This put a really unpleasant image in my head, until I realized that you merely forgot to type the word “away.”
The Vet wants Bush to have the Purple Heart for the ‘emotional scars’ because of the verbal attacks against him?
What short of namby pamby Phil Donahue BS is that?
And I wonder if the Swift Boat Veterans will challenge the legitimacy of Bush receiving this medal.
>>slight hi-jack<<
Does every American serviceman/woman who is wounded in action receive a PH?
That still would leave the vet with two Purple Hearts- why not give one to Cheney? I have no problem with Bush inviting the guy to the White House, let him sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom, whatever. But isn’t it a breach of military etiquette to accept an award that you did not earn? Perhaps the most pressing issue is whether Bill Thomas has some undiagnosed neurological malady which would cause him to behave so irrationally.
A political mistake? Not a total shorting-out of the honesty circuits followed by fundamental failure of any sense of propriety and appreciation for those who earned the honor, accompanied by a complete collapse of the basic morality that keeps us from robbing graves of those trinkets we feel might confer status upon ourselves? I thought you were in favor of the idea of honoring heroism in combat.
I’ll go this far in conciliation: your average garden-variety P.R. flack could easily be flummoxed by something like this coming out of the blue. But all it would take is two (okay, maybe as many as twenty) words from G-Dub (I’ve heard he’s quite taken with his gangsta name) to resolve this appropriately, with due respect to everyone.
Yes. That’s what the medal signifies – that the recipient has been wounded or killed by or during an action against an enemy. That’s part of what makes this insulting. It implies that anyone who criticizes Bush is an enemy of the US.
Better to give one to the guy that Cheney shot.
I guess most of you know how this makes me feel :mad: :mad: :mad:
In spite of what Gary Kumquat says, I would not hate Dubya for refusing or accepting the medal. I think a polite refusal would be the proper thing to do. If the veteran is really insistent, then he should accept it and contact the veteran that the CIC accepts this honor with deep respect. However, if he prposes to make a “Mission Accomplished” show out of this, then Dubya is more of a snot than I ever imagined.
Right I understand.
One other question tho’. When a second award is given this usually takes the form of a bar to the first award.This bar is worn on the medal ribbon of the first award.
Does this procedure not apply to the PH?
http://www.purpleheart.org/purple-heart-history-of-the-moph.html
So, it would most emphatically be incorrect for President Bush to accept this Purple Heart. It would dishonor what it stands for and it is being awarded for mental anguished not suffered in combat.
If it was given as a simple token of respect, it would be another issue entirely.
JIm
Beat me to it.
I feel certain that any number of liberated Iraqis would be eager to help our President earn his Purple Heart the traditional way, if he is truly anxious to obtain one.
For some reason, this is making me think of Brezhnev or Kim Jong Il, jackets festooned with medals they didn’t earn. Now, I’m not comparing Bush the leader to Brezhnev or Kim, and (hopefully) he never wears this medal, but I’m just thinking of the uproar in the Soviet Union when Brezhnev started appropriating all those honors for himself that had previously been reserved for war heroes.
Side note: is it Godwinizing if you invoke Commies rather than Nazis? Is it Godwinski’s Law?
My earlier question is answered in post #51.
Am I to assume that the serviceman is going to give Bush his original award or one of the Oak Leaf Clusters
This links to a photo of LBJ listening to a tape recording of an officer describing a recent combat action. I’ve often wondered if GWB ever reacts in this way. Or, even if he does receive such reports, if he’s left alone to absorb them, or is always surrounded by his team and they are preoccupied with “hey - we can really use this!”
I think it’s just a big game of Dungeons & Dragons to this guy, so playing dress-up with flight suits and other people’s medals is all part of the fun.
It is possible to have more than one copy of a medal. I can go and buy copies of every single one that I have earned from retailers that specialize in this service, and military exchange uniform supply stores also carry them, as well as services for mounting them for dress uniform wear, mess uniform wear, and the like.
This is pretty low on my list of problems with Bush. It’s in the “personal jerkitude” category for me, not the “hurting people” category. I can still support a politician who’s a creep, as long as he’s not causing people to suffer or die. Clinton could cheat on his wife all he wanted, and I’d still focus my criticism of him on his bombing of medicine factories; Bush could be a perfect gentleman about this manner, and I’d still criticize him for lying us into a war.
Daniel
Oh, and mhendo, I like reading what you have to say (to the point of looking around for it sometimes), but this time I have to ask why you’re doing this. Martin Hyde may not hate Bush, or at least not for the right reasons, or at least not for enough reasons, but there’s nothing at all inconsistent or insincere in this pitting.
Do you feel that, as one can damn with faint praise, the OP is somehow bolstering C-plus Augustus* with a too-weak criticism? I concede it’s possible, at least in a literary sense, but I don’t get that feel here. Merely by starting the thread, Martin Hyde has invited derision directed at GWB, and I can’t see that he’s stacked the deck against it.
I also think that the Occupant-in-Chief has committed greater crimes, but I don’t want to drive away anyone who’s just started on the path to wisdom as I see it.
Diogenes, I thought of that too – that the stunt was conceived to paint all critics of the president as foreign enemies, and I had a similar flash of anger. I couldn’t sustain it, though, because the idea of our fellow citizens being the enemy is, unfortunately, common throughout our population and our history, and nobody holds the moral high ground there. Also, I doubt that the gentleman at the source of all this is nearly so cynical and conniving, though he may well be that naive.
The story doesn’t seem to be explicit but I think the implication is that he was giving away the medal itself.