From: Bart (129.171.32.13)
Subject: Ladies and Gentleman, Back by Popular Demand, The Republican Chickenhawk Squad
Date: August 16, 2004 at 8:48 am PST
Chickenhawk n. A person enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it; particularly when that enthusiasm is undimmed by personal experience with war; most emphatically when that lack of experience came in spite of ample opportunity in that person’s youth. CHICKENHAWK HEADQUARTERS
Name: George W. Bush (R-TX)
Born: 1946
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: You know when a guy walks away from a National Guard obligation during wartime and gets away with it, he must come from "a good family." Not that his daddy had anything to do with his getting a Guard slot in the first place - oh, no ... Name: Richard "Dick" Cheney (R-WY)
Born: 1942
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Says he had "other priorities." You bet he had other priorities. Imagine how early in life you must begin scheming to get away with what this guy has. He was too busy thinking about Halliburton to go fight Charlie. Name: I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Born: 1950±
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby is Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff. He’s had a string of no-doubt well-paying government jobs in State and Defense. He’s also practiced law. In fact, he was Marc Rich’s lawyer for years. Yes — the Marc Rich whose pardon from President Clinton was excoriated by so many high and mighty Republicans. Maybe if Scooter had been a better lawyer, his client wouldn’t have needed that pardon. Speaking of legal questions, “Scooter” is alleged by some to have traded energy stocks while helping his buddy Dick Cheney cook up a new energy policy in secret. He’s also suspected of having inserted the bogus “Niger yellowcake” reference into the President’s State of the Union address. As if all that weren’t enough, he’s also a top suspect in the outing of CIA operative Valeria Plame. Clearly “Scooter” is a ballsy kind of guy, so it’s a complete mystery to us why, when he graduated from Phillips Andover in 1968, he didn’t enlist in the Marines or go Airborne instead of going to Yale. Name: Karl Rove
Born: 1950
Employer: Baal
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: This little cherub was born on Christmas Day, 1950. Karl “Bush’s Brain” Rove ran George W.’s campaign, right down to the tiny detail of deciding Bush was going to run. The hardest part was convincing a horde of Republican skeptics that it could be done. He is said to have said of his boss, he’s "the kind of candidate and officeholder political hacks like me wait a lifetime to be associated with." Now Karl’s Senior White House advisor. If he really is “Bush’s Brain,” and if the fondest wishes of former US Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV come true, one fine day Karl will be “frogmarched out of the White House in mandcuffs.” Will history record that event as “Bush’s Lobotomy?”
Name: Donald "The Don" Rumsfeld
Born: 1932
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Korea
Notes: When the shooting started in Korea Rummy here was either 18, or about to turn 18. Not to worry for him, though — he spent the war at Princeton, wearing a ROTC uniform. Once the war was over he flew jets for the Navy for a few years. Defenders of Rumsfeld will say he’s no chickenhawk — he served, and it’s not his fault the war ended before he got his commission. To which others answer, “plenty of farmers and mechanics and kids just out of high school served. Anyone as full of whatever that stuffing in him is, could have tried out for a battlefield commission.”
Name: Paul Wolfowitz
Born: 1943
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Deputy Secretary for Defense - yet another Bush administration man in the Pentagon who has no idea what it's like to wear a uniform. He got a BA at Cornell in 1965. Maybe if we'd had a guy as bright as he thinks he is in Vietnam, it would have turned out differently.
THE BARKING HEAD BRIGADE
Name: William "Bill" Bennett
Born: 1943
Employer: Empower America
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Bill's occupation used to be "public scold," but since his gambling habit was exposed, he's a little less noisy on that front. Bill's a triple-crown winner as a former bureaucrat, a propagandist, and a barking head. (All barking heads are propagandists, but not all propagandists are barking heads.) Name: Ann Coulter
Conflict Avoided: Desert Storm
Notes: Critics will howl that a woman can’t be a chickenhawk. In Ann Coulter’s case, that doesn’t matter; anyone with her level of bellicosity deserves to be held to a higher standard.
Name: Frank Gaffney
Born: 1953
Employer: Indeterminate
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Frank here is a very clever boy. Built a thing called the Center for Security Policy, which apparently keeps him in nice suits so he will look good in front of the TV cameras, which can't seem to get enough of him. As far as we can tell, Frank is a freelance salesman for the defense industry who is paid by an elaborately circuitous process. For all his obsession with the military, it's funny he never served.
Name: Rep. Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich (R-GA)
Born: June 17, 1943
Employer: Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: A virtuoso in the art of hypocrisy, the former Speaker of the House now claims the Vietnam War was a splendid idea, but at the time he opposed going himself. Newtie also speaks highly of morality, but as a serial adulterer he doesn’t want to get too close to it himself. Name: Sean Hannity
Born: December, 1961
Employer: Rupert Murdoch
Conflict Avoided: Desert Storm
Notes: Plenty of guys his age were in Desert Storm - what's his excuse? Name: David Limbaugh
Born: December 11, 1952
Employer: newspapers with low standards
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: David's no fool - he stayed in school! Straight from high school to college in '71, where he stayed 'till '75, when the war was safely over. Poly sci major, wouldn't you know? The least annoying of the Limbaugh brothers, but only because he's more obscure. Name: Rush Limbaugh
Born: 1951
Employer: Yack Radio
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Where to begin ... a joke about the Hindenburg? No, let's go right to the reason he had to stay home from the war - the world's most famous anal cyst. He's denied it, but www.snopes.com, the Urban Legends Reference Pages, has got the goods on him. Name: William "Bill" O'Reilly
Born: 1949
Employer: Rupert Murdoch
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Bill O’Reilly loves to come off as a straight-talking, blue-collar kind of guy. Funny, a lot of guys who fit that description and graduated high school the same year he did - 1967 - went straight to Vietnam. Not our Bill - he went to college. And he didn’t just go to college, he spent his junior year, 1969-1970, in London. He graduated in 1971, briefly exposing him to the draft again, but Bill was miraculously spared. Name: Michael Reagan
Born: March 18, 1946
Employer: Yack Radio
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: What are the odds anyone would know who he is if everybody didn't know who his daddy was? What are the odds he would have escaped the draft if his name had been Manual Rodriguez? Name: Michael Savage
Born: Unk.
Employer: UNK.
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: We're not sure if this frothing lunatic is still on the air. Didn't he get canned for saying all gays should contract AIDS and die? If only he could have channeled all that animosity against Ho Chi Minh - we'd be selling Big Macs in Vietnam today! Name: Rep. Joseph "Joe" Scarborough (R-FL)
Born: April 9, 1963
Employer: MSNBC
Conflict Avoided: Desert Storm
Notes: A former Republican congresman (1995-2002) turned MSNBC motormouth, Joe qualifies as a politician and a barking head. Where were you during Desert Storm, pal? BUREAUCRATIC BATTALION Name: Spencer Abraham
Born: 1952
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Our Secretary of Energy was formerly the Senator from Detroit. In his failed run for re-election the auto industry gave him ,000 - more than it gave any other senatorial candidate. Now, there’s a guy who’s eager to promote alternative energy sources! Couldn’t muster up the gumption to take on Uncle Ho, though. Name: Eliot Abrams
Born: 1948
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: T aptant Secretary of State, Elliott Abrams now holds a National Security Council staff position. This despite widespread feeling that he ought to be in jail somewhere. After all, he was convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran/Contra affair. Name: Gary Bauer
Born: 1946
Employer: ouramericanvalues.org
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: A reliable cog in the Republican machine, a bureaucrat under Reagan, and later a preposterous candidate for president, Gary Bauer isn’t particularly combative - he’s no Ann Coulter. Diminutive and cherubic even in his fifties, he’s hardly the sort of recruit a drill sargent would see as a potential soldier. Which is just as well, because when he otherwise would have qualified for the Vietnam draft, he had a “vague physical problem” that got him a 1-Y draft classification - “draft only if the Canadians are crossing the border shooting.”
Name: John Bolton
Born: 1948
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Let’s see - he’s the Bush administration’s man for arms control, and he opposed the Anti-ABM treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Got his start at State with help from Jesse Helms. Bolton had previously helped Helms get around campaign finance limits. For all his hawkish ways, he never found his way to Vietnam, though.
Name: Andrew "Andy" Card
Born: May 10, 1947
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Andy, as he likes to be called, used to be “the automotive industry’s main voice.” As such, he “lobbied the U.S. government against stricter fuel emissions standards.” Lobbying for the Chamber of Commerce, he “testified before Congress against the ‘Passengers' Bill of Rights.’” He got paid well enough for these services to the (business) community to be able to afford "nearly ,000 in campaign contributions in 1999-2000, including 1,000 each to fellow members of the new administration, John Ashcroft and Spencer Abraham, for their ultimately unsuccessful senate bids.” These days, of course, he’s George’s Chief of Staff. And - oh, yes - he’s a chickenhawk. (Source: Center for Responsive Politics.) Name: Richard "Dick" Cheney (R-WY)
Born: 1942
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Says he had "other priorities." You bet he had other priorities. Imagine how early in life you must begin scheming to get away with what this guy has. He was too busy thinking about Halliburton to go fight Charlie. Name: William "Bill" Bennett
Born: 1943
Employer: Empower America
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Bill's occupation used to be "public scold," but since his gambling habit was exposed, he's a little less noisy on that front. Bill's a triple-crown winner as a former bureaucrat, a propagandist, and a barking head. (All barking heads are propagandists, but not all propagandists are barking heads.) Name: Don Evans
Born: 1946
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: The Secretary of Commerce has known George W. Bush from the old days in the oil industry. Evans raised over million for Bush's presedential selection. Like his pal, George, Don Evans was otherwise occupied when his country needed him to fight the 'Cong. Name: Frank Gaffney
Born: 1953
Employer: Indeterminate
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Frank here is a very clever boy. Built a thing called the Center for Security Policy, which apparently keeps him in nice suits so he will look good in front of the TV cameras, which can't seem to get enough of him. As far as we can tell, Frank is a freelance salesman for the defense industry who is paid by an elaborately circuitous process. For all his obsession with the military, it's funny he never served. Name: Asa Hutchinson
Born: 1950
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Our present Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security has a long career of public service. Prior to his present task of “coordinating the enforcement activities of our borders, waterways, transportation and immigration systems,” he was “Drug Tsar.” We all know how well that went. He was picked for that position while serving as a congressman from Arkansas, where he was originally plucked from obscurity as a rural lawyer by Ronald Reagan. Oddly enough, the trail of Hutchinson’s public service stops short of Vietnam. Name: I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Born: 1950±
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby is Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff. He’s had a string of no-doubt well-paying government jobs in State and Defense. He’s also practiced law. In fact, he was Marc Rich’s lawyer for years. Yes — the Marc Rich whose pardon from President Clinton was excoriated by so many high and mighty Republicans. Maybe if Scooter had been a better lawyer, his client wouldn’t have needed that pardon. Speaking of legal questions, “Scooter” is alleged by some to have traded energy stocks while helping his buddy Dick Cheney cook up a new energy policy in secret. He’s also suspected of having inserted the bogus “Niger yellowcake” reference into the President’s State of the Union address. As if all that weren’t enough, he’s also a top suspect in the outing of CIA operative Valeria Plame. Clearly “Scooter” is a ballsy kind of guy, so it’s a complete mystery to us why, when he graduated from Phillips Andover in 1968, he didn’t enlist in the Marines or go Airborne instead of going to Yale. Name: Richard Perle
Born: 1941
Employer: Impossible to say for sure
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Along with Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle is one of the chief architects of the present debacle in Iraq. Nicknamed “The Prince of Darkness,” he was chairman of the Defense Policy Board. He got demoted to board member after an ethics flap. Space does not permit even an index to the reasons why this man should not be trusted. Name: Donald "The Don" Rumsfeld
Born: 1932
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Korea
Notes: When the shooting started in Korea Rummy here was either 18, or about to turn 18. Not to worry for him, though — he spent the war at Princeton, wearing a ROTC uniform. Once the war was over he flew jets for the Navy for a few years. Defenders of Rumsfeld will say he’s no chickenhawk — he served, and it’s not his fault the war ended before he got his commission. To which others answer, “plenty of farmers and mechanics and kids just out of high school served. Anyone as full of whatever that stuffing in him is, could have tried out for a battlefield commission.” Name: Paul Wolfowitz
Born: 1943
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Deputy Secretary for Defense - yet another Bush administration man in the Pentagon who has no idea what it's like to wear a uniform. He got a BA at Cornell in 1965. Maybe if we'd had a guy as bright as he thinks he is in Vietnam, it would have turned out differently.
CHAPLAIN CORPS
Name: Rev. Jerry Falwell
Born: 1933
Employer: Thomas Road Baptist Church
Conflict Avoided: Korea, Peacetime Draft
Notes: Jerry could probably have served in Korea - other kids his age did. He certainly could have been drafted into the peacetime Army. He called the members of his '70's cult the Moral Majority "soldiers of morality." For all his loathing of communism, it's a pity he didn't get to kill a few when he was young. Name: Dr. Marion "Pat" Robertson
Born: 1930
Employer: Christian Broadcasting Network
Conflict Avoided: Korea
Notes: Dr. Pat claimed in his biography to have "seen combat in Korea. He was in Korea in uniform briefly, but his daddy the Congressman got his reassigned to Japan. His picture belongs in the dictionary next to "pious fraud." Just recently declared that the State Department ought to get nuked, but has yet to be indicted for uttering a terrorist statement. POLITICIANS PLATOON Name: George W. Bush (R-TX)
Born: 1946
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: You know when a guy walks away from a National Guard obligation during wartime and gets away with it, he must come from "a good family." Not that his daddy had anything to do with his getting a Guard slot in the first place - oh, no ... Name: Richard "Dick" Cheney (R-WY)
Born: 1942
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Says he had "other priorities." You bet he had other priorities. Imagine how early in life you must begin scheming to get away with what this guy has. He was too busy thinking about Halliburton to go fight Charlie. Name: Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD)
Born: June 3, 1926
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: WWII
Notes: Nominated as a chickenhawk by a constituent, Roscoe Bartlett brings to his job on the House Armed Services committee a mind that’s unbiased and unprejudiced — though he had turned 18 by D-Day, when there was still plenty of opportunity to become a bona fide member of the Greatest Generation©, Roscoe let the war go by without putting on a uniform. We don’t know why; perhaps you could ask him. Name: Rep. Charlie Bass (R-NH)
Born: January 8, 1952
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: When your old man's U.S. Representative Perkins Bass (2nd District, NH, 1955-1962), and your grandfather's Governor Robert T. Bass (NH, 1911-1913), chances are slim you'll ever get called "Private Bass," even if you are born in 1952. Name: Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO)
Born: January 10, 1950
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: The Congressman from Missouri and House Majority Whip who’s so concerned about defending America that offered an amendment to the law creating the Homeland Security department that would have made it tougher to sell cigarettes over the ‘Net. It wouldn’t have helped the whole country, but the part of it that belongs to Phillip Morris would have benefited. Born just about the right time for Vietnam, somehow Blunt was at Southwest Baptist University when he could have been keeping the ‘Cong out of Chillicothe, MO. Name: Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL)
Born: 1953
Employer: Florida Taxpayers
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: When Jeb was younger he managed to avoid fighting for democracy in Vietnam. When his older brother's future job was on the line, though, he had no trouble fighting democracy. Name: Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
Born: 1943
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: There are chickenhawks, and then there are chickenhawks. Saxby Chambliss is a chickenhawk supreme. He got himself elected to the Senate by casting aspersions on the patriotism of the incumbent, Democrat Max Cleland. Cleland lost three limbs serving his country in Vietnam. Saxby Chambliss was unable to serve because of his bad knees, but somehow is able to totter along as a recreational runner. Name: Rep. Tom "The Exterminator" DeLay (R-TX)
Born: April 8, 1947
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: One of our most-nominated chickenhawks, Mr. DeLay has said he wanted to serve in Vietnam, but was unable to since all the positions had been taken by blacks and hispanics. We suspect there might be someone in Iraq today who would be willing to trade places with Mr. DeLay ... Name: Rep. Charles Gwynne Douglas, III (R-NH)
Born: Dec. 2, 1942
Employer: Was U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Not so notable for bellicosity, but he makes up for it with fervid Republican zeal. Graduated from UNH in 1965, when the draft was pretty strong, but went straight to BU Law. Got out of there in 1968, when it was even stronger. No problem - Ol’ Chuck was “admitted to the bar in 1968 and commenced practice in Manchester, N.H., 1970-1974,” according to an unimpeachable source. How’s he manage to avoid Vietnam? According to that same source, http://bioguide.congress.gov, the future Congressman (NH, 2nd District, 1989-1991) was a “[C]olonel, New Hampshire Army National Guard, 1968 to present.” Name: Rep. Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich (R-GA)
Born: June 17, 1943
Employer: Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: A virtuoso in the art of hypocrisy, the former Speaker of the House now claims the Vietnam War was a splendid idea, but at the time he opposed going himself. Newtie also speaks highly of morality, but as a serial adulterer he doesn’t want to get too close to it himself.
Name: Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH)
Born: February 14, 1947
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayeer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Another member of New Hampshire’s hereditary political aristocracy (see also: Charlie Bass and John Sununu) Judd’s daddy was Governor of New Hampshire from 1953 to 1955. Young Judd graduated from Columbia in ‘69 and apparently went straight to BU Law until the coast was clear. For good measure, he got written up for bad knees. They weren’t so bad he couldn’t spend half his term as Governor on the ski slopes.
Name: Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL)
Born: January 2, 1942
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Dennis wasn't able to serve in the Army in Vietnam because his knees weren't up to it. He did OK as a wrestler in college, though.
Name: Sen. Chester Trent Lott (R-MS)
Born: October 9, 1941
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: We're not sure why Trent didn't serve. Maybe he didn't think he'd look good in Army green. He was a cheerleader in college instead. Wonder how he looked in a cheerleader's uniform?
Name: Sen. Don Nickles (R-OK)
Born: December 6, 1948
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Another National Guard-type Republican. It must be noted that service in the Guard these days is vastly different from what it was in the Vietnam era. When Don went in in 1970, it was a safe slot. Thanks to guys like Don, that's no longer true.
Name: Sen. J. Danforth "Dan" Quayle (R-IN)
Born: February 4, 1947
Employer: "investment firm in Phoenix" - Dan Quayle Museum
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: The Indiana National Guard was a nice safe place for young Dan during the Vietnam era. Good thing he was from "a good family" - too good to waste their boy in a war.
Name: Gov. Marc Racicot (R-MT)
Born: July 24, 1948
Employer: The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Marc got a BA in 1970, and immediately took the grad school route. Once the war was safely over he went in the service as an Army lawyer. After his gig as governor was up, he got the top spot at the RNC, likely as a reward for helping W. grab Florida.
Name: Rep. Joseph "Joe" Scarborough (R-FL)
Born: April 9, 1963
Employer: MSNBC
Conflict Avoided: Desert Storm
Notes: A former Republican congresman (1995-2002) turned MSNBC motormouth, Joe qualifies as a politician and a barking head. Where were you during Desert Storm, pal?
Name: Gov. Meldrim "Mel" Thomson (R-Orford)
Born: March 8, 1929
Employer: His Daddy's Publishing Co, Inc.
Conflict Avoided: Korea
Notes: Meldrim Thomson, New Hampshire’s quintessential Goofy Governor, once sought to arm the state’s National Guard with nuclear weapons. Some thought he wanted nukes to blast the Clamshell Alliance out of the way, so his pals at PSNH could build the Seabrook nuclear power plant. You might think that such a notoriously bellicose individual, twenty-one years old when the Reds crossed the line in Korea, might have managed to get into the fight - but you would be wrong.
PROPAGANDA PLATOON
Name: Ken "Cakewalk" Adelman
Born: Unk.
Employer: Was U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: “I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk.” - Washington Post, February 13, 2002
Name: Roger Ailes
Born: May 15, 1940
Employer: Rupert Murdoch
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: The head honcho of Fox "News." Some might say that Ailes is too old to excoriate for failing to fight the 'Cong, since he was about 24 when the Gulf of Tonkin happened. As Tom Rohde wrote us, "My birthday is June 7, 1940 and I was drafted and served in Vietnam." Besides, this is the guy whose commercials sold Richard Nixon to the American public - and his career went straight downhill from there! Dante is working on a sequel to "The Inferno" in order to encompass a suitable fate for this chickenhawk.
Name: William "Bill" Bennett
Born: 1943
Employer: Empower America
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Bill's occupation used to be "public scold," but since his gambling habit was exposed, he's a little less noisy on that front. Bill's a triple-crown winner as a former bureaucrat, a propagandist, and a barking head. (All barking heads are propagandists, but not all propagandists are barking heads.)
Name: Neal Boortz
Born: April 6, 1945
Employer: Yack Radio
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Mr. Boortz, or, as he likes to be called, "The High Priest of the Church of the Painful Truth," for all his bluster, failed to muster during the 'Nam. His online bio blithely ignores the war. Apparently his local draft board ignored him. Wonder how that happened?
Name: Rev. Jerry Falwell
Born: 1933
Employer: Thomas Road Baptist Church
Conflict Avoided: Korea, Peacetime Draft
Notes: Jerry could probably have served in Korea - other kids his age did. He certainly could have been drafted into the peacetime Army. He called the members of his '70's cult the Moral Majority "soldiers of morality." For all his loathing of communism, it's a pity he didn't get to kill a few when he was young.
Name: James "Jim" Finnegan
Born: August 1, 1930
Employer: William "Bill" Loeb
Conflict Avoided: Korea
Notes: Next to God himself - sorry, we mean William Loeb - Jim Finnegan probably wielded the most feared editorial pen in the Granite State. Oddly enough for a guy born in 1930, he never got around to serving in Korea.
Name: Frank Gaffney
Born: 1953
Employer: Indeterminate
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Frank here is a very clever boy. Built a thing called the Center for Security Policy, which apparently keeps him in nice suits so he will look good in front of the TV cameras, which can't seem to get enough of him. As far as we can tell, Frank is a freelance salesman for the defense industry who is paid by an elaborately circuitous process. For all his obsession with the military, it's funny he never served.
Name: Rep. Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich (R-GA)
Born: June 17, 1943
Employer: Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: A virtuoso in the art of hypocrisy, the former Speaker of the House now claims the Vietnam War was a splendid idea, but at the time he opposed going himself. Newtie also speaks highly of morality, but as a serial adulterer he doesn’t want to get too close to it himself.
Name: Lee Greenwood
Born: Unk.
Employer: the Record Racket
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: He gets all het up about how great the troops are, but being one himself would have put the kibosh on his Vegas lounge act.
Name: Sean Hannity
Born: December, 1961
Employer: Rupert Murdoch
Conflict Avoided: Desert Storm
Notes: Plenty of guys his age were in Desert Storm - what's his excuse?
Name: Brit Hume
Born: 1943
Employer: Rupert Murdoch
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Master of the curled lip, stiff as a frozen haddock, Hume walks point for Rupert Murdoch every weekday from 6 to 7 pm. You might call him the Prime Time Propagandist.
Name: William "Bill" Kristol
Born: 1953 +/-
Employer: The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: The son of the “godfather of neoconservatism,” he’s smooth talker, but he never walked the walk in the glorious crusade against Charlie. Bill - where were ya?
Name: Richard "Dick" Lessner
Born: Unk.
Employer: www.american-renewal.org
ex-Manchester (NH) Union-Leader
Conflict Avoided: Vietnm
Notes: Richard “Dick” Lessner did a brief but hilarious stint as Jim Finnegan’s successor at the Manchester Union Leader (he got canned after a column poking fun at French Canadians blew up in his face). Lessner’s writing style always reminded us of Major Amos. B. Hoople in Gene Ahern's comic, "Our Boarding House.” As did his physical presence, which the Gazette's editor had the pleasure of experiencing during a chat in his office on William Loeb Drive, thanks to the kind offices and ample gall of our War Correspondent. Unlike the fictitious Major, though, Lessner never spent a day in uniform. He spent the ‘Nam years in Divinity School.
Name: William "Bill" Loeb
Born: 1905
Employer: Self
Conflict Avoided: WWII
Notes: Publisher of the infamous Manchester (NH) Union-Leader. A chickenhawk extraordinaire, who kept a whole coop of chickenhawks on his payroll to cluck a whole state into submission. The thrice-married Loeb’s love life could have been the inspiration for Newt Gingrich’s, but that needn’t concern us here. He once provoked his mother into suing him, but again, that’s not the point. Plenty of men his age served in WWII. Somehow Bill managed not to. The Gazette's voluminous archives include a letter from Loeb, on Union Leader stationery, to the present editor of the Gazette. What will that be worth on e-bay one day?
Name: Joseph "Joe" McQuaid
Born: February 12, 1949
Employer: The Manchester Union Leader
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Chronologically the last, and indesputably the least in a long line of Union Leader chickenhawks, Joe graduated from Manchester Memorial High in ‘67 and slid right on over to UNH. He bailed in ‘69, though. Good thing for him he had a “trick shoulder.” Went to work at the Manchester daily his daddy co-founded, and rose to the top with a lot of help from the Grim Reaper. Funny thing - that trick shoulder never hurt his golf game.
Name: William "Bill" O'Reilly
Born: 1949
Employer: Rupert Murdoch
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Bill O’Reilly loves to come off as a straight-talking, blue-collar kind of guy. Funny, a lot of guys who fit that description and graduated high school the same year he did - 1967 - went straight to Vietnam. Not our Bill - he went to college. And he didn’t just go to college, he spent his junior year, 1969-1970, in London. He graduated in 1971, briefly exposing him to the draft again, but Bill was miraculously spared.
Name: Dr. Marion "Pat" Robertson
Born: 1930
Employer: Christian Broadcasting Network
Conflict Avoided: Korea
Notes: Dr. Pat claimed in his biography to have "seen combat in Korea. He was in Korea in uniform briefly, but his daddy the Congressman got his reassigned to Japan. His picture belongs in the dictionary next to "pious fraud." Just recently declared that the State Department ought to get nuked, but has yet to be indicted for uttering a terrorist statement.
Name: Michael Savage
Born: Unk.
Employer: UNK.
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: We're not sure if this frothing lunatic is still on the air. Didn't he get canned for saying all gays should contract AIDS and die? If only he could have channeled all that animosity against Ho Chi Minh - we'd be selling Big Macs in Vietnam today!
Name: Rep. Joseph "Joe" Scarborough (R-FL)
Born: April 9, 1963
Employer: MSNBC
Conflict Avoided: Desert Storm
Notes: A former Republican congresman (1995-2002) turned MSNBC motormouth, Joe qualifies as a politician and a barking head. Where were you during Desert Storm, pal?
Name: Donn Tibbetts
Born: November 29, 1930
Employer: The Manchester Union Leader
Conflict Avoided: Korea
Notes: Hey - it’s not our fault so many of New Hampshire’s Notable Chickenhawks worked for the Union Leader. Birds of a feather, you know. For decades, Donn Tibbetts played reporter in the pages of Bill Loeb’s infamous Onion Loader. No doubt generations of reporters learned how to subtly skew their stories by scrutinizing his work while getting their tickets punched at our quadrennial President-fest. This feisty workingman’s hero inexplicably missed service in Korea, despite being a ripe nineteen when the shooting started. Go figure.
SUI GENERIS Name: Ted Nugent
Born: 1948
Employer: confused teenage boys?
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: The image says it all - all image: our hero stands in combat attire, equipped with not just one, but two phallic symbols. Do we detect a hint of insecurity regarding manhood here? Standing in front of a band of cartoon brothers, he rests his boot on Saddam Hussein’s posterior. And yes, that flag is mounted on a spear. And yes, there is blood dripping from the tip of the spear. Mr. Nugent claims to be drug free, but if anyone has ever everdosed on bloodthirsty jingoism, it’s him. Born in 1948, there’s no way this bad boy would have missed a chance to kill for his country, right? According to a widely-circulated account which we’ve never seen refuted, here’s how Mr. Nugent dodged the draft. "He claims that 30 days before his draft board physical, he stopped all forms of personal hygiene. The last 10 days, he ingested nothing but Vienna sausages and Pepsi; and a week before his physical, he stopped using bathrooms altogether, virtually living inside pants caked with his own excrement, stained by his urine. That spectacle won Nugent a deferment, he says. ‘... but if I would have gone over there, I'd have been killed, or I'd have killed, or I'd killed all the hippies in the foxholes...I would have killed everybody.’” -- Detroit Free Press Magazine, July 15, 1990
THE LEGAL DEPARTMENT
Name: John Ashcroft
Born: 1942
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: As we will never tire of saying, this guy lost an election to a dead man. Where do you go from there? If a Bush is in office, you rise. Annointed himself with Crisco before being sworn in. Also afraid of calico cats. Famously said, "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends."
Name: Antonin Scalia
Born: March 11, 1936
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: The Peacetime Draft
Notes: Associate Supreme Court Justice Scalia - how come he wasn't caught in the peacetime draft of his youth? We dunno ... ask him.
Name: Clarence Thomas
Born: 1948
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Avoided the draft thanks to a school deferment. Got the deferment thanks to affirmative action at Holy Cross and Yale. Of course he's staunchly anti-affirmative action. He saw no conflict of interest deliberating recounts in Florida and the outcome of the 2000 election while his wife, Virginia, who works for the influential conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, gathered resumes for appointments in a possible Bush administration.
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