Slander? We Report, You Decide.

Back on February 12, I posted this unspeakably nasty column by Ann Coulter about Max Cleland, triple-amputee Vietnam Vet. I can't possible give it justice -- you need to read it to truly experience its bile -- but essentially Coulter says Cleland's no war hero because, although having only one remaining limb, we need to consider HOW Cleland lost those other three limbs. According to Honest Annie: "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." Ann goes on to say: “He didn’t ‘give his limbs for his country,’ or leave them ‘on the battlefield. There was no bravery involved in dropping the grenade on himself with no enemy troops in sight."

Well, let's see how Ann's column stands up to the "facts," some of which this blogger has already done.

According to this newspaper article in the Washington Post, it describes Cleland's injury this way:

On April 8, 1968, during the siege of Khe Sanh, he stepped off a helicopter and saw a grenade at his feet. He thought he'd dropped it. He was wrong. When he reached down to pick it up, it exploded, ripping off both legs and his right hand. He was 25.

Hmm. This doesn't sound quite the way Ann described it. Maybe "the siege of Khe Sanh" is another way of saying "non-combat mission to get beer." Let's find out.

Using something that Ann should look into called "Google," I was able to determine that Khe Sahn is actually referred to as "the bloodiest battle in the Vietnam war." (Here's some more information from CNN.) And, just in case these are foreign news sources for Ann, Fox News, by way of its "War Stories with Oliver North" program, notes that:

Khe Sanh was the scene of one of the most ferocious and controversial battles of the Vietnam War. It was a remote combat base in the Vietnamese highlands. The base was under siege for 77 days (from January to April 1968). The 6,000 Marines and soldiers at the base were surrounded by a massive North Vietnamese Enemy Force numbering more than 20,000 by some estimates. Enduring unrelenting enemy fire, heavy casualties and dwindling supplies of ammunition, food and water, the Americans held their ground and broke the back of the enemy. Conditions at the base were stark: most were unable to shower for months, they often had to share their last drops of water or last bites of food with their buddies and enemy fire was so constant they had to live underground in bunkers for most of the siege.

By the way, here's what Cleland himself had to say about Coulter's claims:

"In fact, Cleland was wounded picking up a grenade that someone else dropped, during what he says was a combat mission. Cleland said , “I volunteered for a combat mission with the 1st Air Calvary division going into break the siege at Khe Sahn, and if that isn’t a combat mission, you ought to ask some of the people that were there and the 200 guys that were killed in that mission.”

Looks like someone will have some good ideas for a sequel to Slander...
- posted by Joshua @ 5:00 PM