A thought from one sleazy liar (in the past, I surely hope!) to another: Pull out of the Senate Race!

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal

Quoting from Jack Shafer in Yesterday’s New York Times:

“... [it was] ... revealed that in addition to inflating his military résumé to suggest [Richard Blumenthal, the Attorney General of Connecticut] endured a tour of duty in Vietnam as a U.S. Marine, he also availed himself of enough military deferments and ploys to avoid going to Vietnam that he appears to have set some sort of record. According to the Times, Blumenthal collected five military deferments from 1965 to 1970. And as deferments began to wane, he found a slot in a Marine Reserve unit where the hottest combat he saw was policing Toys for Tots drives in the Washington, D.C., area.”

The question, of course is whether or not this disqualifies him for becoming a United States Senator.

As both a former (I surely hope it is “former”!) sleazy liar and a non-combat civil servant (i.e., civilian Government worker) “veteran” of the Vietnam War I have a moderating thought. For one thing, I spent the entire time I was in Vietnam in 1969/70 in an air conditioned and bomb/mortar-proof bunker beneath the tower at Tan Son Nhut Air Base – that is, minus two R&R’s in Bangkok (don’t ask!) and a two-week Christmas leave back in Hawaii with my family. Even the house that the Air Force rented for me was sufficiently far from downtown Saigon so as to be safe from the nightly mortars and rockets that were almost an everyday occurrence for eleven straight months. Even TET was only a memory by the time I arrived in Saigon.

As regards the subject of dangerous activities, I should mention that I left my wife and seven (I think) children back in Hawaii, plus a younger teenaged brother who, in my absence, was taking those children--ages 2 through 8 or so—for rides on his/my Honda 250 dirt bike up and down Pepeekeo Place in Hawaii-Kai.

Since then, I have become a left-leaning liberal who is becoming more antiwar by the day. The years since my stint in Vietnam, BTW, included six-plus years in Saudi Arabia—before, including and after the first Gulf War during which I foolishly watched Scud canisters tumbling like fireworks in the sky through the atmosphere while the warheads went on into downtown Riyadh causing a scene that was left largely untouched by King Fahd to remind his subjects that the US was their friend and Saddam Hussein was a murderous infidel.

Long story about how the Royal Family finally allowed us “in” back then to recapture Kuwait.

In any event, that downtown scene was clearly visible from the modern overpass that wound around 1/3 of downtown Riyadh until I left for Dubai in 1996. Even the car windows of autos that were near “ground zero” were lying on all four sides of their vehicles where the overpressure caused by the explosions put them next to several destroyed buildings. Weird scene!

My five cats, who were cuddled in my arms or sitting on the front porch of my hooch, haven’t forgiven me for that foolishness even today. Yes, two of the five cats that I brought back to America are becoming the oldest cats in Ocean Shores (three have died of old age and only George and Ralph remain).

I even named George after President George H. W. Bush way back then.

But now I see two sides of Mr. Blumenthal’s dilemma today. Vietnam was as immoral a war as America ever fought—before Vice-president Cheney raised the bar for immorality with the Iraq War.

Thus, I have no problems with anyone who resisted the war or the draft, anyone who took every deferment known to man (I did!), or anyone who jumped into the reserves or National Guard to avoid the full service.

And that includes former President George W. Bush. Likewise, I have the utmost respect for those who did their duty and served in Vietnam, either as a volunteer or a draftee. There's room enough among my personal heroes the for both those who served and those who refused to serve in Vietnam--or any concocted "police action" anywhere in the world.

My mistake back in 1969 was in getting a job-related deferment to work at CINCPAC (under Admiral John McCain, no less) and then volunteering to take a $$$-bonus-based, guaranteed safe “tour” in Vietnam with a group of young USAF first lieutenants and captains working out the snags in something called Seek Data II (or the Silver Fox” as it was known by those of us who knew how inaccurate the data in the report were.)

There’s no hero living in my skivvies!

My only problem with Blumenthal is that he clearly continually and publicly lied to so many people over so many years. Whether those were sins of omission or commission, there's no denying that he knew people thought he served in Vietnam and that he at times actively promoted that false belief for his political benefit.

What I'm not sure of is to what extent this disqualifies him to sit in the United States Senate.

I would guess that it might, but I also think it's far more relevant to look at his record in public office when deciding whether he should continue to serve the public in office.

Unfortunately his largely sick-looking attempts these last few days to stem the uproar look either like more of the same dishonesty at worst and merely a lack of imagination and quick enough thinking at best.