Sgt Dick Blumenthal, USMCR, wannabe-Vietnam Vet

As I noted in an earlier post, my Dad was an Army veteran of both WWII and Vietnam. He served two tours of duty in South Vietnam as a Master Sgt with the Corps of Engineers.

The first tour was in 1967-68 at Cam Ranh Bay. I have pictures of him somewhere dressed up in tiger-stripe camo with white facings playing Santa Claus to Vietnamese kids. They chose him because he had white hair. He was 48 when he left to go to Vietnam. His second tour was in 1969-70 and he was with a road building batallion in both the Central Highlands and the Mekong Delta region.

When your Dad is gone for two years of your childhood serving in a war zone and then some slimey politician fraudulently claims to have served in Vietnam to burnish his credentials, you can understand my anger and disgust with Connecticut AG and US Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal.

William Saletan in the online magazine Slate has a blistering critique of Blumenthal. James Taranto, in his Best of the Web column for the Wall Street Journal, nails it better than I could.

He'll fight for Connecticut's families just like he fought back in his Marine days, when he led the glorious Toys for Tots campaign during Vietnam.

Not that I have anything against Toys for Tots but as the Virtual Stepdaughter always says, "Just saying".