UPDATED II: Fake [?] Anti-Troop Email Making RW Rounds

A Tale of Three (so far) Emails.

[UPDATE: Free Republic has it now. Comments. Are. Priceless. It's all "lefty  Oakland's" doing.]

[UPDATE II: See below. Really. (And read Soonergrunt's comment.)

Michael Ledeen has never seen a "spitting on the troops" story he didn't like. In this post, entitled "Spitting on the Marines," [woo hoo!] he tells us about an email he received:

Spitting on the Marines   [Michael Ledeen]

Here is an e-mail from a Marine chaplain recently returned from Iraq. The story speaks for itself—lousy treatment of our troops at our own airports. He writes about Oakland, and while checking around I find that this is a common experience. I hope that one of our leaders will find a way to put an end to such behavior.

Marines and Soldiers Returning from Iraq not allowed into Oakland terminal...

Shocking soggy spat-upon details below.

The email goes on to document how a group of Marines returning from Iraq were not allowed to enter the terminal at Oakland International Airport. It ends with this:

It felt like being spit on. Every Marine and soldier felt the message loud and clear, "YOU ARE NOT WELCOME IN OAKLAND!"

You know what's strange? Someone else got that same email:

This morning I received an email from the brother of a Marine in the unit referenced below.  The email speaks for itself and raises some disturbing questions.  While outside OC, it's an issue that is worth sharing.  The text below is unedited, although I have removed the name of the Marine who authored the email:

Marines and Soldiers Returning from Iraq not allowed into Oakland terminal...

Now hold on: Is it a "Marine chaplain" or the "brother of a Marine"? Because they're the exact same emails. Complete with the "It felt like being spit on" finish.

And look! CNN is on the case too!

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Two lawmakers asked Friday for a Department of Transportation investigation into a Marine's allegations that he and 200 other military personnel returning Thursday from Iraq were not allowed into the terminal at Oakland International Airport, but instead had to deplane 400 yards away.

"It felt like being spit on," the Marine, who was not publicly identified, wrote in an e-mail to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. "Every Marine and soldier felt the message loud and clear, 'You are not welcome in Oakland.'"

Spitting on soldiers. Of course it's not the old Right Wing "Dems hate our troops - they spit on vets returning from Vietnam!" thing because, well, it's obviously an airport rule, or a military one. And there isn't anything about spit...except the word "spit." Check that: It is about Dems hating the troops. As long as it has "spit" and "soldiers" in the story, Michael Ledeen, and the rest of the Right Wing nuts-o-sphere, can feel that they've done their job: Smear (Democratic) Americans by any means necessary. Lie if you have to. And if you can find a way to use the words "spit" and "soldiers" - awesome!

Extra: And according to a commenter on this site, it's a noise rule at Oakland International Airport.

UPDATE II: This is gonna get ya. The email is on Ledeen's piece attributed to a Chaplain Brandon Harding. I googled the name:

"The message of Christ risen is sort of a metaphor for the Iraqi people," says Chaplain Brandon Harding, 32, of Point Mugu. "They were oppressed and downtrodden and like a savior, we've given them a chance at a better life."

Ow. [***And I amended the title, adding the "?". The email may be real - just misused.]

Crossposted at a Long Tough Blog.

•  And notice how Ledeen says

  "while checking around I find that this is a common experience."

  Checking around? He posted this today. Not that  long ago. The other link goes to a post from yesterday. Seems like in "checking around" he might have come  across that.

  Is somebody lying?

  by Little on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:13:27 PM PDT

  •  I'm sure he checked around

    about as thoroughly as he checked around regarding the "death" of Ayatollah Khamenei.

    by dtj on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:28:07 PM PDT

    •  "checking around"

      in this case means asking the dog if he knows anything about it.

      by newfie53523 on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:29:35 PM PDT

      •  A dog named "Checkers," no doubt. n/t

        by pat208 on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:27:52 PM PDT

  •  Ledeen lying?

    say it ain't so!!!!

    the man wouldn't know the truth if it bit him in the ass.

    by dougymi on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:45:08 PM PDT

  •  Could Be Worse

    He could arranged for the appearance of another Yellowcake document, or conspired with Italian fascists around the time of the Bologna train station bombing, where dozens were killed.

    Or helped orchestrate an illegal war with Iran, based on lies, casualties currently in the hundreds of thousands and climbing daily.

    Hardly the worst of what he's been up to.

    Heh.

    by bink on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:39:05 PM PDT

    •  Er

      Illegal war with Iraq ... Jeez.

      by bink on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:39:26 PM PDT

      •  Getting ahead of yourself...

        God I hope that bad joke is wrong.

        by Little on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:41:20 PM PDT

•  Whatever. Republicans lie. If they tell the

  truth, they burst into flames.

  Another story to inflame (pun intended) the seriously small minded among them.

  by funluvn1 on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:13:49 PM PDT

  •  Whatever? Yeah, I suppose so.

    I'm still gonna stick Ledeen's face in it.

    by Little on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:17:29 PM PDT

•  Hahahahahaha

  CNN is far left liberal.  Did something change when I wasn't looking?

  by madgranny on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:22:50 PM PDT

  •  That's why I hate CNN...

    more than Faux Noise, at least Faux's bias is blatant.

    by blueyedace2 on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:32:47 PM PDT

    •  CNN is owned by AOL/Time/Warner

      The same conglomerate that brought you "V for Vendetta" (released March 17, 2006) and "300" (released March 9, 2007). It's not about right or wrong with Time/Warner. It's all about selling movie tickets. Always.

      by Randgrithr on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:55:13 PM PDT

•  The one thing that didn't happen

  No one was spat on.

  I don't know if that matters, but it seems like maybe it should. Kind of changes the color of the story, if you know what I mean.

  Beyond that, I'm sympathetic with the Marines, who were apparently not given a reason that made sense to them for why they couldn't deplane in the terminal. There might be a good reason, or it might be something super dumb. But I don't see where anyone could conclude, from the information provided, that desire to disrespect the troops factored into the decision anywhere.

  by DBunn on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:22:58 PM PDT

  •  Did you see the link at the end?

    Someone claims to have called the Port Authority. It's about a noise ordinance, so they say.

    by Little on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:27:19 PM PDT

  •  If you google spitting and the Vietnam soldier

    you will find this is an urban legend that we should blow up right now.  Jerry Lembke wrote a book to that effect.  After studying documented cases he could not find evidence and indeed found so many inconsistencies in the stories that he decided many were outright lies.  John Llewellyn, a certified legal expert in this topic, with 20 years experience, also found no evidence that these stories were true.  It could be true that an occasional soldier was spit upon, but it was never  common as the pro-war types would have you believe. If they are resurrecting this story it is time to call it out.

    by hairspray on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:14:08 PM PDT

    •  Black hole. It's useless to argue it

      I have numerous times. I usually get "My father was spit on!!!!"

      Nothing to do with that one. I just say, "You know, if something like that happens, it really sucks. And we should talk about all the Libs that welcomed soldiers home and helped them out too..."

      by Little on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:20:24 PM PDT

      •  What really happened

        is a lot of returning vets beat up hippies, anti war protesters, cut off hair etc. There were some real mean guys who came back from VN and kicked a lot of peaceful people's ass. I saw it. I never saw spitting.
        I did see some taunts and angry words, however.

        by mariachi mama on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 06:13:53 PM PDT

•  Looks like this fraudulent story

  is about to be exposed to the light of day.

  by niteskolar on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:25:26 PM PDT

•  "It felt like"

  "It seemed like"
  "It almost was as if"
  "If felt sort of like"

  You know the far rightwing is in deep, deep shit where even their future smear mail stories are full of soft qualifiers and "*"'s at the end that will have to be covered up to make the event seem like something it wasn't.

  It might just be simpler for them to do the usual and lie about an event that never happened than to try and "save" that airport 'almost, sorta like' spit on story.

  On another note:
  
  Has there ever been a real and verifiable anti-troop email making RW rounds? It seems like whatever pops out of the fever swamp is fit for mass emailing.

  I seem to recall that the Code Pink group was being slammed because of a faked photoshopped banner over the real original banner... and the moron-o-sphere was full of 'witnesses' who said they saw the fake banner.

  Reading that airport story, it could have been something as simple and inoffensive as noise or security protocols that governed the decision about where and how they deplaned. But why dig deeper, when you can just have a smear on file later!

  Because.... what? Bush's Homeland Security hates the troops? Yeah. That's brilliant, wingners. Make that argument in a year or so.

  Delusions of Mass Distractions.

  by LeftHandedMan on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:26:06 PM PDT

•  What's with those Marines thinking that they

  should be treated better than other passengers?  At least they weren't forced to sit in the plane on the tarmac for six or eight hours like some non-military passengers were yesterday.

  by nupstateny on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:36:25 PM PDT

  •  Your kidding, right? n/t

    by pritchdc on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:05:40 PM PDT

    •  no, n/t

      by nupstateny on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:06:39 PM PDT

      •  You remind me

        of a young couple that flew from Tokyo back to Chicago on the North West flightwhen I left Korea.  They were whining about having to take an air conditioned bus to clear customs at a location off of the airport.  Prior to that flight from Tokyo, I had arrived at Kempo AB, Korea early AM.  I then sat outside for several hours till the terminal opened.  Then to the plane for short wait, like an hour or so.

        You might want to take into consideration that you don't know what you’re talking about, before you do it.  Unless your a Marine or Soldier, but I doubt it.

        by pritchdc on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:17:50 PM PDT

        •  Why would a marine or any other service member

          think that they wouldn't be subjected to the same inconviences that any other traveler would be subjected to, especially in today's world?

          by nupstateny on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:35:55 PM PDT

          •  They/we don't

            It's the understanding that they will not be treated any differently, better or worse.  There were three times that I was at a major airport in duty status and we were not allowed into the terminals:

            1. Alexandria airport VA I was in the 82d ABN and we were using the side opposite the terminal because we were loading C-130s'

            2. NY (not sure which one) on the way to the 1st Gulf War we were not allowed to deplane for refueling (I think) because we had weapons.

            3. DFW for a refueling stop, we were flying in CH-47 Chinook helicopters.

            I personally don't believe that the letter in question is real.  See the comment by soonergrunt. What I didn't like was the tone of your comment.  GIs' don't expect shit.  On both of my return trips from Iraq I didn't give a shit about seeing anybody but my family.

            by pritchdc on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:51:11 PM PDT

•  Favorite Free Republic comment thread

  To: Bahbah

  It’s as simple as this: We are no longer ONE nation.

  We have been divided. Lines are now drawn on a political spectrum by locals in direct conflict with national.

  Hello 1860.

  Pick your sides, hippies!!! It's Fort Sumter all over again!

  by Little on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:42:06 PM PDT

  •  asdf

    Dear Oakland California:

    Due to this incident I no longer consider your city to be part of the United States. I hold your neighbor to the west, the City of San Fransisco, in the same regard. You are part of a separate nation which is an enemy of the United States.

    41 posted on 09/29/2007 5:00:21 PM PDT by Fred Hayek (Liberalism is a mental disorder)

    by Little on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:55:58 PM PDT

    •  Oh gheeze,

      That poster's mother probably wouldn't let him ride his bicycle that far.

      by nupstateny on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:05:40 PM PDT

      •  asdf

        To: Bahbah

        This should have been anticipated. Oakland is OaklandSSR. It is one of the more anti-American spots on the planet.

        Oakland has now passed Sadr city as "the most anti-American spots on the planet."

        by Little on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:33:14 PM PDT

        •  The more shrill, the less authentic

          As kids growing up, we used to be scared of that cranky old neighbor who always seemed angry at us just because we were kids.  

          As we got older, we began to realize he was all bark.  And not scary. And we realized he was pathetic instead.

          by sawgrass727 on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 06:41:55 PM PDT

•  Ya know....when you throw a trillion dollars...

  ....in the direction of the military, it makes you feel all about imagined slights like this.

  by Bensdad on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:57:45 PM PDT

•  What a bunch of frickin maroons...

  by JVolvo on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:58:31 PM PDT

•  Another link

  http://gunnyg.wordpress.com/

  And I failed to nitice that Ledeen's email has an attribution.

  Chaplain Brandon Harding

  1ST BN 3D MARINES

  So who's the "brother of the Marine"?

  by Little on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 04:59:46 PM PDT

•  I was walking down the street yesterday...

  just minding my own business, when the friend of a friend's brother's cousin sent me an e-mail, which I totally read, even though I didn't have a computer with me:

  I swear to God, I just saw Ronald Reagan spit in the face of a Marine, wipe it off with an American flag, and then swear allegiance to Satan.

  It felt like that, anyway.

  by Kagro X on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:02:09 PM PDT

  •  Dammit Kagro X

    I'll be laughing all night because of YOUR silliness.

    by gsenski on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:50:22 PM PDT

  •  Wonderful! LOL! N/T

    by phrogge prince on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 06:24:04 PM PDT

•  I should probably amend the title

  The email may not be fake. The "brother of a Marine" and "Marine chaplain" thing sure made it look like it, but it may be  real. We'll see. But everything surrounding it - especially the "spitting," well, it  just makes you wonder.

  by Little on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:11:13 PM PDT

•  Two dead give-aways--

  One, there is no such thing as a "Marine Chaplain."  The Marines get their chaplains and medical support from the Navy.
  Second, anyone in service who has travelled military to a commercial airport--R&R Leave, Unit Movement, etc, knows that they are kept separate for security reasons, as well as for the fact that you are on the cheapest contract the government could get, which may or may not have you out in the middle of nowhere.
  At Colorado Springs, CO, where Fort Carson is, you don't get to get anywhere near the terminals.  You get a nice refereshing walk of about 300 meters to the busses, getting yelled at by REMFs the whole way.
  At DFW, when coming home on R&R leave, you get off the plane in an empty terminal, walk several hundred yards through various secured passageways until you get to the Customs screening area.  Then you get yelled at by REMFs a lot, then you walk some more and get released into the main terminal to catch your connecting flight.
  If it's a unit movement, you may or may not get to enter the terminal based on several variables--is smoking allowed there?  Is drinking allowed there?  Are the unit personnel allowed to drink?  Are unit personnel carrying classified/high value government property?
  What DoD and service-specific regulations apply?  What state/local laws apply?  Is the Movement Commander a bleeding jackass?
  Any one or combination of these variables, particularly the ones regarding alcohol consumption and classified/high value items will get you locked down to a hanger quick, fast, and in a hurry.  So too will the last one, whether or not the MC is a bleeding jackass.
  Then there's also the high likeliehood (given the sites that are pushing these stories) that the whole thing is a load of shit.

  by soonergrunt on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:11:16 PM PDT

  •  Thanks. I added a link to this comment

    in the post.

    I'm going with load of shit.

    by Little on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:15:28 PM PDT

  •  And he appears to be with the Seabees

    Sound right?

    by Little on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:17:40 PM PDT

    •  Seabees or Marines?

      Seabees are all Naval personnel.

      by soonergrunt on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:44:09 PM PDT

      •  Seabees, although reports are varied

        The email says "Marine Chaplain."

        This says Marines: http://www.americandefendersoffreedo...

        This says Seabees: http://www.venturacountystar.com/...

        Many reports talk about what seems like a helluva guy. He could be being misrepresented here.

        by Little on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:50:15 PM PDT

        •  Well, It can't be both at the same time.

          That makes it sound more like a load of shit.

          by soonergrunt on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 06:04:36 PM PDT

  •  When were you in? n/t

    by pritchdc on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:19:05 PM PDT

    •  I still am

      Eight years active duty, twelve years National Guard, including almost three years active time on deployments.

      by soonergrunt on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:35:43 PM PDT

      •  I retired

        a couple of years ago, medical after I got back in '04.

        Stay safe.

        by pritchdc on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:55:37 PM PDT

        •  I'm safe, barring a car accident

          or something involving an auto-stapler or a three-hole punch for the next year or so.  After that, I'm available again...

          by soonergrunt on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 09:03:52 PM PDT

  •  See Also

    This guy.
    When you have your own Wikipedia entry, people are on to you.

    by soonergrunt on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:40:16 PM PDT

  •  REMF. Had to look it up.

    Once I read the words "Rear Echelon", I automatically knew what the remaining two words would be.

    Thanks for your comment--I appreciate learning from someone with first-person experience.

    by sawgrass727 on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 06:48:34 PM PDT

•  Don't Forget Human Spittoon Matt Sanchez

  Matt was making a career of claiming to be the Marine that everyone spat on.

  But he lost some of his luster when his carreer as a gay porn star came to light and he was accused of various swindles.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/...

  http://www.pensitoreview.com/...

  His filmography includes "Jawbreaker" in which he was billed as Rod Majors. I wonder if Matt felt like he was being spit on?

  by bernardpliers on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:12:14 PM PDT

  •  His real question (or his co-star's perhaps)...

    Spit... or swallow?

    by Joffan on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 05:39:48 PM PDT

•  Are we really surprised

  ethics are not part of the equation. I remember Rumsfeld stating openly that disinformation to win the war on terror would be used and winning the war on terror means overwhelming anyone who disagrees.

  Big Coffers and Rising Voice at Conservative Group

  http://www.nytimes.com/...

  Can dirty tricks be far behind, they sound desperate.

  by ohcanada on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 06:04:10 PM PDT

•  It felt like

  having an ad written about you in the New York Times.

  by Crashing Vor on Sat Sep 29, 2007 at 07:37:57 PM PDT

•  Spitting Report

  http://volokh.com/...
  Spitting Report, Part II: Of Civilian Airports and Attempted Debunkings.--

  Spitting Report, Part II:
  Landing at Civilian Airports and Other Problems With Attempted Debunkings.

  1. BACKGROUND:

  In my first, somewhat speculative post on the stories about servicemen and veterans being spat upon during the Vietnam era, I suggested that perhaps Professor Jerry Lembcke had not fully understood the limitations of LEXIS/NEXIS, the most popular service for news searches (a problem NEXIS shares with WESTLAW). Because in NEXIS the full texts of most of the major newspapers start about 1982, NEXIS is effective for searching 1983 to the present, but is usually not useful for pre-1979 events and is of only marginal utility for 1979-82 searches.

  My next post (on newspaper evidence of spitting 1967-72) was the first of several more formal reports on the issue of spitting. Perhaps Lembcke’s most central evidentiary claim is that, if spitting on servicemen was fairly common in the Vietnam era, there would be at least some evidence of it in accounts of the period—if not news reports of spitting on soldiers at least some discussions of it. Lembcke claims that there were no contemporaneous accounts of spitting and no discussions of it, except for one retrospective account in a 1973 book by Robert Jay Lifton and an ambiguous mention by Cardinal John J. O’Connor in a 1968 book. Lembcke claimed that stories of spitting started appearing in the press about 1980.

  I found and documented many contemporaneous news accounts of spitting on servicemen in the 1967-72 period. I found many other more generalized discussions of spitting on servicemen in news stories, columns, and letters to the editor (most of which I didn’t bother to cite). Thus, one of Lembcke’s main reasons for doubting the many 1987-2007 extant oral histories of being spat upon is simply false.

  Today’s post considers several issues, including Professor Jerry Lembcke’s claims that "no returning soldiers landed at San Francisco Airport," and that "GIs landed at military airbases, not civilian airports."

  I show that the San Francisco International Airport, where some of the spitting incidents are alleged to have occurred, was authorized as one of the four main West Coast "ports of debarkation" where servicemen returned on direct flights from overseas (among the others was Travis Air Force Base). Not only did Army Regulations in the late 1960s and early 1970s designate the San Francisco International Airport to receive direct flights of military personnel, they required the Oakland Army Terminal to staff a returnee team located at the San Francisco Airport to meet and process servicemen arriving directly from Vietnam and the Far East. Further, the particular spitting story that Lembcke has most often attempted to debunk involved a soldier on emergency leave, a status that typically allowed soldiers to fly on commercial flights directly to US commercial airports at Army expense (see discussion below). Thus, another reason that Lembcke raises for doubting spitting stories is also flatly false.

  (Click here to show the rest of the post.)

  2. EVALUATING THE STORIES IN BOB GREENE’S HOMECOMING:

  Although ultimately it is unclear how many of the spitting stories in Bob Greene’s collection Homecoming (1989) are true and how many are false, the 60 first-hand accounts he published at least avoid making one obviously false claim after another. Like Lembcke (Spitting Image, 1998, p. 6), I take the first-hand accounts of being spat on or witnessing spitting more seriously than the second-hand or third-hand accounts. Besides the 60 first-hand accounts, there are an additional five spitting stories in the Homecoming in two classes that are less credible or relevant: one account of being spat upon in New Zealand and four second-hand (hearsay) accounts.

  Two of these 60 stories are so sketchy that it’s hard to tell the details of what is supposed to have happened, leaving 58 first-hand accounts with enough detail to get at least a rough idea about what is supposed to have happened. Four letter writers to Bob Greene tell of two spitting incidents, and one writer, Barry Streeter (p. 41), tells of three incidents. I found one error in one story, though not a serious one: one story refers to the Oakland AFB (p. 12), by which the writer probably meant Travis AFB near Oakland, though I may have missed other errors obvious on the face of the stories.

  Most of the stories in Bob Greene’s Homecoming involve servicemen who are still in the service (many are coming home on leave), not those who have been discharged or separated from the service. Some letter writers reported being spat on before going to Vietnam and some do not claim to have been to Vietnam at all. Some have been home and out of active service for months or years. Some responded violently to the spitting attack, such as by punching the spitter; most did not.

  About half purportedly took place in or near commercial airports, the rest did not—but then, Bob Greene invited stories of spitting by describing a returning serviceman being spat upon by a hippy in an airport, so his collection should be skewed toward these sorts of stories. For example, others were described as taking place on several college campuses; at a shopping mall; on a street, highway, or a freeway; and in front of the Waldorf Astoria in NYC. A Catholic priest, who served as a chaplain, reported being spat on at the JFK airport by a woman about 43 years old who said that "I napalm babies" (Homecoming, p. 35).

  Although not typical of Greene’s collection of spitting stories, even some of those who opposed the war or were pleased about the incident reported spitting on servicemen or vets. One Berkeley neurosurgeon who opposed the war, never went to Vietnam, spending his military service in San Francisco saving the lives of men whose heads were blown apart in Vietnam. He reported being spat on by a young neighbor and asked about how many he had killed today as he was getting out of his car in Berkeley, California. He said that he later sat down to have a talk with the boy (Homecoming, pp. 18-19). A female anti-war activist and University of Wisconsin student said that in the fall of 1971 she was spat upon in Madison, Wisconsin by an 18 or 19-year old while wearing her Air Force Overcoat and her Vets for Peace hat. (Lembcke might speculate that this Madison teenager spat on her because of her Vets for Peace hat, not her Air Force Overcoat.) A National Guardsman describes his pleasure when during the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention a young woman spit in the face of a lieutenant who "gave us hell" (p. 130).

  3. DEBUNKING MYTHS:

  A. How Many First-Hand, Public Accounts of Spitting on Vietnam Vets Has Lembcke Debunked?

  When one looks for the source of the idea that no spitting occurred, most roads lead to Professor Jerry Lembcke. While there are many Vietnam veterans who don’t believe the spitting stories (probably because they didn’t experience harassment themselves), the academics, journalists, and public intellectuals who are pushing the no-spitting meme seem to derive many of their arguments from Lembcke. So it makes sense to look more closely at Lembcke’s evidence and argumentation.

  Jack Shafer at Slate writes:

  Lembcke, a professor of sociology at Holy Cross and a Vietnam vet, investigated hundreds of news accounts of antiwar activists spitting on vets. But every time he pushed for more evidence or corroboration from a witness, the story collapsed—the actual person who was spat on turned out to be a friend of a friend. Or somebody's uncle. He writes that he never met anybody who convinced him that any such clash took place.

  Is this true? Did Lembcke claim to have "investigated hundreds of news accounts of antiwar activists spitting on vets." If this were true of published accounts of spitting on Vietnam veterans, I can’t imagine that Lembcke wouldn’t have detailed some of these debunkings in his book.

  Here are some of the claims that Lembcke made about spitting:

  The truth is that nobody spat on Vietnam veterans . . . . (Jerry Lembcke, Spitting on the Troops: Old Myth, New Rumors, The Veteran, vol. 33, no. 1 (2003))

  There were also actual incidents of Vietnam veterans being treated abusively, but in all the documentable cases it was pro-war people who were the abusers. And there are, finally, the reports by Vietnam veterans themselves of either having been spat upon or having witnessed buddies being spat upon. For obvious reasons, I gave these reports serious consideration, but their validity was hard to establish. Almost all such reports came years after the incidents were alleged to have occurred, while in the actual time frame in which men came home from Vietnam there are no such reports. When one attempts to validate the stories through follow-up research, many such claims dissolve rather quickly, and in others one finds details that betray a lack of authenticity. (Lembcke, The Spitting Image, 1998, p. 6)

  [T]he real story of solidarity between the anti-war movement and Vietnam veterans has to be told, and the image of the spat-upon veteran has to be debunked and its mythical dimensions exposed. (Id., p. 26)

  [W]e need to dispel the power of myths like that of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran by debunking them. (Id., p. 10)

  What about the public first-hand accounts of spitting, such as the 58 reasonably detailed spitting stories in Bob Greene’s book Homecoming? How many, if any, of these public, first-hand spitting stories has Lembcke actually debunked? Is Lembcke referring to Greene’s published stories when he writes, "When one attempts to validate the stories through follow-up research, many such claims dissolve rather quickly . . . ."?

  It is one thing to assert, as is probably true, that the second-hand and third-hand stories of spitting have been spread so widely that the general public substantially over-estimates the incidence of spitting.

  But this is true of most memes. For example, Lembcke himself has spread a false meme that there were no contemporaneous accounts of spitting on soldiers in the press at the time or even (with a couple of exceptions he is willing to admit) any discussions of the issue in the press at the time. Referring to spitting, he writes:

  Not only is there no evidence that these acts of hostility against veterans ever occurred, there is no evidence that anyone at the time thought they were occurring. (Lembcke, 1998, p. 75)

  Problem is, the spitting story seems to be fantasy. Perhaps some soldiers somewhere got spat on. Yet no reports of such incidents ever appeared while the Vietnam war was going on. Not until years later did the story surface. (Lembcke, Newsday, May 1, 2000).

  Lembcke’s false meme (about no contemporaneous discussions of spitting on soldiers) has spread so widely that it now appears in scholarly books and articles, press accounts, and even movies.

  It is entirely possible that many retrospective hearsay accounts of spitting are unreliable, but it does not follow that most of the hundreds of extant first-hand accounts are doubtful as well.

  One should also be sensitive to the context in which spitting stories arise. If a first-hand account arises only when the story-teller has been asked to justify his own wrongdoing, failures, or mental problems, that context would render the account less reliable than when a veteran writes in to Bob Greene who wants to know if the spitting stories going around are true, or writes to Shafer to tell them of his experiences of abuse.

  B. Attempted Debunking By Lembcke (letter by Barry Streeter):

  The one spitting story that Jerry Lembcke has most often attempted to debunk is the letter from Barry Streeter, published in Bob Greene’s Homecoming (p. 41). Instead of picking one of Greene’s more typical accounts for an attempted debunking, Lembcke picks the most extreme example in Greene’s book, the only letter writer claiming three instances of spitting. After mentioning Bob Greene’s stories, Lembcke writes:

  These stories have to be taken very seriously, but as historical evidence they are problematic. In the first place, stories of this type didn't surface until about ten years after the end of the war. If the incidents occurred when the storytellers say they did, in the closing years of the war, why is there no evidence for that? Moreover, many of the stories have elements of such exaggeration that one has to question the veracity of the entire account. One that Greene published read,

  My flight came in at San Francisco airport and I was spat upon three times: by hippies, by a man in a leisure suit, and by a sweet little old lady who informed me I was an "Army Asshole."

  Besides the fact that no returning soldiers landed at San Francisco Airport, I find it hard to believe that the same veteran was spat on three times in one pass through the airport.

  There are many stories like this one (the prevalence of San Francisco in these stories might be suggestive of a story-telling cliché) . . . .

  Let’s look closer at this supposed debunking of the letter from Barry Streeter.

  C. Contemporaneous Stories.

  First, as Part I of my report shows, there are contemporaneous references in the 1967-72 press of spitting on servicemen.

  D. Did Servicemen Land in San Francisco?

  Next, Lembcke argues: "[N]o returning soldiers landed at San Francisco Airport." Not only is Lembcke making a false claim here, but his differing treatment of this case may reveal something about Lembcke’s reliability in argumentation. Let’s compare his critique of Barry Streeter’s letter in the 1999 article quoted above to Lembcke’s critique of it in his 1998 book on spitting.

  On page 1 of the book Spitting Image (1998), Lembcke begins with two quotes—one from Streeter’s letter, which Lembcke attacks, and the other from an anti-war friend, Sharon Moore, who recounts the return of her friend Terry from Vietnam and who considers spitting an urban legend. Lembcke appears to treat Moore’s hearsay account of no harassment of Terry as true.

  Yet, unlike his 1999 article, Lembcke’s 1998 book does not critique Barry Streeter’s letter by claiming that "no returning soldiers landed at San Francisco Airport."

  Why?

  Because in the book Sharon claims that her friend Terry also flew into the San Francisco airport: "Terry returned to McCord Air Force Base near Seattle, flew to San Francisco on a commercial airline, then took a bus into the city." (Spitting Image, 1998, p. 2)

  So in his book, Lembcke can’t claim that veterans coming back from Vietnam wouldn’t have flown into San Francisco, because they sometimes did, as his friend Sharon’s story indicates. Streeter’s letter never says that he flew into San Francisco directly from Vietnam; Streeter wrote: "My flight came in at San Francisco airport . . . ." Like Moore’s friend Terry, Streeter may have flown in from Seattle (or elsewhere), after transferring by bus from a military airport.

  Yet in Lembcke’s 1999 article, without his juxtaposing Sharon Moore’s story, readers would not be able to see that Lembcke’s claim is false. As the New York Times reported (May 7, 1967), servicemen often have to take many different flights to get home. Further, soldiers on leave were sometimes flown directly to civilian airports such as O’Hare, especially around the holidays (Zanesville Times Recorder, December 26, 1970). Streeter flew home in mid to late November, immediately before Thanksgiving. But there are much bigger problems with Lembcke’s stories about servicemen not returning to commercial airports, such as San Francisco.

  E. The San Francisco Airport Was One Of Four Official West Coast Airports Used For Direct Flights Back From Overseas.

  Perhaps the most bizarre claim made by those who are trying to debunk the spitting stories is that returning servicemen didn’t fly directly into commercial airports on the West Coast. Army regulations tell a different story. There are extensive regulations governing military personnel flying from overseas on commercial airlines into commercial airports, some of which are summarized in Army Regulations (612-5) and on the form "Commercial Air Travel Information Sheet," which was given to servicemen flying back from Vietnam to commercial airports other than the standard commercial ones of San Francisco, Seattle, or JFK, or such military airports as Travis AFB and McChord AFB.

  There were four West Coast locations designated for returning soldiers as "aerial debarkation" ports or "arrival points" within the continental US on direct flights from overseas: Travis AFB in Fairfield, CA ([north]east of Oakland), McChord AFB in Tacoma, WA, San Francisco International Airport, and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (1969 AR 612-5; 1973 AR 612-5). Chart 2.1 from 1969 AR 612.5 shows the San Francisco International Airport as one of these four main "aerial debarkation" ports for servicemen returning from the Far East.

  CHART 2.1 (click the chart to enlarge it)

  Further, Army regulations ordered the Oakland Army Terminal to "Establish . . . liaison teams at the port of aerial debarkation serving the returnee-reassignment station." (1969 AR 612-5, 3.1(15) & 3.16) This designation of the San Francisco International Airport as one of the four West Coast "aerial ports of debarkation" and the requirement that the Oakland Army Terminal staff the San Francisco commercial airport with returnee-reassignment teams was carried forward in the 1973 version of the same regs.

  Thus, according to Army regulations in the late 1960s and early 1970s, military personnel from the Far East were authorized to fly directly into the San Francisco International Airport, where they were to be met by Army returnee processing teams, staffed out of Oakland.

  Soldiers who flew directly from Vietnam, Tokyo, or Honolulu into civilian airports other than the three US civilian airports where Army processing teams regularly met troops (San Francisco, Seattle, or JFK)—civilian airports such as Los Angeles or O’Hare—were given the "Commercial Air Travel Information Sheet" to explain their travel procedures.

  Here is an excerpt from the 1969 AR 612-5 (pp. 31-33), revised through 1971:

  Commercial Air Travel Information Sheet

  1. You are returning to the United States through a commercial air terminal that does not have a U.S. Army Returnee-reassignment Station. Therefore, there may, or may not, be a military assistance team located at the terminal at which you land. Since these instructions will assist you in complying with your movement orders, you should retain them for future reference. . . .

  5. This paragraph pertains to those individuals who are returned to the United States for TDY or leave and will be returning to their overseas organization.

  a. You should retain your copy of your commercial airline ticket as verification of the date you returned to the United States. This date will be used by the custodian of your military leave record in computing the amount of leave for which you are to be charged.

  b. If you are on TDY or emergency leave, port call instructions should be included in your orders. If this information has been omitted from your orders and you are:

  E1-E5—Report to the Oversea Replacement Station listed in your TDY or emergency leave orders upon expiration of your leave and travel time.

  E6-E9 and Officer Personnel—Request assistance from the Port Call Section of the applicable Military Traffic Management and Terminal Service (MTMTS) Area Office immediately upon arrival in CONUS.

  Eastern Area MTMTS for East bound travel; telephone [phone], . . . Brooklyn, NY. Western Area MTMTS for West bound travel; telephone [phone], Oakland, CA.

  c. If you are returning to the United States in an ordinary leave status, your return trip transportation is at your own expense.

  Consider these arguments that Lembcke made about another spitting story not in Greene’s book, one where the serviceman flew into Los Angeles:

  GIs landed at military airbases, not civilian airports, and protesters could not have gotten onto the bases and anywhere near deplaning troops. There may have been exceptions, of course, but in those cases how would protesters have known in advance that a plane was being diverted to a civilian site? And even then, returnees would have been immediately bused to nearby military installations and processed for reassignment or discharge.

  As I understand the army regulations (and newspaper accounts) of the time, these three sentences of Lembcke contain three false claims and one seriously misleading one. Contrary to Lembcke’s claims:

  (1) GIs often landed at civilian airports, such as San Francisco.
  (2) Protesters could get near deplaning troops.
  (3) While some returnees, especially GIs being separated from service, would ordinarily have been transferred to a base for processing, other returnees, especially GIs on leave, would ordinarily have gone straight home, rather than having to transfer to military installations.
  (4) To encounter large numbers of servicemen returning from Vietnam, protesters would not need to know anything about flight schedules because of the sheer volume of military personnel going through the larger West Coast airports, especially San Francisco.

  The first of these four issues has just been dealt with, and the second issue follows from the first (since in that era, anyone was routinely allowed to go out to the gates, as well as to baggage claim areas). The third will be dealt with in next section, and the fourth will be handled in a later report.

  F. Emergency Leave.

  In quoting from Barry Streeter’s letter, Lembcke omits another crucial aspect of Streeter’s story: that he was coming home on "emergency orders," i.e., an "emergency leave, a common practice for events such as a death in the family. Although I am still waiting for full regs from the late 1960s to arrive in my mailbox to fill out some of the details of my analysis, those granted emergency leave were authorized to fly on commercial aircraft to commercial airports at the military’s expense. If a military flight to an Air Force Base were leaving immediately, the soldier might have taken it, but otherwise he would have taken a commercial flight to a commercial airport. If he flew directly into the civilian airports at San Francisco, Seattle or JFK, he would have been quickly processed and sent on his way (at his own expense for travel within the continental US). If he arrived at another airport, such as LAX, if there were no processing team there (the regs did not mandate that there be one at LAX), he would simply call the Oakland Army Terminal to inform them that he was in the US.

  So, for a serviceman like Barry Streeter, who claimed to have "returned from Vietnam in November 1971 on emergency orders," perhaps the most likely place for him to arrive would have been directly on a civilian flight from the Far East to the civilian San Francisco International Airport.

  1969 Army Regulation provided:

  2.13. Personnel returning to CONUS or other areas for temporary duty or leave. . . . c.(2) Emergency leave personnel. (a) Orders issued for personnel returning to CONUS for emergency leave (AR 630-5) will specify that transportation used by the individual from the aerial port of debarkation will be without expense to the Government and will direct his return to the oversea command upon completion of leave. Orders will direct these individuals to contact the appropriate U.S. Army returnee-reassignment station, if not processed by a U.S. Army returnee- reassignment processing team at the port of debarkation. The orders will include only the travel to CONUS. Orders issued for personnel returning to CONUS or non-CONUS area of residence for emergency leave via air which authorize air transportation for return to the oversea command, will include a specific fund citation to defray cost of travel to and from overseas. . . .

  3-12. Leave of absence. a. Travel orders issued by the oversea commander to personnel traveling individually normally will grant such individuals a delay en route from the U.S. Army returnee-reassignment station to the specific unit of assignment. . . . d. Personnel returning to CONUS on emergency leave will be permitted to depart on such leave without delay.

  G. Are Three Spitting Incidents Too Many?

  Once all of Lembcke’s fact-based criticisms of Barry Streeter’s letter have collapsed, Lembcke is left with just an intuitive argument. Lembcke argues that three instances of spitting in one time spent in the airport seems awfully high—and they are. If most accounts depicted multiple spittings on the same day, one might raise this as an objection. But of the 58 first-person accounts in Greene’s Homecoming, only Barry Streeter’s depicted three instances of spitting and only his depicted more than one separate incident on the same day in the same location.

  Also, one must remember (using crude Bayesian insights) that more unusual stories are more salient and more likely to be volunteered. Greene’s collection is not a random selection of typical veteran experiences (as Lembcke recognizes in his book). Whether this outlier is implausible depends on how frequent spitting actually was.

  To continue in the intuitive style of argumentation that Lembcke raises, imagine that a Duke Lacrosse student claimed that he was spit at three times in one day on the Duke campus last fall. That might sound high, but it would not be implausible, even though the great majority of Duke students probably supported the Lacrosse players. Similarly, if 30 years ago a person of a different race had walked through a community with a significant minority of vicious racists, a report of three spittings in one day would seem high but not implausible.

  Until a few years ago, I was very overweight, though otherwise I was reasonably fit. I would often go for six months or a year between hearing someone insult me directly on the street. In other settings, however, insults averaged more than one a day. For example, in the early 1990s, I was sometimes riding my bike the approximately 10 miles to work from where I live on Chicago’s South Side and 10 miles back four or five days a week. Most of the trip was on the lakefront bike path where one could go quite fast. I once counted the number of insults over 10 days of riding during good weather, and it was 9 insults. Although the average was about one insult a day, on many days I got no insults, while on other days it wasn’t unusual to get three to five insults a day. The great majority of those doing the insulting were teenagers. I was able to reduce that rate of insults by about 80% simply by wearing an imposing looking helmet and sunglasses.

  So Barry Streeter’s three spitting events in one day seems high intuitively, but if the other accounts of spitting in the San Francisco airport are true, then this account is not too implausible. Barry Streeter’s relatively extreme account may or may not be reliable, but at least Streeter makes no claims that Lembcke has yet shown to be false, while Jerry Lembcke has unfortunately made several demonstrably false claims while trying to debunk Streeter.

  H. How Typical is Streeter’s Account?

  Lembcke claims that "there are many stories like this one." Yet of the 58 relatively detailed first-hand accounts in Bob Greene’s book, Streeter is the only writer claiming more than one independent act of spitting on the same day in the same location, and there are only four other letter writers who claim two spitting incidents in any combination of locations. The only even slightly suspicious thing about Barry Streeter’s story that Lembcke has managed to raise is that Streeter reports being spat on three times during a single day at the San Francisco Airport. At least on the frequency of spitting, there are NOT "many stories like this one."
  (hide)

  MORE TO COME WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON.

  Related Posts (on one page):

  1. Spitting Report IV: Opposition To The Troops

  2. SPITTING REPORT III: EVIDENCE RELEVANT TO ONE OF BOB GREENE’S SPITTING ACCOUNTS.--

  3. Spitting Report, Part II: Of Civilian Airports and Attempted Debunkings.--

  4. Many 1967-72 Spitting Incidents Are Documented in the Press.

  5. Vietnam Spitting.--

  11:14 AM
  Delete

  by mjuygv on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 11:08:28 AM PDT

•  Spitting on Soldiers Propaganda Tool

  This is relevant because the e-mail evokes the old "spitting on soldiers" myth -- a piece I did some time ago:  Did Spitting 'Victim' from D.C. Protest Cry Wolf?

  by davej on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 12:45:01 PM PDT

  •  This one has more

    Actually, this is a later, revised version published at my blog, with a bit more info than the Alternet piece, and properly credits Digby for some of the background:  http://www.seeingtheforest.com/...

    by davej on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 12:51:04 PM PDT

•  OAK hatred toward Marines.

  "... Now hold on: Is it a "Marine chaplain" or the "brother of a Marine"? Because they're the exact same emails. Complete with the "It felt like being spit on" finish. ..."

  Why can a chaplain not have a brother? It appears that using a minimal amount of reality and logic it is easily deterimined that the brother of the marine forwarded the e-mail message. Don't most forwarded e-mail messages tend to have the same content?

  Yes you are LITTLE.

  by jihad4what on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 01:27:23 PM PDT