An Open Letter to Sen. Durbin

This letter from a retired combat aviator from the Vietnam War is making the rounds in military e-mail systems today:

June 15, 2005

The Honorable Richard Durbin
United States Senate
332 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D. C. 20510

Dear Senator Durbin,

As a combat aviator veteran of Vietnam and retired Naval Officer, I must express in the strongest possible terms my disappointed in your condemnation and vilification of our military personnel serving in Guantanamo Bay. Your comments from the Senate floor, supposedly heard off the record, speak further to you and your party's true disdain and dislike of our military heroes. Comments like yours tear the hearts out of our fighting hero's just as surely as physical wounds received in combat. In my perspective, this is no different from those who yelled "baby killers" to our troops when we return home in the 60's and 70's.

My anger, frustration and disappointment in you as an elected senator is your comparison of treatment received by the terrorist killers in detention in Gitmo to those innocent victims murdered by the Nazis during WWII. How dare you even mention the mass murders in Cambodia?

Would you say these same comments, so vividly expressed recently on audiotape, to the likes of Jessica Lynch? To the Pearle family? To those families of the Jews murdered in Europe? That was bad treatment! I believe there are still a few elected officials in congress that could explain "bad" treatment to you.

By the way, ask our tank commanders about air conditioning in their war fighting vehicles. Or our Marines & Soldiers in their hummers! Have you ever been enclosed in the confines of a war fighting ship? We treat those damn terrorists better than we treat our fighting heroes. What a stupid, uninformed and ridiculous statement.

In the past I have given you the benefit of the doubt as a courtesy to a large and proud family of Illinois voters who has supported you and the democrats in the past.
I will pledge that efforts are underway to cancel any support to you and your party. We don't want any apology. As you know, they are only words.

Sincerely,

F. R. Koenig
Captain, USN Retired
POB 796788
Addison, TX

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