Not to put too fine a point to it . . . .
By . . . but it seems to be that many professional golfers are stupid meatheads. Scott Johnson at Powerline urged me to “read the whole thing.” And so I did:
[Jerry] Kelly and four other PGA Tour members spent eight days in Iraq as part of the USO’s “Operation Links Handshake Tour.” The group was organized by Frank Lickliter II and included Donnie Hammond, Howard Twitty and Corey Pavin, who edged Kelly to win the 2006 U.S. Bank Championship in Milwaukee.
“It was a life-changing experience,” Kelly said in a telephone interview Friday. “It was the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”
The golfers visited 14 bases in Iraq, entertaining the troops with golf exhibitions and swapping stories with soldiers in conversations that stretched into the early morning hours.
“We hit balls off of Saddam’s palace, off the back of a tank, off the wing of an Iraqi MIG fighter,” Kelly said. “We stopped a soccer game in the Kurd region and hit balls off the field into Turkey. We hit balls in Mosul.
“We did a ton of stuff. We wish we could have spent more time with the guys. They were like, ‘Thank you so much.’ We were like, ‘Are you kidding me? We’re the ones who are thankful.'”
. . . He came away with a new appreciation for what the soldiers are accomplishing and expressed in strong terms his disdain for how the war was being covered by the American media.
“Our soldiers are so selfless,” he said. “We need to be promoting them and telling people what a great job they’re doing. All they’re hearing is bashing.”
Next week: Derek Jeter visits the men and women guarding the oil fields in Kirkuk. After suiting up in Kevlar and using hand grenades to display his patented Unnecessarily Dramatic Leaping Throw, he pronounces upon the folly of the Baker Commission and declares that the war is actually going well.