The beefcake Senator gets cheesy
by digby
We all know that Scott Brown has spent the last four month haranguing Elizabeth Warren for allegedly misrepresenting her family background on a form back in the 1980s. You’d think he’d be a little bit more cautious:
The man who inspired Sen. Scott Brown to write a bill making it illegal to falsely claim military honors said he thinks the Massachusetts Republican is stretching the truth when he claims to have “served in Afghanistan.”
Brown made the Afghanistan declaration in his recent debate with his Democratic opponent for the Senate seat, Elizabeth Warren.
But Brown’s service in Afghanistan was not combat. It was part of his annual two-week stint with the National Guard, in which he requested, in a highly unusual move, to serve in Afghanistan.
“It sounds to me like we just got another Blumenthal Connecticut, Mark Kirk type things there,” said Vietnam veteran Doug Sterner, referring to exaggerated military claims two years ago by now-Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.)
“I thought it was seriously misleading,” said Sterner, whose website outing heroes was the basis for Brown’s “Stolen Valor” bill. Sterner’s criticism echoes a Boston Globe editorial published Thursday morning.
I heard him say it in the debate and a little alarm bell went off in my mind but I couldn’t remember what was wrong with it. It was that Brown asked to sent to Afghanistan for his two week National Guard service. I’m afraid you don’t get to refer to yourself as having “served in Afghanistan” when you do that. In fact, it makes you one of those “phony soldiers” to use Rush Limbaugh’s obnoxious phrase:
Sterner said it wasn’t that Brown’s service was with the National Guard that’s the problem. Scores of Guard members have been recipients of the Medal of Honor, he noted. Brown’s mistake, he said, was implying that his service in Afghanistan was a real tour of duty.
“I would be the last person to denigrate anybody’s National Guard service, but I thought the claim, putting himself on par with men and women who have done combat tours, often in excess of a year, 14 months, was a pretty cheesy thing to do,” Sterner said.
Seriously, if he “served in Afghanistan” so has two thirds of the US Congress who’ve gone over there on fact finding missions. It’s absurd.
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