Isn't it bad enough that when the families do want coverage by the media to report the funerals of the fallen or even go to the airport to cover the flag draped coffin returning to their home town, the military will not allow it? Now the McCain campaign decides that they can hire actors to portray a funeral for political gain? I want to throw up!!!!!!
I'm going off on a huge rant right now so if you're not in the mood to read it, please skip past this part and move onto the report from CBS. My husband said that my mouth should have been sent to Vietnam and it would have been over in a week. Chaplain hat is off and veterans advocate hat, wife of Vietnam vet, daughter of Korean vet battle gear is on!!!!
This son of a bitch has used the military long enough! McCain does not own the word patriot any more than he deserves to use the fact he was a POW to cover up every single shifty dirty deed he has done since the day he was released from the Vietnamese. He does not own history any more than he owns his own facts and considering there are a lot of other POW's who see right through him, it's time for him to just use that "whatever" that got him thru those days as a POW and face some truth for once in his life. He proved what he was when he came home and dumped his first wife who was in an accident for Cindy. We all know that story. As a veteran he also proved that he does not give a shit about any other veteran as long as he's taken care of an bowed down to as if he is a hero equal to those who have lost limbs trying to save lives and ended up having to fight the government to have their wounds taken care of when he turned his back on all of them by voting against increasing the VA budgets and all other measures that would provide the adequate care for them.
Don't let the Walter Reed scandal pass your memory here either. After all, how many trips did he make sure he mentioned when he "visited the troops there" but never, ever once stood up to say how deplorable those in the wards hidden from public view were being treated no matter what was being reported before and after the Washington Post got their hands on the story? Do you really think any of this was a secret from an insider like McCain when he was sucking up to Bush and Rumsfeld? People talk.
Now this son of a bitch turns around and uses, yes uses, imaginary dead soldiers to sell his script of being all so in tune to the suffering of military families? What the hell does he know about what any of them are going through or even care? I've spent the last 26 years fighting to keep them alive and if McCain really gave a shit about any of them he would have made damn sure that every little thing that needed to be done was being done for all of them. After all, when he was released from the POW camp, he managed to get all the care he needed and yes, got his claim approved for disability and I bet that he never once had to file a single appeal for it. He never had to suffer because the VA would not honor his claim or show up at the VA to have PTSD treated only to be told they didn't have the time to see him or tell him when he called a suicide hotline that he needed to call back in the morning! He never once had to endure any of this because after all, he came home as war hero who was honored while the rest of the Vietnam veteran were being shafted from here to eternity and kept suffering while he lived off the tax payers going to college and then collecting disability he was entitled to while not caring about the others who were not getting anything for all his years in the Senate when he had the power to do something about it. This is all pure bullshit!
I wonder how many times he'll manage to talk about how he was a POW tonight in his speech. I didn't watch last night. I opted to watch America's Got Talent instead. I knew it would be bad enough having to read the speeches today online. I won't watch tonight either. I won't waste my time knowing the person doing the speaking is lying through his teeth! I'm sure he'll have some other Vietnam veterans standing behind him. I doubt they ever noticed how McCain never seems to manage to stand behind any of them and fight for them!
So many have died when they still could have been alive. They died after they got home. They died because they took their own lives because people like him never once showed they cared about any of them. He used them. He's still using them. Now, go and read this and understand that it's not the fact he's a Republican that I can't stand him. I have a lot of Republican friends who can't either. What I can't stand is this POW degrading the service of all others by using this part of his life as a stepping stone to power. He should have been proud of his service and brought honor to it instead of degrading it. When it comes to being a veteran, he's a cardboard cutout.
Kathie Costos (rant over, next post Chaplain hat back on)
Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.org
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington
Fake Soldiers Used In RNC Video
Patriotic Montage Shown At RNC Featured Actors Hired For One Day Shoot, Not Military
Comments 141
Sept. 4, 2008
CBS) CBS News Investigative Producer Michael Rey wrote this story for CBSNews.com.
It was a video that was supposed to elicit soaring patriotism and real emotions about the Pledge of Allegiance. But to do that, it used fake soldiers and a staged military funeral instead of the real thing.
On Tuesday night, 15-year-old Victoria Blackstone, a sophomore at the St. Agnes School in St. Paul, led the crowd at the Xcel Energy Center in the Pledge of Allegiance. The audience heard her 434-word essay, “Pledging myself to the Flag of the United States of America,” an essay she’d entered in the “Wave the Stars & Stripes” essay contest and won. The RNC turned that essay into a three and a half minute video, a visually stirring montage rolling over Victoria’s words about sharing the Pledge with Americans who have stood at important moments in history.
There’s the Continental Congress…A real WWII vet…Photos of workers at Ground Zero. A close-up of a folded flag presented to a grieving widow at a military funeral… profiles of soldiers swelling with pride in slo-motion.
But CBS News found that the footage of the ‘funeral’ and soldiers is what is called ‘stock’ footage. The soldiers were actors and the funeral scene was from a one-day film shoot, produced in June. No real soldiers were used during production.
The footage, sold by stock-film house Getty Images was produced by a commercial filmmaker in Chicago. Both Getty and the production company, Mr. Big Films, confirmed that the footage was shot on spec and sold to the Republican National Committee.
One of the actors, Perry Denton of Chicago, Ill. also confirmed that he was hired on a day-rate as an actor for the shoot and told CBS News he was surprised to learn the footage was shown at the convention.
go here for more
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/04/
cbsnews_investigates/main4415886.shtml
