Mark Steyn

Just one comment, Ted, “bearded Canadian clown jumped up from the cinema reviews for crawling to Mrs Conrad Black” isn’t spelt “respected voice”. I disagree that anyone takes Steyn seriously.

Coulter is worse than a clown, she’s a foul, nasty insult-monger. But in this case she seems to have some evidence on her side. Yes, Cleland was “in a combat zone” — the whole damned country was a combat zone — and yes, he did brave deeds (as recognized by his Silver Star). So if the question is whether Max Cleland should be commended for his bravery in the Vietnam War, the answer is clearly Yes. But if the question is more specifically how he lost his limbs, then it seems straightforward that he did so in an accident, not in combat. Ted’s quotes from the Washington Post and Esquire conveniently leave out the whole context, which Coulter actually supplies in her recent follow-up column.

So there’s fudging on both sides. Coulter conveniently leaves out the larger context of Cleland’s strong record of military service; people like Ted leave out the specific context of Cleland’s terrible injuries. In the midst of “Liar Liar” accusations, few seem to have the patience to get the story right.

Coulter has another column on this subject. She supplies some references.

You can follow the spread of Coulter’s innuendo throughout the Internet-accessible media. It’s like watching a radioactive tracer. Quite remarkable (which is why I am remarking on it).

It seems to me that it would make a great case study in social network theory.

C.

So what Ann Coulter said about the cause of Senator Max Cleland’s injuries was accurate and nobody has provided any evidence to the contrary. It looks then like the only people who are “lying” are those who falsely accused Ann Coulter of “lying” in her column last week.

“Steyn, as dsquared said, is taken seriously only by people you don’t take seriously.” -Posted by Matthew

Another way to interpret that is that people *do* take him (and Coulter) seriously, but we don’t realize that.

Until it’s too late.

“If he does correct his error, he only deserves to be dissed for not double-checking a source.”
-Posted by Mark Byron

Note the source – ‘Slander’ Coulter. Also known as ‘Traitor’ Coulter, and as ‘All liberals are traitors’ Coulter. Most famous, perhaps, for her belief that McVeigh blew up the wrong building (which is a hoot, considering how useful the NY Times was to the right during the 1990’s).

The fact that he didn’t quadruple check anything from her pen indicates that he’s a fool or a liar. The fact that he verbally sh*t in the lap of a vet in his wheelchair indicates that he’s scum.

I don’t like Coulter any more than the next guy, but now she’s got some sources.

Assuming the sources are accurately quoted, that seems like enough for me to warrant a retraction to the claim that she “lied.”

No apology; Coulter’s column does not provide support for the claim that Cleland should not claim to be a war veteran (or indeed the stronger claim made that he is not one), that his mission was routine, or that soldiers regularly lost multiple limbs to live grenades at Fort Dix. The last seems to me to be a quite serious libel against Fort Dix.

Ted, you’ve done a neat job of parsing sentences to change their meaning but you really haven’t refuted anything Coulter wrote, much less proved she lied:

Maybe Max Cleland should stop allowing Democrats to portray him as a war hero who lost his limbs taking enemy fire on the battlefields of Vietnam.

To which Ted replied:

He is a war hero. See Silver Star.

Not one who “lost his limbs taking enemy fire on the battlefields of Vietnam” as Coulter accurately stated.

It was on a battlefield of Vietnam, as illustrated in the Coulter follow-up article.

Um no, actually the follow-up article establishes that it was after the battle and fifteen miles away from the site of the battle.

Coulter’s next sentences:

Cleland lost three limbs in an accident during a routine noncombat mission where he was about to drink beer with friends. He saw a grenade on the ground and picked it up.

To which Ted replied:

A routine noncombat mission? He was supposed to set up a relay station in the aftermath of the battle at Khe Sanh. Doesn’t sound like a good description.

Again, the battle was already over and this was fifteen miles away from the site of the battle. Coulter’s description is accurate.

Coulter’s final sentence:

He could have done that at Fort Dix.

To which Ted replied:

The crew were riding the helicopter with live weapons and live grenades. It couldn’t have happened at Fort Dix.

Since they use both live ammunition and live grenades at Fort Dix, it certainly could have.

For those wondering what Steyn himself would say in his defense, I wrote the following to Mark Steyn this afternoon (mailbox@steynonline.com0 and he and his staff were good enough to get back within the hour.

——————————
My complaint to Steyn (for the sake of context, sorry to make this comment so long by including it)

Dear Mr. Steyn:

Regarding your Washington Times Column of Feb 16, 2004, and in particular your reference therein to Ann Coulter’s “merciless but entirely accurate column” on Max Cleland:

Ann Coulter is wrong to insinuate that the injuries which led to Max Cleland becoming a triple amputee did not occur in the context of a combat mission. They did. Specifically, they occurred while Mr. Cleland was jumping out of a helicopter as part of a contingent from the 1st Air Calvary going to reinforce US troops during the siege of Khe Sahn. While it is highly likely (but not definite) that the grenade causing them was a US grenade that accidentally detached from his or one of his fellow troops’ web belts while jumping out of the helicopter (a fact Cleland has publicly acknowledged in multiple interviews), that does not lessen the sacrifice involved. Ms. Coulter has previously rightly commended President Bush for taking the risk of flying F-102’s, a plane nicknamed the “Widowmaker” for its woeful safety record, in the Texas Air National Guard when he surely could have been assigned to less risky duties. Both she and you should realize that jumping out of a helicopter in a combat zone, even if not in direct sight of the enemy, is a much greater risk, and Mr. Cleland, who volunteered first to serve on active duty and volunteered in particular for that reinforcement mission, should likewise be commended for taking that risk.

Moreover, Ms. Coulter is wrong to insinuate that the probably accidental nature of the injuries that ended Max Cleland’s tour of duty in Vietnam prove that he never showed any valor of the normally lauded sort during his entire tour of duty. Max Cleland was awarded the Silver Star, a citation “for gallantry in action against an opposing armed force” that is behind only the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross, for an incident just days earlier near Khe Sahn (an incident which by the way emphasizes the point that soldiers assigned to be radio relay operators can serve just valorously as those assigned to be riflemen). As the official citation reads:

*********************

“Captain Cleland distinguished himself by exceptionally valorous action on 4 April 1968 … during an enemy attack near Khe Sanh.

When the battalion command post came under a heavy enemy rocket and mortar attack, Captain 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, Captain Cleland organized his men into a work party to repair the battalion communications equipment, which had been damaged by enemy fire.

His gallant action is in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service, and reflects great credit upon himself, his unit and the United States Army.”

*********************

As annoying as it may be for politicians to put forth their biographies in lieu of policy positions, I believe it cannot be denied that Max Cleland has a biography worth commending.

Regards,

William Kaminsky

———————————-

Steyn’s response:

Dear Mr Kaminsky,

Putting Ann Coulter aside for one moment – she can defend her column, I’ll defend mine – what I wrote about Max Cleland’s accident was: “It wasn’t in combat. He was working on a radio relay station. He saw a grenade dropped by one of his colleagues and bent down to pick it up.”

That’s correct in all particulars. It was after the battle of Khe Sanh. He was not flying in to reinforce US troops, he was helping set up the radio station at the division assembly area some 15 miles away. As to the risks of “jumping out of the helicopter”, I’m not sure what you mean. The helicopter landed on the ground. He got out. He unpacked the equipment. Lest you doubt my version, here’s what he told Jill Zuckman of The Boston Globe in 1997. The Globe, as you know, is no right-wing attack dog:

“After unloading the equipment, Cleland climbed back into the helicopter for the ride back. But at the last minute, he decided to stay and have a beer with some friends. As the helicopter was lifting off, he shouted to the pilot that he was staying behind and jumped several feet to the ground.”

At that point, he saw the fallen grenade and bent down to pick it up.

However, the principal source for my brief paragraph on Max Cleland was not Miss Coulter or Miss Zuckman but Mr Cleland himself. I highly recommend his autobiography, Strong At The Broken Places, which is a very moving and honest account of how he feels about what happened. On page 87 of that book, he writes of his having been awarded the Soldier’s Medal “for allegedly shielding my men from the grenade blast and the Silver Star for allegedly coming to the aid of wounded troops… There were no heroics on which to base the Soldier’s Medal. And it had been my men who took care of the wounded during the rocket attack, not me. Some compassionate military men had obviously recommended me for the Silver Star, but I didn’t deserve it.”

“Allegedly shielding”, “allegedly coming to the aid”, “no heroics”, “I didn’t deserve it”: Those are Mr Cleland’s words, not mine. It is not I who disagrees with the Silver Star citation you quote, but the recipient himself. If you think what I wrote is wrong, you really ought to take it up with Max Cleland, as I got from him. I believe he can be reached through the Kerry campaign. My characterization of the events of April 1968 is no different from his, made repeatedly over three decades, from 1968 to 2002 – until he decided to allow himself to be used to impugn the National Guard record of America’s Commander-in-Chief at a time of war. As I said in my column, this is “sad”. Others can reach their own determination. But I stand by every word I wrote.

**************************

Hmmm. I think there is an argument to be made that picking up the grenade was not an “accident.” Apparently, U.S. soldiers in Vietnam (and probably everywhere, I would guess) were instructed to not leave a weapon lying around in a combat zone that the enemy could use against you. Granted, Cleland did wonder if it was his, but the correct thing to do would have been to pick it up anyway. He also was not on his way for a beer with friends. He was landing in a sort of secured “landing zone”, which was really a small flat spot on a hill surrounded by the enemy. Eleven years after the incident someone else who landed with him revealed that it was his grenade and not Cleland’s.

ah, I am retracting what I just wrote. I gleaned the above info from a number of well-recognized sources, but now I’m not sure if the info is correct or not. sorry.

Jeebus, it’s not like Cleland is one of those asses who pretends he was in combat or anything. I understand why Ann Coulter needs to paint Cleland as some sort of opportunist who is letting people think he’s a hero when he’s not – she’s clearly at war against the Democratic Party (possible exception: Zell Miller, but then again, he’s not really a Democrat), so she doesn’t care about facts, or nuance – in Ann Coulter’s world, Democrat = Liberal = Traitor.

But, for the love of Pete, Cleland is no traitor! He wasn’t shirking his duties when he lost his limbs. He wasn’t fooling around, missing from duty, or wasting the taxpayer money that was spent training him, like some people that Ann Coulter thinks are just peachy keen.

I can’t believe that anyone takes anything Ann Coulter writes seriously. Even if she accidentally mentions something that has some passing resemblence to the truth, her column is not worth the paper it’s printed on.

So one day I’m sitting in the passenger seat of this car at an intersection, and the driver asks me to look out the window (his line of sight is blocked) to tell him whether there are any cars coming. “No,” I say, truthfully, “there aren’t any cars coming.” He pulls out and immediately a semi smashes into us. When he gets out of the hospital, he came up to me and angrily said, “Why did you lie to me and tell me there wasn’t anybody coming?!” Whereupon I stuck my nose up in the air and said, “Don’t call me a liar. I didn’t lie. You asked, ‘are there any cars coming?’ and I answered ‘no.’ Technically, this was the truth. What hit us was a truck, not a car. So there.”

Similarly, by dancing all about the facts and delicately phrasing their slime so that it is technically without error, the mendacious Steyn and the unspeakable Coulter managed to produce a pair of screeds whose intent is, when read by anybody who didn’t already know the facts, to convince that reader that Max Cleland was an oaf, a fraud, and no hero at all.

What utter trash those two are.

I’m shocked that American conservatives have such an enervated patriotism. Steyn is a Canadian, so maybe he doesn’t know any better, but the fact remains that Max Cleland had three limbs blown off in the service of his country. Of course many American conservatives don’t think he is, because he’s in league with their real enemy, the Democratic party.

Apparently, Mr. Steyn is unfamiliar with the concept of ‘humility’.

Just saying it was 15 miles from “the site of the battle” tells us nothing as to how dangerous the place was.

It tells us that it was not, contrary to the claims of some, a battlefield, which is the only relevant consideration to the issue at hand.

Cleland lost three limbs in an accident during a routine noncombat mission where he was about to drink beer with friends. He saw a grenade on the ground and picked it up. He could have done that at Fort Dix. In fact, Cleland could have dropped a grenade on his foot as a National Guardsman – or what Cleland sneeringly calls “weekend warriors.”

If you parse it out, this is accurate, although it is written to give the impression that Cleland “dropped a grenade on his foot”, which is not in fact the case. (Cleland learned years after the fact that it was another soldier’s grenade, and wrote about the discovery in his memoirs.) If it’s not designed to give that impression, it’s simply a non sequitur, something like writing, “Although Cpl. Smith was wounded by friendly fire in Kuwait, he could have slipped and broken his neck while vacationing in Australia.” Yes, but what’s the relevance?

Coulter also writes, “Indeed, if Cleland had dropped a grenade on himself at Fort Dix rather than in Vietnam, he would never have been a U.S. senator in the first place,” which seems to pass outside the bounds of accuracy. (Would you accept the accuracy of the sentence “Indeed, if young George Bush had been convicted of cocaine possession, rather than using his father’s connections to hush up the story, he would never have risen to the Presidency”?) Neither case is true, and it’s being presented as though one is. There is probably some Latinate term for this contrapositive flogging that one of the big-brained professors knows.

So I would say that Steyn is wrong about the accuracy of Coulter’s piece, although it’s less packed with obvious lies than some things she’s written.

Conservative Postmodernists parse the bejaysus out of sentences and selectively spin the historical record in ways that compel open-mouthed awe. Thanks to them, we can confidently say that during the Vietnam war, as near as makes no odds, Max Cleland embarrassingly blew himself up in New Jersey while at about the same time, to all intents and purposes, George W. Bush nobly defended his country as a fighter pilot.

I still maintain it is wrong even to be discussing a Coulter comment. Let us remind ourselves:

“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.”

Now you can either say (a) she means this, in which case I hope to most people anything else she has to say is beyond the pale (was OBL’s only crime to target the WTC, not the NYT building too?) or (b) she is joking, and you shouldn’t take her seriously, which means that everything she says is a joke, and shouldn’t be taken seriously.

But people like Mark ‘landslide’ Steyn do. Well I’d ignore them too. Everyone else does.

I think Sebastian calls it right.

Though how Steyn (Coulter’s a viscious fool so no surprise there) could even remotely quibble about the matter is fantastic. I have no doubt that Steyn would consider himself quite herioic to have been in, say, Iraq and even gotten a blister.

P.S. I wonder what these people would think of a column in which I laugh at Michael Kelly for dying because of a self-inflicted blood clot (he developed the clot after spending hours at a time in a very cramped spot from which he did his reporting). He was warned by a doctor to stop these rides, but continued and died.
Ha Ha Ha.

P.P.S. This business about the “accuracy” of Coulter’s claim is a dodge. She is denigrating Cleland’s service—THAT is the problem.

For a nice bunch of people, CT has acquired some of the creepiest commentators.

Are Thorley, Agnos, Mandarin, Tom McMahon and Ayjay in the real world?

They act like we’re arguing about some kind of liability suit. We aren’t; we’re arguing about a smear which is not well based in fact. The question isn’t to figure out exactly HOW factually inaccurate the smear is.

Coulter slimed a Silver Star-winning triple amputee — who happens to be a Democrat –because his wounds weren’t the result of enemy fire or in a battle zone, and Steyn picks up on it.

To me the attempt at smearing is the issue, not the details of fact. Once the facts are in, the smear looks a bit worse than it did at first (the Silver Start was not mentioned by Coulter, nor the fact that they were returning from a battle zone), but the the smear itself should be the issue.

The reason live ammunition was being carried was because they were returning from the war zone. End of story.

Cleland was a very conservative Democrat. There’s absolutely no one who is safe from the Republican attack bots. They really have no sense of decency or shame at all.

If I were CT I would ban every one of the creepy commentator sons-of-bitches I mentioned above. But I’m not.

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.

That it’s possible for someone to suffer an injury like Cleland’s in the course of National Guard service (assuming he shows up), doesn’t make it anything like “routine” in that context. It’s just not true that National Guard service involves anything on the same order of risk, even confining things to categories of injury possible in the course of National Guard service. It’s absurd to ignore that Cleland’s injury is profoundly connected with the order of risk he took, as Coulter does, only because the only ingredients strictly required to duplicate that injury are “young men and weapons.”

Sheesh, I hope she shatters her pelvis.

If I were CT I would ban every one of the creepy commentator sons-of-bitches I mentioned above. But I’m not.

Always the apparatchik, never the kommissar. Poor little Zizka.

The question isn’t to figure out exactly HOW factually inaccurate the smear is.

I see. From the beginning we know it’s a smear, so we needn’t trouble ourselves whether it’s true. Sentence first, verdict afterwards.

Actually, I’m with S. Holsclaw — inclined to cut Cleland some slack, considering what he’s been through.

But can we please stop using his Silver Star as evidence that he’s a “war hero”? Apparently the guy himself says in his autobiography that he didn’t deserve the medal. For those of you who still know how to read, the quote can be located above, in Steyn’s response to Wm. Kaminsky.

You haven’t looked at the quote, have you, jon h? Never mind. The righteous aren’t required to do their homework.

The NBC correspondent who died of a blood clot was David Bloom.

Isn’t the question, would Coulter have fallen upon that grenade? Or Steyn? Or Coulter’s sex god, Cheney — who was too busy spying upon college radicals, according to the latest New Yorker article about Halliburton, to bother to go to Vietnam? Do they really think the choice was not falling on it, and letting his buddies get wasted?

Well, no need to answer that. We know what the ethos of the right is all about. I got mine, and you can piss off.

Really, there isn’t a need to parse this too closely — I am quite happy to see conservatives go into battle claiming that Bush wasn’t AWOL, because he got his teeth done on taxpayer money in Birmingham, and claiming further that the Dems are scum, because one of their guys got his limbs blown off by his own grenade a big fifteen miles from the site of the last battle he was in.

Please, Please, let this theme be taken up by more Right wing columnists, Republican party chairmen, and big Newt Gingrich himself. While I don’t think Republicans are monsters, when they insist on caricaturing themselves as such during an election year, I can’t say I’m too unhappy about it. This is definitely how I want to see the preliminaries to the 2004 election play themselves out!

Roger has the right take on this.
PLEASE let the wingnuts continue these attacks—let’s not hide the right wing ugliness from the voters.

Cleland should take off the flight suit, he’s been found out.

Well, the actual words (heck, this is like discussing M. Dowd, only worse):

And yet 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.

Doesn’t seem to say more than Cleland had commitment and bravery, which are a part of the military.

From there, people are blinded by the fact that “the Colt” is what she is, into all sorts of things. In spite of the facts.

So … is the Colt right when she indicates that “commitment and bravery: describe Cleland? Probably.

Is she right that Cleland was really sticking around to be with friends and have an excuse to crack a cold beer with them? Probably (is that his military duty? Don’t most guys wish it was their duty to drink a beer with friends. Must be how GW developed his serious alcoholism problem, just doing his duty).

Is this a bad time to break the ban on discussing either “the Colt” or “the Dowdy one”? Probably that too.

There are two things going on.

One, the Colt wrote a snarky column, which is what she does as a partisan.

Two, she took an implied shot as a part of that column on someone who seems like a pretty honorably guy, all in all, even if he got injured in an accident rather than by someone’s intent (though a hideous accident is a hideous accident).

At least he didn’t get hurt when a nuclear weapon went off in the sky over the theatre following the Tet mess.

But seriously …

That’s correct in all particulars. It was after the battle of Khe Sanh. He was not flying in to reinforce US troops, he was helping set up the radio station at the division assembly area some 15 miles away. As to the risks of “jumping out of the helicopter”, I’m not sure what you mean. The helicopter landed on the ground. He got out. He unpacked the equipment. Lest you doubt my version, here’s what he told Jill Zuckman of The Boston Globe in 1997. The Globe, as you know, is no right-wing attack dog:

“Allegedly shielding”, “allegedly coming to the aid”, “no heroics”, “I didn’t deserve it”: Those are Mr Cleland’s words, not mine. It is not I who disagrees with the Silver Star citation you quote, but the recipient himself. If you think what I wrote is wrong, you really ought to take it up with Max Cleland, as I got from him. I believe he can be reached through the Kerry campaign. My characterization of the events of April 1968 is no different from his, made repeatedly over three decades, from 1968 to 2002 – until he decided to allow himself to be used to impugn the National Guard record of America’s Commander-in-Chief at a time of war. As I said in my column, this is “sad”. Others can reach their own determination. But I stand by every word I wrote.

Hey, every hack other than Dowd can be right once in a while.

Ann Coulter writes:

“Cleland wore the uniform, he was in Vietnam, and he has shown courage by going on to lead a productive life. But he didn’t ‘give his limbs for his country,’ or leave them ‘on the battlefield.’ There was no bravery involved in dropping a grenade on himself with no enemy troops in sight. ”

Okay, it was an accident — but servicemen are constantly dying in peacetime training accidents. And folks like Dwight Eisenhower were far from “battlefields” as they served. Should we scrutinize their service?

Democrats on the Bush AWOL thing, Coulter on Cleland, media selling ads covering all of it — it’s all part of the same scorched earth political crap.

You’re just going to have to insert a long stream of invective here for my reaction to this garbage.

I hold no brief for Mark Steyn — I rarely read him and am not often amused when I do — but I made the mistake of clicking on Greg’s weblog link and found myself entirely on Steyn’s side in the following exchange…

Steyn (on the Iranian government’s announcement that it would accept earthquake aid from anyone, including the U.S., save Israel): “If it’s a choice between being pulled out from under a collapsed roof by a Jew or dying down there, the government would rather you died.”

Greg: “Hmmm. He might be right, but I doubt this was a matter of simple prejudice or racism. After all, there are surely Jews among the other rescue teams that have been sent in. Besides which, if Iran’s Muslims were really primitive theocrats they would have no such objection to Jews, since historically Muslims respected Jews and Christians as fellow ‘People of the Book’.”

Ha, ha. I had to reread that last sentence several times to confirm that someone would actually write such ignorant nonsense with a straight face!

“an entirely excremental display”

Entirely?!? Every word was complete crap? None of it was true? Or shouldn’t have been said, even if true?? Or are you a pathetic liar???

As for Steyn being wrong on the electoral count, whatever, he is rarely wrong, he is funny because he is smart. Ann is just pissed off because people are trying to shut her up by shunning her, using social pressure, rather than addressing her arguments.

You guys can’t see it, and I don’t really care if you do, but Coulter and Steyn kicked your collective butts this time.

Yeah, ZJO, except your ‘aquaintance’ is unsourceable.
I demand as much proof for your claim as people are clamboring for Bush’s claim.
That’s the thing with the Dems. Long on claims, short on sources.

Seriously, where do these slime come from? Someone must have linked.

Liam – no need to travel so far to get a copy – it sells well enough on Amazon too (rank: 21,545 c/w The Memoirs of Richard Nixon – rank: 123,812.) But, just out of interest, what was it selling like in Tehran – hotcakes? Will you be doing a follow up survey – pls let us know the results.

Wbb,

Hmm, took your advice but couldn’t find the “Protocols” on Amazon. Maybe they’re just out of stock. But if you have an extra copy…

Back the truck up.

Cleland has become a mascot for Kerry’s Vietnam theme. He and Kerry were in Vietnam and based on this common experience they have derided the credibility of anyone from Howard Dean to GWB. They have persistently taunted their opponents in a manner that Kerry had denounced in 1992 when something like it was aimed at Clinton.

This time Kerry can point to a man whose missing limbs become a prop for what exactly? It is too much a ploy for bogus sympathy rather than respect of a war hero. That Cleland goes along with it is a mystery to me.

Are we to pity him? Are we to admire him for being used like this? What is the message about Kerry that we are to take from this theater?

By Kerry’s weekend Press Release and letter to President Bush, it seems, we are to pretend that their time in Vietnam ought to shield them from criticismm on the issues. Or that they can resort to defensive prickliness at the mere challenge to their stance on national security and defense.

They like the Vietnam motify only so far as it permits them to frame the discussion. And that discredits them and is a disservice to the country.

Although Coulter and Steyn punctured this pretense of Kerry and Cleland, there’s not much point in increasing the granularity of honorable service. If not for a change in mission, Kerry and Cleland would not have seen anything close to combat; likewise with GWB and thousands of others.

How does one defend the political theater of Cleland’s criticisms of veterans (about 2/3rds during the Vietnam war) who didn’t seen combat? To say that combat made him superior in current political judgment?

And whatabout Kerry’s Vietnam theme? To say that his was a superior example of presidential character?

The tactical distraction is utter nonsense and its primary purpose is to provoke mud-slinging. And the overall goal is make people get fed-up with Kerry’s questionable record during the Vietnam War.

The following is taken from Steyn’s website. You’ll find that Mr. Steyn is more than willing (in fact, eager) to take on any questions you may have about his research or fact-finding. That is what makes him different from most opinion columnists like Paul Krugman or Ann Coulter.

THE CHICKEN-SHIT CHICKEN-HAWK PANTS-WETTING PANTS-SHITTING PUTRID LYING SCUMBAG REPLIES: It’s not I who disputed the official record, but Max Cleland. In his autobiography, Strong At The Broken Places, a very moving and sincere account of how he feels about what happened, Cleland writes of his having been awarded the Soldier’s Medal “for allegedly shielding my men from the grenade blast and the Silver Star for allegedly coming to the aid of wounded troops… There were no heroics on which to base the Soldier’s Medal. And it had been my men who took care of the wounded during the rocket attack, not me. Some compassionate military men had obviously recommended me for the Silver Star, but I didn’t deserve it.”

“Allegedly shielding”, “allegedly coming to the aid”, “no heroics”, “I didn’t deserve it”: Those are Max Cleland’s words, not mine. He makes plain what happened: that his “compassionate” comrades all the way up the chain decided retrospectively to enhance the events of four days earlier. What they did was understandable, but Max Cleland was honest enough with himself to acknowledge the truth. My characterization of the events of April 1968 is no different from his, made repeatedly over three decades, from 1968 to 2002 – until he decided to allow himself to be used to impugn the National Guard record of America’s Commander-in-Chief at a time of war. As I said last week, this is “sad”.

Cleland disagrees with Bush’s strategy on this war: that’s why he lost his seat in Georgia – because instead of taking homeland security seriously he wanted to prioritize union featherbedding in the new department. That’s his right. But let him fight Bush on the war Bush is fighting, not the last one.

Maybe it will work. Maybe John Kerry’s four months in Vietnam are more important than his remarkable two-decade lack of legislative accomplishment. But, if you think what I wrote last week is wrong, you really ought to take it up with Mr Cleland. I got it from him.