DEMONSTRATING the same nauseating capacity
for exaggeration he now exhibits with wild
abandon, when Al Gore was in Vietnam he wrote
one of his friends: "When and if I get home ... I'm
going to divinity school to atone for my sins."

Presumably Gore wrote this while out from under
the protective glare of his bodyguard.

During his tour of Vietnam, the senator's son was
assigned a series of bodyguards whose mission it
was to ensure that Gore's war injuries would be
limited to any paper cuts he might sustain while filing
his illiterate scribblings for the Stars and Stripes.

Ediotr's Note:
I've always wondered.
If Gore had a "country club, no-danger" tour of Vietnam,
why didn't Smirk sign up for one of those?

Though Gore's flacks insist that there is "no
evidence" Gore noticed anything usual about having
a Man Friday serving him mint juleps in wartime,
somehow Gore did screw up the courage after only
three months of this horror to raise his hand and ask
to go home. (The Army grants requests like that all
the time: "Can I go home now?")

If Gore didn't know, he was alone in his ignorance.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, soldiers (the
ones without bodyguards) used to taunt Little Lord
Fauntleroy about his privileged treatment.

Unlike so many Vietnam veterans, the vice
president has managed to emerge from his war
trauma and open up with the media about the
experience. He told Vanity Fair magazine: "I took
my turn regularly on the perimeter in these little
firebases out in the boonies. Something would
move, we'd fire first and ask questions later." He
informed The Washington Post: "I was shot at. I
spent most of my time in the field." He told The
Baltimore Sun: "I carried an M-16" and "I was fired upon."

In point of fact, Gore was never shot at, and never
fired a shot in anger. His weapons of choice were white-out and a
typewriter ribbon, not an M-16. Though the Los Angeles Times broke
the bodyguard story about a year ago, the adversary press never really
leapt on it. The Times article was pretty spectacular, citing a number of
Gore's fellow servicemen who said that they "were assigned to make sure
this son of a prominent politician was never injured in the war."

But then a Gore supporter ("reporter," for short) quickly got one such
Man Friday on the record admitting that he was technically called Gore's
"security escort" -- not his "bodyguard." That ended the media's interest
in the story.

Since then, Gore has felt no compunction about running campaign ads
brimming over with photos of GI Al with his prop backpack and M-16.
(The bodyguards have been airbrushed out.)

Pointedly alluding to his opponent, Gore shamelessly boasts: "When I
graduated from college, there were plenty of fancy ways to get out of
going and being a part of that." Not him, though, no sir. He went to
Vietnam because: "I knew if I didn't, somebody else in the small town of
Carthage, Tenn., would have to go in my place."

No, actually. Gore did get one of those fancy deals. It was just a lot
fancier than most boys can get -- especially any other boy from
Carthage.

The only difference between Gore and Clinton is that Gore had a way
out. If Clinton could have worked out a scam like that he'd surely have
gone, too. In fact, this is just the sort of package that would have
appealed to Clinton. He could have preserved his "political viability" and
his precious little neck at the same time. With all the hookers, he might
not even have asked to go home early.

While Brave Al soldiered his rifle and took off for the Saigon Marriot in
calculated gambit to help out dad's faltering re-election bid, George W.
Bush was climbing into fighter jets and taking off at the speed of sound.
Though the National Guard service during the Vietnam War has gotten a
bad reputation, Bush was in the Air National Guard. He was a fighter
pilot, flying F-102s.

If Al Gore -- or any member of the adversary press now sneering at
George Bush's service with the Air National Guard -- ever took off in an
F-102, they wouldn't be able to relieve themselves for two weeks.

Even in peacetime, fighter pilots routinely lose more comrades than
wartime engineers -- to say nothing of Army journalists.

Still, Gore drones on about his fictitious combat experience and taunts his
opponent -- who was surely in greater physical peril. Can you imagine a
Republican trying to get away with this? Though Gore was allegedly
unaware of the special treatment he received back in Vietnam, the privileged
Little Lord Fauntleroy is fully aware that the adversary press is about as likely
to take a shot at him now as the Viet Cong were back then.