Monday, August 30, 2004

 
Chickenhawk with a bandaid....

Morton Blackwell is handing out purple heart band-aids to the yokels at the RNC:

Delegates to the Republican National Convention found a new way to take a jab at Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's Vietnam service record: by sporting adhesive bandages with small purple hearts on them.

Morton Blackwell, a prominent Virginia delegate, has been handing out the heart-covered bandages to delegates, who've worn them on their chins, cheeks, the backs of their hands and other places.

Blackwell is president of the Leadership Institute, a nonpartisan educational foundation he founded in 1979. According to its Web site, the institute prepares conservatives for success in politics, government and the news media.

So what did you do in Vietnam, Morty?

In youth politics, Mr. Blackwell was a College Republican state chairman and a Young Republican state chairman in Louisiana.

He served on the Young Republican National Committee for more than a dozen years, rising to the position of Young Republican National Federation national vice chairman at large.

Off and on for five years, 1965-1970, he worked as executive director of the College Republican National Committee under four consecutive College Republican national chairmen.

[...]

Mr. Blackwell was Barry Goldwater’s youngest elected delegate to the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco.

He was a national convention Alternate Delegate for Ronald Reagan in 1968 and 1976, and a Ronald Reagan Delegate at the 1980 national convention.

That isn't to say that Morton hasn't had some experience with militaries:

Blackwell is also President, International Policy Forum, from the 1984 CNP Directory, "a foundation which promotes educational exchanges between conservatives in the US and pro-freedom leaders in other countries." From other articles however, the IPF is painted far different. IPF trains rightwing conservatives around the world in New Right political techniques. Paul Weyrich chairs IPF.

"Blackwell and Weyrich also lead International Policy Forum (IPF), which appears to be the international parallel to CNP. The two organizations held joint meetings in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1991 and in Romania in 1992. Blackwell has also trained rightist political forces in Latin America and Africa(19) through IPF, notably supporters of the Pinochet military dictatorship, Argentinean rightists, and supporters of Inkatha chief Buthelezi in South Africa. It was Buthelezi's group that later attempted to create civil war in South Africa to keep apartheid policies in place. Inkatha worked with pro-apartheid and neo-nazi groups to stop the elections eventually won by Nelson Mandela. A number of IPF projects, including the Inkatha training, were aided by U.S. government funding through the National Endowment for Democracy.(20)" 18

The distance from College Republicans to Pinochet was probably just a walk across the street.