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Coulter slams Cleland
Posted at: Friday, February 13, 2004, 01:20 AM
Ann Coulter, the conservative columnist, isn’t known for her gentle language. And her words were particularly pointed this week in a column in which she took to task former Sen. Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat and supporter of John Kerry, for questioning President Bush’s military service record.
Cleland lost three limbs in Vietnam. He was also decorated for helping wounded comrades during a 1968 rocket attack there.
Coulter belittled his status as a war hero because his wounds were the result of an accident with a grenade, not combat.
“There was no bravery involved,” she wrote.
“Indeed, if Cleland had dropped a grenade on himself at Fort Dix rather than in Vietnam, he would never have been a U.S. senator in the first place,” Coulter wrote. “Maybe he’d be the best pharmacist in Atlanta, but not a U.S. senator.”
Cleland’s office referred reporters to Kerry’s campaign, which released a statement from the candidate calling Coulter a “Bush campaign operative” and saying her column “achieved a level of cruelty that is not only slanderous, but offensive to the millions of men and women who have fought and bled for America.”
“If the best the other side can do is to attack disabled war heroes when there are millions of veterans in America whose health care and benefits have been slashed by this administration, then they are in for a fight that they will lose,” Kerry said.
