GALL

Karen "Man Hands" Hughes says John Kerry has some 'splaining to do - this, from the tool who helped scrub Bubble Boy's National Guard paperwork:

More likely Hughes was just being her disingenuous self when suggesting Kerry's wartime behavior hadn't gotten enough scrutiny. At any rate, she isn't in the best position to accuse Kerry or anyone else of false pretenses. Among the press corps that covered the 2000 campaign, her instinct to conceal and dissemble was well known. Indeed, conservative journalist Tucker Carlson suggested last year that her willingness to lie for Bush "almost crosses over ... into mental illness." Feigning indigation over comments made by Kerry more than 30 years ago would pose no challenge for Hughes.

She deserves to be challenged, however, about her own role in the concealment of Bush's actual service record. Although she is currently peddling her new bestseller, the most pertinent questions concern "A Charge to Keep," that slim promotional volume with Bush's name and likeness on the cover.

While including plenty of filler and self-serving rhetoric, Hughes needed only five pages to recount Bush's military career -- from his decision to apply for pilot training to the lessons he learned during his National Guard service. The deceptions begin on Page 51, when Bush claims that during Christmas vacation in Houston, he "heard from contemporaries that there were openings for pilots in the Texas Air National Guard, and I called to ask about them ... I met the qualifications and was accepted into the Texas Air National Guard." It's a nice, simple story, but it omits most of the facts and distorts others, as this investigation by the Los Angeles Times explains.

The gripping but brief account of Bush's training and service ends vaguely, with this sentence: "I continued flying with my unit for the next several years." That's false; he quit flying after less than two years. He and his ghostwriter don't mention that he quit flying no later than August 1972, after he missed a flight physical and was suspended. His disappearance into Alabama to work on a Republican Senate race, when he was supposed to be pulling duty, is also left out.

On that chapter's concluding page, Bush proclaims: "I am proud of my service. Yet I know it was nothing comparable to what our soldiers and pilots were doing in battle in Vietnam." Having written those words, Hughes should remember them whenever she feels the urge to demean Kerry, who still carries a piece of shrapnel in his left buttock. And should she open her mouth about this subject again, someone should ask her what the president did with his medals.

Tom Burka adds:

"Whatever Kerry did or didn't do with the medals he earned for saving men's lives in dangerous combat, it's a disgrace," she said. "His so-called defense of this country makes me puke."

"If George W. Bush had earned a medal for anything that he did, you can bet he wouldn't have faked throwing out any award that he would possibly have earned," she said. "If they gave out medals for running out on National Guard duty, for disregarding a direct order, or for practically flunking the National Guard pilot's exam, you can bet the President would have taken a principled stand on them, if he had any principles."

Hughes derided the bravery and valor that led Kerry to get the medal in the first place. "Anyone can get medals," she said. "It's keeping them or throwing them out that's the hard part."

"I don't know if you can get a medal for driving drunk," she said defiantly, "but if you could, the President would have a whole deskful."

'Nuff said.
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