My Veterans Administration rating at Togus is 100%. That has absolutely nothing to do with my ability to work. I’ve been a commercial fisherman and a prison Special Ops Response Team member. We dealt with angry inmates who sometimes had massive pecs. No doubt our secretary of “war” would see them as excellent warrior recruits. 

That 100% service-connected rating does not prove I was ever in combat. I have other ways to document that memorable experience. Ratings reflect injuries or diseases acquired while serving in uniform. Sometimes it does involve the physical or psychological wounds of combat. It may have to do with special legislation passed by Congress, like the Agent Orange or Burn Pit laws that are time and place-specific.

It could involve exposure to contaminated groundwater on a Marine base in North Carolina, as happened to my kid brother. Being 100% service-connected does not mean a soldier ever deployed to a combat zone. 

In the latest effort to torpedo Graham Platner’s Senate bid, ignorant or malicious bad actors have claimed he is a fraud because he gets 100% of his medical services free at the VA while doing the physically demanding work of an oysterman. That is bogus opposition “research,” another dud torpedo aimed at ending his mission to unseat Sen. Collins.

People may not like Platner’s position on all the issues, but he tells us what he thinks rather than what he presumes we want him to say. I respect that.

Michael Caron
Liberty