Tuesday, Tuesday, April 10, 2001

By Ed Lotterman

Minnesotans should tell Jesse Ventura to put up or shut up on his military record.

The governor is quick to make allusion to his Navy service when it seems to benefit his political, financial or rhetorical needs. Just a few days ago, our very thin-skinned leader upbraided a journalist who had criticized Ventura's conservation budget by saying, "until you've hunted man you haven't hunted."

But he never has given a clear description of his actual service.

I never hunted man in my three years of active Army service. I did serve with the 173rd Airborne Brigade on a landing zone at the foothills of Vietnam's Central Highlands. I worked in an Army post office most of that time. But I have close friends and old colleagues who were in combat with Company N, 75th Rangers and with the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment. And I did pull my share of perimeter guard duty, sitting through the night in a bunker with an M-60 and a set of switches for the Claymore mines in front of our sector.

In my experience, and that of many other Vietnam veterans, the people who had the most intense combat experience seldom talk about it at all in public. They virtually never flaunt it as the governor does. The blowhards who stand around bars telling war stories usually are people who spent most of their time in some safe rear area, or never got in country at all.

Males of our generation faced hard choices. We could enlist, wait for the draft, hope to fail a physical, stay in school with a 2-S deferment, or flee to Canada. I enlisted in the Army, my cousin moved to Canada, a good friend went to jail for opposing the draft, and Jesse Ventura served in the Navy. I think all four of us can be proud of what we did, and I don't judge anyone else's moral choices.

Nor do I think any public figure should be pressed to disclose what he or she did in terms of military service. If Ventura believes "What I did is between me and the man upstairs," that is fine. But such a commitment cuts both ways. If the governor wants to win an argument or belittle someone else by claiming a war experience, then he owes the public some clear explanation of when and where he actually served and what combat he actually participated in.

I get very uncomfortable when people start trading on their military service for personal or political profit. The hairs really stand up if they seem to be embellishing the record or are fuzzy about the details.

Take the following statement by our governor: "He (DNR Commissioner Alan Garber) has two tours to Vietnam, and I have one as a Navy Seal and then 17 months in Southeast Asia." Is Ventura saying he served in Vietnam or just as a SEAL? Were his 17 months in Southeast Asia in a combat area or in some place like the Philippines?

Some time ago, someone challenged Ventura's claim of having served as a SEAL, noting that records showed he was in an Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) instead. The governor parried this by saying the two terms and units were virtually identical.

They were not, at least up to the time I went through Army parachute jump school in early 1968. There were several each of SEALs and UDTs in my company and they described substantial differences in the training and combat employment of the two units. The media never followed up on this, but in my experience when bragging veterans embellish a few little details, they usually are embellishing many.

The governor need not spill his guts or bare his soul. But if he wants to trade on his Navy record, he should release his DD Form 214 and make a statement of the specific places and dates of his overseas service. If he participated in classified operations 30 years ago, such secrecy is meaningless now.

If the governor is unwilling to make even such a bare-bones disclosure of his experience, he should shut up about it.

Lotterman is an economist and writer who lives and works in St. Paul. He can be reached at elotterman@pioneerpress.com.

Reprinted with permission from the author