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So, flying across the Atlantic, as Traci, Michelle, and Nicole work out the choreography, I ask one of our military attachés to call ahead to Ramstein Air Force Base for three burkhas.

Five hours later we touch down in Germany and get the full military welcome. General Gregory S. Martin, Commander, USAF Europe, greets each of us as we hit the tarmac. There are phalanxes of airmen, lots of brass, including the commander of the 86th Airlift Wing. He gives me a firm handshake and a warm smile.

“Mr. Franken, sir. I’m Brigadier General Mark Volcheff. Welcome to Germany. Thank you so much for coming.”

“My honor, sir.”

“Could I talk to you for a moment?”

“Sure.”

The general takes me aside and leans in confidentially.

“Mr. Franken, I understand that you put in a request for three burkhas, is that right?”

“Yes. I want to have the Patriot cheerleaders come out as the Taliban cheerleaders.” I grin, expecting a laugh. Instead, a pensive nod.

“Uh-huh. Mr. Franken, now this is entirely your decision. We certainly don’t want to tell you how to do your job. But we are trying to make the point that this is not a war against Islam, and we think that the burkhas might send the wrong message to the Muslim world.”

He’s looking me square in the eye. The implication, basically, is that the Taliban cheerleaders bit could severely complicate our war against terrorism, perhaps leading to the deaths of thousands of innocent Americans.

“But it’s funny!” As a comedian, that’s always my immediate reaction. Somehow, though, I can’t say, “But it’s funny!” to the commander of the 86th Airlift Wing.

So the Taliban Cheerleaders bit? Gone.

Still, we had a great time, a whirlwind tour with stops at bases in Sicily, Bosnia, and Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. It was my third trip in as many years to Kosovo. There’s no airstrip at Bondsteel. So each time I went, we’d chopper in on Chinooks from Macedonia, flying over the rugged Sar Mountains, which tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians had traversed to escape the ethnic cleansing that President William Jefferson Clinton finally put an end to.

On my first USO tour, as we flew over the Kosovo countryside, we could see below us the burned out roofs of ethnic Albanian homes that had been torched, right next door to Serb homes with TV antennae on their intact roofs. That was Europe, 1999.

After Milosevic had thrown in the towel in June of that year, U.S. peacekeeping forces seized about a thousand acres of farmland not that far from the Macedonian border. On my first trip to Bondsteel, that December, the camp had been under construction. Soldiers slept in wooden barracks and used makeshift latrines. Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton—a company you might have heard of—was the contractor.

Two years later, on my third trip, Bondsteel was looking like a base stateside, with twenty-five kilometers of roads and over three hundred buildings housing nearly seven thousand troops. There was even a Burger King. I was told that for every burger consumed by a GI at Camp Bondsteel, Brown & Root took a cut. And Dick Cheney received a coupon.

It reminded me of an exchange from the 2000 vice presidential debate. Citing the accomplishments of the Clinton/Gore years, Joe Lieberman alluded to Cheney’s $20 million figure send-off from Halliburton: “And I see, Dick, from the newspapers, that you’re better off than you were eight years ago.”

That got a laugh. But Cheney came back with a topper. “And I can tell you, Joe, that the government had absolutely nothing to do with it.” That got laughter and applause. Cheney had gotten the best of Lieberman. And in an election that was decided by 537 votes, you could reasonably point to that moment and say it changed the outcome.

Of course, what Cheney said was not entirely true. It was, in fact, a bald-faced lie. In addition to benefiting from the unprecedented expansion of the entire economy during the Clinton years, Halliburton had received $3.8 billion in government contracts and taxpayer-insured loans while Cheney was its CEO.