in part because he started really, really young. he used a fake i.d. to sign up in the first place when he was 15 years old. according to his new york times obituary he, quote, paid a wino to pose as his father to certify he was old enough to join the u.s. army. again, he signed up at 15. in his career in the army david hackworth was awarded ten silver stars and eight bronze stars and eight purple hearts. david hackworth was his name, one of the most decorated soldiers of his generation or of any generation. david hackworth was just 40 years old and a full bird colonel in 1971 when having just served those four hard tours in vietnam he decided back in the united states that he would go on tv as a serving u.s. army colonel because he felt like he
amount to? for those of his wife and children and mother, no, no, no. so david hackworth started off that reporting. the pentagon denied it, but hackworth was proven out and donald rumsfeld and the pentagon ultimately relented. december 16th donald rumsfeld put out a surreal statement which i should note never technically admitted it. i have directed that in the future i sign each letter. okay. and the surrealness of that statement and the behavior of donald rumsfeld, it was a little snapshot of the george w. bush administration on this issue. beyond that personal strangeness from rumsfeld, this is not the issue on which you find a lot of dissent. you might find denial, but once it was known what they were doing, there really wasn t anybody in the country who
had something to say to the american public about the vietnam war that this country was still in and that he had been fighting in for all those years. on june 27th, 1971, david hackworth appeared on an abc news show called issues and answers. and in that tv appearance he called vietnam a bad war. he said the united states should get out. he basically made the case that it was unwinnable. and you know, it is a powerful thing in our country when a veteran, especially a decorated veteran like him, decides to speak out about a war that america is currently engaged in. but when david hackworth went on tv in june 1971 and called called vietnam a bad war he wasn t a veteran at that point. he was still in the army. he was still serving as a very, very highly decorated u.s. army colonel. so that decision from that position to make that dramatic pronouncement about war on the tv news, that was how the u.s. army lost who vietnam commander
december 16th donald rumsfeld put out a surreal statement which i should note never technically admitted what he had done. but it was surreal. this is what he said. i have directed that in the future i sign each letter. okay. and the surrealness of that statement and the behavior of donald rumsfeld, it was a little snapshot of the george w. bush administration on this issue. but beyond that personal strangeness from rumsfeld, this is not the issue on which you find a lot of dissent. right? you might find denial, but once it was known what they were doing, there really wasn t anybody in the country who didn t have the same feeling about what the bush administration had just bumbled into there and what hackworth discovered they were doing. who thought that was a good idea? you might have disbelieved it when you first heard the reporting. but once you found out it was true, callousness and impersonal
before those four tours in vietnam, before that remarkable tour in korea david hackworth also served at the very tail end of world war ii. and the reason his career was able to span that distance, to span all those different conflicts over those decades is in part because he started really, really young. he used a fake i.d. to sign up in the first place when he was 15 years old. according to his new york times obituary he, quote, paid a wineo to pose as his father to certify he was old enough to join the u.s. army. he signed up at 15. in his career in the army david hackworth was awarded ten silver stars and eight bronze stars and eight purple hearts. david hackworth was his name, one of the most decorated soldiers of his generation or of any generation. david hackworth was just 40 years old and a full bird