Vietnam-era 'chickenhawks' deserve a swift kick

Vietnam-era 'chickenhawks' deserve a swift kick

By Gordon Livingston
Special to The Baltimore Sun

Among the human attributes that excite the most contempt, hypocrisy occupies a special place. Those who say one thing and do another or who criticize others for moral deficiencies they themselves exhibit are deservedly the objects of public derision.

So it is with the "chickenhawks" of the Vietnam War generation currently providing what passes for leadership in this administration. They include Vice President Dick Cheney, who discovered he had "other priorities" during Vietnam, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who graduated from Cornell University in 1965 but decided to forgo military service during the war.

We recently have had a renewed opportunity to observe hypocrisy in action in President Bush's reluctance to disavow the contemptible attacks by a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth....

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