02-17-2004, 08:45 AM
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#11 (permalink)
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This vexes me. I am terribly vexed.
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Cleland responds to Coulters slander.
http://www.11alive.com/news/news_art...?storyid=42979
Quote:
2/15/04
Former Sen. Max Cleland defended his military service record Saturday night in response to comments from columnist and television commenter Ann Coulter that accused him of playing up injuries he suffered in the Vietnam War for political gain.
Coulter, in a column published this week, said that Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, is no war hero, but rather a victim of a tragic, accidental grenade explosion who plays up his amputations for political gain.
“If Cleland had dropped a grenade on himself at Fort Dix rather than in Vietnam, he would never have been a U.S. Senator in the first place. Maybe he’d be the best pharmacist in Atlanta,” Coulter said in her column, published on February 11.
“He didn’t ‘give his limbs for his country,’ or leave them ‘on the battlefield,” Coulter said. “There was no bravery involved in dropping the grenade on himself with no enemy troops in sight.
In fact, Cleland was wounded picking up a grenade that someone else dropped, during what he says was a combat mission.
“I volunteered for a combat mission with the 1st Air Calvary division going into break the siege at Khe Sahn, and if that isn’t a combat mission, you ought to ask some of the people that were there and the 200 guys that were killed in that mission.”
As he campaigns for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, Cleland has questioned President Bush’s military record and touted Kerry’s, who served as Navy lieutenant during the Vietnam War.
“(Bush) goes into Iraq and then three weeks in the battle stands on an aircraft carrier, dressing up pretending to be a super hero, and the guy hardly showed up for drills in Alabama,” Cleland says. “He got favorable treatment in Vietnam.”
Rusty Paul, a Georgian Republican Party strategist, said Coulter crossed the line with her comments.
“You can’t take away from Max Cleland his record of service to this country and the sacrifice that he’s made, regardless of the circumstances. To me, that’s out of bounds to talk about that,” he said.
Paul, however, said attacking the politics of Cleland and Kerry was well within bounds. “I think the voters would prefer to talk about what George Bush’s view for the future is versus John Kerry’s rather than what happened 30 years ago,” he said.
President Bush released all his Vietnam-era records Friday to counter Democrats’ suggestions that he shirked his duty in the Texas National Guard.
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