Chickenhawk/NHG/Bureaucratic Battalion

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Originally published on the New Hampshire Gazette website. Used with the express permission and encouragement of Steven Fowle, editorius. Formatting has been altered in the transition to the wiki.

Note to well-meaning copyeditors: The text below is a faithful reproduction of previously published material. Any misteaks, tyops, and other errors are from the original document, and should be left unchanged.

Chickenhawks: Bureaucratic Battalion

[edit] Spencer Abraham
	Born: 1952 Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer Conflict Avoided: Vietnam Notes: Our Secretary of Energy was formerly the Senator from Detroit. In his failed run for re-election the auto industry gave him ,000 - more than it gave any other senatorial candidate. Now, there’s a guy who’s eager to promote alternative energy sources! Couldn’t muster up the gumption to take on Uncle Ho, though.
[edit] Elliot Abrams
	Born: 1948 Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer Conflict Avoided: Vietnam Notes: T�aptant Secretary of State, Elliott Abrams now holds a National Security Council staff position. This despite widespread feeling that he ought to be in jail somewhere. After all, he was convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran/Contra affair.
[edit] Gary Bauer
	Born: 1946 Employer: ouramericanvalues.org Conflict Avoided: Vietnam Notes: A reliable cog in the Republican machine, a bureaucrat under Reagan, and later a preposterous candidate for president, Gary Bauer isn’t particularly combative - he’s no Ann Coulter. Diminutive and cherubic even in his fifties, he’s hardly the sort of recruit a drill sargent would see as a potential soldier. Which is just as well, because when he otherwise would have qualified for the Vietnam draft, he had a “vague physical problem” that got him a 1-Y draft classification - “draft only if the Canadians are crossing the border shooting.”
[edit] John Bolton
	Born: 1948 Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer Conflict Avoided: Vietnam Notes: Let’s see - he’s the Bush administration’s man for arms control, and he opposed the Anti-ABM treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Got his start at State with help from Jesse Helms. Bolton had previously helped Helms get around campaign finance limits. For all his hawkish ways, he never found his way to Vietnam, though.
[edit] Andrew "Andy" Card
	Born: May 10, 1947 Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer Conflict Avoided: Vietnam Notes: Andy, as he likes to be called, used to be “the automotive industry’s main voice.” As such, he “lobbied the U.S. government against stricter fuel emissions standards.” Lobbying for the Chamber of Commerce, he “testified before Congress against the ‘Passengers' Bill of Rights.’” He got paid well enough for these services to the (business) community to be able to afford "nearly ,000 in campaign contributions in 1999-2000, including 1,000 each to fellow members of the new administration, John Ashcroft and Spencer Abraham, for their ultimately unsuccessful senate bids.” These days, of course, he’s George’s Chief of Staff. And - oh, yes - he’s a chickenhawk. (Source: Center for Responsive Politics.)
[edit] Richard "Dick" Cheney (R-WY)
	Born: 1942 Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer Conflict Avoided: Vietnam Notes: Says he had "other priorities." You bet he had other priorities. Imagine how early in life you must begin scheming to get away with what this guy has. He was too busy thinking about Halliburton to go fight Charlie.
[edit] William "Bill" Bennett
	Born: 1943 Employer: Empower America Conflict Avoided: Vietnam Notes: Bill's occupation used to be "public scold," but since his gambling habit was exposed, he's a little less noisy on that front. Bill's a triple-crown winner as a former bureaucrat, a propagandist, and a barking head. (All barking heads are propagandists, but not all propagandists are barking heads.)
[edit] Don Evans
	Born: 1946 Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer Conflict Avoided: Vietnam Notes: The Secretary of Commerce has known George W. Bush from the old days in the oil industry. Evans raised over million for Bush's presedential selection. Like his pal, George, Don Evans was otherwise occupied when his country needed him to fight the 'Cong.
[edit] Frank Gaffney
	Born: 1953 Employer: Indeterminate Conflict Avoided: Vietnam Notes: Frank here is a very clever boy. Built a thing called the Center for Security Policy, which apparently keeps him in nice suits so he will look good in front of the TV cameras, which can't seem to get enough of him. As far as we can tell, Frank is a freelance salesman for the defense industry who is paid by an elaborately circuitous process. For all his obsession with the military, it's funny he never served.
[edit] Asa Hutchinson
	Born: 1950 Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer Conflict Avoided: Vietnam Notes: Our present Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security has a long career of public service. Prior to his present task of “coordinating the enforcement activities of our borders, waterways, transportation and immigration systems,” he was “Drug Tsar.” We all know how well that went. He was picked for that position while serving as a congressman from Arkansas, where he was originally plucked from obscurity as a rural lawyer by Ronald Reagan. Oddly enough, the trail of Hutchinson’s public service stops short of Vietnam.
[edit] I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
	Born: 1950± Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer Conflict Avoided: Vietnam Notes: I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby is Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff. He’s had a string of no-doubt well-paying government jobs in State and Defense. He’s also practiced law. In fact, he was Marc Rich’s lawyer for years. Yes — the Marc Rich whose pardon from President Clinton was excoriated by so many high and mighty Republicans. Maybe if Scooter had been a better lawyer, his client wouldn’t have needed that pardon. Speaking of legal questions, “Scooter” is alleged by some to have traded energy stocks while helping his buddy Dick Cheney cook up a new energy policy in secret. He’s also suspected of having inserted the bogus “Niger yellowcake” reference into the President’s State of the Union address. As if all that weren’t enough, he’s also a top suspect in the outing of CIA operative Valeria Plame. Clearly “Scooter” is a ballsy kind of guy, so it’s a complete mystery to us why, when he graduated from Phillips Andover in 1968, he didn’t enlist in the Marines or go Airborne instead of going to Yale.
[edit] Richard Perle
	Born: 1941 Employer: Impossible to say for sure Conflict Avoided: Vietnam Notes: Along with Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle is one of the chief architects of the present debacle in Iraq. Nicknamed “The Prince of Darkness,” he was chairman of the Defense Policy Board. He got demoted to board member after an ethics flap. Space does not permit even an index to the reasons why this man should not be trusted.
[edit] Donald "The Don" Rumsfeld
	Born: 1932 Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer Conflict Avoided: Korea Notes: When the shooting started in Korea Rummy here was either 18, or about to turn 18. Not to worry for him, though — he spent the war at Princeton, wearing a ROTC uniform. Once the war was over he flew jets for the Navy for a few years. Defenders of Rumsfeld will say he’s no chickenhawk — he served, and it’s not his fault the war ended before he got his commission. To which others answer, “plenty of farmers and mechanics and kids just out of high school served. Anyone as full of whatever that stuffing in him is, could have tried out for a battlefield commission.”
[edit] Paul Wolfowitz
	Born: 1943 Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer Conflict Avoided: Vietnam Notes: Deputy Secretary for Defense - yet another Bush administration man in the Pentagon who has no idea what it's like to wear a uniform. He got a BA at Cornell in 1965. Maybe if we'd had a guy as bright as he thinks he is in Vietnam, it would have turned out differently.