A Message From Bob Mulholland

by Brian Leubitz [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

So, as long as we are in the Bob Mulholland phase, here's an email that he sent to at least one activist, Michael Jay, who is featured in the Courage Campaign video regarding the Guardian story about DiFi. So without ado, over the flip you'll find that email.

Michael-- and others-  my father due to economic needs in the Depression made it thru only the 10th grade. But he and mother's generation became the Greatest Generation by winning WW 11. He made it thru the Battle of Bulge ( General Patton's Army) then his outfit was the first to get to the Mauthausen concentration camp (Austria)  and saw the  horrow of what the Nazis had been doing for years but were able to save hundreds of people including  Simon Wiesenthal. I became proud of my father but knew little of it growing up since most of the WW 11 veterans did not talk about it to their kids.

While I was drafted into the US Army I volunteered for the paratroopers and for Vietnam. I was there during one of the most difficult times ( 1967-68)- the Tel Offensive( over 2,000 Amereicans killed in Feb 1968 alone- 70 a day), LBJ announcing he would not run again, then the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, followed by riots in over 100 American cities, then the assassination of Bobby Kennedy with more and more American youth being sent to Vietnam. Most of whom were either high school graduates like me or like my father- finishing 10th or 11th grade.  While I was seroiusly wounded it was the loss of  friends and so many Vietnamese who paid the ultimate price that made me disillusioned with that Vietnam Folly.

Today there are over 58,200 names on the Wall in DC. I try to stop by the Wall when I am in DC, sometimes at  midnight. I don't stop asking-why?  Now in 2007 it was the American people who  gave Bush Jr a second term and the Iraq Folly continues and it will until America elects a Democrat to the White House. Everyday I think of our troops in Iraq and their families. I have a sense of what they are going thru- there is no light at the end of the tunnel except for a locomotive coming at us. In 1968 Nixon told the American people he had a secret plan to end the war. Four years later George McGovern said he would end it- McGovern lost 49 states. 

My top priority is to help elect a Democrat to the White House on Nov 4,2008. I know that if our Democrat wins the White House big we will add Democrats to the US House and the US Senate and then we can end the war in Iraq. So I have little patience for any  issues other than the presidency.  I regret the use of my words in the Guardian. I want all Democrats to focus on electing Democrats on Nov 4,2008. While in Vietnam I don''t think any of us talked about what was going on in Congress.

Bob Mulholland