Quote:
Originally Posted by finnbow
And there's always Charles Whitman, an ex-Marine who earned a Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, a Sharpshooter's Badge and the Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal before murdering 16 and wounding 32 at UT Austin in 1966.
And then, of course, we have Timothy McVeigh who earned a Bronze Star, National Defense Service Medal, Southwest Asia Service Medal, Non-Commissioned Officer Professional Development Ribbon, Army Service Ribbon, Kuwait Liberation Medal (Saudi Arabia) before bombing the Federal Building in OKC.
My father was an Army careerist and JAG officer who came home with many tales of some very nasty, murderous behavior by service members he either defended or prosecuted (JAG criminal attorneys rotate assignments). And I lived around or worked for the US Army for the first 37 years of my life. I harbor no delusions about the inherent superiority/heroism of our men in uniform.
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(Early 1970s.) I remember my Dad and few other neighborhood men, rushing to the aid of a woman one night whose husband a WW2 Marine Corp veteran had gotten drunk, gone over the edge and started shooting up the house. An apparent case of "flashback". They got her out of the house and to safety just as the cops arrived. The cops held him off until he finally ran out of ammo, then went in and arrested him. (Between him and the police, the house was a mess.)
For years after that, he spewed hatred at the police and the government in general, because he felt they had disrespected a war veteran by making him deal with the indignity of arresting him and making him sit in jail. (He also went to the VA for psych evaluation.)
Dave