Vietnam

[victor steinbok]

Just to clear some air--I was not hyperanalyzing Blumenthal's "lie". I
am not defending him or trying to figure out how he could be defended.
I simply posited the circumstances under which I thought his claim
would be plausible, then asked if these circumstances are plausible.
This is not to justify the statement but to find out about the usage.
Let's separate the language issues from politics.

Having said that, the first part of David Daniel's comment is roughly
what I was looking for (not that it fully answers the question). But
the second part is supposition. I don't care about Blumenthal's likely
or unlikely political motivations--this is quite irrelevant to what I
asked.

VS-)

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 4:38 PM, David A. Daniel <dad at pokerwiz.com> wrote:
>
> As a guy who was in the Marine Corps Reserve, Blumenthal knows full well
> that he is not entitled to say that he was "in Vietnam". Someone who had not
> been in the service(s) at all might make this mistake ("Yeah, my uncle was
> in Vietnam", or the like) but not someone who was. He just flat out lied,
> and has probably been lying, waffling and shuffling about his military
> service for his whole political life.
> DAD
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
> Bill Palmer
> Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 5:07 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Vietnam
>
>
>
> Victor,
>
> IMHO, this is hyperanalyzing a simple lie.
>
>  The man tried to claim, imply, suggest, assert, or whatever, that he had
> served in a combat zone, when he, demonstrably, had never done so.  And he
> did it purely for poitical gain, to gain votes from those who would support
> him on the basis of his supposed service to his country.  Why try to find a
> million ways where he could have been making a truthful statement that was
> simply misconstrued?
>
> He would have been better advised to weasel word a claim of military service
> as a veteran of the Vietnam Era, which does not require that service have
> been in-country.
>
> Bill Palmer

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