Posted on Nov 8, 2015
Recalling a life event that occured 50 years ago using a word closely resembling what occured, is it a lie if you didnt know the difference?
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If you were recalling a significant life event that happened to you over 50 years before and you used a synonym or something close to describe part of the event, does that constitute a lie if you didnt know the difference (Scholarship versus appointment; which means tuition, room, and board)? Or does this constitute a witch hunt as Dr. Carson has stated?
WASHINGTON, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson's recollection of being offered a scholarship to the prestigious U.S. Military Academy at West Point was questioned on Friday, potentially damaging the credibility of the 64-year-old retired neurosurgeon.
Also on Friday, Carson's account of how he attempted to stab a friend in his troubled youth came under renewed scrutiny.
Carson, a favorite of conservative activists, who is tied with Donald Trump at the top of Republican primary polls a year before the November 2016 presidential election, has often recounted both tales from his 1990 autobiography on the campaign trail, as he trumpets his rise from poverty in inner-city Detroit to the highest echelons of medicine.
On Friday, Carson's campaign said he never sought admission to West Point, while Carson himself gave a slightly different account of the stabbing incident, describing the boy he lunged at as a close relative instead of a friend.
"These are little things that get at his credibility," said John Feehery, a Republican strategist who is not working for any of the 2016 presidential candidates. "He's coming in there as an outsider who is honest and a breath of fresh air. If his whole life story is undermined by these little inaccuracies it could have a negative effect."
Carson told Fox News his account of the West Point scholarship offer "could have been more clarified." He is planning to participate in a live interview on Sunday morning on CBS's "Face The Nation," where he will likely face tough questions.
"Voters care about candidate integrity," said Laura Stoker, a political science professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "But people - especially those who already favor Carson - will resist allegations until information is definitive."
Carson's supporters seemed unperturbed, and doubted whether the candidate had been inaccurate.
"If I had a general come up to me when I was 17 years old and try to convince me to go to West Point and he told me my expenses would be paid, I don't think it would be so far-fetched to think he offered me a scholarship," said Warren Galkin, 86, of Warwick, Rhode Island, who has given money to a political action committee supporting Carson's campaign.
WEST POINT SCHOLARSHIP
In his autobiography, "Gifted Hands," Carson wrote that as a high school student he dined with General William Westmoreland in 1969. "Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point," he wrote, saying that he turned it down. "As overjoyed as I felt to be offered such a scholarship, I wasn't really tempted."
Carson's campaign said on Friday that his grades and conversations with officials of the ROTC, which provides preliminary military training for students interested in becoming officers, constituted a de facto acceptance to the academy, which provides full scholarships to all of its students. But it said Carson never actually applied or was admitted to West Point.
"His Senior Commander was in touch with West Point and told Dr. Carson he could get in, Dr. Carson did not seek admission," Carson's campaign spokesman Doug Watts told Reuters in an email.
"Dr. Carson, as the leading ROTC student in Detroit, was told by his Commanders that he could get an Appointment to the Academy," Watts said. "He never said he was admitted or even applied."
West Point on Friday said there was no record of Carson completing an application for admission. It is possible someone nominated him for the academy, but that would only have been an early step in the multi-part process of admission.
"Candidate files where admission/acceptance was not sought are retained for three years; therefore we cannot confirm whether anyone during that time period was nominated to West Point if they chose not to pursue completion of the application process," West Point spokeswoman Theresa Brinkerhoff said in an email to Reuters.
"No one can enter the academy without completing the entire admission process," she added.
The differing accounts of Carson's West Point scholarship were first reported by political news website Politico, in a story headlined "Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship."
Carson's campaign contested that interpretation.
"The Politico story is an outright lie," Watts said in an email to Reuters. "The campaign never 'admitted to anything.'"
CARSON HITS BACK
The fracas over West Point came only hours after Carson attacked the media for questioning his accounts of a violent past.
"This is a bunch of lies," Carson told CNN on Friday. "This is what it is, it's a bunch of lies attempting, you know, to say that I'm lying about my history. I think it's pathetic."
Carson, who is popular with evangelical voters, often speaks on the campaign trail about flashes of violence during his youth, casting the lessons he learned from that period as evidence he has the strength of character to be president.
In his autobiography, the renowned brain surgeon wrote that as a teen, he tried to stab a friend named Bob in the stomach with a knife, but the boy's belt buckle blocked the knife.
On Thursday on the campaign trail, when pressed by reporters about the incident and also in an interview with Fox News, Carson said that Bob's name, along with some other names in the autobiography, were pseudonyms that he used to protect the privacy of the people he was writing about.
He described Bob in the book as a friend and classmate. In the Fox News interview and on CNN, Carson said the boy was a "close relative."
WASHINGTON, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson's recollection of being offered a scholarship to the prestigious U.S. Military Academy at West Point was questioned on Friday, potentially damaging the credibility of the 64-year-old retired neurosurgeon.
Also on Friday, Carson's account of how he attempted to stab a friend in his troubled youth came under renewed scrutiny.
Carson, a favorite of conservative activists, who is tied with Donald Trump at the top of Republican primary polls a year before the November 2016 presidential election, has often recounted both tales from his 1990 autobiography on the campaign trail, as he trumpets his rise from poverty in inner-city Detroit to the highest echelons of medicine.
On Friday, Carson's campaign said he never sought admission to West Point, while Carson himself gave a slightly different account of the stabbing incident, describing the boy he lunged at as a close relative instead of a friend.
"These are little things that get at his credibility," said John Feehery, a Republican strategist who is not working for any of the 2016 presidential candidates. "He's coming in there as an outsider who is honest and a breath of fresh air. If his whole life story is undermined by these little inaccuracies it could have a negative effect."
Carson told Fox News his account of the West Point scholarship offer "could have been more clarified." He is planning to participate in a live interview on Sunday morning on CBS's "Face The Nation," where he will likely face tough questions.
"Voters care about candidate integrity," said Laura Stoker, a political science professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "But people - especially those who already favor Carson - will resist allegations until information is definitive."
Carson's supporters seemed unperturbed, and doubted whether the candidate had been inaccurate.
"If I had a general come up to me when I was 17 years old and try to convince me to go to West Point and he told me my expenses would be paid, I don't think it would be so far-fetched to think he offered me a scholarship," said Warren Galkin, 86, of Warwick, Rhode Island, who has given money to a political action committee supporting Carson's campaign.
WEST POINT SCHOLARSHIP
In his autobiography, "Gifted Hands," Carson wrote that as a high school student he dined with General William Westmoreland in 1969. "Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point," he wrote, saying that he turned it down. "As overjoyed as I felt to be offered such a scholarship, I wasn't really tempted."
Carson's campaign said on Friday that his grades and conversations with officials of the ROTC, which provides preliminary military training for students interested in becoming officers, constituted a de facto acceptance to the academy, which provides full scholarships to all of its students. But it said Carson never actually applied or was admitted to West Point.
"His Senior Commander was in touch with West Point and told Dr. Carson he could get in, Dr. Carson did not seek admission," Carson's campaign spokesman Doug Watts told Reuters in an email.
"Dr. Carson, as the leading ROTC student in Detroit, was told by his Commanders that he could get an Appointment to the Academy," Watts said. "He never said he was admitted or even applied."
West Point on Friday said there was no record of Carson completing an application for admission. It is possible someone nominated him for the academy, but that would only have been an early step in the multi-part process of admission.
"Candidate files where admission/acceptance was not sought are retained for three years; therefore we cannot confirm whether anyone during that time period was nominated to West Point if they chose not to pursue completion of the application process," West Point spokeswoman Theresa Brinkerhoff said in an email to Reuters.
"No one can enter the academy without completing the entire admission process," she added.
The differing accounts of Carson's West Point scholarship were first reported by political news website Politico, in a story headlined "Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship."
Carson's campaign contested that interpretation.
"The Politico story is an outright lie," Watts said in an email to Reuters. "The campaign never 'admitted to anything.'"
CARSON HITS BACK
The fracas over West Point came only hours after Carson attacked the media for questioning his accounts of a violent past.
"This is a bunch of lies," Carson told CNN on Friday. "This is what it is, it's a bunch of lies attempting, you know, to say that I'm lying about my history. I think it's pathetic."
Carson, who is popular with evangelical voters, often speaks on the campaign trail about flashes of violence during his youth, casting the lessons he learned from that period as evidence he has the strength of character to be president.
In his autobiography, the renowned brain surgeon wrote that as a teen, he tried to stab a friend named Bob in the stomach with a knife, but the boy's belt buckle blocked the knife.
On Thursday on the campaign trail, when pressed by reporters about the incident and also in an interview with Fox News, Carson said that Bob's name, along with some other names in the autobiography, were pseudonyms that he used to protect the privacy of the people he was writing about.
He described Bob in the book as a friend and classmate. In the Fox News interview and on CNN, Carson said the boy was a "close relative."
Politics
ROTC
United States Military Academy (USMA West Point)
Posted 10 y ago
Responses: 49
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He sounds like he's on benzos. The agitation, outbursts, memory loss, psychosis, and delusions are ALL co-occurring disorders of benzo addictions. That is my take. Sedative,Hypnotic and Anxiolytic Use Disorder DSM-5 304.1 (F13.1)
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SGM (Join to see)
SGT Efaw (Mick0 G., No I have not, but I do remember seeing something similar in a store in the mall while TDY in Atlanta back sometime around 2008, but it wasn't Dr. Carson that was pictured, but the chosen one of hope and change.
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SGM (Join to see)
MAJ Keira Brennan, Very interesting analogy, ma'am, I was not aware of such a thing as Benzos; common uses?
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This guy is human. We all say things that probably doesn't use the correct verbage. It's no worse than the continual lies that we have heard for some time from others.
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SGM (Join to see) It sounds to me like I should say, "Oh, hey....It was just a slip of the tongue." Unfortunately for him, there are more stories from Dr Carson's new book being called into question. It was also interesting timing for Dr. Carson to bring out a book that extolled his many (heroic?) exploits, but when a Presidential candidate makes claims, especially about possible Military service, then the potential Commander-in-Chief better have his "ducks in a row" if he wants the Military vote.
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SGM (Join to see)
SGT Robert Gresham, No it was not a slip of the tongue, but merely spoken as he remembered it.
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PVT Robert Gresham
SGM (Join to see) - I understand that, but if I hear that a Presidential candidate can't recall the words that were spoken, that are supposed to show a record of Military leadership, in his own book, especially at this time, then I can't in good conscience consider him as a viable candidate.
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SGM (Join to see)
SGT Gresham, Roger, it's just that Dr. Carson never considered being President when someone suggested he write a book 20 years ago and you and I both know he did not write every word of this book.
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PVT Robert Gresham
SGM (Join to see) - I agree with you 100% on that, I'm sure that his publisher had some kind of hand in the wording of the book. The selective nature of many of the stories, however, above and beyond this one, make me a bit skeptical of his memory of events.
To me, this is comparable to some guy in a bar, very drunk, explaining to me how he was in the Service, and he was in the Army, and went to Special Forces, but then decided to be a Navy SEAL instead, where he saved a whole company of men with his "Rambo" knife. He may have actually been in the Military, but the rest is likely supposed to impress people. I can't PROVE that he's lying, so I WILL thank him for his Military service, but I'm going to be suspicious, and I'm not going to buy him a beer, and introduce him to all my friends as a hero. I have to have a really good feeling about a man's character before I would even think about it.
To me, this is comparable to some guy in a bar, very drunk, explaining to me how he was in the Service, and he was in the Army, and went to Special Forces, but then decided to be a Navy SEAL instead, where he saved a whole company of men with his "Rambo" knife. He may have actually been in the Military, but the rest is likely supposed to impress people. I can't PROVE that he's lying, so I WILL thank him for his Military service, but I'm going to be suspicious, and I'm not going to buy him a beer, and introduce him to all my friends as a hero. I have to have a really good feeling about a man's character before I would even think about it.
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It seems to me that people think that a presidential candidate must be perfect. No one is perfect and everyone forgets things. I do not expect anyone I vote for to be perfect. I look at things realistically. I read the book, "Gifted Hands", and Dr. Carson was not only brilliant, but he had common sense. He knows how to work with people. He knows how to make informed decisions. He's methodical and thinks things out before making decisions. I'm not giving my opinion, but facts. I don't even read what the media says, because I know they are going to twist and distort things to make the lazy, non-thinkers agree with them. In today's society, no one wants to think critically. I teach mathematics and the students simply mimic what I teach. That's a problem with many people today. They think they know everything (at least they have an opinion on everything), when in actuality they know little to nothing.
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SGM (Join to see)
SFC Terry Fillmore, thank you. I have not read Gifted Hands and appreciate comments on this discussion based on your knowledge of the book.
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Nope, matter of fact Dr. Carson, in lacking any military exposure after high school. most probably correctly stated that West Point offered him a full scholarship - in his understanding of going to a school with no tuition, books, boards or meals cost - that surly appeared as an offer of a full time, fully paid scholarship. Especially with the events being recalled close to 50 years ago in my mind, somethings become a little faded - do I remember the exact words spoken by the minister to me and my dear wife 48 years ago, no....do I know he said something along the lines of 'Jim marriage is a serious commitment, not to be taken lightly'.....more than likely, did a member of the active duty entourage attending this ROTC gala see a fine young black ROTC cadet and say - I'm sure we could get you an appointment to West Point and a full scholarship......you bet. Dr. Carson is a man, of all of the candidates, whose integrity is a shining light of honesty, commitment and service. Unlike a certain other black man, whose records are sealed, whose associations are extremely Marxist leaning and who has lied repeatedly about his past and ObamaCare. "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor" - lie. Cost for the average family will go down - lie.
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MSgt (Join to see)
MAJ (Join to see) - And that is the main problem here that I see. The DNC candidates have not built anything based on honesty so when they lie it is not a big issue to their followers. When someone on the right lies who does espouse a certain moral standard they are crucified by the left and the media. So this begs the question, what is better? To have no moral standard that you can be held to or to have a moral standard knowing that you may violate it as a human being? If your morals are a moving target then I guess you will always hit them because you will adjust them at will to meet them. If they are fixes, as christianity dictates then you have to be comfortable with the fact that you are a flawed human being who will probably never fully meet them. That they are a target or goal for one to achieve. I for one prefer to have a fix target in this area, a moral standard that does not move with the wind.
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MAJ (Join to see)
MSgt (Join to see) Interesting. I'd favor someone who didn't habitually lie, regardless of their moral grounding. And I don't think liberals don't have morals, any more or less than conservatives do (or don't) have morals.
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MSgt (Join to see)
MAJ (Join to see) - Again its a moving target. I don't think it is not that they don't have moral abut they seem to change with the most recent polls. As you know one can not lead based on poll numbers. They have to establish a set of standards and abide by them. No leader will be successful that changes their position or has different stands for different people.
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MSgt (Join to see)
MAJ (Join to see) - I also don't say this lightly, I have experienced many leaders in my career, both civilian and military, The worse leaders are those that hold a different standard for themselves and a select few then they do for everyone else.This line of thinking has also been confirmed through my graduate work. Carson will be dinged for this but not nearly as much as the MSM and the DNC would like.
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It's a witch hunt. He is the biggest threat to the left so get rid of him quickly. Like what happened with Herman Cain. Ever notice that once he was out of the presidential race you didn't ever hear about the issue again? Must not have been that big of an issue to pursue after he dropped out.
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"Bipartisan" Politico lied and scrambled to recover.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/06/media/ben-carson-politico-west-point/index.html
http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/06/media/ben-carson-politico-west-point/index.html
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The left is grabbing at straws to try and find some way to discredit Dr. Carson.
A verbal offer is a verbal offer and there is no way of proving he never had a conversation with someone at WP and this was not offered to him...and as for the other issues...POPPY COCK! The left is trying to make mountains out of tiny little mole hills....
If the left is so gun hoed on getting the truth out they should be more concerned with all of the MANY MANY LIES Hillary has told so far.
A verbal offer is a verbal offer and there is no way of proving he never had a conversation with someone at WP and this was not offered to him...and as for the other issues...POPPY COCK! The left is trying to make mountains out of tiny little mole hills....
If the left is so gun hoed on getting the truth out they should be more concerned with all of the MANY MANY LIES Hillary has told so far.
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Sgt Kelli Mays
SGM (Join to see) - I have not really read what others have written...I just read this post, read what the poster wrote and formed my own opinion...that being said...I not familiar with near death in coffee shops or Egyptian pyramids storing grain.
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SGM (Join to see)
Sgt Kelli Mays, Copy that, ma'am, I just wanted to get your opinion if in fact you had heard of the other allegations, I for one had not, but since I started this discussion I am interested to hear more.
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Sgt Kelli Mays
SGM (Join to see) - LOL...it's news to me. I've seen a number of Carson interviews and heard news folks speak of Carson, but it's the first I've heard of near death and pyramids. You're guess is as good as mine on these two insinuations.
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CW3 Jim Norris
Tom:
Bad idea, not voting. Of course there will always be something 'wrong' with any candidate, but Carson, Cruz and yes, even Trump is a giant leap forward in integrity, leadership and patriotism from where we now are. Please reconsider, support the candidate from the Republican Party, not because she/he is perfect, but because the nation is better off with them in office than not. "all it takes for evil to triump is good men to do nothing'.....do something Tom, vote.
Bad idea, not voting. Of course there will always be something 'wrong' with any candidate, but Carson, Cruz and yes, even Trump is a giant leap forward in integrity, leadership and patriotism from where we now are. Please reconsider, support the candidate from the Republican Party, not because she/he is perfect, but because the nation is better off with them in office than not. "all it takes for evil to triump is good men to do nothing'.....do something Tom, vote.
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What many don't notice is that politicians make good use of all publicity either good of bad, because it keeps their name on peoples minds; which is free publicity and that get them votes.
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