Thank you Pat Leahy for your efforts to obtain war related jobs for Vermont. We do need to provide the best possible equipment for our warriors and heroes so they can be effective in killing civilians and destroying infrastructure. But not a questioning peep from the Vermont media or elected politicians regarding this issue or the rosy picture Douglas presented of the Afghanistan war, a picture provided by the generals.
I am opposed to basing any part of Vermont’s economy on war related industries and support only life affirming and life sustaining employment.
[For more information on my campaign, go to VoteBoots.com]
Mr. Wardinski makes some hay on his campaign site over his claimed service in the Marine Corps and being in Veterans for Peace; “I’m a Marine Corp. veteran with an honorable discharge and was discharged because I was deemed unfit to be an officer after refusing to go to war and kill.” Considering he appears to have been around for a while, has anyone ever thought to actually ask him for some proof of his claims? Now I realize that someone is probably warming up a response along the lines of “he doesn’t need to prove anything to the likes of you” etc. etc. but this is a candidate, no matter how outlandish, who chose to make a particular claim presumably because he believes it bolsters his candidacy. So I am asking simply if he can provide some proof of that claim such as a copy of his DD-214. Because, frankly, his claims and reported information about him bear many of the signs of an outright phony:
1.Weird or impossible dates – From 7 Days site on 24 Sept of 2009 “I am a pacifist,” said Wardinski, who served as a Marine in Vietnam from 1963-1967.”
2.An inconsistent or overlapping narrative – Claimed Vietnam service overlaps period claimed to have attended the University of Oregon (1965-1967) and to have been a Dartmouth student (1965) on Votesmart biography page.
3.Wildly unlikely administrative situations – From his campaign page: “…with an honorable discharge and was discharged because I was deemed unfit to be an officer after refusing to go to war and kill.”
4.Unfamiliar with some basic customs of the claimed service – Misspelled “Marine Corps” on his campaign site.
While you may not care one whit whether Mr. Wardinski served, I believe most people regardless of their political leanings would care to know if a candidate for public office has been less than truthful. Mr. Wardinski is a candidate, and merely the fact that he is an unlikely candidate for a third party shouldn’t lessen the standard of honesty he should be held to.
While I’m on the topic, the most common answers to a request for verification of service when dealing with a phony veteran are:
1.All my records were burned up in a fire.
2.Everybody else in my unit was killed and I was the sole survivor, so they listed me as dead.
3.I was doing uber-secret squirrel stuff, no records were kept and I can’t talk about it.
if I thought of Mr. Wardinski as anything other than a crackpot, I’d be curious about the answers of these as well.
That said, anyone who chooses to run for public office and makes their military history an aspect of their campaign needs to be prepared to answer these sorts of questions.