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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (311607)	11/21/2006 7:41:21 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578294

During his tour of Vietnam, the senator's son was assigned a series of bodyguards whose mission it was to ensure that Gore's war injuries would be limited to any paper cuts he might sustain while filing his illiterate scribblings for the Stars and Stripes. Though Gore's flacks insist that there is "no evidence" Gore noticed anything usual about having a Man Friday serving him mint juleps in wartime, somehow Gore did screw up the courage after only three months of this horror to raise his hand and ask to go home. (The Army grants requests like that all the time: "Can I go home now?") If Gore didn't know, he was alone in his ignorance. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, soldiers (the ones without bodyguards) used to taunt Little Lord Fauntleroy about his privileged treatment. Unlike so many Vietnam veterans, the vice president has managed to emerge from his war trauma and open up with the media about the experience. He told Vanity Fair magazine: "I took my turn regularly on the perimeter in these little firebases out in the boonies. Something would move, we'd fire first and ask questions later." He informed The Washington Post: "I was shot at. I spent most of my time in the field." He told The Baltimore Sun: "I carried an M-16" and "I was fired upon." In point of fact, Gore was never shot at, and never fired a shot in anger. His weapons of choice were white-out and a typewriter ribbon, not an M-16. Though the Los Angeles Times broke the bodyguard story about a year ago, the adversary press never really leapt on it. The Times article was pretty spectacular, citing a number of Gore's fellow servicemen who said that they "were assigned to make sure this son of a prominent politician was never injured in the war." But then a Gore supporter ("reporter," for short) quickly got one such Man Friday on the record admitting that he was technically called Gore's "security escort" -- not his "bodyguard." That ended the media's interest in the story. Since then, Gore has felt no compunction about running campaign ads brimming over with photos of GI Al with his prop backpack and M-16. (The bodyguards have been airbrushed out.) Pointedly alluding to his opponent, Gore shamelessly boasts: "When I graduated from college, there were plenty of fancy ways to get out of going and being a part of that." Not him, though, no sir. He went to Vietnam because: "I knew if I didn't, somebody else in the small town of Carthage, Tenn., would have to go in my place."

To: combjelly who wrote (311607)	11/21/2006 7:44:37 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578294

But eight Vietnam vets who served with the vice president now claim that Gore was never in the middle of a battle and that his unit was supposed to keep him safe because he was a senator's son. "Alan Leo said soldiers were ordered to serve as Gore's bodyguards, to keep him out of harm's way," a Los Angeles Times story reports. " 'It blew me away,' Leo said. 'I was to make sure he didn't get into a situation he could not get out of.' " Leo said Gore's bodyguards would take him into the field when combat was over so he didn't get messed up. Later, Gore worked as a PR man in the army.

To: combjelly who wrote (311607)	11/21/2006 7:46:44 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1578294

Granted the Army drill must've been hard for a Harvard graduate -- an enlisted man who'd led a privileged life of servants and private schools. The son of a rich and powerful senator wouldn't exactly be thrilled with an outfit that made him get up at o'dark hundred, stand in line in the rain, eat out of a mess kit and shout "How high, sir?" when told to jump. Things got better once Gore got to Vietnam. There his basic weapon was a Remington typewriter, and the headquarters' snack bar was light-years away from the trenches where the daily fighting and dying occurred. He was special: the only enlisted man in Vietnam with his own bodyguard. Gore's senator daddy also got his son's 12-month tour cut to five by leaning on a political general. The unconnected, of course, served a minimum of 12 months unless they went out Purple Heart early on a stretcher or in a body bag.