Senator Metzenbaum is an idiot?

[Eden]

Just got this as an e-mail.  Don't know how true it is or where it came from but here it is.

WHAT SENATOR JOHN GLENN SAID:    

 There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq in January.
In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the
month of January.That's just one American city,
about as deadly as the entire war-torn country of Iraq.



When some claim that President Bush shouldn't
have started this war, state the following:



a. FDR led us into World War II.

b. Germany never attacked us; Japan did.
From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost ...
an  average of 112,500 per year.



c. Truman finished that war and started one in Korea.
North Korea never attacked us.
From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost ...
an average of 18,334 per year.

d John F. Kennedy started the Vietnam conflict in 1962.
Vietnam never attacked us.

e.   Johnson turned Vietnam into a quagmire.
From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost ..
an average of 5,800 per year.

f. Clinton went to war in Bosnia without UN or French  consent.
Bosnia never attacked us.
He was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three
times by Sudan and did nothing Osama has attacked us on
multiple occasions.

g. In the years since terrorists attacked us , President Bush
has liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled
al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran, and North
Korea  without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who
slaughtered 300,000 of his own people.



The Democrats are complaining
about how long the war is taking.
But
. It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno
to take the Branch Davidian compound.
That was a 51-day operation.



We've been looking for evidence for chemical weapons
in Iraq for less time than it took Hillary Clinton to find
the Rose Law Firm billing records.



It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the
Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard
than it took Ted Kennedy to call the police after his
Oldsmobile sank at Chappaquiddick



It took less time to take Iraq than it took
to count the votes in Florida!!!!

Our Commander-In-Chief is doing a  GREAT JOB!
The Military morale is high!

The biased media hopes we are too ignorant
to realize the facts



But Wait there's more!



JOHN GLENN (ON THE SENATE FLOOR)
Mon, 26 Jan 2004 11:13



Some people still don't understand why military personnel
do what they do for a living. This exchange between
Senators John Glenn and Senator Howard Metzenbaum
is worth reading. Not only is it a pretty impressive
impromptu speech, but it's also a good example of one
man's explanation of why men and women in the armed
services do what they do for a living



This IS a typical, though sad, example of what
some who have never served think of the military.



Senator Metzenbaum (speaking to Senator Glenn):
"How can you run for Senate
when you've never held a real job?"



Senator Glenn (D-Ohio):
"I served 23 years in the United States Marine Corps.
I served through two wars. I flew 149 missions.
My plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire on 12 different
occasions. I was in the space program.  It wasn't my
checkbook, Howard; it was my life on the line. It was
not a nine-to-five job, where I took time off to take the
daily cash receipts to the bank."



"I ask you to go with me ... as I went the other day...
to a veteran's hospital and look those men ..
with their mangled bodies in the eye, and tell THEM
they didn't hold a job!



You go with me to the Space Program at NASA
and go, as I have gone, to the widows and Orphans
of Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee...
and you look those kids in the eye and tell them
that their DADS didn't hold a job.  


You go with me on Memorial Day and you stand in
Arlington National Cemetery, where I have more friends
buried than I'd like to remember, and you watch
those waving flags



You stand there, and you think about this nation,
and you tell ME that those people didn't have a job?

What about you?"


For those who don't remember
During WW.II, Howard Metzenbaum was an attorney
representing the Communist Party in the USA.

Now he's a Senator!



If you can read this, thank a teacher.
If you are reading it in English thank a Veteran.



It might not be a bad idea to keep this circulating.

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Eden
Just got this as an e-mail.  Don't know how true it is or where it came from but here it is.



It might not be a bad idea to keep this circulating.

How about circulating the truth?

[Eden]

Originally posted by Sandman
How about circulating the truth?

I heard that Snopes was in trouble for mis-quoting and overall poor research techniques and methodology.  I don't know the truth anymore.  I guess there is no truth .... only lies.  We need to stop speaking because when our mouths are moving...we are lying.

[Sandman]

Certain that you're not confusing Wikipedia with Snopes?

Transcripts from the House and Senate are publicly available.

[Skilless]

Originally posted by Eden
I heard that Snopes was in trouble for mis-quoting and overall poor research techniques and methodology.  I don't know the truth anymore.  I guess there is no truth .... only lies.  We need to stop speaking because when our mouths are moving...we are lying.

That's news to me.  Are you sure you're not thinking of Wikipedia?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bw/20051214/bs_bw/tc20051214441708

[Eden]

You might be right.  It seems as if the internet is our own worst enemy.  Perhaps too much information and almost all of it is conjecture, inaccuracies and lies.  Thank goodness we have real things like Santa Clause, Easter Bunny and Democrats to keep us in touch with reality.

[lasersailor184]

Wikipedia recently got in trouble when people started making erroneous and false submissions.  They now require everything to be checked and submitted by wiki members.

[Sandman]

FWIW, Wikipedia isn't too bad.

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(news)#Nature_follow-up:__How_do_the_article_sizes_compare.3F

[GtoRA2]

You don't need snopes to know a good portion of that is BS, you just need a few history books.

Truman did not start the Korean war. The north koreans did when they invaded the south killing many Americans and Koreans.


The Germans declared war on us, FDR did not start that war either.

That has been around for sometime.

Stupid crap.

[Eden]

Originally posted by GtoRA2

The Germans declared war on us, FDR did not start that war either.

Actually what it says is

"a. FDR led us into World War II."

You've misquoted.  It does not state that the war was Started by FDR merely that he was at the helm when the war began.  I suppose it could be argued that it implies his actions (and leadership) resulted in our entry into the war.  That, however, would be an alternate meaning of the word "led".

Not that I'm claiming any of this to be true (or defending it in any way).  Personally I think that there is no such thing as the truth.  Even when we consider the truth of life itself I often feel that it is, in realty, nothing more than a fairly good piece of fiction.

[GtoRA2]

Originally posted by Eden
Actually what it says is

"a. FDR led us into World War II."

You've misquoted.  It does not state that the war was Started by FDR merely that he was at the helm when the war began.  I suppose it could be argued that it implies his actions (and leadership) resulted in our entry into the war.  That, however, would be an alternate meaning of the word "led".

Not that I'm claiming any of this to be true (or defending it in any way).  Personally I think that there is no such thing as the truth.  Even when we consider the truth of life itself I often feel that it is, in realty, nothing more than a fairly good piece of fiction.

The context of the whole thing is Liberals are bad. By saying "led us into WW2" is implying that it was somehow his fault.

On top of that it kinda implies that WW2 was some liberal mistake.

I am not a liberal but imply that WW2 is a mistake caused by FDR who was a "liberal" is a silly thing to do.



There is some gray in the world, but there is truth as well.

[Gunslinger]

Are you guys looking at the same link??????

The link sandy posted said "Status:   True. "

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/glenn.asp

do some of you think just cause it's on snopes it's automatically false?

although I woulndt entrily agree with A-G I think those are framed as opinions.

The item quoted above is indeed a relatively faithful transcript of candidate John Glenn's remarks during a 1974 debate with Howard Metzenbaum for the Democratic nomination to a U.S. Senate seat, but the circumstances that prompted Glenn's words were not quite as they're made out to be here.

The 1970 Democratic primary in Ohio for a U.S. Senate seat pitted two men who were just embarking on long careers in national politics: businessman Howard Metzenbaum vs. former Marine pilot and astronaut John  Glenn. Although Glenn — a hero since his Mercury 6 flight eight years earlier had made him the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth — was the favorite, he lost the nomination to Metzenbaum following a campaign remarkable for its rancor, and Glenn came away from the experience bitter over a false rumor, attributed to a Metzenbaum aide, that he and his wife were on the verge of a divorce. Metzenbaum lost the general election to Republican Robert Taft, Jr., but he was appointed to the U.S. Senate in 1974 when Ohio's other senator, William B. Saxbe, resigned to accept a nomination as U.S. Attorney General, setting the stage for Glenn to challenge Metzenbaum once again in the 1974 Democratic primary.

The candidates in the 1974 race were even more contentious than they had been four years earlier. Metzenbaum took to referring to Glenn disdainfully as "Colonel Glenn" to emphasize his military background (Glenn was a World War II and Korean War veteran and had retired as a colonel from the Marine Corps in 1965 after twenty-two years of service) — today military service is generally considered a positive attribute in a politician, but in 1974 America had just ended its long and controversial involvement in Vietnam, and the military was viewed with suspicion and distrust, especially by the large portion of the "baby boom" generation that had reached voting age.

A few days before a May 3 debate between the candidates at the Cleveland City Club, Metzenbaum (an entrepreneur who had created the Sun Newspapers chain in the 1960s and had co-founded APCOA, one of the nation's largest parking companies) charged that "Colonel Glenn" had never "met a payroll," implying that Glenn's background as a career military man meant he was lacking in the real-world business experience a U.S. Senator should possess. (Metzenbaum's claim wasn't quite accurate: After his retirement from the Marine Corps, Glenn had held a position as a business executive with Royal Crown Cola and had served both as a member of the board of directors and as president of Royal Crown International.)

Metzenbaum's comment was widely publicized and interpreted by many — including Glenn himself — as a slam that Glenn had "never held a (real) job (even though Metzenbaum hadn't actually used those words), and Glenn went into the Cleveland debate a few days later well-prepared to answer the charges. Although Metzenbaum didn't raise the "job" issue during the debate, Glenn nonetheless seized the opportunity to launch into his carefully-crafted "I have held a job" retort, invoking stirring images of motherhood, sacrifice, and patriotism. Although it was a rehearsed speech rather than the impromptu response legend has since made it out to be, Glenn's stinging rebuke to Metzenbaum was a masterful stroke that swung momentum in his favor. He bested Metzenbaum by 8 percentage points in the primary and was elected to the U.S. Senate in the general election, carrying all 88 counties in Ohio in the process.

Both men went on to enjoy long political careers, Glenn serving four consecutive terms in the U.S. Senate before retiring in 1998 and Metzenbaum winning election to the U.S. Senate three times himself, but the timeless lesson of that 1974 campaign will outlive them both: You impugn the reputation of a national hero at your own peril — especially when he has better speechwriters than you do.

Update:   In 2005, someone prefaced the John Glenn/Howard Metzenbaum article with the following item about Iraq. This addendum has nothing to do with John Glenn — it's an anonymous piece that has been floating around the Internet since 2004, but because it has been tacked onto an article about Glenn, readers have been misled into thinking that it is a transcription of something he said:

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Gunslinger
Are you guys looking at the same link??????

The link sandy posted said "Status:   True. "

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/glenn.asp

Read the link. According to Snopes, the exchange between Glenn and Metzenbaum is true. The part about FDR, Kennedy, et al, is not.

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by Sandman
Read the link. According to Snopes, the exchange between Glenn and Metzenbaum is true. The part about FDR, Kennedy, et al, is not.

no it says it's missleading:

2005, someone prefaced the John Glenn/Howard Metzenbaum article with the following item about Iraq. This addendum has nothing to do with John Glenn — it's an anonymous piece that has been floating around the Internet since 2004, but because it has been tacked onto an article about Glenn, readers have been misled into thinking that it is a transcription of something he said:

I didn't think that's what either of the senators said once I got to the actual exchange.  It doesn't say that information is not factual or un-true.  Like I said earlier it's more of a matter of opinion.

[DREDIOCK]

Originally posted by Sandman
How about circulating the truth?

Ok so I rea the snopes article

Snopes said its "True"

Just that his quotes were made in 74 and not more recently