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Title: Trump creates outrage in Iowa claiming that John McCain wasn't a war hero because he was a captured POW – and dodges questions about his own Vietnam War draft deferments
Source:
Daily Mail Online
URL Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art ... all-half-field-stays-home.html
Published: Jul 18, 2015
Author: David Martosko, US Political Editor
Post Date: 2015-07-18 13:59:06 by cranky
Keywords: None
Views: 58970
Comments: 201
Donald Trump escalated his feud with Sen. John McCain on Saturady in Iowa by suggesting only his capture and five years as a prisoner of war turned him into a 'war hero.' 'He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured,' Trump said on stage at the Family Leader Summit in Ames. McCain spent years in a Viet Cong prison after the plane he was flying was shot down over Hanoi in October 1967.He was tortured enough to produce permanent physical disabilities. Trump got student and medical deferments and never served in uniform. He told reporters after his speech that a bone spur in his foot led to the medical exemption from the draft. Asked which foot had disqualified him, he couldn't remember. 'You'll have to look it up,' Trump said dismissively. 'It's in the records.' Rick Perry, the former Texas governor who is running 10th in an average of national polls, immediately called for Trump to quit his presidential campaign. ANGRY: Trump attacked Sen. John McCain and said the only reason he is considered a war hero is his capture and imprisonment as a POW during the Vietnam War. NOT A HERO? Sen. John McCain spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison after his plane was shot down durign the Vietnam War WALKING WOUNDED: McCain's torture left him disfigured and permanently damaged 'I respect Sen. McCain because he volunteered to serve his country,' Perry said in a statement. 'I cannot say the same of Mr. Trump.' 'His comments have reached a new low in American politics. His attack on veterans make him unfit to be Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, and he should immediately withdraw from the race for President.' Trump focued considerable rhetorical artillery on McCain Saturday, mocking his bona fides on military and veterans issues: 'He graduated last in his class at Annapolis,' he claimed. 'Well, second-to-last.' In a press conference following his speech, Trump backtracked a few inches about prisoners of war. 'If somebody's a prisoner, I would consider him a war hero,' he said. 'But her have lots of heroes who wersn't prisoners. The billionaire's tussle with McCain began after he drew a reported 15,000 people to a campaign event in Phoenix to talk about illegal immigration. McCain, a proponent of comprehensive immigration reform, called his audience 'crazies.' Trump responded that the GOP's 2008 presidential nominee was a 'dummy.' In an emailed statement to DailyMail.com, Trump said after his press conference: 'I am not a fan John McCain because he has done so little for our Veterans and he should know better than anybody what the Veterans need, especially in regards to the VA.' 'He was extremely disrespectful to the thousands upon thousands of people, many of whom happen to be his constituents, that came to listen to me speak about illegal immigration in Phoenix last week by calling them "crazies",' Trump carped. 'These were not "crazies" – these were great American citizens.' 'I have great respect for all those who serve in our military including those that weren’t captured and are also heroes,' he insisted. Republicans auditioned all day for Christian conservatives, parading their bona fides in the nations' first presidential primary state. But not everyone searching for votes showed up. The cattle-call brought nine of the Republican Party's 15 declared presidential candidates to a single stage, less than a day after Democrats did the same thing – with all five of their White House hopefuls – a two-hour drive to the east. The Christian-right sponsoring group, The Family Leader, attracted mostly the candidates from the conservative end of the GOP spectrum. Led by political kingmaker Bob Vander Plaats, the group wields outsize influence in the Hawkeye State whenever Republicans barnstorm through during the run-up to the quadrennial Iowa caucuses. The $10 billion man was otherwise a crowd favorite in Ames, Iowa, speaking about his religion before a group of Christian conservatives Donald Trump's childhood church was First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, New York City. He said he was in church just last week Anti-abortion politics were visible in Ames, Iowa on July 18, 2015 at the Family Leader summit, a gathering of Republican presidential candidates hosted Missing in Ames was the Republican front-runner Jeb Bush, the sometimes-moderate New Jersey governor Chris Christie and the usually moderate former New York governor George Pataki. Nowhere to be found were senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Paul's libertarian brand of Republicanism, makes some religious conservatives wary. Carly Fiorina, the GOP's only female While House contestant, also didn't make the trip. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the day's first candidate-speaker, wrapped up his time on stage in a Q&A with pollster Frank Luntz by asking if he could read aloud from a book. 'It's a Bible,' he said, drawing wild cheers from the audience. He read from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 12, verse 48: 'From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded' – explaining it as a parable about America's global primacy and its obligations to keep its people, and the world, safe. Rubio blasted the Obama administration's recent nuclear bargain with Iran, calling it 'a complete sham.' He also castigated the president for sidestepping the role of Islam in global terror. 'It's not radical Presbyterian terrorism,' he said. 'It's radical Islamic terrorism. ... We have to target them militarily in their safe havens.' Abortion politics were visible both outside and inside the event venue in Ames, Iowa. Sign-wavers pointed to right-wing outrage over a surreptitious video that showed a Planned Parenthood medical doctor describing how she tailored her abortion procedures in order to preserve fetal body parts for human biologics companies. Outrage over an undercover video sting of Planned Parenthood brought anti-abortion Iowa Rep. Steve King kicked off the day with anger over 'that in-quotes "doctor"' whom he said was killing 'babies that could be viable outside the womb. It is sickening to watch.' Seizing on the political moment as a springboard for new laws tightening abortion restrictions, Knig said: 'This is our chance.' Also in evidence was a lingering resentment over this month's stunning Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex weddings nationwide. 'Marriage = 1 [man] and 1 [woman],' a projected image declared above the stage as the crowd filed in, using icons to represent male and female. 
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 105.
#10. To: cranky, A.K. Stone, SOSO, Deckard, Gatlin (#0)
McCain is a war criminal who bombed civilians, not a war hero for being captured and I spit on his worthless Vietnam medals.
Then you and Trump spit on every American that was captured in WWI, WWII, the Korean War and Vietnam. I am sure you think that you all are real true blue patriots. I think that you are all a POS for spitting on these men and women that nobly served our country.
Not really, but McCain is a civilian bombing war criminal and his medals are spit worthy to me.
Wow, now I recognize where I met you before. You were the guy that was spitting on the Vietnam veterans as they returned home and calling them baby killers. You haven't changed a bit.
Considered an urban legend. No one can ever cite a single instance, find any victims or witnesses to spitting on the Vietnam vets. Do you know of any documented cases? Wiki: The Spitting Image, documentary
"Myth: That in reality the stories of returning soldiers being spat at or upon was made up by Far Right extremists as a way to smear the antiwar movement Fact: Cases of being spit on have been documented in numerous contemporaneous news articles and in a Dec 27, 1971 CBS TV interview of a returning combat medic, Delmar Pickett, Jr. In fact, spitting on troops was so common that the National Guard was specifically trained not to react to spitting. Professor Jerry Lembcke wrote "The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam" which concluded that the spitting stories were a myth. Lembcke didn't bother to reveal that he was a member of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and was a Marxist and an anti-war activist who had an agenda in publishing his book. Lembcke's "proof" that spitting didn't occur was soundly debunked by Jim Lindgren of Volokh Conspiracy, including proof that he lied about several things he stated in his book. Contemporaneous documentation has been found in the (PA) Bucks County Courier Times, New York Times, the Pomona Progress Bulletin, the Associated Press, the Panama News, the Washington Post and the Odessa American, among others. According to a August 27, 1967 New York Times article, written by Neil Sheehan, National Guardsmen were trained to endure spitting by being spat upon during training. According to a December 27, 1969 Washington Post article, an SNCC official urged protestors to spit on the President "as a tactic of protesting the Vietnam War". At least one former anti-war protestor has admitted to spitting on soldiers during his protesting days. Spitting on National Guardsmen at the 1968 Democratic Convention was documented by the Walker Report, a government-commissioned report on the protests as well as the Daley report, commissioned by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Even Congressional Medal of Honor winners were spat on and insulted. In one documented instance, a WWII CMOH winner, James Conners, decked a protestor who was yelling "killer, killer" at him. One prominent anti-war protestor, Congressman Allard Lowenstein, implored students who opposed the war, in a May 14, 1969 article in the Washington Post, to stop all the spitting. One of the most prominent protestors of all, Tom Hayden, was arrested for spitting on a police detective during the Chicago Democratic Convention. Bob Greene's "Homecoming: When the Soldiers Returned from Vietnam" documents the stories of vets that testify to being spat on or disrespected in other ways when returning to the States. In some cases, even veterans of previous wars turned their backs on Vietnam vets. There are numerous stories of the VFW and American Legion refusing to accept membership applications from Vietnam vets. Soldiers returning to Oakland were warned about protestors and body searched for weapons before they were exposed to them, because there had been incidents of violence priot to the policy change. It is self-evident, from the many recent Welcome Home parades for Vietnam vets, that Vietnam vets were not welcomed home when they returned.
When you follow the links and read the stories, there are very few actual victims or witnesses in these stories. It's like reading through the links from InfoWars or PrisonPlanet stories: you find that the linked material used to support the main story aren't true or are greatly overstated. I do recall first hearing these stories in the early Eighties and I wondered at the time why we were only hearing about this supposed widespread spitting-on-troops so long after the war was ended and even the draft dodgers got pardoned.
Becuase it took a long time after the war for people to stop treating and thinking of the Vietnam Vet like a POS. I clearly remember those days and how many of my acquaintenances freely expresswed their deep disquest at these vets. It was and remains a national embrassment. Few of these vets were enlisted men, most were drafted. They answered the call. They deserved much better treatment when they returned home. Save for the ones that broke down and committed autrocitites of their own, in my mind they are all heroes.
#111. To: TooConservative, SOSO (#105)
The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam is a 1998 book by sociologist Jerry Lembcke. The book argues that the common claim that American soldiers were spat upon and insulted by anti-war protesters upon returning home from the Vietnam War is an urban legend intended to discredit the anti-war movement.
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#15. To: Pericles, cranky, A.K. Stone, Deckard, Gatlin (#10)
McCain is...............not a war hero for being captured and I spit on his worthless Vietnam medals.
#61. To: SOSO (#15)
Then you and Trump spit on every American that was captured in WWI, WWII, the Korean War and Vietnam.
#63. To: Pericles (#61)
#77. To: SOSO, Pericles (#63)
You were the guy that was spitting on the Vietnam veterans as they returned home and calling them baby killers. You haven't changed a bit.
#85. To: TooConservative (#77)
Do you know of any documented cases?
#92. To: SOSO (#85)
Check.
#105. To: TooConservative (#92)
I do recall first hearing these stories in the early Eighties and I wondered at the time why we were only hearing about this supposed widespread spitting-on-troops so long after the war was ended and even the draft dodgers got pardoned.
Replies to Comment # 105. I do recall first hearing these stories in the early Eighties and I wondered at the time why we were only hearing about this supposed widespread spitting-on- troops so long after the war was ended and even the draft dodgers got pardoned.
A 1971 Harris poll conducted for the Veterans Administration found over 90 percent of Vietnam veterans reporting a friendly homecoming. Far from spitting on veterans, the antiwar movement welcomed them into its ranks and thousands of veterans joined the opposition to the war.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 105.
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