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.