Hillary Clinton tried to become a Marine? Right. That was the week after Harry Reid tried to become a Rockette. Had the Marines accepted her, perhaps her training would have been helpful when her plane came under sniper fire while landing in Bosnia in 1996.
Let me see now. As I understand it, what we’re called on to believe is that a highly employable young Yale Law School graduate, who had led teach-ins against the Vietnam War in college, had worked on the campaigns of Gene McCarthy and George McGovern, and who was engaged to a draft-dodger seeking to become the attorney general of his state, really just wanted to be a lean, green, fighting machine.
Pull the other one, Hillary.
Incredibly, and Just in time for Veteran’s Day, Hillary reprised the remarkable story about how she tried to enlist in the Marines in 1975 while she was living in Arkansas but had not yet married Billy-Bob. It goes in this wise: She told the recruiter in Little Rock that she wanted to be part of the few, the proud. But the stout lad looked her up and down and then asked how old she was, and, her story goes, said: “You’re too old, you can’t see, and you’re a woman. Maybe the dogs (the Army) will take you.”
How sound of the boys in green to turn her down. That is, if this encounter really happened, which it would take major league credulity to credit. Apart from the reasons above that barracks life would have been a bad career choice for Hillary, her time away at basic training would have left Billy-Bob even freer than usual to seek a few good women.
But the story is not credible at all. It calls for way more skepticism than Dr. Ben Carson’s memories of thuggish moments in his youth. It’s so incredible that even the Washington Post roused itself to call it into question. Perhaps the Post and other mainstream publications and news outlets will recall some of the battalions of reporters sent across the land to find contradictions in Dr. Carson’s rendition of his past and task them to nail this one down. But don’t count on it.
What Hillary doesn’t know, as her ignorance of things military appears to be encyclopedic, is that while she clearly would not have been accepted into Marine Corps Officer Training School for infantry officers because of her sex, or into flight school because of her vision, there is no reason why a smart lawyer, even a woman with bad eyesight and at Hillary’s age, could not have served in the Judge Advocate General Corps of any service in 1975. Even the Marines. (See Lieutenant Colonel Sarah “Mac” McKenzie — hubba hubba — of whom there are real-life counterparts, though, I’m sure, not many as good-looking. Sorry ladies, Sir, I mean Ma’am. Thank you for your service, but you know it’s true.) Almost certainly she could have served in the reserves, so that she wouldn’t have had to have given up a civilian career in order to wear the uniform.
This is yet another story from the Clinton Whopper Canon that is not believable at any level by anyone paying attention. It just won’t pass inspection. But it’s too good to stop telling. So we’re likely to hear this one again from the cattle futures queen. George Will nailed it back in the nineties when he said on some political talk show or other (quoting from memory here — but I believe I have it): “The Clintons aren’t hostile to the truth. They’re just cheerfully indifferent to it.”
Just so. Semper fib.
On another Hillary military matter, my sources within the Hillary campaign are telling me that if she becomes commander-in- chief in 2017, she will mandate a new way of counting marching cadence for all services. The new cadence count would be: “Your left, your left, your left, left, left. Your left, your left…”
