http://mediamatters.org/items/200605100006?src=weekly200605120014CNN's O'Brien questioned the patriotism of Vietnam vets protesting administration's actions in Iraq
Summary: Commenting on the two Vietnam veterans who recently mailed their military decorations to President Bush in protest over the administration's foreign policy, Miles O'Brien asked: "
s it the patriotic thing to do?" He also said, "If I were a soldier in Iraq ... I would feel somewhat betrayed to hear that veterans were doing this. Is that, in some way, not showing support for the men and women who are risking their lives over there?
On the May 10 edition of CNN's American Morning, co-host Miles O'Brien repeatedly suggested, during an interview with two Vietnam veterans who recently returned their military decorations in protest over the Bush administration's actions in Iraq and elsewhere, that the men's actions were unpatriotic and undermined U.S. troops.
The two guests, Air Force veteran David Patterson and Navy veteran Joseph DuRocher, returned their medals accompanied by letters addressed to President Bush. In his letter, Patterson objected to the "hate, torture and death" provoked by the Bush administration's foreign policy. DuRocher, who sent Bush his lieutenant's shoulder bars and Navy wings, wrote in his letter:
Until your administration, I believed it was inconceivable that the United States would ever initiate an aggressive and preemptive war against a country that posed no threat to us. Until your administration, I thought it was impossible for our nation to take hundreds of persons into custody without provable charges of any kind, and to "disappear" them into holes like Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram. Until your administration, in my wildest legal fantasy I could not imagine a U.S. Attorney General seeking to justify torture or a President first stating his intent to veto an anti-torture law, and then adding a "signing statement" that he intends to ignore such law as he sees fit. I do not want these things done in my name.