Saturday, April 24, 2004
Politics
Right now, I really haven't followed the presidential election all that much. To me politicians are just necessary evils that have to be put up with. I think the majority of them are just a bunch of power hungry individuals that will say whatever they think you want to hear in order to be voted for.
That being said, I don't understand the fuss over Kerry's military records. It seems that a lot of people are upset because he wasn't wounded bad enough. I'm sorry, but if you're serviing your country somewhere and you're close enough to the bad guys to get wounded in any way - you're wounded enough. Here's the quote that set me off:
"One Kerry critic has questioned whether he deserved the Purple Heart for the first shrapnel wound to the left arm. The medical record simply says the shrapnel was removed and Bacitracin dressing was applied. "It would seem this critic (who was unnamed) would have been much happier had the wound occured maybe 12 inches higher and taken out an eye or lodged in the heart leaving Kerry blind or dead.
Hey - he was being shot at by people who were trying to kill him while he was trying to stay alive while following orders defending his country. It seems somehow that since he survived he's less of a patriot. Should we start giving graduated patriot awards? The worse you're wounded the more patriotic you are?
I was lucky. I was never stationed in active combat, though I have spent time in a declared combat zone (Desert Storm/Southern Watch) while it was relatively peaceful and in a non-combat zone (Europe in the 80s) when it wasn't relatively peaceful. Not to take anything away from those who were, but does the fact that I was never shot, gassed, bombed, burnt, beat up, tortured make my 22 years in the military worthless?
