One wonders if Woody believes in the tooth fairy, Easter bunny and Santa Claus as well:

STORIES ABOUT spat-upon Vietnam veterans are like mercury: Smash one and six more appear. It’s hard to say where they come from. For a book I wrote in 1998 I looked back to the time when the spit was supposedly flying, the late 1960s and early 1970s. I found nothing. No news reports or even claims that someone was being spat on.

What I did find is that around 1980, scores of Vietnam-generation men were saying they were greeted by spitters when they came home from Vietnam. There is an element of urban legend in the stories in that their point of origin in time and place is obscure, and, yet, they have very similar details. The story told by the man who spat on Jane Fonda at a book signing in Kansas City recently is typical. Michael Smith said he came back through Los Angeles airport where ”people were lined up to spit on us.”

Like many stories of the spat-upon veteran genre, Smith’s lacks credulity. GIs landed at military airbases, not civilian airports, and protesters could not have gotten onto the bases and anywhere near deplaning troops. There may have been exceptions, of course, but in those cases how would protesters have known in advance that a plane was being diverted to a civilian site? And even then, returnees would have been immediately bused to nearby military installations and processed for reassignment or discharge.

Link here: http://tinyurl.com/78eg3

CRAIG, Andre Jr., 24, Pfc., Army; New Haven; First Infantry Division.

DAHL, Joel A., 21, Sgt., Army; Los Lunas, N.M.; Second Infantry Division.

DIXON, Derek C., 20, Cpl., Marines; Riverside, Ohio; Second Marine Division.

MORETTI, Trista L., 27, Sgt., Army; South Plainfield, N.J.; 25th Infantry Division.

Impeach Cheney sez Slate.

I really disagree, but I admire your heterodoxy, as a Pro-Venezuela hawk.

Btw, what happened to the Hagel presidential campaign? He was the antiwar alternative in the party before Ron Paul.

I think the problem Lugar has had is that he is fundamentally not a confrontational person, and he became used to presidents taking his opinion seriously. He is not prepared for the response he has received from the incumbent Republican president, which is to ignore him utterly.

Lugar has had a problem saying “no” throughout his career. Back in 1973, as mayor of Indianapolis, he submitted to an interview by the editors of a brand-new sort-of underground newspaper. I happened to be one. At that time we were playing around in our pages with the idea of UFOs. One of us asked Mayor Lugar what he would do if he were confronted by a UFO and its inhabitants. Rather than throw us out of his office, he said he would probably shake tentacles and award the beings the Key to the City.

As a more significant example, he found it impossible to cut his ties to those of his supporters who were identified as being tied to organized crime.

My guess as to why Lugar has “spoken out” this week is that he has heard the rumors coming out of the White House that Bush is, for the first time, considering a reversal of the momentum for a heavier and heavier commitment in Iraq. Maybe he is signalling that there will be significant Republican support for Bush if he does “turn tail and run.” Perhaps he is signalling, on the other hand, that there will be little Republican support in the Senate for any plan that does not include definite steps toward withdrawal.

If it is the latter, though, Lugar characteristically cushions his own blow by saying he’s not going to vote with the Democrats on any substantive withdrawal plan.

Your party’s love of gold plated, chicken hawk draft dodgers came later….

But I must be off my meds as Cooper diagnosed me (and you) as one who must always be to the left of everyone else…

When are we gonna get a movie review of Sicko?? 50-1 Cooper (or his daughter) will pooh-pooh it because it dares paints Cuba in a positive light. In response to the claim they were treated differently, Moore said last night on Leno that one Spanish speaking 9/11 responder actually went to a different clinic as a Cuban on her own and was treated the same as when with the Moore group.

Moore also disclosed that in 1997 NBC censored the results of a TV Nation bit that had Cuba scoring better in a “broken arm olympics” vs. the US and Canada. NBC’s “standards and practices” banned Cuba from winning and made Canada the winner. They did the dirty edits over Moore’s objection. Raw political censorship in America??? Naw….

Btw, what happened to the Hagel presidential campaign? He was the antiwar alternative in the party before Ron Paul.

I think the problem Lugar has had is that he is fundamentally not a confrontational person, and he became used to presidents taking his opinion seriously. He is not prepared for the response he has received from the incumbent Republican president, which is to ignore him utterly.

Lugar has had a problem saying “no” throughout his career. Back in 1973, as mayor of Indianapolis, he submitted to an interview by the editors of a brand-new sort-of underground newspaper. I happened to be one. At that time we were playing around in our pages with the idea of UFOs. One of us asked Mayor Lugar what he would do if he were confronted by a UFO and its inhabitants. Rather than throw us out of his office, he said he would probably shake tentacles and award the beings the Key to the City.

As a more significant example, he found it impossible to cut his ties to those of his supporters who were identified as being tied to organized crime.

My guess as to why Lugar has “spoken out” this week is that he has heard the rumors coming out of the White House that Bush is, for the first time, considering a reversal of the momentum for a heavier and heavier commitment in Iraq. Maybe he is signalling that there will be significant Republican support for Bush if he does “turn tail and run.” Perhaps he is signalling, on the other hand, that there will be little Republican support in the Senate for any plan that does not include definite steps toward withdrawal.

If it is the latter, though, Lugar characteristically cushions his own blow by saying he’s not going to vote with the Democrats on any substantive withdrawal plan.