Yeah, okay it's a golden oldie. It was right before I could vote. To this day, republicans who don't know any better laugh at George McGovern because he was a Dove in a time we were tearing ourselves apart over Vietnam. It mattered not to them that he stood and faced a fear flying Combat Bomber Missions over Europe in WWII that most of us will never know. He was excoriated by the right for his love of Peace, not his Love of War. Now he speaks again, and it's worth hearing his words.

I bested 16 other contenders in winning the nomination, with primary election victories in 11 states, including New York and California. Critics overlook the shooting of Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, who otherwise would have run as an independent, taking perhaps 20 million votes from Nixon. The formula for Nixon's landslide victory was the Wallace vote added to the Nixon vote. Critics also overlook my opponent's unprecedented campaign spending. Most of his negative television ads were designed to paint me as an extreme radical uninterested in the defense of the country. This even though I was a decorated combat bomber pilot in World War II, while Nixon was stationed far from battle.

I'm proud of my war service, but today I'm more interested in peace. I certainly don't want any more wars like the one in Iraq -- a country that posed no threat to us and had nothing to do with Sept. 11, 2001. There seem to be no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But here at home, 100,000 Americans die each year from alcoholism. Multitudes are suffering from clinical depression or obesity or other disorders. And in the world at large a child dies from hunger every five seconds. Those are the weapons of mass destruction that disturb my rest.
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It has always seemed to me that the leaders who are the quickest to send our boys and our young to war are those who have never known war themselves.