9,000 PURPLE HEARTS - THAT'S AN ORDER
By STEVE DUNLEAVY
LEE GRAVES this week got some good news
for his business, but not very good news for
soldiers.
"On Wednesday, we got the official order to
make 9,000 Purple Hearts," he told me from
Tomball, Texas.
Purple Hearts are awarded to servicemen and
women who are wounded in the zone of hostility
during war.
But we are not fighting a war, according to Bill
Clinton, we are just "degrading" Slobbo's war
machine. OK.
Then why in good God's name are we making
Purple Hearts if we are not in a war and we don't
expect casualties?
"I was a little surprised to get that big an order
from the Defense Logistics Agency," said Graves,
boss of medal-making Graco Industries.
"I have been producing medals and campaign
ribbons for 20 years and never have I been asked
by the Defense Department to come up with a
Purple Heart.
"But 9,000 Purple Hearts. Yes, well I am
surprised."
The order is stone-dead cold, according to Lee, a
Good Ol' Boy who has done his time in the
trenches of foreign wars.
"I think I am right - they [Washington] want 1,400
Purple Hearts for November, 1,400 for
December, 1,600 for January, 1,600 for
February, 1,600 for March and 1,400 for April."
Unless we have a war, why would the Defense
Department be asking for Purple Hearts?
"Off the top of my head, I am guessing that 9,000
would be about 10 percent casualties of our being
there. Wounded, I pray. That sounds right. I sure
hope nobody gets killed."
So, even though Clinton has always told us that
ground troops would never be an option and he
announced it to Slobodan Milosevic, guess what.
Well, the Pentagon must think otherwise.
I called Christina Di Memmo, the public-affairs
officer at the Defense Logistics Agency in
Philadelphia, which is the groundhog for Pentagon
buying.
"I am not the person to give an official response,"
she said politely.
If I can't get a comment from an official
spokesperson, then who can I get to talk?
Dutifully, she called back later and said, "We are
simply maintaining the quantity of supply."
Nobody wanted 9,000 Purple Hearts last year.
Bill Clinton isn't taking my calls today.
Silly Billy.
Now, if Silly Billy for once in his life is playing
good poker with Slobbo, and not tipping his mitt,
I will, for once in my life, applaud him.
But if the Pentagon is saying, "Screw this
draft-dodging mook, we are going in, ground
troops and all," then it tells us the measure of
Clinton's intelligence.
William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard,
told a packed New York Post breakfast forum on
Tuesday: "There will be U.S. troops in Kosovo by
November."
Whether his "Kristol Ball" is better than mine or
whether he knew about 9,000 Purple Hearts
being ordered, I don't know.
But I do know what Lee Graves says honestly:
"For 20 years, we have been making medals and
ribbons for the armed services.
"We have never been requested to make Purple
Hearts for the armed forces. Never. Truthfully, I
hope they are not needed."
Yep, I think we are going in.
Better to kill the killers than bomb the living
daylights out of innocent civilians who are the
descendants, as Henry Kissinger said, of people
who stood by us in two world wars and spat in
Hitler's face.
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Robert Naiman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Preamble Center
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