When Bob Dole Said No
posted by Rick at 7:06 PM

Noel Koch, former Special Assistant to President Richard M. Nixon and Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, writes in the Washington Post that Bob Dole should know better--and used to know better--than to serve as a GOP attack dog over the quality of the opposition candidate's record of military service.

It is not surprising to hear John Kerry's wounds belittled by men who have avoided all risk of being wounded. Someday perhaps we will be able to plumb the neuroses of those who avoided Vietnam and have ever after had difficulty living with the choice. But it is surprising to hear Bob Dole doing it.
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Time in-country, how often a man was wounded, how much blood he shed when he was wounded -- it is hurtful that those who served in Vietnam are being split in so vile a fashion, and that the wounds of that war are reopened at the instigation of people who avoided serving at all. It is hurtful that a man of Bob Dole's stature should lend himself to the effort to dishonor a fellow American veteran in the service of politics at its cheapest.