Vietnam Veterans for What?

There's some malignant entity out there calling itself Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform, and it first came to my attention in the 2004 election when it joined with the infamous Swift Boat Liars for Bush in spewing out baseless invective about the war record of John Kerry.

Now it is back in the "news", more or less, with a recent story on the rightwing Cybercast News Service, reprinted on a fundo Xian site calling itself Crosswalk, The Intersection of Faith and Life. There are also some articles originating with the VVAR on FreeRepublic and other sites of that ilk; you can pretty much tell where an "independent" organization lies by where they appear on the Internets.

The Fearless Leader of VVAR (and as far as I know, its only member), one dickwad "academic" named Leonard Magruder (who isn't even a Vietnam veteran!) is trying to shop around that same tired old lie that it was the media that "lost" the Vietnam War.

He also cites some 21 "standard histories and commentaries" to PROVE his allegations that the media snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

No, I have't examined the actual citations, but I'm pretty sure I don't need to. I am willing to bet good money, sight unseen, that they are of the same credibility and believability as those "scientific studies" that "prove" global warming is a hoax, a fraud, or worse.

My basis for this? Aside from its appearance only in wingnut media, this bogus outfit has, apparently, only one campus organization, and that at the University of Kansas.

You remember Kansas: Home of wacked-out homophobe Fred Phelps and a state school board that believes in fairy tales, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

And, the final capper on the reliability and trustworthiness of this fine organization? They are also pushing for the public school indoctrination of the scientifically bankrupt concept of "Intelligent Design".

Need I say more? Whenever you hear the words "academic reform", you can just about bet that it's another Orwellian-named entity that is actually pushing just the opposite philosophy.

So about the only thing I have left to say is this: Fuck you, Magruder, and your phony wingnut organization. If you're not a Vietnam veteran, you've got no business heading an organization called Vietnam Vets for Anything.