Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_ A Fair & Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken [94]
So I think it’s time for another “Operation Chickenhawk.” This one’s a prequel, because Rush, Will, and Thomas eat it in the original one, and I wanted to use them again. Also, I’ve been following George Lucas’s career, and prequels seem like a good way to keep the franchise alive.
There were so many great Chickenhawks to choose from. Like Saxby Chambliss, who defeated Max Cleland for the Senate in Georgia. Cleland lost three limbs in Vietnam, but Chambliss ran ads with Cleland’s face next to Saddam Hussein’s. Chambliss, it seems, had Buchanan’s knee problem—the kind that gets better after you’ve gotten your 4-F.
There’s Bill Bennett, who a few years ago said he has two regrets in his life: not meeting his wife earlier, and not going to Vietnam. I have the exact same regrets—I, too, wish Bennett had met his wife earlier and gone to Vietnam. I’ll give you odds he’s added a third regret.
There’s a ton of these guys. Ken Starr got out for psoriasis. New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg got out for acne. Acne! Ashcroft was teaching. Tom DeLay is a good one. According to a January 7, 1999, Houston Press article, DeLay once explained that there was literally no room in the military for him because so many minority youths had volunteered for the military to escape the ghetto.
I don’t know why Bill O’Reilly didn’t go into the military. As DeLay explained, it’s such a great route out of the abject poverty of the Westbury section of Levittown.
Vice President Cheney has said that he didn’t fight in Vietnam because at the time he “had other priorities.” Coincidently, that’s exactly why I didn’t go.
Van Cong River: Mekong Delta, South Vietnam August 1968
The below-decks cabin was tight and smelled like men at war.
Journalist Specialist First Class Al Gore studied Lieutenant Kerry’s strangely Semitic features. The strong jaw, the deep-set eyes, the prominent nose that spoke of the Mittel-European shtetl and the seemingly unending tragedy of the Jewish people.
“This is going to be easy,” thought Gore. Gore’s editor at Stars and Stripes, Captain Ailes, had assigned him another by-the-numbers profile. Kerry, a lanky Swift Boat commander, had just been awarded the Silver Star, which made Gore all the more self-conscious of his only decoration, a good conduct medal for ghostwriting Captain Ailes’s weekly column, “Why We Fight.”
“Lieutenant, I was thinking of approaching this story from a different perspective, maybe writing from the point of view of the eleven VC you single-handedly killed. Sort of a postmodern thing.”
Kerry already regretted allowing the overly solicitous Tennessean to tag along. “First of all, I didn’t do it single-handedly. And, secondly, if I ever do wear the Silver Star, it’ll be for the brave men I served with. It’s their medal, too.”
“That’s great, that’s great,” Gore said, writing furiously. “Do you mind if I tell your crew what you said about their heroism?”
Kerry scowled, and picked a chip of paint off a rusting bulkhead. “Not this crew.”
Something about Kerry’s tone of voice aroused Gore’s reporter’s instincts. “So this is a new crew?”
“New?” Kerry scoffed. “That’s a charitable way to describe them. Frankly, in my two tours, I’ve never seen a bigger bunch of pants-pissers.”
Gore stopped writing. This wasn’t the sort of angle Captain Ailes approved of. “So they’re more heroes in the making than actual heroes?”
Before Kerry could answer, loud screaming broke out on deck. The lieutenant vaulted topsides, as Gore scrambled after.
All hell was breaking loose. The Swift Boat had pulled up alongside a fragile-looking sampan carrying two elderly Vietnamese women, baskets of fruit, and a small pig.
At the rail of the Swift Boat, two very agitated seamen were waving their M-16s and screaming.
“What’s under the pig, dink bitch?!” shouted the smaller