Collateral Damage

by | May 28, 2010 | 0 comments

58, 260 is the official number of US soldiers, sailors and airmen who died or who are still listed as missing and presumed dead as a result of hostilities in Vietnam. There are an additional 303, 644 who were wounded including over 74,000 quadriplegics or multiple amputees. Surely, some of these wounded warriors have died as a result of these wounds over the last forty years, but are not counted in the “official” totals. In addition, what we don’t know, at least with certainty, is how many of the estimated 1.5 million who returned with post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) have succumbed to problems arising from this misunderstood psychological disorder. We do...

Liar, Liar Pants on Fire

by | May 23, 2010 | 0 comments

By now, all of you faithful readers, will have been deluged with comment from pundits far smarter than this writer on the newest lies told by yet another aspiring politician.  Richard Blumenthal, now running for the Senate seat to be vacated by Chris Dodd in Connecticut got caught red handed (or red lipped as the case may be) by the NY Times fibbing about having served in Viet Nam when, in reality, he only ran the Toys for Tots program for the Marine Reserve in NY.  He later admitted to “misspeaking” about the matter, but he was coughing into his sleeve at the time and it didn’t come out to clearly.  According to my on-line dictionary,  to misspeak means to...