guarantee that we will never betray the commitment that we made to them and to their loved ones.

[C]oming from Webb — a voice for the white working class, a former Navy secretary and decorated Vietnam veteran whose son left college to enlist as an infantry private in the Marine Corps and fought in the Iraq War — his words carry a punch that few other Democratic surrogates can muster.

 That's right.  Military veterans receiving benefits and those on active duty do not pay income taxes on their benefits.  These individuals are part of the 47% that Mitt Romney holds in thinly veiled contempt.  The man is despicable.  

Mitt Romney in 1968 - while thousands of young Americans were dying in Vietnam

During Bush Years Remains of War Dead Dumped in Landfill

Chimperator Bush surely loved to use members of the nation's military as backdrops for political events - all the time claiming that he revered "our troops" as do many demagogues in the Republican establishment today. As the sayings go, talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words. A breaking scandal at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware is underscoring just how cheap such pro-military words were under the dark years of the Bush/Cheney regime. It seems that throwing remains of war dead returning from the fool's errand war in Iraq and Afghanistan sold to the American people based on lies into a landfill was just fine. No wonder the Chimperator and Emperor Palpatine Cheney never wanted to allow the press to take pictures of the returning coffins, etc. The Washington Post has details on this disturbing story. Here are highlights:

The Dover Air Force Base mortuary for years disposed of portions of troops’ remains by cremating them and dumping the ashes in a Virginia landfill, a practice that officials have since abandoned in favor of burial at sea.

The mortuary in Delaware, the main point of entry for the nation’s war dead and the target of federal investigations of alleged mishandling of remains, engaged in the practice from 2003 to 2008, according to Air Force officials. The manner of disposal was not disclosed to relatives of fallen service members.

Gari-Lynn Smith, portions of whose husband’s remains were disposed of in the landfill after his 2006 death in Iraq, said she was “appalled and disgusted” by the way the Air Force had acted. She learned of the landfill disposal earlier this spring in a letter from a senior official at the Dover mortuary.

“My only peace of mind in losing my husband was that he was taken to Dover and that he was handled with dignity, love, respect and honor,” Smith said. “That was completely shattered for me when I was told that he was thrown in the trash.”

The disclosure of the landfill disposals comes in the aftermath of multiple federal investigations that documented “gross mismanagement” at Dover Air Force Base, which receives the remains of all service members killed in action in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere overseas.

On Tuesday, the Air Force acknowledged that the mortuary had lost a dead soldier’s ankle and an unidentified body part recovered from an air crash; had sawed off a Marine’s arm so his body would fit in his casket; and had improperly stored and tracked other remains.

“What happened at Dover AFB exceeds on many levels the nationwide anger that resulted from reports of mistreated wounded at the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2007 and reports of lost or misplaced graves at Arlington National Cemetery,” said Richard L. DeNoyer, the national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “You only get one chance to return our fallen warriors to their families with all the dignity and respect they deserve from a grateful nation — and that mortuary affairs unit failed.”

Smith,spent more than four years trying to find out what happened to her husband’s remaining body parts before she learned of the landfill disposal. Sgt. 1st Class Scott R. Smith served more than 16 years in the Army and volunteered for dangerous duty defusing and destroying bombs in Iraq. He was killed when stepped on a pressure plate that triggered a buried bomb.

Gari-Lynn Smith said she believed that Dover officials would treat the remains with respect. The deceased soldier’s parents declined to comment. In April, Trevor Dean, a senior official at the Dover mortuary, informed her in a letter that some of her husband’s body parts were cremated and dumped in a landfill in King George County. In the letter, Dean listed her husband’s first name incorrectly, an oversight that Smith saw as yet another sign of disregard for her spouse.

“This has been nothing but a nightmare,” she said.

I would posit that all 8 years of Bush/Cheney was more or less a nightmare. Yet simpletons continue to listen to the disingenuous bullshit coming from the faux patriots in the Republican Party. I know I will offend some readers, but in my estimation, to be a Republican nowadays requires one to either be mentally ill or to have suffered a lobotomy. The lies and disingenuousness are simple mind numbing.

Profiling the War Dead

With the rampant anti-immigrant and anti-nonwhite hysteria sweeping around within the GOP base, an article in the Los Angeles Times that examines the war dead from California shows how nasty and obscene this anti-immigrant bigotry truly is when exposed to the light of day. While wearing their religion on their sleeves and touting intolerant hate-based "family values," the Christianist who make up the core of today's Republican Party are hypocrites and anything but true Christians. As the article illustrates, more than ten percent (10%) of California's war dead were immigrants who obviously were not here to steal the jobs of whites or subvert America. Rather they came to strive for a better life and paid the ultimate price out of their devotion to this country. It is most sad that these young people gave their lives for a nation that the Christianists believe belongs only to them. Both these Christianists through their war mongering and mindless support of the Chimperator and the Chimperator himself have a great deal of blood on their hands. Here are a few highlights:

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Nearly 500 Californians have lost their lives in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least 58 were immigrants; more than 160 were parents and left behind more than 300 children. One descended from two presidents; another was a Guatemalan street orphan taken in by a U.S. family as a teenager. A database of California's war dead will be available Sunday at latimes.com.

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At age 7, Victor H. Toledo-Pulido was smuggled from Mexico through rugged mountains into California. He and another soldier were killed in May 2007 when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle southeast of Baghdad. "They judge us, and they say we just come to take their jobs and positions, but we also make sacrifices. Victor worked since he was little, in the fields and in restaurants," his mother, Maria Gaspar, said after the 22-year-old was killed. "He was Mexican, but he thought like an American. And he gave his life for this country."

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Dozens more were the children of immigrants, including Bunny Long, 22, a Marine lance corporal whose parents came from Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge imprisoned them for four years in a labor camp."This is our home," Sim Long said after his son was killed in March 2006 by a suicide car bomber in Fallouja, west of Baghdad. "I'm very proud that Bunny was able to give back to his country. Our country."

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No high school has lost more young men -- six -- than Buchanan High in the Central Valley town of Clovis. Another Clovis soldier killed in Iraq went to Clovis High. The city's population is about 83,000. The median age of those killed was 23. There were 402 casualties under age 30. Fifteen were older than 40.

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The bulk of The Times' analysis is based on original reporting compiled since late 2001, including more than 420 obituaries written by Times staff writers. The findings were used to create a database that includes information including the service member's high school, marital status, number of children and place of burial. It also notes, when known, that a person was born outside of the U.S. or was a first-generation American.

Some of George Bush's Victims

Eight more American soldiers died yesterday, sacrificed on the altar of Chimperator Bush's hubris. As a parent, it sickens me that families have lost beloved children all because of the lies of Bush/Cheney. Needless to say, the above photo doesn't even begin to focus on the countless innocent Irqgis killed in Bush's war.