Blast from the past: denigrating war heroes edition
by digby
Joe Conason reminds us of this lovely one from Ann Coulter:
“Max Cleland should stop allowing Democrats to portray him as a war hero who lost his limbs taking enemy fire on the battlefields of Vietnam,” she writes, claiming that he “lost three limbs in an accident during a routine non-combat mission where he was about to drink beer with friends. He saw a grenade on the ground and picked it up. He could have done that at Fort Dix. In fact, Cleland could have dropped a grenade on his foot as a National Guardsman …. Luckily for Cleland’s political career and current pomposity about Bush, he happened to do it while in Vietnam.”
Cleland won the silver star for the battle of Khe Sanh.
Funny, I don't remember any Republicans taking either Chambliss or Coulter to task for that one. Indeed, as Conason's piece reminds us, denigrating war heroes in the most malignant terms is a Republican specialty. It was only a decade ago that they were profiting smartly by doing it. The Cleland attacks, you'll recall, didn't just come from the likes of Coulter --- it came from Saxby Chambliss, his GOP rival. He was a man who, like Donald Trump, successfully managed to avoid going to Viet Nam.
The former Senator Chambliss most recently made news by proclaiming that Edward Snowden should be "hung from the public square." He's quite the tough guy.
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