I like Bush he's funny...

Bush himself told The Houston Chronicle in 1994 he joined the Guard because "I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes." That's pretty straightforward: He joined the Guard to stay out of Vietnam, a war he supported. (All the more ironic, then, that he now orders the Guard into harsh Iraq duty, and then sanctimoniously parries questions about his Guard days by noting how, thanks to his policies, service in the Guard is now quite dangerous .)

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Omission Accomplished'

02/20/2004 @ 1:48pm [permalink]
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Never one to let the facts get in the way of a good story, Ann Coulter is standing by her bizarre assault on Max Cleland, the former Democratic Senator. Coulter still insists he's not a Vietnam war hero.

True, Cleland lost both legs and an arm -- but Coulter has done us the important service of noting that those three limbs were not shot off, one by one, with an AK-47 wielded by an actual screaming Viet Cong. Ergo, they aren't combat injuries.

Our political discourse is vastly improved for Ann Coulter's important contribution. This incisive distinction of hers ought to go down in history with such classic formulations as "I smoked marijuana but I didn't inhale."

Coulter also cleverly seizes upon remarks by Cleland and others expressing frustration at the random meaningless of his wounds: In essence he hopped out of a helicopter straight into an exploding grenade dropped accidentally by another American. Cleland has the humility and subtlety to say there was nothing heroic in that, it was just fate, bad luck; Coulter slyly twists such remarks into a blanket statement that Cleland is no hero, he's just a shmuck who blew himself up.

But wait. Once again, here is the US Army's own description of how, four days before he lost his limbs, Captain Max Cleland "distinguished himself by exceptionally valorous action on 4 April 1968 ... during an enemy attack near Khe Sanh, Republic of Vietnam.

"When the battalion command post came under a heavy enemy rocket and mortar attack, Capt. Cleland, disregarding his own safety, exposed himself to the rocket barrage as he left his covered position to administer first aid to his wounded comrades. He then assisted in moving the injured personnel to covered positions. Continuing to expose himself, Capt. Cleland organized his men into a work party to repair the battalion communications equipment, which had been damaged by enemy fire."

So in building her extremely worthy and important case that Cleland's no hero, how does Coulter finesse this?

By omitting it.

Entirely.

She titles her latest ramble "File Under: 'Omission Accomplished'."

No kidding!

The Army says that Captain Max Cleland, disregarding his own safety during one of the heaviest rocket and mortar attacks of the entire Vietnam war, ran out to save injured comrades, moved them back to cover, and then rallied his men to keep doing their job.

Just four days later, with his tour of duty in Vietnam near an end, Captain Cleland accepted one last mission. Here is how Cleland's commanding officer describes that mission:

"Max Cleland was with the Battalion Forward Command Post in heavy combat involving the attack of the 1st Cavalry Division up the valley to relieve the Marines who were besieged and surrounded at the Khe Shan Firebase. The whole surrounding area was an active combat zone ... Max, the Battalion Signal Officer, was engaged in a combat mission I personally ordered to increase the effectiveness of communications between the battalion combat forward and rear support elements: e.g. Erect a radio relay antenna on a mountain top. By the way, at one point the battalion rear elements came under enemy artillery fire so everyone was in harm's way.

"As they were getting off the helicopter, Max saw the grenade on the ground and he instinctively went for it. Soldiers in combat don't leave grenades lying around on the ground. Later, in the hospital, he said he thought it was his own but I doubt the concept of 'ownership' went through his mind in the split seconds involved in reaching for the grenade. Nearly two decades later another soldier came forward and admitted it was actually his grenade. Does ownership of the grenade really matter? It does not."

Cleland's former C.O. adds: "This Ann Coulter has written real slime."

Coulter says she is responding to "insinuations that I 'lied' about Senator Max Cleland." Insinuations? For my part I'm not insinuating anything: Ann Coulter lied.

"It is simply a fact that Max Cleland was not injured by enemy fire in Vietnam," Coulter writes -- a brilliantly trenchant and valuable observation, and undeniably true. She goes on to lie, "He was not in combat," and also to lie, "he was not in the battle of Khe Sanh, as many others [including, apparently, the US Army] have implied."

"He picked up an American grenade on a routine non-combat mission," she lies, "and the grenade exploded." Well, the officer who sent him on that mission calls it a combat mission at Khe Sanh; but Coulter long ago learned to cherry-pick what suits her off of Lexis-Nexis, so she knows it was a routine day of beer-drinking.

* * *

Coulter has become the thing she claims to hate -- a caricature of a 1970s hippy spitting at men in uniform -- because she wants us all to stop talking about George W. Bush's frivolous relationship to his National Guard service.

But Bush himself told The Houston Chronicle in 1994 he joined the Guard because "I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes." That's pretty straightforward: He joined the Guard to stay out of Vietnam, a war he supported. (All the more ironic, then, that he now orders the Guard into harsh Iraq duty, and then sanctimoniously parries questions about his Guard days by noting how, thanks to his policies, service in the Guard is now quite dangerous .)

Coulter, for her part, takes Max Cleland's loss of his legs in Vietnam and turns it into a story of ... George Bush's heroism: "... the poignant truth of Cleland's own accident demonstrates the commitment and bravery of all members of the military who come into contact with ordnance. Cleland's injury was of the routine variety that occurs whenever young men and weapons are put in close proximity -- including in the National Guard."

Oh, it brings a tear to my eye! The commitment and bravery of our President pulling strings to join a Vietnam-era States-side "champagne" unit -- especially after he had the poignantly cautionary example of Max Cleland's injuries!

http://thenation.com/outrage/index.mhtml?bid=6