Connecticut: Blumenthal = Liar

General General Discussion
1

Guess he was a politician first - United States Marine second…A disgrace to those who shed their youth and their lives there:

Perhaps John Kerry, the former junior senator from Massachusetts, did not serve as heroically in Vietnam as he would like us to think. Certainly he wasn’t there for very long. But at least he put in an appearance. The same can’t be said of Sgt. Richard Blumenthal, a fellow Democrat and the attorney general of Connecticut, who is seeking to become that state’s junior senator.

“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Sgt. Blumenthal told a March 2008 gathering of veterans in Norwalk. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it–Afghanistan or Iraq–we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”

Today’s New York Times, however, reports that Blumenthal never served in Vietnam. He received two student deferments while an undergraduate at Harvard and another one while doing graduate work. “In early 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson, under pressure over criticism that wealthier young men were avoiding the draft through graduate school, abolished nearly all graduate deferments and sharply increased the number of troops sent to Southeast Asia.” So Blumenthal got deferment No. 4:

That summer, Mr. Blumenthal’s draft classification changed from 2-S, an educational deferment, to 2-A, an occupational deferment–a rare exemption from military service for men who contended that it was in the “national health, safety and interest” for them to remain in their civilian jobs. At the time, he was working as a special assistant to Ms. Graham, whose son Donald he had befriended at Harvard.
That would be Katharine Graham, then publisher of the Washington Post. Blumenthal then moved on to the Nixon White House, where he worked for urban affairs adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan (later a Democratic senator from New York). Somehow America survived the damage to the “national health, safety and interest” that resulted from Graham’s having to find a new assistant. Blumenthal got a fifth deferment, and finally enlisted when this ran out:

In 1970, with his last deferment in jeopardy, he landed a coveted spot in the Marine Reserve, which virtually guaranteed that he would not be sent to Vietnam. He joined a unit in Washington that conducted drills and other exercises and focused on local projects, like fixing a campground and organizing a Toys for Tots drive.
Only a few years ago, Democratic politicians like Kerry were denouncing George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for avoiding the draft by, respectively, enlisting in the National Guard and obtaining deferments. These attacks were scurrilous, and it would be no less so to claim that there was anything dishonorable about Sgt. Blumenthal’s service in the Marine Reserves.

More: Wall Street Journal

2

An interesting op-ed piece published in the NYT yesterday suggests Blumenthal’s fabrications are part and parcel of a more systemic societal problem infecting many of the Boomer Generation.

The Technicality Generation
By LARRY PRESSLER
Published: May 18, 2010

THE problems faced by Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut’s attorney general, over his depiction of his military service are indicative of a broader disease in our society. The issues of integrity in business and politics that plague us today — the way elites are no longer trusted — are rooted in the dishonesty that surrounded the Vietnam-era draft.

The Vietnam War drove members of my generation in different directions. Some served because they believed in the war, others didn’t believe in the war and protested, but when drafted felt an obligation to go. Others were simply drafted. Some refused service out of principle, others out of fear, and still others because they felt that taking the time to go to Vietnam would slow their careers.

Many of those who didn’t serve were helped by an inherently unfair draft. I don’t fault anyone for taking advantage of the law. Where I do find fault is among those who say they were avoiding the draft because they were idealistically opposed to the war — when, in fact, they mostly didn’t want to make the sacrifice. The problem is that for every person who won a deferment or a spot in a special National Guard unit, someone poorer or less educated, and usually African-American, had to serve.

Thus, many in my generation knew they were using a broken (but legal) system to shirk their duty. They cloaked themselves in idealism but deep down had to know they were engaging in a charade. (I, too, was against the Vietnam war and felt that people should protest, but not dodge their draft responsibility.)

This intellectual justification continues to this day, only now these men are among our country’s leaders.

I had a unique opportunity to observe the best and brightest of my generation — first as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford in 1964 and then when I attended Harvard Law School after serving in Vietnam. Among both sets of my classmates were some who used elaborate steps to avoid the draft. (At school, I recall articles circulating that explained how to fail Army physicals.)

In private conversations with my classmates, I was told over and over that they didn’t want to serve in the military because it would hold up their careers. To the outside world, though, many would proclaim they weren’t going because they were opposed to the war and we should end all wars. Eventually they began to believe their “idealism” was superior to that of those who did serve. They said that it was courageous to resist the draft — something that would have been true if they had actually become conscientious objectors and gone to prison.

Too many in my generation did a deeply insidious thing. And they got away with it. Big time. Poorer people went to war. The men who didn’t were able to get their head start to power.

Now that flawed thinking has been carried forward. Many of these men who evaded service but claimed idealism lead our elite institutions. The concept of using legal technicalities to evade responsibility has been carried over to playing with derivatives, or to short-changing shareholders. Once my generation got in the habit of saying one thing and believing another, it couldn’t stop.

Bizarre outcomes abound. Many of those who avoided the war became advocates of a muscular foreign policy. When I was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I would be invited to meetings in the Pentagon or the White House to discuss troop deployments. In those meetings, I encountered far too many Democrats and Republicans who did not serve in the war when they had a chance, and who overcompensated for their unease by sending others into harm’s way.

In the coming days, I imagine we will learn more details of Mr. Blumenthal’s sad story. What we know, though, more generally, is much more troubling. Too many members of my generation learned to believe that they could work within the law to evade basic responsibilities, cloaking their actions in idealism. It’s a way of thinking that scars us to this day.

Larry Pressler, a former Republican senator from South Dakota, served in the Army in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968.

3

My Son saw this story and stated to me that AG “Sgt” Blewthemall must have gotten one of his deferments during the teaching of the Corps Values as he has no honor or courage.

4

I’m shocked! :rolleyes:

5

Reminds me of Clinton saying she took sniper fire when she got off the plane, video came out, and then she, too, said she “mispoke”.

Speaking of which what the fuck kind of excuse is “mispoke”. Politician double speak for “I got caught in a lie, and now Im trying to make people feel sorry for me…”.

Cocksucker should be charged for stolen valor…:smiley:

6

My dog will compose Mozart’s Requiem before that happens…