Having trouble with a war, you say? Need a little time to formulate a plan that will make future generations ejaculate in awe over the mere mention of your name? Need some good press? Well, just send some PGA golfers to Baghdad!
Yes, taking part in the USO’s “Operation Links Handshake Tour” a gaggle of PGA players led by Jerry Kelly and Corey Pavin were in Iraq recently, hitting balls and shaking hands for appreciative troops.
According to the Wisconsin State Journal, Kelly and the boys spent eight days in the Middle East, visiting U.S. troops at 14 military bases. They were transported between bases by Blackhawk helicopters, stopping to put on golf exhibitions and talk with the soldiers.
The golfers wore full body armor and helmets and insurgents fired three rockets at the base where they were sleeping, though none went off.
Basically, they were in the shit.
The Wisconsin State Journal goes on to say that Kelly is a big supporter of the war.
“You don’t hear about them building the schools, you don’t hear about all of the good will that even the privates are doing, much less what all of the top brass (are doing),” Kelly said of his time in Iraq, where at approximately the same time the U.S. was releasing information that two more U.S. servicemen were killed along with 30 Iraqis or so.
Kelly said that the media is making things “extremely chaotic” in Iraq.
“I met with one of the local governors. And he said, ‘Under Saddam, 100 people were dying a day not 25 people a day. Yes it’s terrible and it was terrible before. But it makes it extremely chaotic with people seeing only the bad on CNN,” said Kelly.
It’s great to see the PGA players out there, giving the men in uniform some entertainment, and taking their minds off of their realities, for a while. All the players are to be commended for that, as are the many other athletes and entertainers that join up with the USO.
Kelly, however, could only look more like a simplistic pawn than if he was actually wearing a George W. Bush T-shirt and started shouting “send more troops!”
While I’m sure Operation Build and Paint Schools would be going much more swimmingly if journalists would stop writing about the pesky war that encompasses all of it, I’m not completely positive I’d be getting an adequate read on the situation from the back of a helicopter while government PR guys squawk about.
So while Kelly’s gesture in going to Iraq was grand, with his comments about kill-ratios and media censorship, his gesture to those seeking perpetual war was even grander.
–WKW
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Rumsfeldshould get the NASCAR guys over there, like, yesterday.If they ever proposed an Operation Links Handshake Tour for Golf Bloggers would you be willing to sign on? I'd be there in a heartbeat. Not that it's likely to happen. I don't suppose.
isn't too old.
God bless jerry kelly, our troops everywhere, and America