Senators wage war of words over DeLay barbs

[thedrifter]

Senators wage war of words over DeLay barbs

Here's yet another attack on a veteran's military service by a "chicken
hawk".

Not surprisingly, the attacker is one of the main "chicken hawks" blocking
HR 303 and the Discharge Petition.

Regardless of your politics, a "chicken hawk" attacking a veteran is a
pretty low thing, especially when you read DeLay's reasons for military
service not being listed on his resume: http://slate.msn.com/id/1002713/

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/....ap/index.html

Senators wage war of words over DeLay barbs
Kennedy served in military; House GOP leader didn't

WASHINGTON (AP) --"I certainly don't want to see Teddy Kennedy in a Navy
flight suit."

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay used that image in a speech last week as he
accused Democrats of a lack of leadership on national security. His joke at
the expense of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, touched off a verbal
war Friday.

"To try to gauge just how out of touch the Democrat leadership is on the war
on terror, just close your eyes and try to imagine Ted Kennedy landing that
Navy jet on the deck of that aircraft carrier," DeLay, R-Texas, told a group
of college Republicans. "I don't know about you, I certainly don't want to
see Teddy Kennedy in a Navy flight suit anytime soon."

DeLay spokesman Jonathan Grella called it "tongue-in-cheek" humor, but
Democrats came to Kennedy's defense.

Former Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia, a Democrat and a Vietnam veteran who
lost a bitter re-election race in 2002, dashed off a letter to DeLay calling
the comments "reprehensible" and finishing up with his own barb: "This
country deserves more patriots like Senator Kennedy, not more chicken hawks
like you who never served."

Former Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, also a Democrat and Vietnam veteran,
chastised DeLay in a letter Friday for his "tasteless and unnecessary smear
of Senator Kennedy." The remark's tone, he said, seemed to question
Kennedy's military service record.

Kennedy served in the Army. DeLay did not serve in the military.

Kennedy spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said the incident was "another missed
opportunity for DeLay to set a good example in front of an audience of young
people rather than promote the politics of personal destruction."

While criticizing the Democrats for failing to see the humor in DeLay's
remarks, Grella said there is a serious issue involved.

"The Democratic party has a lot to answer for in terms of their decimating
our intelligence and not being there for our military and our national
defense," he said. The military veterans in Congress, he said, don't have
exclusive rights to opinions on national security.

Find this above article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/....ap/index.html
http://slate.msn.com/id/1002713/ Delay in 1999

"Not only is their president getting us in a mess, but he's undermining our
military." DeLay's fervid rhetoric carried the day; even though his prot?g?,
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, voted to support the air strikes, the House
vote ended in a 213-213 tie, which of course meant that it had withheld
support for the air strikes.


What did Tom DeLay do during the Vietnam war? "I don't know. I think he was
in college," his daughter Dani told Chatterbox when he asked her last
Friday. DeLay spokesman Mike Scanlon was similarly stumped when Chatterbox
asked him Monday. A story by reporter (and Vietnam vet) Guy Gugliotta in
today's Washington Post, however, brings the news that DeLay "received
student draft deferments during the Vietnam era and avoided military service
through the 1969 lottery," which presumably means he drew a high number.
Apparently DeLay, who was something of a prankster in his early college
days, was able to keep his student deferment after he was asked by the dean
to sit out a semester at Baylor University, which he attended from 1965 to
1967. Instead of taking the time off, DeLay got married and enrolled at the
University of Houston, where he graduated in 1970.

What's DeLay's line about sitting out the war? That he was needed for the
war at home against earwigs and cockroaches? (Instead of going into the
military, he became an exterminator.) DeLay flack Scanlon said he'd get back
to Chatterbox, but never did. Specifically, Chatterbox wanted to know if
there was any truth to a report in the Houston Press, a rather emphatically
anti-DeLay alternative newspaper, about what DeLay said on this subject at
the 1988 Republican convention in New Orleans, when vice-presidential
nominee Dan Quayle was under attack for having avoided Vietnam service in
the National Guard. (The story was repeated in a Molly Ivins profile of
DeLay in the May issue of Playboy.) Here's what the Houston Press reported:

He and Quayle, DeLay explained to the assembled media in New Orleans, were
victims of an unusual phenomenon back in the days of the undeclared
Southeast Asian war. So many minority youths had volunteered for the
well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there
was literally no room for patriotic folks like himself. Satisfied with the
pronouncement, which dumbfounded more than a few of his listeners who had
lived the sixties, DeLay marched off to the convention.

Chatterbox has heard many draft-dodger alibis in his time, but he has never
heard anyone plead reverse discrimination.

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"Support Our Soldiers"
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United We Stand
God Bless America
*****
Were it not for the brave,
there would be no Land of the Free!


Remember our POW/MIA's
I'll never forget!


Sempers,

Roger