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Ted Rall's Mixed Bag of Myths, Lies and Spit

Every time I try to ignore Ted Rall, he drags me back in. His latest is called: Boycott the Military bq. A peace-sign necklace hanging above a loose floral-print dress billowing about her unshaven legs, the hippie chick scornfully scans his uniform, spits in his face and screams: "Baby killer!" The veteran scans the crowd for support, but sees only contempt in the faces of passersby.
It's a powerful, tragic cliché of the Vietnam era, dramatized in the "Rambo" movies, and a cautionary tale for today's antiwar left. But according to Holy Cross College professor Jerry Lembcke, a Vietnam vet and author of "The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam," it never happened. Never happened. So my parents, whose memories of that time are pretty clear, have been lying to me. My Vietnam veteran relatives are also lying. Neighbors, past teachers, parents of friends - all lying. The most dishonest thing about the left is how they dismiss everything that exposes them in a less than adoring light as media lies or conspiracy theories. Not only did it happen then, it's happening now.
"If you go back and look at the historical record, like I did--newspaper accounts, police records, and also just things historians have written," says Lembcke, "you don't find any record or any evidence that these things happened--or even that they were being claimed as happening--in the late '60s and early '70s." There isn't even one letter written by a soldier at the time referencing such an incident.
Forget the historians. Go find some actual vets and talk to them. Just because the incidents aren't embedded in media stone doesn't mean they didn't happen. But when it's convenient, people like Rall and Lembke will say, if the media didn't tell the tale, it's not true. And then turn around and say everything in the media is a lie. bq. Michael Moore's documentary film "Fahrenheit 9/11" reflects the left's internal contradiction about the military. First we see U.S. forces indiscriminately bombing Iraqi civilians, torturing and sexually harassing prisoners and terrorizing women and children in their homes. But the film's longest segment focuses on deaths and injuries suffered by those who, in Moore's words, "defend our freedom." Well, which is it? Are they torturers or footsoldiers of democracy? I wouldn't really call it an internal contradiction. I'd call it hypocrisy. These are the people who claim they support the troops by saying bring them home now, but that turn of phrase is just another in their long line of disingenuous taglines. They call our soldiers Rambos and compare them to cold-blooded killers. They don't care about the lives of the soldiers. They want them home because it would mean an end to Bush's Illegal War on Brown People. To pull the soldiers out and leave Iraq to fend for themselves when they are not ready to do that would be to turn Iraq over to all the terrorist factions that are hiding under the rocks there. The ensuing chaos and breakdown of whatever semblance of democracy has been instilled there would be a great big victory for the Ted Rall left. Anything that makes Bush, his administration or the war look like failure gets the V sign from them.
There was a time when service in U.S. military was honorable and professionally rewarding. But because of politicians who use the military to pump up corporate profits instead of defending us, that was a long time ago. Americans with personal integrity should boycott the volunteer military and discourage everyone they care about to do the same.
That's the left in a nutshell. Their ideals come before anything else. Before your safety, the safety of anyone else in the world, before the security of this country. Personal integrity? Integrity is giving up a lucrative career and certain fame in order to go and serve your country. Lack of personal integrity is villifying a person who does just that. Ted Rall is the last person who should be talking about personal integrity. bq. "They come from parts of the country where jobs are hard to find," an acquaintance condescendingly excuses the enlistees. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? I'd rather sleep under a bridge, eating trash out of a Dumpster, than murder human beings for Halliburton. Talk about myths. Ted still believes the one that says everyone in the military is comes from destitution and joined the armed forces as a way out of poverty. I'll tell you what happened to personal responsibility, Ted. It's right here. And here. And here. Sitting at a desk drawing crude cartoons and writing screeds against the military is not some great show of personal responsibility and it certainly doesn't take much integrity. There are people putting their lives on the line so others can live free, and Ted wants you to boycott them.
Until military service becomes less of a scam, no one should sign up. Those who have should not reenlist. Who will defend the United States if attrition shrinks the volunteer armed forces? If we're attacked by a foreign power, as we last were in 1941 at Pearl Harbor, Americans will line up to volunteer. World War II, won six decades ago by a storied generation of draftees and volunteers, was fought to defend American freedom. But we haven't fought an honorable war since.
You heard the man. Nobody sign up. Don't reenlist. Rall, in what has to be the height of ignorance, thinks you should wait until we are attacked and then sign up. Don't worry about having people in place to defend us, to keep us secure, to be there the moment something happens. If we're attacked by a foreign power, as we last were in 1941 at Pearl Harbor So, is Rall saying that 9/11 never happened, or is that an innuendo that he thinks we attacked ourselves? Either way, that has to be the most powerfully corrupt thought Ted has come up with so far, and that's no small feat. This from a New Yorker who walked through the debris and saw the destruction up close. Pat Tillman lined up to volunteer after that. But according to Ted, the war in Afghanistan is a lie, a farce, so Tillman's show of integrity doesn't count. I don't know who Rall thinks we should have attacked after 9/11 but only a misguided, brainwashed fool would think that the events of that day did not constitute an act of war. Rall is also one of those selfish lefties who is happy enough with Americans having freedom and doesn't care about the people of other countries. He is also ignorant enough to not see that democracy for everyone is a safer world for all. Would he prefer to let al Qaeda live on? Would he prefer that the "insurgents" in Iraq be let alone to do their thing? Ted Rall wants you to boycott the military. He wants the rolls to diminish. He wants the enlisted numbers to wane. Only then will he be happy. Imagine if Ted's dream came true and no one re-enlisted and no one volunteered. Imagine then another large scale attack on our country. There would have to be a draft in order to shore up our defenses and then Ted would run to his computer and bang out a column about how evil the draft is. I envision a scenario that brings the war to our own soil. I see Ted Rall cowered under his desk as his fabled "insurgents" and Michael Moore's Minutemen are dropping bombs in Rall's backyard. And I imagine that if a U.S. soldier were to rescue Rall, he'd welcome that soldier with open arms. See, with people like Rall, their personal integrity only reaches so far. Soldiers - whom you should not support - are only poor, ignorant killers until you need one by your side. If we're attacked by a foreign power, as we last were in 1941 at Pearl Harbor A man who believes that believes in lies. It's no wonder he now subscribes to the myth that Vietnam veterans were never spit on or treated badly. And years from now, he'll claim that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were treated with respect, even though he - and everyone who subscribes to the Ted Rall Doctrine - is doing a great job of spitting on them himself. And this time it's being set down in stone. [cross posted at RedState.org]

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Ted Rall's Mixed Bag of Myths, Lies and Spit:

» Contradictions from Inoperable Terran
Ted Rall just won't shut up.... [Read More]

» His Number One Fan from Ted Rall Is Full Of Crap
Michele explodes on Rall's bag of lies that he calls "Boycott The Military."... [Read More]

» Constants from Bloviating Inanities
The sun rises in the east. Ted Rall says something galactically stupid, Michele notices, takes his ass apart in itty-bitty... [Read More]

» Denial from Ted Rall Is Full Of Crap
Ted's column starts off with Lembcke... A haunted young man whose face bears too many lines for his years, jetlagged and limping from a wound sustained in the defense of his country half a world away, emerges from a jetway... [Read More]

» Update 6 from protein wisdom
Ted Rall is still an idiot out of his fucking mind.*... [Read More]

» all the creepy people, where do they all come from? from the red pages
From today's A Small Victory, discussing Ted Rall (And this is a woman who thinks I'm obsessed with her. Ha.): [quoting Rall]If we're attacked by a foreign power, as we last were in 1941 at Pearl Harbor So, is Rall... [Read More]

» The myth of spitting, or the "historical" record from Arguing with signposts...
Ted Rall, erstwhile posterboy of the rabid left and Michael Moore wannabe, has a few people stirred up over a new column about "The Spitting Myth." John Hawkins and Michele Catalano are among the bloggers popping Ted's bubble on this.... [Read More]

» Speaking of Fear and Loathing... from Mudville Gazette
An unedited story from a soldier in Iraq: The temperature was way over 100 today and my PLT had a patrol in the afternoon, which I was supposed to go on, but my Squad LDR told me I had to... [Read More]

Comments

Never happened? When I was in the Air Force back in 1988, a guy I served with had come home from VietNam to be egged at the airport and screamed at.
He doesn't like to talk about it, and it was pretty nasty.

Bastards.

I'm surprised Ted is willing to concede World War II as an honorable war. It would be so easy for him to jump on the "we pushed Japan into it" bandwagon. It would also be more consistent.

Are you sure Ted would rail against a draft? It seems to be what the antiwar left (and right) are all clamboring for nowadays.

Of course, Ted is the kind of guy who likes to have his cake and eat it too, so he'd probably come out against the thing, even if he secretly wants it.

Oh come now, Gregory. You give Ted and the left FAR FAR too much credit. They are waffling hypocrits. When the military is all volunteers, well then the rich and privileged don't have to sacrifice for the wars of their rich parents. THEN and only then are they in favor of the draft.

When the draft might be necessary, however, they would then be dead set against it.

As usual it's not about the people in the military, it's about their agenda. If it's their idea it's great. Otherwise, it's bad.

Only the poor enlist? What a crock. My son-in-law has over $100,000 in his education fund alone, and his parents live in a house that would swallow two of mine.

Only the dumb enlist? My son-in-law and I swap books on quantum physics, and he's going for his bachelor's degree. In the Navy.

The Ted Rall and the left are pompous a@%$(*^ jerks.

Elizabeth
Imperial Keeper

why do you bother reading this ranting idiot??? You've got much better things to do (the metal gods post would be a good place to start!). He's a raving lunatic with his own agenda... him and Michael are probably slobbering over each others words of inannity, kissing each other's asses and complimenting each other on how right you are, old chum!

On another note: You NEED to fix the CSS... the text on your site keeps dissapearing... I'm running IE 6.0.2800.1106 and it's happening every time I load your site.... didn't used to happen! Please fix it so it's not a pain in the ass to get my dose of ASV (which I find it VERY difficult to live without!!!)

oh, one more thing... I wonder if Mr. Rall is busy denying the holocaust, too.... just a fleeting thought.

I would fix it if I knew how. I'm looking for help right now.

Jim: In the meantime, get a browser that doesn't suck, like Firefox or Mozilla .

For someone who credits himself with "Columbia University." "Class of 1991. Major: history. With honors.", Mr. Rall isn't too sharp when it comes to WWII history. Suggesting that we can mobilize a volunteer army "If we're attacked by a foreign power, as we last were in 1941 at Pearl Harbor", is absolutely asinine. This is a classic example of the saying "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it", as anyone even remotely familiar with world history will tell you that our isolationist approach to the impending war resulted in the US military getting caught with it's pants down. It took months of desperate planning and training, and cost thousands of lives before we were able to mount any type of offensive. Thankfully, those people who lived through that period and vowed that we'd never get caught off guard again aren't all gone. It's truly sad that people like Ted Rall, who claim to be educated in history, can only point out the events that led to victory but completely forget the hard work and suffering that allowed those events to occur. I've had a pretty low opinion of Ted based on his callous, attention-grabbing comments and cartoons, but his suggestion that we institute a reactive approach to the military proves to me that he not only immature, but completely ignorant as well.

I swear to God, the Left doesn't live and work on this planet; hell, they are even beyond this galaxy!

Is this a variation on the old "if a tree falls in a forest..." saying:
If a US soldier is spit upon by an anti-American protester, and the NYTimes doesn't report it, did it ever happen?
The upper echelons in the "mainstream media" today cut their teeth on the Vietnam era. Every poll of "journalists" shows they not only consider themselves "liberals" but are in larger percentage within their job than the population AND further left than the majority of "liberals" in the population. By and large, by deciding what constitutes "news" they manipulate reality. Now with things like radio and the internet, it isn't as easy, and many, like the LATimes, are resentful and angry at this "pseudo-journalism" that is fact-checking their a**es and giving voice to the majority.

Rall's poisoned screeds reflect more and more the abject hatred that defines the left in America and no amount of dissembling "I support our soldiefs BUT ..." can hide it.

Bull-fscking-s##t. I was there and it happened to me. He called me a "baby-killer", too.

Kind of a tangent here, but when I see the multitudes of lefty celebrities and pundits who say "Of course I support the troops" in a rote way that makes you doubt their sincerity, I like to remember that at least some of them actually mean it, and back up the talk with action.

I'm thinking of a couple specific people here - Robin Williams and Al Franken - who have pretty much doctrinaire lefty antiwar views, but genuinely do support the troops, both having done USO shows in Iraq (and Williams did one in Afghanistan, too.) It's nice to see that sort of thing, that gives them a real credible claim to the label "the loyal opposition."

Whereas dirtbags like Ted Rall only support the troops, maybe, in the sense of the moonbats who carry signs saying "We support the troops who kill their officers."

Why does Rall think that anybody who would consider joining the military would listen to him?

It's not like he's that convincing to someone who's not already on his side, and such a person would never enlist in the first place.

February 1972, San Francisco Airport.

I was in full uniform, just back from Viet Nam and on my way home. As I walked into the terminal I heard the "baby killer" shouts. I turned and saw a ball of hair (male/female, pick one.. I don't know) hanging out of a Volkswagen bus driving through the terminal. My nearly-full can of coke made quite a dent in the passenger side of the bus. Instead of coming back they kept going. I was so disappointed. They were/are (by definition) cowards.

I didn't kill babies, but I came damn close to taking out a couple of hippies that day.

Any other questions "father" Lembcke?

Ah, but they would consider enlisting, according to Rall! Remember, the military is entirely made up of those who are either psychopaths, or fooled into joining "poor, stupid, and easily led."

And at least two out of those three describe Rall's readership!

I worked with two guys, early in my career who were in Vietnam, and both of them said they had been spit on while in uniform, by civilians who followed up with very cruel comments. One of them, a Marine, said he volunteered to go back to Vietnam for three more tours--- he'd rather be shot at by the Cong than spit on by his fellow Americans. The other man was one of those included in Bob Greene's book about this. "Homecoming"--- Amazon has a couple of used copies. Mr. Greene challenged readers of his column to write in and tell how it had happened to them. He got bags full of accounts, enough to conclude that, unfortunatly, it did happen... as much as Mr. Rall and the other usual suspects deny that it did.

I have always wondered why not one of these spitting events was ever reported to an authority, or even witnessed by one. You'd think there would be one citation issued for it. Lembke's got a point there. You'd think there'd be one, at least.

I don't buy Lembke's meta-argument--that the spitting stories represent a collective transference of stress and frustration with the US involvement there--ergo the victimizers become the victims.

Sort of like UFOs--thousands of reports, no proof. Except he doesnt get that rational.

The best book on post Vietnam experience remains RC Burkett's Stolen Valor, detailing how many are actually co-opting others Vietnam experience (and honors) for their own.

I suspect Mr. Kerry may well be a candidate for this at a point.

with regards to Rall, well, Im a fan of yours Michele. Yours is a necessary voice. a fine blog here and im a frequent commentator.

But you are bottom fishing with this Rall stuff. Your his greatest fantasy. An indignant woT supporter linking to him, keeping him intellectually and politically engaged. he owes you money, since that's what your doing for him.

my thought: why dont you focus your efforts on some fruit that may require some, er, work or thought to pick. How about Fisk, Pilger, even Dana Milbank at the WaPo, whose article the other day, designed to slam Bush for paying WH females less than the men, contradicted itself by the fourth graf!!

In short, fight the people who are really misleading us--not the guy preaching to the vegan anarchists planning to remove their clothes at the republican convention.

thank you, Rod

All I can do is add to what's already been said. I came into the AF in '84 and most of the senior folks were Viet Nam vets. Heard many a first hand account of those events that Mr Rall says are myths.

You know...try as you may, you can't fake the shudder of a vet remembering something like that. They can tell you about their base being hit with a gleam in their eye and tell you with sadness about how they lost a friend...but the shudder as they talk about coming home.

Good on ya Michele, some things require a response.

Rod:

A) Ted Rall doesn't even know I exist.
B) Thanks for the tip that what I'm doing doesn't require thought or work.

When I get paid for doing this, that's when I'll start caring what people think. Until then, I get really cranky when people tell me what or what not to write.

I don't see why anyone pays attention to Rall. Don't feed the troll, is more than apt. Let him wallow in his filth, and remain an obscure and little known two bit stick figure cartoonist.

michele--I am a fan and I appreciate your work. Our views largely mirror each other, as near as I can tell. I apologize if you are hurt by my remarks.

I am a reporter for an NYC paper and cannot have a blog, so yours is a substitute. I am also a conservative--ex liberal--worked for the Dukakis campaign in Ct. Your stuff hits home. Also, watched the towers fall. Went to 6 funerals. Your stuff speaks to that.

Let me be clear though: Rall is a well-documented America hater who even Oliver wills, and many others, has had to disown. You know this. When even the ABB left--and thats what Ollie and Matt Y are--disiwn you, you are into the nether regions of Moonbat-dom.

yet you continue to link to the guy and talk about him. You transfer your importance and relevance--and you have both in spades--to a man who is irrelevant and unimportant.
He is the political equivalent of the homeless guy standing in the middle of PArk Ave sceaming about damnation----to a potted plant. Note: this guy exists, and actually has something of a following.

SO again, I simply suggest you use that mind of yours--that slices like a f#ckin' hammer, as Allah would say--to argue and debate where it can do the most good.

Either way, Im a fan and an unmet friend.

Thanks, Roddy

This book (mentioned above) refutes Rall. But we already knew he is full of shit.

I could be wrong, but if I recall correctly, I don't believe Lembcke is a priest; fewer of the Holy Cross faculty are with each passing year. But this is hardly my alma mater's biggest embarrassment; when I was there in the early 90s, one of the most prominent people in the faculty was John Esposito, who spent most of the decade telling the world that Islamic terrorism was no threat.

(Regarding why Rall does what he does.)
It's not like he's that convincing to someone who's not already on his side, and such a person would never enlist in the first place.

No, but he might inflict some pain on the people he hates. That seems to drive him onward.

Rod, if other moonbats can disown Rall why can't the Washington Post and hundreds of other major media outlets. I depend on blogs to keep track of the undesirables so I do not have to because ignoring your enemy is not an option.

Crap. It happened to me, and I was just in the ROTC.

Michele, you didn't comment on Rall's point about the military low salary issue, which is Bush's way of crapping on the troops who go to fight for phony reasons.
And what about the discrepancy between what an infantry soldier makes versus a contract soldier? And what about the draft? The chances of it returning are pretty high, despite what Congress is saying at the moment (pre-election).

By the way, Pat Tillman, an exceptional soldier in many ways, died of freindly fire. Have you heard?

Brad, I skipped over a couple of issues because that's not what pissed me off. Sorry if I didn't cover the issues that pissed you off, but I do believe you have your own blog for that sort of things.

And yes, I know Pat Tillman died from friendly fire. That still doesn't excuse Rall saying he went over there to be a killing machine, now does it?

Now what's this about the draft returning? Should I go poke my husband's eye out so he doesn't get called? Citations.

Holy crap, people who pay attention to Rall are going to STOP ENLISTING! This is the death knell of the US military!

It's not hard to imagine that Rall is stupid, but this degree of stupendous stupiditude is so impossibly colossal that it requires quantum physics to describe. More likely this is his usual stunt of whipping out his pee-pee and waving it in public while chanting "Me Me Me Me Me!"

If so, then we all fell for it again.

"Michele, you didn't comment on Rall's point about the military low salary issue, which is Bush's way of crapping on the troops who go to fight for phony reasons."

The military's turning people away. I guess Bush didn't crap on them enough.

"And what about the discrepancy between what an infantry soldier makes versus a contract soldier? And what about the draft? The chances of it returning are pretty high, despite what Congress is saying at the moment (pre-election)."

I hope to God our fearless leaders aren't stupid enough to hobble our war effort with a draft. There's absolutely no need for it, what with the military turning people away right now and all; raise the enlistment caps, and we'll be fine. (Well, we'll be fine as soon as the newbies get trained; drafting them won't make that happen any quicker, nor will it make them cheaper to supply them, unless the plan is to use the draftees as human shields).

So far so good. The only ones clamoring to draft people are doing it in a fairly transparent attempt to interfere with the war effort, not further it. Which, judging from our experience in Vietnam, is a goal that the draft is well-suited for.

"By the way, Pat Tillman, an exceptional soldier in many ways, died of freindly fire. Have you heard?"

What the Hell does that have to do with anything? Friendly fire is just one of the hazards that every soldier faces. The fact that Tillman got bit by this hazard as opposed to some other hazard doesn't really make any difference in the essential facts or the meaning of them.

well, there is this op-ed from a former Nixon speechwriter
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19322-2004Jun30.html

it won't be the last, trust me.

In the very early seventies, my mom taught future nurses and morticians at a local community college- she would bring us to the campus a lot. I remember fondly having spagettios cooked over a bunsen burner, and helping her by setting out the embalmed cats for anatomy class, etc.

My siblings and I would also hang out in the campus lounge, trolling for loose change left in the vending machines, and
playing foosball and ping pong.

We had to make ourselves scarce if she was actually teaching a class...
one evening I got bored watching a geology film through the door window of another class, and wandered into the lounge.

There I had the misfortune to see some enraged hippie types swearing a blue streak at a guy in a military uniform, with a crew cut. He was a pig and a murderer, among other things. Scared the living daylights out of me, and I ran away.

That was the only time I remember seeing a spectacle like that... however, I did hear students whispering and grumbling at military types from time to time.

Most of mom's students were clean cut for the times, sort of "carpenters" or "nice young couple on dragnet" types. But the campus had it's share of nasty hippies.

yawn

Ah yes, and some of the idiots who think conscription would be wonderful in a free society. Ho hum, guess Brad's going to start jumping up and down and shout "See?! SEE!!" or something.

Note that Noel Koch (the former Nixon guy linked above) gives close to zero military justification for wanting a draft. His arguments all come from a "social engineering" point of view - that the shared experience of conscription builds better Americans or something. Arguably, there might be something to that, in a theoretical sense, but that's kind of a side issue. (I have doubts that you can instill any sort of patriotism worth having by force, and tend to believe Robert Heinlein's view - that any society that can't muster sufficient voluntary forces to defend itself isn't worth saving in the first place; it's already dead.)

The true key issue wrt the draft is that no one - I mean NO one - in the military wants it. Our modern armed forces simply aren't organized in a way that conscript troops are at all useful, nor are they necessary.

well, there is this op-ed from a former Nixon speechwriter

Wow. Can't get much more relevant than an op-ed from a former Nixon speechwriter. I'm convinced...

I'm sure no one interested in the millitary would be the least bit deterred by Rall's ravings, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't realize that. After all, people like him are the soldiers' only hope. He's Speaking Truth to Power, Standing Up To The Man, and all those other cool things he missed out on back in the glory decade of the 60's. How many times must the cannonballs fly, man? How many times?

To the apparent fact that there didn't seem to be any reports that the "authorities" had been told of these spitting incidents meaning that they had all been made up out of whole cloth: well, just by using what little I know of basic human psychology I can think of some reasons off the top of my head why soldiers coming back from Vietnam didn't bother to complain to the cops or nearby security guards or their commanders:

  • After having seen combat in Vietnam, spitting and cursing from stinky hippies was petty shit not worth getting uptight about.
  • No self-respecting soldier was going to run to daddy because some weakling needled him.
  • Being treated badly for doing his duty, combined with whatever possible horrors of war he had seen, possibly produced in many a returning soldier feelings of shame that would prevent him from speaking of incidents such as these to anyone in authority.
  • I would think that any male, at least, would know this sort of thing instinctively, but times they have changed I guess.

    Andrea, when you say male, are you referring to Rall? Because he's kind of a girly-man, so that might explain things.

    Andrea:
    I'm not saying that they're made out of whole cloth, but as an anti-idiotarian, doesn't it strike you just a little odd that according to this guy Lembke that he could not find one single incident in the police records of all towns over 50k in populace (apparently those are the ones that have electronic archives)in the land?

    Not one? Not a cop doing right by a vet--many cops were vets and ex-service then--not an infuriated colonel...not one?

    also problematic: it always happens when they're alone and never a corraborating witness.

    It is objectively verified that the hippies--the new leftists--were awful, that's not on the table. Actually, they werent as bad as the real left, the Kennedys and that ilk, who cut the funding in '73, forcing the capitulation....

    two things cut against me here, making believe there is something to it: 1. Lembke is a lefty academic, and as such, may well be the next Bechloss for all I know, 2. I know a man, one of the most honest men I've ever met, who said to me that he was spit on outside a Pathmark in Queens in 1971, after he had bought his wife some tampons. He thought the hippie chick saw his Marines Tattoo. SHe called him a "child-raper."

    He said he told the store manager and an off-duty cop, but they did nothing.

    "...doesn't it strike you just a little odd..." blah blah blah Vietnamcakes.

    My reply: no.

    Oh yeah -- I'm (obviously, as displayed by your ignorance and general gullibility) older than you, I can remember the Vietnam War and attitudes towards returning vets and had people tell me how they were treated so please don't try to snow me. Go ahead and believe this one guy, who claims to have done all this research, if you want. I'd rather believe my own memories, kthxsomuch.

    Is it odd? No. What's to report? That was a time when males were expected to engage in fisticuffs in public over "honor", and spitting wasn't a crime.

    My story's a little different than most: between planes on my way home, after asking if I was in the Army, to which I replied, "No, sir, Marines!", the middle-aged male in a business suit hissed "Baby-killer!" and spat at me. He didn't actually spit on me, he tried to, and missed. I offered him another chance, but he ran away without another word, or spit.

    "Ran" is perhaps a bit harsh. "Walked very rapidly, glancingh back over his shoulder, once he was about thirty feet away."

    There were no witnesses. If I was going to assault someone I'd be careful to not have them about, too. I suppose that technically there was a crime of some sort, but not anything that I'd try to go to court over. It would be his word against mine. Why waste the time?

    What seems to be forgotten here is that, however despicable verbal abuse can be, in most if not all places at that time, it was simply a petty crime on the scale of a parking ticket. You'd have to be pretty petty yourself to obtain the identity of the persons involved and then go and file charges on them. It simply wasn't worth the time. Taken in context, how many news stories from that era can you find that deal with prosecutions for parking violations? Is the lack of stories in major newspapers evidence that no such "crimes" occured? Really?

    As Andrea Harris said (and I was there too) it did INDEED happen, and anyone who says that it didn't is a total moron. Ah--but what the hell--facts are so irrelevant when you have an agenda to push.

    Rod--

    With all due respect, it is wholly immaterial to me what your agenda is. You have the right to be skeptical about anything and everything, even about whether the earth is round (and actually, strictly speaking, its not--its an oblate sphereoid)

    The issue here concerns the existence of facts, not agendas. As someone who personally observed such things, I will not be convinced that my memories were implanted by directed microwaves from some sinister source.

    You are perfectly free to disbelieve me, or call me a liar, but I was there. Take it or leave it. Its all the same to me.

    How weird--

    The comments aren't shown in chronological order. What's with that?

    An interesting exchange between Orwell and a "peace" advocate of the time is relayed here. It is amazing the similarity between those times and now.

    http://antichomsky.blogspot.com/2004/07/orwell-vs-proto-chomskyites.html

    Jesus Andrea, take it down a notch.I never saw you as unskeptical--your not on Tim Blair's site and you don't seem like a sheep, but if I'm ignorant, your just a hack. This isnt your best day. I like your posts generally--we had a few funny ones back and forth at Tim's once. Gotta be your teeth or the neighbors upstairs.

    SO your clear--I think it happened, just not as much as everyone said it did. Also: i wish there were more incidents of the GIs putting it to the lefties, but they were too well trained, I guess. Still are.

    Htom--I'm sorry about that. You did a piece of work and that happened. Our counry owes you something more. A lot more. Thank you.

    Tcobb--cool off. My agenda is to flatten Iran and Syria, then maybe get around to Saudi. But only if the NorKs simmer down. And that assumes that Taiwan doesnt get threatened more....you dig? Im skeptical is all.

    You made a compelling case. If you
    witnessed it, it probably did happen. I am a journo here in NYC and a
    skeptic by nature, though one who leans right, and seeks no pissing match.

    Thank you for your service, a little bit of what you did makes possible
    what I do, to say nothing of life for my wife and 4 kids.

    Fair notice: I will persist in calling the earth round however.

    Do well. Roddy

    As to Rall, anyone that goes after Marianne Perl the way he did in pursuit of an agenda deserves to be spat on. . . at the very least. I can forgive a man his idiocy - but not that.

    WWII was an "honorable war" for some folks because their beloved Soviet Union was saved from the clutches of the evil Nazis. They completely forget about the millions of loyal Party members in the US who were told to oppose war against Hitler, in those golden days between 1939 and 1941 when Hitler and Stalin were allies. There were 14 million signatures on a "peace petition" in summer of 1941 - a document that conveniently disappeared right after "Operation Barbarossa" kicked off.

    BTW, it should come as no surprise that Rall is also dead wrong on military pay. They are low for the lowest ranks, but almost NOBODY gets out of Basic and AIT [you get two types of training, not one] without at least ONE promtion, many get jumped two grades and the top graduates get 3 promotions [to E-4]. It is just like minimum wage: nobody stays at that rate very long.