Can Harkin Tell the Truth?

For most of Iowa it is not a new revelation that Tom Harkin has a problem with telling the truth. The problem that he has is that it is hard for him to do. It is hard for Tom Harkin to tell people the truth. Here are a couple of instances where Tom Harkin strettttcccchhheeeed the truth.

We all know that he served in the Navy for several years as a pilot. The problem that Tom has here is that he has grossly overinflated his contribution to the US Navy. At one point, 1979 to be exact, Harkin made the claim that he spent a year piloting F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols over Vietnam. Several years later we have come to find out that this is not the case. No what Senator Harkin did do during Nam is to ferry planes between Atsugi, Japan and the Philippines. Senator Harkin did not fly combat air patrols in Vietnam, he was a ferry pilot. I don’t mean to tarnish his service to his country, what I will do is call him out when he overinflates his history.

And then there was the case of his brother Frank who is deaf. At a breakfast meeting with reporters during one of his presidential campaigns he made the claim that his brother had held a good union job for several years. He then claims that the new owners of the plant broke the union in the plant and that it cost his brother his job. He then claimed that it was happening all over America. This wasn’t the whole truth. But we have come to expect no better out of Senator Harkin. Harkin had helped his brother find a job with the postal service in the 70s under the Carter administration where he labored until his retirement.

Or of course there is the lie at last year’s Democratic slumber party. In this case Harkin stated with a straight face that when the US withdrew from Vietnam nothing happened. We all know that this one is false, it is common knowledge that the North Vietnamese slaughtered innocent men, women, and children without provocation. It was genocide. And Harkin missed that evidently.

Why does Senator Harkin lie about things that it is so easy to disprove. Perhaps he has been studying the Vietnamese textbooks. You know the ones that praise the oppressive communist regime. Or perhaps he just isn’t very perceptive. I doubt that this is the case because if he wasn’t very perceptive he wouldn’t be a Senator. Then again, maybe he knows that what he is saying is a lie and he just doesn’t care. This last possibility is the most disturbing because it leads one to believe that he is just interested in grabbing all the power and influence for himself, not his constituents. Tom Harkin is the type of politician that we don’t need in Congress. He is a Washington insider that is power hungry. He is an insider.

And this is just another reason that I am voting for Christopher Reed in November. It is time that we bring a semblance of decency to the office that Harkin expelled long ago.