Posted on 02/23/2004 10:26:19 AM PST by LibWhacker
Republicans drummed Max Cleland out of the Senate. Now, he seizes on a chance to return the favor.
SHEBOYGAN, Wis. - He has no legs and one arm, and was out of breath after maneuvering from car to wheelchair. Max Cleland was nonetheless an imposing presence barreling across an icy parking lot, his eyes locked on the latest batch of veterans he needed to see.
"How are ya, brother," he boomed in his Georgia drawl last week. "Give me a hug! God bless ya!"
And then, after demanding hugs from everybody in the little union hall in eastern Wisconsin, Cleland pressed on with his mission.
"The Bush slime machine," he barked, will stop at nothing to smear a genuine war hero, John Kerry. The president, he said, got his "daddy" to keep him out of combat in Vietnam, and now he's created another "quagmire" that's getting American "kids" maimed and killed.
"If he'd gone to Vietnam maybe he'd have learned some lessons," snapped Cleland, who lost three limbs in that war.
It's payback time for Max Cleland.
Sixteen months after Republicans unseated Cleland from the U.S. Senate in a campaign that questioned his commitment to national security, he has become a fixture on the Kerry campaign.
Wheeling himself into American Legion halls, TV news studios, and postdebate spin rooms, he touts the Democratic front-runner and levels blistering attacks against President Bush. On caucus and primary election nights, Cleland is usually front and center cheering from his wheelchair beside Kerry.
"He's just been a warrior. The guy has been working as hard as if it was his own campaign," Kerry said by telephone. "On a personal level to me, it's just been incredible to have my pal from the Senate and from Vietnam working with me."
When Kerry formally announced his candidacy surrounded by veterans in South Carolina last fall, Cleland handed him his family Bible to keep for guidance from God on the campaign trail.
"Everywhere I go, it's with me," Kerry said.
Speaking to voters or reporters, Cleland, 61, moves from guffaws and self-effacing jokes to pure venom when he talks about Bush and Iraq. To friends who saw the normally jolly Georgian depressed and directionless after losing his Senate seat in 2002, his passion is heartening.
"I said to him recently, "Max, you're back,"' said T. Wayne Bailey, a political science professor at Stetson University in Deland and close friend of Cleland's for four decades. "He's dishing it out, and I think this is a sort of purification for him. Losing the election was the valley of the shadow, and this campaign has energized him. It's a catharsis."
* * *
The TV commercial began with grainy images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
"As America faces terrorists and extremist dictators, Max Cleland runs television ads claiming he has the courage to lead," an announcer said. "He says he supports President Bush at every opportunity. But that's not the truth. Since July, Max Cleland has voted against President Bush's vital homeland security efforts 11 times."
In fact, Cleland helped write a similar homeland security bill that differed from the White House version only on civil service rules. But what outraged even some prominent Republicans were the images of bin Laden and Hussein connected to a man who lost so much in Vietnam.
Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain condemned it as "disgraceful." Republican Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, another decorated Vietnam veteran, was so livid he threatened to make his own ad denouncing the attack on Cleland.
Cleland's opponent, then-U.S. Rep. Saxby Chambliss, removed the shots of Hussein and bin Laden but kept the ad up.
Meanwhile, President Bush went to Georgia five times to campaign for Chambliss. An uproar over Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes' decision to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag mobilized rural, white Republicans. Barnes and Cleland were unseated.
Cleland, whose being was defined by three decades of high profile political service, was left despondent and as he put it, "almost literally out on the street." He also became a national symbol for Democratic activists convinced of GOP ruthlessness.
Bailey, the Stetson political scientist, arranged a temporary teaching job for him at American University in Washington, and Senate friends, especially fellow vets Hagel, McCain and Kerry, tried to buck up their former colleague. After he had been nominated by Bush, Cleland was sworn in as a director of the U.S. Export-Import Bank in December.
"John (Kerry) and I shed some tears in his office," recalled Cleland, who said he has yet to recover emotionally from the election loss. "He and I have had some very deep discussions. He called me last year and said, "Max, you've got to get back in the game."'
So Cleland has, with a vengeance. He has emerged as one of the highest profile Kerry campaigners and an attack dog.
Like Kerry, he voted to authorize force in Iraq, but now contends the reasons for war were "lies."
"Here's a guy who cut short his military tour by eight months in the Guard and failed his flight physical. Yet he plays dress up, dresses up in a flight suit, as if he is a bona fide pilot along with the real heroes on that aircraft carrier," he said, referring to the president's speech after the fall of Baghdad.
"Bush does his macho thing, saying "Bring it on,' taunting terrorists. Half of the men that have been killed in Iraq were killed since he said that. That tells me he had no idea what he was getting the American military into. I don't think he has any idea what to do now."
Some Bush allies suggest Cleland's disabilities are an unfair shield for what they see as his reckless partisan attacks. (Bush didn't fail his physical; he didn't take it). Columnist Ann Coulter this month derided Cleland as the "Democrats' designated hysteric" about Bush's National Guard service. She questioned Cleland's war record:
"He saw a grenade on the ground and picked it up. He could have done that at Fort Dix. ... Luckily for Cleland's political career and current pomposity about Bush, he happened to do it while in Vietnam. ... There was no bravery involved in dropping a grenade on himself with no enemy troops in sight."
On April 4, 1968, a month before he was due to head home, Cleland earned a Silver Star for exposing himself to rocket and mortar fire to give first aid and help move injured soldiers near Khe Sanh. Four days later, he went to set up a radio relay site by the perimeter. Hopping off a chopper, the 25-year-old saw a grenade on the ground that he mistakenly thought might be his. Shifting his M-16 to his left hand, Cleland reached for it.
Marine Charlie Wolden heard the explosion behind him. He turned to see U.S. Army Capt. Cleland rising on what was left of his legs and then tumbling to the ground. Wolden and others wrapped tourniquets around Cleland's legs and arm and hoisted him atop a poncho and onto a helicopter. He assumed for nearly 20 years that Cleland had died.
"For her to say he was not in a combat zone ..." Wolden said of Coulter. "Thirty feet away from him were 50 Marines in a foxhole separating him from three divisions of North Vietnamese."
Wolden, who for years was haunted by Cleland's expression as they loaded him into the chopper, reunited with him several years ago and last week was driving him around Wisconsin. He worried deeply about Cleland after the 2002 election, but glancing at Cleland as he conducted a radio interview, Wolden smiled at his friend's resurrected energy.
"Vietnam vets need a mission, and he's got one. He's the same guy he used to be - but maybe a little snarlier," he chuckled. "It's like he got stung by a bee, and he's like, "Hey, you bastards did this to me, and now I'm coming back at you."'
- Adam C. Smith can be reached at 727 893-8241 or adam@sptimes.com
Sorry folks you can flame away but if they can throw bile so can I. Cleland is no war hero, he was not injured in battle. Yes he was injured while in service to his country and that's a shame but that doesn't inoculate him from all critisism.
He sure didn't seem to be angry enough at Bush to refuse this nomination.
"If he'd gone to Vietnam maybe he'd have learned some lessons," snapped Cleland, who lost three limbs in that war.
The National Guard training probably adequately covered the safe handling of grenades.
I'm thinking this latest tact on their part is going to infuriate a lot of people who didn't actually go to Vietnam but served in other ways.
Do Not Play With Hand Grenades!
"John (Kerry) and I shed some tears in his office," recalled Cleland, who said he has yet to recover emotionally from the election loss.
Over an election loss?!
Girls.
Course of Study: Grenade Handling
Grade: F
Teacher's comments: When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not our friend.
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