Jean Schmidt Quotes
Cowards cut and run. Marines never do.
Murtha had called for a transfer of the fighting from Americans to Iraqis. A highly decorated marine war hero wounded twice, he was then called a coward, by some Republican members of Congress like Schmidt and the Bush Administration—almost always by people who had never served in the military and often sought and obtained deferments. Schmidt later claimed that she had not known of Murtha’s war record. However, Schmidt commonly made nasty statements about other people. See her nickname.
Jean Schmidt, U. S. Congressman (Republican, OH), Attack on the House floor on Congressman John Murtha (Democrat, PA), November 18, 2005
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Lacedaemonian refers to the ancient Greek city of Sparta,
Patton, though a great leader and fighting general, also was almost crazy and irrational at times. This quotation illustrates one of those periods. Somehow, most of the officers and enlisted men under his command were generally able to distinguish and live with him. In this case, no one tried to ferret out the cowards and kill them despite the Generals exhortation. Also, his—and other people’s notion that bravery is genetically inherited is scientifically incorrect.
Sometimes paraphrased as “the coward dies a thousand deaths, but the brave man dies but once.”
Attila the Hun. The Romans aided by Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, fought the Huns in the only battle that Attila ever lost which he lost badly. There were 165,000 men killed in an afternoon. The Roman General, Flavius Aetius, had been a boyhood friend of Attila’s and had fought with him against the Visigoths. The Romans had Attila trapped but his old friend let him escape with just a good thrashing to his ego and army as to not upset the balance of power and tilt it in favor of the Goths. Roman foreign policy at the time was to keep all the Barbarians strong enough to fight one another so that none would be dominant but all weaker than Rome. Divide and conquer.
Webb’s opponent had accused him of not being patriotic because he opposed many of President George W. Bush’s Iraq War policies. This technique of publicly intimating that an opponent was not patriotic because he opposed the hawkish proposals of the President, had worked very well for the Republicans before. Presidential Candidate John Kerry, a decorated war hero, was attacked and remarkably Senator Max Cleland who had lost three of his four limbs in battle was unseated by attacking his patriotism. When Senator George Allen, fighting for reelection, used the technique on Webb, Web responded much more aggressively than earlier Democrats had when faced with the accusation. Senator Allen, like most of the patriotism critics of heroic veterans, had never been in combat.
Public opinion in the Union was quite different and more complex. Eggleston was an accomplished writer who had served in the Confederate army of the Civil War. 20 year after the war he wrote a series of articles for the prestigious Northern Atlantic Monthly trying to convey the war from the Southerner’s point of view.
He had been asked by a reporter if his Marines would be able to take Baghdad in the American invasion of Iraq, 2007. Kelly commanded the Marines charged with taking Baghdad. They did.
Jeannette Mary Schmidt is an American politician who is a state representative in Ohio's 65th district. She was a U.S. Representative for Ohio's 2nd congressional district, serving from 2005 to 2013. She is a member of the Republican Party.
