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Vietnam Vets to Vote on Iraq Troop Surge
By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press Writer
<SCRIPT type=text/javascript>document.write(getElapsed("20070203T180352Z"));</SCRIPT>Sat Feb 3, 10:03 AM<NOSCRIPT>UPDATED 21 HOURS 34 MINUTES AGO</NOSCRIPT>
WASHINGTON - Four senators who will vote this week on putting more troops in Iraq bear the scars of another war in another time, in a place called Vietnam. Three will vote against sending more troops. One will vote the other way.
John McCain, a former Navy fighter pilot, was captured by the Vietnamese, tortured and imprisoned for more than five years. Knowing what it is like to have fought before and lost, he is with President Bush on sending 21,500 more troops to Iraq.
Chuck Hagel, an infantryman in Vietnam, was seriously wounded by an enemy mine explosion beneath the armored personnel carrier he and his brother were in. He opposes the troop increase.
So does Senate newcomer Jim Webb, an ex-Marine who speaks Vietnamese, who opposed the Iraq war from the outset and campaigned for the Senate wearing the combat boots of a son who recently went off to the war.
"Welcome to hell," he wrote in March 2003, the month of the U.S. invasion. "Many of us lived it in another era."
Webb, 60, a Democrat from Virginia, was wounded while commanding a Marine rifle company during some of Vietnam's bloodiest fighting, in the An Hoa Basin west of Danang. He had shrapnel lodged in his left knee, left arm, back of the head and right kidney. Webb said the experience changed him.
"I was probably older when I was 24 than I am right now," he said years after the war.
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By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press Writer
<SCRIPT type=text/javascript>document.write(getElapsed("20070203T180352Z"));</SCRIPT>Sat Feb 3, 10:03 AM<NOSCRIPT>UPDATED 21 HOURS 34 MINUTES AGO</NOSCRIPT>
WASHINGTON - Four senators who will vote this week on putting more troops in Iraq bear the scars of another war in another time, in a place called Vietnam. Three will vote against sending more troops. One will vote the other way.
John McCain, a former Navy fighter pilot, was captured by the Vietnamese, tortured and imprisoned for more than five years. Knowing what it is like to have fought before and lost, he is with President Bush on sending 21,500 more troops to Iraq.
Chuck Hagel, an infantryman in Vietnam, was seriously wounded by an enemy mine explosion beneath the armored personnel carrier he and his brother were in. He opposes the troop increase.
So does Senate newcomer Jim Webb, an ex-Marine who speaks Vietnamese, who opposed the Iraq war from the outset and campaigned for the Senate wearing the combat boots of a son who recently went off to the war.
"Welcome to hell," he wrote in March 2003, the month of the U.S. invasion. "Many of us lived it in another era."
Webb, 60, a Democrat from Virginia, was wounded while commanding a Marine rifle company during some of Vietnam's bloodiest fighting, in the An Hoa Basin west of Danang. He had shrapnel lodged in his left knee, left arm, back of the head and right kidney. Webb said the experience changed him.
"I was probably older when I was 24 than I am right now," he said years after the war.
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