FOX News just reported that VietNam era draft dodgers are to be honored in Canada...

[techumseh]

Many people honor Vietnam War resisters in Canada. They're some of the nicest Americans we know.

[MRT144]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
How typical. 30 Years and Canada (not all Canadians, Canada) still shoving their nose where it has no place being.

like afghanistan?

[CrONoS]

MRT144

[Spiffor]

Too bad it ain't true. The draft dodgers are the ones who did the right thing

[Jaguar]

I don't give a damn about Vietnam. Get over it, people.


I do hate the draft.

Think about the dumbest, most immature person in your high school class. There's probably someone similar in every other high school class. Consider that these people are expected to act responsibly with, say, Rocket Propelled Grenade Launchers in the event of a draft. Are you ****ing kidding me?

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Too bad it ain't true. The draft dodgers are the ones who did the right thing

Yeah, I mean why should they go fight a war that the French had already lost?

ACK!

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Too bad it ain't true.

What isn't?

The draft dodgers are the ones who did the right thing

Why only them?

[notyoueither]

When Canada erects a monument to Canadian vets of Vietnam, than a little bit later we should dedicate something to the draft dodgers.

Perhaps a nice hedge on the property line of a Menonite colony. That would be a fitting memorial to their valour.

[Asher]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
How typical. 30 Years and Canada (not all Canadians, Canada) still shoving their nose where it has no place being.

Is this for real?

Reality check, Sloww, the US was meddling in other countries business and has been post-WW2. Canada is the one that minds our own business except in extenuating circumstances (mass genocide, for example).

[MRT144]

i already called the texan jackass out on this asher

[Jaguar]

Texan jackasses be Yarrr and woo

[notyoueither]

Another side of the story.

http://www.ottawasun.com/News/Columnists/McRae_Earl/2005/11/11/1301845.html

Fri, November 11, 2005

This brave soldier won’t be attending today’s war memorial. Why? He fought in Vietnam.

By EARL McRAE

He holds out, for my hand to take, a string of silver rosary beads and cross. "It was my grandmother's. She gave it to me the morning I left on the bus. I kept it with me all through boot camp and all through the war. I had it in my pocket all the time." His eyes well up with tears.

Doug Carey won't be at the national War Memorial this morning. If he'd been made to feel welcomed, made to feel honoured, made to feel remembered, he might have decided to go, but the Canadian government doesn't have any such sentiments for Doug Carey, veteran, Doug Carey, Canadian, or the 20,000 of his fellow countrymen who fought, or the 103 who died.

There'll be words spoken in the cold November air about our brave soldiers who fought and died in World War I and World War II and the Korean War, but there'll be no words spoken about the long and terrible and bloody conflict known as the Vietnam War. There'll be invited ambassadors with wreaths for the laying from countries that are our military allies, and from countries that were once our military enemies. There'll be invited military personnel from countries that are our allies, and from countries that were once our enemies.

It will not be mentioned that among those whose sacrifice is being commemorated, who fought and who died in Canada's 20th century wars, were Americans; Americans who chose to fight in the uniform of another country, our country. They, too, are being honoured this morning by Canada, but Canada is not honouring, and has not respected, the thousands of young Canadians who crossed the border to sign up for the Vietnam War wearing the uniform of the United States of America.

103 Canucks died in 'Nam

It will not be mentioned that on the memorial in Washington, D.C., The Wall, with the names of the more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers killed in the Vietnam War, are the names of the 103 Canadians also killed.

It will not be mentioned that Canada, neutral in the Vietnam War, permitted some 30,000 American draft dodgers into the country as landed immigrants, along with numerous military deserters.

It will not be mentioned that Canada, the Canada who said Canadians signing with U.S. forces for Vietnam was a violation of Canada's Foreign Enlistment Act of 1937 disallowing Canadians to serve in the military of a country at war with a nation Canada has no quarrel with, is the same and hypocritical Canada whose economy profited from the war by the sale to the American military between 1968 and 1973 of $2.7 billion worth of war materiel from guns to grenades to aircraft engines to military vehicles to boots to berets to napalm.

It will not be mentioned that Canada, who wouldn't send troops, Canada, who opposed Canadians joining the U.S. military to fight, is the Canada whose delegates to the various peace commissions willingly undertook spy work for the CIA, helped the Americans to secretly bring more troops and arms into South Vietnam, helped the U.S. keep the chemical defoliant program from the public, permitted the U.S. military to test Agent Orange destined for Vietnam at Camp Gagetown, N.B., permitted U.S. bombers to practise their carpet-bombing runs near Suffield, Alta., and North Battleford, Sask.

The Canadian Vietnam Veterans Association, with branches across Canada, has not been invited to the Remembrance Day service this morning. If the association, or any individual Canadian Vietnam vets, wish to use the War Memorial for wreath laying to honour their Canadian comrades, along with our soldiers in all the wars, they will have to do so detached from the official ceremony and -- as they have in the past -- when eyes are looking the other way.

"I've got The Wall in Washington to go to," says Doug Carey, 58, retired security guard who lives in Carleton Place with his wife Pat, a restorative-care worker at a nursing home in town. "That's where I feel welcome. I've been there about eight times. Many of my buddies' names are on that wall."

'I hated high school'

Doug Carey was 18 when he thought of going to war. "I hated high school, I wanted out." He lived in Port Hope with his mother, father, and two younger brothers. He was visiting his mother's parents in Oakville. "I went there to talk to my grandmother about what I should do with the rest of my life. On TV, the news, they'd show the war in Vietnam every night. And there'd be stuff about the draft dodgers coming to Canada.

"I thought that was chicken s--- of them. One night I saw an ad on an American channel, for the U.S. Marines. It said 'Join the Marines, be a man.' I spoke to my grandmother. She said 'Sometimes you have to fight for your freedom.' That went to my head like a rocket ship."

The next morning, he took a bus to Buffalo. The U.S. Marines recruitment centre. His grandmother bought him a return ticket. He didn't tell his parents. He was interviewed by a Marines sergeant. Many Canadians who went to the States to join the U.S. armed forces gave American towns, villages, cities as their birthplaces to avoid possible trouble. Seldom were questions asked. Carey happened to have been born in the States.

"The sergeant asked where I was from, and I said, 'Canada, I'm Canadian,' and he said I'd have to go back and get my green card. Then I told him I was born in Waterbury, Conn., and he said 'Good, you don't need that Green Card s---.' He didn't ask for any proof, nothing."

Five weeks later Carey was on a bus from Buffalo to the Marine boot camp at Paris Island, S.C., for 12 weeks of mental and physical punishment to mould him from civilian to U.S. Marine fighting machine.

"If you were black, they called you ******, if you were Jewish, they'd call you ****, if you were Catholic, they'd call you a f------ mick, and if you dared give it back to them, you'd be on the floor, they'd drive a knuckle into your solar plexus and drop you. They'd wake you up at 2 a.m., make you run for two hours in the dark in full equipment. You'd be back in bed at four, and they'd wake you again at five, and more of the same. Running, obstacle courses through muck and slime, climbing, you name it.

'Unusual treatment'

"One time I accidentally bumped against one of the instructors and said 'Excuse me.' Next thing I know he's grabbed me by the shirt, fired me up against my rack (bunk), bounced me off the wall, punched me four five times in the kidneys, and dropped me to my knees. I forgot to say 'Sir.' Not once, but twice. Always has to be twice. At the start of the sentence and the end.

'Sir, excuse me, Sir,' " Doug Carey grins. "They're trying to break you. But I was tough. I told myself 'This is what I came for.' This might all seem like cruel and unusual punishment, but believe me, after being in Vietnam for six months, I was so thankful for for it all, you wouldn't believe."

Carey falls silent. Then: "They treat you like s---. Twelve weeks of it. But on the night before boot camp graduation, we were in our racks, and a drill instructor came in. He turned out the lights. And his last words to us were -- 'Goodnight Marines.' " Doug Carey's voice breaks. "We made it -- we were now one of them, we were U.S. Marines."

Doug Carey asked to go to Vietnam and in May 1966, he was shipped off. His first tour of duty was 13 months. His second, cut short after six months. He was in some of the fiercest battles of the war. Fighting in 115F heat. How many North Vietnamese enemy did he kill? "I don't know. Quite a few." He was promoted to corporal in the field. His buddies nicknamed him Wild Man. And Canuck. He flew the Canadian flag on his one-man makeshift tent. "I wore a Labatt's 50 bottle cap on a chain around my neck."

He contracted encephalitis from a mosquito bite in the jungle. He was evacuated to hospital in Danang. His brain swelled. He hallucinated. His right side was paralyzed for five months. He was sent back to military hospital in the States. He spent months recovering. His war was over. He asked for and received his honourable discharge from the Marines in August 1969.

Respect absent

He came back to Canada. Port Hope. He got into fights in bars. "When they found out I was a Vietnam vet, they'd start on me. They knew nothing. They were ignorant a--holes. They'd say I shouldn't have been there. There was no respect at all. I'd be thinking of my friends who were killed. I'd hit them.

"I'd be trying to date a girl, talking to her, and things would be going fine. When she asked what I did and I said I fought in Vietnam, she'd walk away in disgust. That happened more than once."

Thirty-six years after leaving the Marines, he still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. As do most soldiers who've experienced lengthy combat.

"I have nightmares. I still hear guys screaming. I still see the faces of my dead friends, and dead enemies. I still break down and cry for no reason at all. Not in front of people. I'll go off and do it. I take medication. Every now and then I go to Syracuse and the veterans administration hospital there for checkups."

The U.S. government pays his medical expenses and that of the Canadian Vietnam vets. Would he do it all again?

"Yes. I'd jump on the bus again right now. I was a U.S. Marine. I still am.

"I always will be. I can phone 50 of my Marine buddies right now and if I asked them to come up here right away to help me, they'd be here tomorrow.

"I'd do the same for them. The bond can never be broken."

Doug Carey is made to feel welcome at the cenotaph in Carleton Place every Remembrance Day, and he'll be there this morning with his son Ryan, a captain in the Canadian Army, and Cpl. Doug Carey, Canadian, will be carrying a wreath and wearing his U.S. Marines dress blues, and the uniform still fits him beautifully, he wears it proudly.
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Letters to the editor should be sent to feedback@ott.sunpub.com.

[notyoueither]

The dodgers are fine. They made a choice and came here for whatever their reasons. Most of them that I've ever met don't make a big deal out of it. In fact, they're usually really quiet about it.

That being said, the granola munching *******s who want to erect a monument to the dodgers, and make a big, political, deal out of it can kiss my ass.

I wouldn't turn someone in who told me they blew the ****ing thing up.

[Berzerker]

Few people dispise that war more than I, but even I can see no reason to honor those men who evaded the draft by moving to Canada.

If more people followed their lead, we might have fewer "elective" wars... I'd think you'd be a bit more grateful since they sacrificed to oppose what you despised.

[notyoueither]

You sent us ~120,000 who couldn't fit in any uniform without making it look bad.

We sent you 20,000 volunteers.

I'd say the US did well in the exchange.

And no, I don't want Canada to become a beacon for Yanks who can't stomach losing an election.