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Ken Rossignol's avatar

Barry; admit it. Moore Buffoonery of the first order from start to finish when the court whacks the effort to redraw the congressional district. Now you can elevate Wes Moore for a Medal of Dishonor to go along with his fake Bronze Star. Nonetheless, you wrote as good a piece as is possible to frame this codwallop.

J.  Barry O'Connell's avatar

When somebody puts down the medal of Honor and calls it the medal of dishonor it makes me sick. My cousin Merritt was awarded the medal of Honor for his actions on lunga Ridge, sometimes called edson Ridge on Guadalcanal where he was in command a of the second raider battalion. They killed so many Japanese that there was nowhere to put the bodies and they stacked them like cord wood. Kind of like my grandfather did in Russia during the war in 1919. He made it out alive and he received the Congressional for his actions. Then he went on to make it to Deputy commandant of the Marine corps. Before he retired. He went to work as executive director of the NRA and everything seemed to be perfect. Then he went into his garage. One day in Arlington. Virginia turned on the car and left the door shut and committed suicide. So before I'm going to talk bad about anybody who got the Congressional medal of Honor, I'm going to think of my cousin Merritt Edson. That I'm not going to go along with a joke.

As far as Wes Moore goes I was never in the army or in the military at all. But I did find ways to serve our country in other capacities including spending time in Afghanistan in 2012 and 2013. I hear people talking crap about Afghanistan as people were sitting in offices in air conditioning sipping coffee as if the battle were somewhere else. The military in Afghanistan were brave and honorable and decent men and Wes was one of them. Because of the work I was doing I got down to the town where he was stationed and if you think it was some sort of beach resort because of all the sand you've got another thing coming. The toughest guys you'd ever want to meet in the world felt the stress and the terror and had to deal with fear as a daily component of life. I was as abused as a child so consequently I don't feel fear the same way everybody else does. When you go through your childhood and teenage years until you leave for college under a constant threat of attack, Taliban just isn't that scary. But for everybody else, I knew serving our country in Afghanistan. It was an awful lot of pressure to be under. I'm no hero but Wes is and I respect him for it.

Ken Rossignol's avatar

I am about 82% through your book, 1963 Death of Three Presidents; it has the potential to be a major hit. Please have someone take care of the minor punctuation edits; it's a helluva historical fiction, but I fear it is far more fact than fiction. You are in the same bookshelf as Dashielle Hammett and H. L. Mencken, in my view. Keep bangin on the keyboard. It's fine with me that you believe in Moore, but less of him is fine with me.