Book of the Month: The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam

Regular readers know my opinion of the whole "spitting on Vietnam veterans" thing, i.e., that it is a myth and an urban legend. The book that first exposed this myth is my new Book of the Month: The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam by Jerry Lembecke.

Lembecke, a Vietnam veteran himself and a sociology professor at Holy Cross, takes a scholarly look at the issue from many angles, relying on the mythmaking potential of the media and the politicians, examines the sociology -- and the pathology -- behind it and comes to some pretty irrefutable conclusions.

If we do not remember our own history, someone else will remember it for us. That's what has happened with the history of the Vietnam War. We let the politicians, starting with Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, redefine the war and its effect on the United States, so that the Vietnam veterans were victims of the stab-in-the-back betrayal back home, by the anti-war crowd, by the media and by the liberal politicians.

Does that sound familiar? I don't want to stretch the analogy too far, but that is exactly the mindset among the returning soldiers and the defeated masses in Germany at the end of World War I. Like in the Vietnam War, the people back home did not have to experience the horror of war. Unlike in WWII, Germany did not have to endure saturation bombing, gas attacks, wild artillery rounds, etc. So when the war was lost, someone other than the brave troops at the front had to be blamed. Enter the liberal politicians of the Weimar Republic and their financiers, The Jews.

Again, without stretching the analogy too far, the people "back home", e.g., the war protesters, the "liberal media", and the sucky weak-kneed lily-livered politicians "sold out" the brave American boys. Finally, Nixon hit upon the ideal meme: We have already lost 30,000 men in Vietnam -- do you want those lives to have been lost in vain? In a nice bit of circular logic, we have men on the ground fighting, so we have to keep fighting. That's like burning up a wad of cash worth $1 million and then thinking that you have to burn up another $1 million because you squandered the first one. Or my favorite analogy, the man who kills both of his parents and then pleads for leniency because he is an orphan.

Anyway, back to the book.

Like a tide out of nowhere, the letters to the editor column in my local newspaper swelled to bloated proportions in the last month or so with people who claim that they are Vietnam vets and claim that it really, really happened to them.

There are a few common threads to all of these narratives: It always happened in an airport (usually SFX) and the vet had just stepped off the plane coming back from Vietnam when some "long haired hippie" (usually female) popped up, spit in his face, and called him a "babykiller".

There are some problems with this narrative: When we came back from Vietnam, we landed at a military installation, such as Travis AFB in California or McChord Field in Tacoma. From there we were loaded on buses and taken to another military installation for processing out. It wasn't until the very end of this grueling process that we were discharged and then we had to find our own way to the airport, usually by an expensive taxi ride. By the time the returning vet got to the airport, he was just one more guy in uniform and did not wear a banner that said "Vietnam Vet". Any long-haired hippie that wanted to spit on a Vietnam veteran would have to take pot luck, hoping that the guy in uniform was truly the intended recipient.

There are no -- I repeat, NO -- contemporary accounts of that spitting ever happening. No news stories, no witnesses, no incident reports from airport security, no bail receipts, no nothing anywhere that can verify that this actually happened. It's impossible to "prove" a negative, but this comes close to it.

And what about those vets who say it did happen to them? Well, I don't want to call them liars, exactly. I'm sure that at this point they truly believe that it happened to them. But memory is a funny thing, and whole studies have been made on the process of implanting or self-creating "false memories" that seem just as real as any other "organic" memory.

But that is the power of myth. In many ways, the myth is more "real" than the facts. When faced with facts that counter the myth, people still cling to the myth.

Read this book for a scholarly but immensely readable insight into the whole "spitting on veterans" phenomenon. Highly recommended.

And Even More on Spitting

Coincidentally, as I was composing the previous blog entry, I got a post on my old "spitting on vets" post. Someone who prefers to hide behind anonymity cites a reference to an alleged CBS news story from December 1971 that "proves" that Vietnam vets were spit on. And based on this single citation he claims that "hundreds" of Vietnam vets were victims of expectorant attacks.

Okay, I'll bite. I looked at the source. Just as I suspected, it is not a documented contemporary account. It's just some guy saying after the fact that he was spit on at the Seattle airport on his way back from Vietnam. There were no arrests, no incident reports filed by airport security or local police, no contemporary newspaper accounts, nothing. Just one guy's after-the-fact claim.

Some proof.

Saying so does not make it so. When I came back from Vietnam in 1969, we landed at Travis Air Force in California. Then we were loaded on busses and carted off to the Oakland Army Terminal for processing out. Finally I took a taxi to the San Francisco airport and caught a flight to Seattle.

So I went through both of the airports that figure prominently in most of those "spitting on veterans" stories, without incident. So did my fellow Vietnam vets; out of all the veterans that I know -- and I know a lot of them -- NO ONE has reported that they were spit on.

And when you think about it, just how would anyone know you had just returned from Vietnam? Why were no other soldiers, sailors or Marines in uniform spat on? If they were, why haven't they reported it? It seems to me that those rabid leftwing pinko-commie antiwar protesters full of spit and looking for a place to explode wouldn't be that discerning.

After I returned I went back to college and became active in the anti-war movement. No one I ever met in the movement called me a baby-killer or spit on me. Quite the contrary, returning vets held a special cachet because it was felt that we had been there and seen it all, and we could speak with authority. Members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, in the early days before the ideological split, were honored with prominent spots in the antiwar rallies and demonstrations.

Ironically, it was the warhawks who dissed the Vietnam vets. I've said before that we were made to feel uncomfortable in the American Legion and the VFW -- they looked at us as losers, slackers and stoned-out druggies who were unable to win our own war the way they had won theirs.

So if anyone was routinely disrespecting Vietnam vets, it was not the anti-war movement. Let's get that straight once and for all.

Okay. But let's just say, for argument's sake, that the CBS story is correct, and he actually was spit on by an anti-war protester at the Seattle airport.

So what? One incident proves nothing. One incident is just that, one incident. It certainly does not serve as the basis for the blanket statement you see everywhere, that Vietnam vets were routinely spit on when we returned.

It's easy to see why the rightwing wants to promote this canard. But it's sad to see so many of my fellow vets buying into it and manufacturing false memories of it happening to them.

Remember, there is ZERO evidence that these spitting incidents ever occurred. None. Not a single arrest, police report or newspaper/media account contemporary with the event.

If you can find one (and not some bogus after-the-fact reminiscence), send it to me and I will eat my words.

A Gathering of Eagles?

Word on the street has it that a gang of veterans calling itself a Gathering of Eagles is going to show up at the Vietnam memorial on March 17, the day of the 2007 March on the Pentagon. Wearing armbands.

Their stated purpose is allegedly to keep the likes of Cindy Sheehan and Jane Fonda from spitting on Iraq veterans again and throwing paint on the Vietnam memorial. This "story" is all over the wingnut Internets, including a blog calling itself ProgressiveU(!). Take a look and tell me what is so fucking progressive about this Faux-News-watching Rethug-sucking talking-points-spouting Kool-aid-drinking knuckle-dragging asshole.

Okay, enough name-calling. Back to the point: We've all beaten the whole "spitting on veterans" meme to death on this blog already, but throwing paint on the Vietnam memorial? That's a new one on me.

I don't believe that it has ever happened -- there was red paint (symbolizing blood) poured on the steps of the capitol building as I recall during the last demonstration, and back during the Vietnam War protests, actual blood was poured on occasion -- see for example, the Berrigan Brothers pouring blood on the draft records in Baltimore. But as far as I know, the Vietnam memorial has not been splattered with anything.

So my question is this: Can anyone seriously picture Cindy Sheehan, of all people, (or even Jane Fonda, for that matter) actually spitting on an Iraq veteran? Throwing red paint on the Vietnam memorial?

The answer is no, no rational person believes that. So just where are these bogus threats coming from?

From the diseased, weak-minded and insane imaginations of that good ole vast wingnut conspiracy, of course. And from the thinking-impaired socially-retarded shrunken-head brains of a bunch of can't-get-over-it Vietnam vets who still blame Jane Fonda for losing the Vietnam War. Never mind that inconvenient and pesky fact that 99% of the Hanoi Jane stories are PROVEN to be false. In short, they are lies that are still being circulated by the rightwing We-Hate-Jane crowd.

But back to the gathering storm of eagles. I think these self-described "eagles" actually just want to show up and strut around in their armbands and jackboots to intimidate people, kind of like a bunch of other guys I can think of, who also were notorious for suppressing free speech and calling anyone who disagreed with The Leader a traitor...

Gathering of eagles? Uh-huh. More like a Konvocation of Kleagles.

Spitting. Again.

Jesus, will it never end. As I've said before in this blog, claims of spitting on veterans has become a shorthand way to denigrate anti-war protesters. Only problem is, it never happened to troops coming back from Vietnam and it isn't happening now.

One-legged Iraq War veteran Private Joshua Sparling, however, seems to be proud of the fact that he has been a one-man spittoon. Sparling has claimed that on numerous occasions he's been spat upon by protesters.

At the risk of sounding like a parrot, bullshit bullshit billshit.

Sparling is a professional Rethug agitator who hangs out with the likes of Sean Hannity and Ann "Thrax" Coulter. He shows up belligerent and obnoxious at anti-war rallies, actually trying to provoke someone into spitting on him. Trouble is, no one will actually do it, so he's reduced to just making shit up. Hey, they eat that up over in rightwing cuckoo-land.

One of the problems with his whole shtick, though, is that it only serves to resurrect the completely discounted urban legend about Vietnam veterans being spat on. In airports. On their way home from Vietnam.

Remember that not one single case of a Vietnam veteran being spat upon has ever been documented. But that doesn't matter, since proof and evidence are the province of the reality-based community. It still shows up in any simple Google News search.

Check out the full story of Joshua Sparling over at AlterNet. It's not a pretty sight, but someone needs to call out the fucker on his lies. And he can stop waving that bloody stump around -- he hasn't sacrificed nearly as much as 3085 of his fellow soldiers.

Spitting on Veterans -- The Persistence of a Myth

When I got back from Vietnam, no one spat on me. No one spat on any of my friends. I've asked a lot of my fellow veterans and no one spat on them, either.

In fact, no one has been able to come up with one single documented contemporary account or photograph of any Vietnam veteran being spat on by war protesters when he returned from Vietnam. And yet this myth, more than any other save those surrounding "Hanoi Jane", has grown legs sufficient enough to have now become an archetype of the whole Vietnam experience.

"Most Vietnam vets were spat on when they came back," Michael Smith stated flat-out, attempting to justifiy his actions after his arrest for spitting on Jane Fonda at a book signing. And that statement, as far as I can tell, went completely unquestioned, completely unchallenged by the MSM/SCLM.

I'm at a loss as to understand why this phenomenon is occurring. Even though, as I say, there is not one single documented case from those years, a Google search for the phrases "vietnam veterans" and "spit on" turns up 5,700 pages. And many of those pages appear to be latter-day testimonials from many of my fellow Vietnam vets, attesting to the fact they were, indeed, the recipient of unwanted saliva when they came through airports in LA, SFO, etc. And it was always airports. Not coffeeshops, not gas stations, not streetcorners. Airports. (See Jack Shafer's May 2000 column in Slate, Drooling on the Vietnam Vet for an excellent analysis.)

Sorry guys, but I am not buying it, and I'm sorry to see that you've jumped onto the victimization bandwagon. I'm sorry that you've bought into this whole mythology of the poor persecuted Vietnam veteran.

It seems to me that you don't realize what a fucking pussy this makes you look like. Are you really trying to tell everyone that you were just back in The World from a year in the jungle and when some long-haired patchouli-reeking draft-dodging hippie freak comes up to you in the airport, calls you a baby-killer and spits on you, you did absolutely nothing about it???

Bullshit. If that really happened, then you'd still to this day be so fucking humiliated by what a pussy you were that you'd never, ever talk about it.

No, you would have kicked his ass but good, and that would be your story today. About 90% of your fellow Vietnam vets would have done the same thing, and yet there are no arrest records from those days that show that a Vietnam vet and a war protester got into a fight over some spit.

So if we are going to believe that it really did happen "all the time", then we have to believe that the spitting protesters were just so fucking extremely lucky to have targeted some poor wimpy chickenshit turn-the-other-cheek Chaplain's Assistant every single time. And that you were one of them.

Jesus, dude, if you're gonna tell some bullshit war story, you might want to think through the ramifications first: Tell a story that's gonna make you look good, not one that makes you look like a chickenshit wimpass dork.

Forgotten Men of Black History: Dwight Johnson

February is Black History month, regardless of how much a bunch of whiny entitled racist assholes grumble about there not being a "White History Month". (Hint: It's because every fucking month on the calendar is "White History Month")

Generally I like to feature someone in my Forgotten Men of Black History posts who has overcome incredible odds, who survived an actively hostile society, who had the pluck and the righteousness and the zeal and the determination to rise, in spite of how badly the deck was stacked against him.

And sometimes not. This is one of those times.

Dwight Johnson is not really a household name any more, but he was on everyone's lips in the spring of 1971. Dwight Johnson was a Vietnam veteran who was awarded the Medal of Honor (sometimes erroneously referred to as the Congressional Medal of Honor) by President Lyndon B. Johnson himself in November 1968, for actions in Vietnam in February 1967. (That long gap of time between the time of the action and the award of the medal seems significant to me -- but I don't know what it signifies*...)

Things took a dark turn for Dwight Johnson. He was one of the first people to have an identified "Post Vietnam Syndrome" disorder, as PTSD was being called back then (and would be until 1980). Finally, when he had spiraled downwards for long enough, he was shot to death by a store owner in a botched armed robbery attempt on April 29, 1971.

The media ate it up. Black war hero turns armed robber! And what was a deeply personal tragedy for Johnson and his family became a lasting meme of the Vietnam veteran. Suddenly the media had an immediate shorthand stereotype of Vietnam veterans: We were all crazy, walking time-bombs just looking for a place to explode.

It didn't take any time at all for Hollywood to pick up on it. By 1976 the idea of the psychopathic violent loner Vietnam vet was so ingrained in the national consciousness that all Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle had to do was deliver a kind of throwaway line about having been in Vietnam and the audience immediately knew all that it needed to know about him.

The release of both Coming Home and The Deer Hunter in 1978 permanently glued the Disturbed Vietnam Vet into everyone's consciousness. Coming Home was particularly egregious in this, since it presented a false dichotomy -- Vietnam vets are crippled emotionally or else they are crippled physically. There is no in-between.

And by the time John Rambo came along, people were beyond eager to believe him, even down to the part about people spitting on him when he came home from Vietnam (and you all know how I feel about that -- see also this month's Book of the Month).

But we are what we eat, as the saying goes, and we've eaten this shit for so long that we think it tastes good.

So it was kind of "fitting" that the first person to suffer a state execution in 2015 was Andrew Brannan, a Georgia Vietnam vet with PTSD. The only good thing is that we are all now getting so old that the whole psycho-Vietnam-vet meme will die out with us.

Or not. A hundred years from now, "spitting on Vietnam vets" who were "psychotic loner time bombs looking for a place to explode" will be all that history will remember about Vietnam veterans.

Back to Dwight Johnson: It was Dwight Johnson who became the apotheosis of the psycho Vietnam vet and cemented that into the national subconscious. It's sad that if he is remembered at all, it will be for this. Dwight Johnson, I never knew you buddy, but this brew's for you! You deserved better.

More Reading:

• Veterans and Allegories on the Film Reference site
• Hollywood and Vietnam on Film Comment
• From Villain to Hero: The Transformation of the Vietnam Veteran in American Cinema from 1976 to 1988
• Rambo as America: An (Over-the-top) Inter-textual Analysis of America’s Greatest/Worst Film Series
• List of Medal of Honor recipients from the Vietnam War -- especially the Transportation Corps' William Seay, whom I knew slightly; I rode "shotgun" in a convoy over that same highway the day before the ambush.

---

* Footnote: I suspect that politics may have had something to do with that. Even though the Medal of Honor is supposed to be "above politics", that hasn't always been the case. For example, Theodore Roosevelt conducted an active -- some said unseemly -- but unsuccessful campaign for it after the Charge up San Juan Kettle Hill. And surprisingly, the one United States "battle" that resulted in the highest number, per capita, of awards of the MOH was ... the Battle of Massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.

"Spitting on Veterans" -- It Just Won't Go Away

I've blogged before in this space on the whole bogus spitting-on-Vietnam-veterans meme and what a pussy it makes of those Vietnam vets who have, over the years, convinced themselves of the truth of these incidents, when in fact there are absolutely zero contemporary accounts of it actually happening.

But it's one of those things, like so many other Urban Legends, that just won't die. The lead paragraph of this recent story out of Tyler, Texas, is another example of it.

I don't know if these three vets actually said that to the reporter or if she took it on herself to toss it in because it would jazz up a story about a vandalized Vietnam veterans memorial, but either way it's an insult. I'd like it to die, but I guess that's too much to hope for.

Sadly, two hundred years from now (assuming we last that long as a species -- a doubtful proposition) that will still be one of the factoids about the Vietnam War that people "know".

In the Year of Our Lord

I guess, it being Sunday and all, that it's my day to post on Religion Issues...

So I get a new post on my "Spitting on Nancy Pelosi" post from way back in August of 2009:

Anonymous said...
I read the constitution, and it ends with this statement: "Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven..."
Lord? Didn't you say there was not a single mention of God? Sounds like a mention to me.

Yeah, anonymous asshole, it sure might sound like it to you, but it isn't. Not really.Here's my response to that post:

You gotta be fuckin' KIDDING me...
That's the way EVERY SINGLE official document was dated back in the day.
That was the accepted method of dating stuff. See, for example, this as well as this and this.
That does not indicate a belief in god and I'm surprised that you people can even bring that up as "proof" that the FFs believed in god.
Give me a fucking break, already.

My favorite prayer is this: Jesus, save me from your followers...

Followers who are too fucking stupid to even know what "A.D." means when it comes to dating stuff.

A.D., morons, is a shorthand acronym for the Latin "Anno Domine", which translates into "The Year of Our Lord"... It was an accepted and handy way of dating stuff for centuries, and its use no more indicates a belief in the Magical Guy in the Sky than does something like the expletive "god damn it".

You people really think that when someone swears a hearty and explosively emotional "god damn it!" when something goes wrong they are actually calling on the Xian god to literally damn something?

Actually, now that I think about it, when Baby Doc Bush called the US Constitution "just a goddamn piece of paper", he was serious about that curse... After all, he did his best to figuratively, if not literally, shred it. To damn it, as it were.

And don't let's forget, he was a guy who talked to god every day. Who wouldn't listen to advice from his own father about invading Iraq because he was answering to a "higher father".

And more chilling, he actually thought god was answering him... And told him to invade Iraq!

Another Blast from the Past

It's kind of funny how things have a way of coming to the surface, even months after the fact. On August 24th of last year I wrote a post entitled "Spitting on Nancy Pelosi".

Usually with blog posts they end up like yesterday's newspaper. Nobody reads them any more. But this entry seems to have grown some legs, as it were, and there have been over 20 comments, the most recent one today from, naturally, Anonymous:

I always thought liberals were tolerant and welcomed ALL opinions and diversity. I feel a lot of hate, name calling and stereo typing. Farnsworth68, you should be ashamed calling yourself a lefty.

To which I of course replied:

Anon, I'm a wingnut's worst nightmare, a gun-totin' meat-eatin' redneck liberal with a bad attitude. You must be used to dealing with wimpy pussified liberals like those in the US Senate. Not this guy, dude.

I mean, really. What part of "Pissed Off Veteran" didn't he get?

Spitting on Nancy Pelosi

My brother-in-law who lives in Hawaii and works in the medical field sends me wingnut stuff periodically, sometimes just to get my goat, but sometimes with actual questions. He unfortunately works in a rural part of the state with a number of reactionary wingnut medicos who are constantly trying to fill his mind with senseless rightwing bullshit.

So the other day he sends me a copy of this "open letter" written to the Speaker of the House by an attorney named Dennis L. Guthrie, who practices law in Charlotte, NC. The letter was dated August 11, 2009, so it is of recent vintage. I'm reproducing the whole thing here because it's actually quite humorous, in a bone-chilling car-wreck-on-the-freeway kind of way...

Dear Ms. Pelosi:
I write to you out of utter disdain! You are despicable and un-American as the traitor Jane Fonda.
I am a soon to be 65 year old who has voted in every state and local election since 1966. I have voted for both Republicans and Democrats alike. I have worked on campaigns for both Republicans and Democrats, white and black. I served the country I love in Vietnam, as my son did in the Middle East. I was awarded two bronze stars. I have been involved in politics since age 6 when my father was the campaign manager for a truly great American Congressman, Charles Raper Jonas, who worked for his constituents and his country, and was to be admired, unlike you.
You obviously haven't read the Constitution recently, if ever, the Federalist Papers, or even David McCullough's book on John Adams. You ought to take the time while riding around in your government provided luxury executive jet to do just that. You represent Socialistic and even Marxist principals [sic] that our founding fathers tried to avoid when setting out the capitalist republican form of government represented by our Constitution.
I find it interesting that you and your husband are multi-millionaires with much of your fortune being made as a result of your "public service". You have controlled legislation that has enhanced your husband's investments both on and off shore. At the same time you redistributed the wealth of others. Our system of a free market economy is being destroyed by the likes of you, Harry Reid, and now our President. You ride around in a gulf-stream airplane at the tax payer's expense while criticizing the presidents of companies who produced something for the economy. You add nothing to the economy of the Unites States; you only subtract therefrom.
I would like to suggest that you return to the city of fruitcakes and nuts and eat your husband's canned tuna and pineapple produced by illegal immigrants and by workers who have been excluded from the protection that 90% of the legal workers in the Unites States have.
I await your defeat in the next election with glee.
Don't ever use the term "un-American" again for protesters who love this country and are exercising their rights upon which this country was founded. By the way, while I served in the Army, I was spit on by the same type of lunatics who support you and who you probably supported in the 60's and 70's. You are an embarrassment to all of us who served so that you would have the protected right of free speech to call us un-American, as do the majority of the people of this formerly great country. You are a true disgrace to most of the people who served this country by offering themselves for public service in the United States Congress.
I feel certain you aides will not share this letter with you, but I intend to share it with many.
Sincerely,
Dennis L. Guthrie
dlguthrie@gdhs.com

Jeez, where to begin? The hatred squeezing out between the lines of this diatribe is almost physically palpable. Okay, this guy is supposed to be an attorney, yet he doesn't seem to have the slightest idea about the history of the founding of the United States.

Those Socialist/Marxist "principals" that the founders tried to avoid? Actually, it was pretty easy to avoid them, since Karl Marx wasn't born until 1818, and didn't publish the Communist Manifesto until 1848.

And that "capitalist republican form of government"? The US Constitution is remarkably silent on economic matters -- in fact, like "god", there is not a single reference to capitalism, freemarket economics or anything that could remotely be considered "economic" in nature, other than recognizing the existence of slavery, but only to establish in law that a slave was only three-fifths of a man.

The other charges? They are both stale and overblown, and have pretty much proved to be lies by now:

· Pelosi's "luxury" jet? Here's what Snopes has to say about that.
· Star-Kist Tuna, American Samoa and Nancy Pelosi's husband? Here's Snopes again.
· Redistributing wealth? Snopes.

He also claims that he was spit on while serving in the US Army. I doubt it. I really do, I'm calling bullshit on that claim here and now, and my regular readers all know how I feel about that.

It's really sad to see someone my own age, a fellow Vietnam veteran, being suckered in by all this rightwing propaganda bullshit that comes over the airwaves from the likes of Rush Pimple-Ass Draftdodging Limbaugh (BTW, where's Guthrie's Vietnam-vet rage about Limbaugh the draft-dodger?) and out of the mouths of the ClusterFox meat puppet magpies.

Of course Guthrie is from North Carolina ... anybody want to bet on his ethnic heritage? My next paycheck says that he's one of those fearful "White people are being kicked aside" guys, one of those closeted racists who just can't stand it that ONE OF "THEM" is now their president, but since we all now live in a "post-racial" nation, they can't just come out and say "Kill the Nigger", the way they'd like to. So they have to get their anger up over non-issues, such as the health care "death panels" and "socialized medicine" and the like, and redirect their hostility to a more easily attacked target, such as the Speaker of the House. Note that the president was mentioned, but only in passing as one of those evil "destroyers" of the free market economy.

Got news for ya, Denny G. It was the capitalist pig Wall Streeters and those greedy CEOs that you praise who have destroyed your precious "free market" economy.

Sir! No Sir!

I recently had the pleasure of seeing Sir! No Sir!, an excellent documentary on the anti-war movement within the military during the Vietnam War, and I highly recommend it, not only to those who were there and those who only watched it on tv, but especially to those who weren't alive yet and who have been spoon-fed a fake history of the Vietnam War Resistance movement.

It was on the Sundance Channel, and I hope they will show it again. If not, it's on DVD and you can request your local video outlet to order a copy, if they don't have one already. Or even buy your own copy -- it's worth having in your collection.

These days, with the wholesale rewriting of the history of the Vietnam War (spitting on returning veterans, we could have won if it hadn't have been for the wimpy peacenik protesters/the media/the Democrats/name your villain) that has occurred over the intervening years, it's a refreshing look at the volatile anti-war movement that was taking place inside the military, beginning with, of all people, Green Berets, very early on. And it will amaze some and shock others to learn how widespread the anti-war movement became as the war ground on.

I'd like it to be mandatory viewing for all high school students, especially those in history class who are studying the Vietnam War.

Get it, see it, share it. It's worth the time.

Thank You, Buzzflash

I suddenly got a ton of comments on my Weekly Bush Twins in Uniform this week, and I wondered why. Turns out that Buzzflash, my favorite news site, featured it on their front page yesterday.

Naturally most of the comments are anonymous and a lot consist of vicious attacks on my personal character (one pathetic loser even accused me of "spitting on veterans").

In the words of Fearless Leader, "bring it on".

Just remember, though, that I have only two rules: (1) I don't respond to anonymous sniper blowhards, and (2) I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.