Ya know, I’m always down with busting some stolen valor creeps in our government, but I ran across a link last night which charges Scott Brown, the Republican Senator who sits in the Teddy Kennedy seat these days, with Stolen Valor. I tried to be outraged about it, but I just couldn’t summon the bile. But here’s the story;<\/p>\n
Apparently, Brown, a member of the Massachusetts National Guard, served his two-week drill this year in Afghanistan. I don’t know if he finagled the brief deployment with the state’s AG or what, it wouldn’t surprise me if he did, nor would it surprise me that he did it for purely political reasons. <\/p>\n
Regardless, according to this blog on Cape Cod Today<\/a>, Brown is now telling constituents that he served in Afghanistan. Well, technically, he did. And he’s a JAG officer, so, ya know, they rotate in and out of war zones as they need to – it’s the nature of their job. The author of the blog is outraged that Brown never saw combat, but that Brown claims that he “served in Afghanistan”. An awful lot of people go to Afghanistan and never see combat. That’s why so many come back without the award of a Combat Action Badge.<\/p>\n So, basically, this blogger and some of my friends are upset that Brown can say he “served in Afghanistan” and they charge that it’s stolen valor for him to say that. I don’t see it.<\/p>\n And then in the same breath, they defend Brown’s opponent, Fauxcahontas Elizabeth Warren’s claim that she’s a Native American;<\/p>\n Brown’s claim that he “served” in Afghanistan, directed to the electorate, is a far greater fraud than anything he’s tried to pin on Liz Warren for her claim to Native American ancestry.<\/p>\n She in fact has a good faith basis for believing she’s part Indian, whether it is factually correct or not, because it’s something she was told by her mother as a small child.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So, just because her mother lied to her, that makes it OK to take advantage of set-asides for real Native Americans – like phony veterans who take benefits meant for real veterans. Never mind that she could look in a mirror and see that her claim wasn’t true. But Scott Brown did actually “serve in Afghanistan”, and I’m pretty sure that his records will reflect that, no matter how hard the Democrats will wish otherwise.<\/p>\n Like I said, I tried to get exercised over Brown, I even tried to get TSO to get me exercised about him, but we just couldn’t summon the outrage. Maybe the Democrats would like to define how long we have to serve some place in order to say it out loud. <\/p>\n And they didn’t seem so upset when they discovered that Richard Blumenthal lied about his service in Vietnam<\/a>. Blumenthal wasn’t even in Vietnam a day, but the Democrats elected him despite the fact that he was caught in a lie and refused to apologize for it. But Brown actually does go to Afghanistan, and they’re upset? Sounds like a double standard to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"