James Webb (D-Va.)

Webb was a varsity boxer at the academy and in his senior year fought classmate Oliver North, who later became a central figure in the Iran-contra scandal. Webb was judged "the superior fighter," but North won on a decision. The Navy used a film of their fight for training, but stopped after both men became public figures.

Descended from 18th Century Scots Irish immigrants to the United States, Webb's family boasts that it has fought in every American war since. Having settled in southwest Virginia, four of Webb's ancestors fought with the confederates during the Civil War and one for the Union.

Vietnam War

Shortly after Webb graduated from the Naval Academy in 1968, having won the superintendent's commendation for outstanding leadership, he was sent to Vietnam as a platoon leader with the Marines. It was an event that would help define the rest of his life.

Webb was awarded the Navy Cross, the second- highest award given by the Navy and Marine Corps, after he captured three enemy soldiers and killed several others in hidden bunkers during an attack in what the award citation identifies only as "deep in enemy territory." He also won a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and a pair of Purple Hearts.

But Webb's connection to Vietnam went far beyond his war wounds. He learned to speak the language and, after the war, worked for years as a pro bono lawyer helping the Vietnamese community in the United States. His third and current wife, Hong Le Webb, was a South Vietnamese evacuee during the 1975 fall of Saigon.

"I'm one of these people who - there, there aren't many of us - who can still justify for you the reasons that we went into Vietnam, however screwed up the strategy got," Webb has said.

Webb attended Georgetown University law school after leaving the military in 1972 and in 1975 took up the case of a Marine private, Samuel A. Greene Jr., who had been convicted of war crimes following the massacre of 16 women and children in the Vietnamese hamlet of Son Thang, just a short distance from the better-known war crimes site of My Lai.

Greene, an African American who had a juvenile criminal record before joining the Marines, was 18 and on his first patrol in Vietnam as part of a five-man "killer team" that was accused of shooting the civilians. The leader of the team, Randall Dean Herrod, a decorated Marine, was later found to have ordered the shootings but was acquitted of all charges after Oliver North appeared on his behalf as a character witness. Greene, however, was dishonorably discharged and jailed on murder charges.

Webb worked on a pro bono basis to have Greene's dishonorable discharge upgraded and succeeded in doing so in 1978 - three years after Greene killed himself because earlier attempts to change his discharge status in federal court failed.

Navy Secretary and Views on Women

Webb was hired as counsel to the House Committee on Veterans Affairs in 1977 and worked there for four years, leaving to continue work as an author. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan appointed Webb as the nation's first assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs. Three years later, Reagan made Webb secretary of the Navy, making him the first academy graduate to become the Navy's top civilian leader.

It was during that first decade as a civilian that Webb earned a reputation for having a quick temper and, in the eyes of some, a bias against women.

As Navy secretary, Webb argued that the Navy needed twice as many ships as White House budget cutters would allow : 600 instead of 300. When the Reagan administration refused to fold, Webb resigned.

Webb also had a reputation for greeting decisions by superiors with which he disagreed with withering fire.. In the aftermath of the 1991 Tailhook scandal, in which top naval pilots were charged with sexually abusing female officers at a Las Vegas convention, Webb derided Navy leadership for not only failing to defend the aviators but for not challenging civilian criticism that the Navy suffered deep cultural problems.

"The aftermath of Tailhook was never about inappropriate conduct so much as it was about the lack of wisdom among the Navy's senior leadership," Webb told a Naval Academy conference in 1996.

Webb also had been criticized as a misogynist because of his voracious opposition to allowing women to enter the Naval Academy and against a new U.S. policy that would allow women to serve in combat.

There were reports that he called female cadets "thunder thighs" during a 1992 speech at the academy.And in 1979, he'd penned a 7,000-word essay in Washingtonian magazine, headlined "Women Can't Fight," in which he called the academy's freshman dorm "a horny woman's dream."

"There is a place for women in our military, but not in combat," Webb wrote. "And their presence at institutions dedicated to the preparation of men for combat command is poisoning that preparation."

Reporter, Author and Actor

Webb went on to a career as a television journalist, winning an emmy for his Public Broadcasting System coverage of the 1983 attack on U.S. Marines in Lebanon. He also launched a career as an author of nine novels and non-fiction books, a screen writer and a movie producer. His first novel, "Fields of Fire," published in 1978, was described by several reviewers as a classic on the Vietnam War.

"I've never felt more natural than when I'm doing this sort of stuff, when I feel like I'm leading - from the Marine Corps to working on the Hill, to working in the Pentagon, to working in the Senate," Webb once told an interviewer from The Washington Post. "But nothing gives me greater pleasure than to write something that I believe is really good. Writing is what I will always do, no matter what."

His movie credits include "Rules of Engagement," a 2000 film staring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. Webb most recently was working on a screenplay with Rob Reiner about an Iraq war veteran, though that project was placed on hold when Webb decided to run for the U.S. Senate.

2006 U.S. Senate Campaign

An Internet draft campaign began in 2005 urging Webb to run for the Senate against then-Sen. Allen, a former Virginia governor expected to cruise easily to re-election and possibly run for president in 2008. Webb announced he would run in February 2006 and though he won a Democratic primary, he remained largely unknown throughout most of Virginia and was given little chance of beating Allen.

Allen spent more than $1 million on ads that cited Webb's 1979 Washingtonian article and sexually explicit excerpts from Webb's novels that Allen said showed Webb's disrespect for women. But Allen 2006 then undercut his own campaign during an August rally by repeatedly referring to an Indian American Webb aide who was filming Allen as "macaca," renewing charges that Allen was a racist. The charge basically ended Allen's political career and Webb won the Senate race by 0.4 percentage points, helping turn the Senate Democratic.

But Webb hadn't even officially taken office when he caused a national sensation by publicly rebuking President George W. Bush at a White House party for new members of Congress just weeks after the election.

Bush approached Webb at the event and asked "How's your boy?" Webb's son, Jimmy, was serving in Iraq with the Marines. "I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," said Webb, who had worn an old pair of his son's combat boots during the entire campaign.

"That's not what I asked you," Bush said. "How's your boy?"

"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said, bringing the conversation to a cold end.

Conservative columnist George F. Will castigated Webb's behavior, writing that Virginia's new senator was a "boor" who showed "patent disrespect for the presidency" and "calculated rudeness" to Bush who "asked a civil and caring questions, as one parent to another." Will concluded, "He already has become what Washington did not need another of, a subtraction from the city's civility and clear speaking."

But Webb's treatment of Bush also made him "a folk hero among liberals and Democratic bloggers" and his fellow Senators.

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