Opinion: Conn. Senate Candidate Richard Blumenthal Didn't Go to Vietnam, But He's in a War Now

(May 18) -- Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal seemed a shoo-in to replace Chris Dodd in the U.S. Senate. That is, until word came that he told an audience in 2008 that he had served in Vietnam.

Blumenthal never served in Vietnam.

The story broke Tuesday in The New York Times. Hey, wait a minute! Isn't The New York Times, if you listen to just about every conservative in the United States, actually named "The Liberal New York Times," and solely devoted to overthrowing every right-wing officeholder?

According to Kevin Rennie, a political columnist for The Hartford Courant and a former Republican state senator, the story was fed to the Times by the Linda McMahon campaign. McMahon, the leading Republican candidate for the open Senate seat, is outspending all her opponents, which certainly doesn't hurt when seeking any piece of dirt that could help attain victory. And her previous work as the grande dame of the World Wrestling Entertainment doesn't hurt, either, in seeking employment in another often-fake profession.

Blumenthal concedes he misspoke during his 2008 speech, according to Fox News, and meant to say he served "during" not "in" Vietnam. It

"On a few occasions, I have misspoken about my service and I regret that and I take full responsibility," he said Tuesday. But he described those remarks as "absolutely unintentional," and said the mistake has only happened a few times out of "hundreds" of addresses he's given.

He said he was "proud" of his service in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve.

"Unlike many of my peers, I chose to join the military and serve my country," he said. "I will not allow anyone to take a few misplaced words and impugn my record of service."

This is not good for Blumenthal. But it remains to be seen if it will be fatal to his political career.

After all, it wasn't fatal when Ronald Reagan fudged his military service a bit. In his 2000 book "President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime," Lou Cannon recounts how Reagan was asked in 1985 about the appropriateness of visiting a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, where SS soldiers were buried.

"Yes, I know all the bad things that happened in that war," Reagan said. "I was in uniform for four years myself."

And in his 1965 autobiography, "Where's the Rest of Me?" Reagan wrote: "By the time I got out of the Army Air Corps all I wanted to do -- in common with several million other veterans -- was to rest up a while, make love to my wife, and come up refreshed to a better job in an ideal world."

But, as Al Hunt reported in The Wall Street Journal when Cannon's book came out, "Reagan actually spent the war years making training films and spending most nights at home. In 1983 the Gipper regaled Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal with his memories of photographing Nazi death camps at the end of the war. But Mr. Reagan never left the country during that war, period."

And when war-promoter Dick Cheney got his fifth deferment, it was right after the Selective Service expanded the draft to include married men without children. In my book "Red White and Liberal," I wrote, "The Cheneys' bundle of draft-resistant joy entered the world nine months and two days after that rule change." And when George W. Bush's military service was an issue during his presidential runs, an examination by The Boston Globe revealed that he fell short of his commitments.

But don't expect anyone who is out to get Blumenthal to question the military credentials of Cheney, Bush or, especially, to ever, ever speak ill of Reagan.

Even though we can be sure that Reagan's legacy will remain untarnished by the hands of time, that doesn't let Blumenthal off the hook. It's an insult to those who serve in harm's way when those who were nowhere near a war zone imply they were.

Blumenthal never went to war, but he's in one now.

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