Here's Lt. Colonel Robert Bateman from Phillip Carter's "Intel Dump" in the Washington Post:
Now, for starters, we in the military really do not care if Chuck Norris is a complete and total Creationist, who apparently does not believe in science and who opposes the consensus of the scientific community. We in the military really do not deal with that stuff. Heck, a good number of servicemen are probably also creationists. It doesn't matter. We also do not really care all that much that Norris cheated on his then-wife and fathered a child out of wedlock. Sure, it would be a crime for someone in the military to do that, but Norris has his own set of values to deal with -- he is a Hollywood star and a civilian. Because Norris is just an actor, we in the military really do not care about these things. They don't affect his roundhouse kick, so far as we can tell. We also know that Norris is really animated. All that is fine. But what is not fine is for Norris to go around pretending he did "two tours in Iraq."
Norris is an actor -- not a soldier or a Marine, an actor. While it is cool that Norris spent a few years in the Air Force back in 1958-1962, that only means that he should know what he is talking about. A Marine "tour" in Iraq is 7 months, an Army "tour" is 15 months or 12 months, depending upon when you got there. For Norris, spending 96 hours in Iraq with the USO, getting complete VIP treatment and flying over the country and staying at secure bases, even if he did it twice, is not the same thing. It does not entitle him to make claims like "I've done two tours over there," nor does it mean that he knows even the very first thing about the military operations in Iraq, or anywhere else for that matter. Indeed, if that were so the military would also be turning to Norris's fellow Texan, the blond ingénue Jessica Simpson, for national security advice, since she has also completed Norris's version of a "tour" in Iraq.
The bottom line is that none of us confuse the movies Chuck played in for actually being in combat in Iraq, and I for one wish he would not use his few hours during a USO trip as an intellectual crutch to try and support his opinion about National Security issues. (That is called "Waving the Bloody Shirt." But you see, to use that rhetorical device in the least bit credibly, you need to actually have done something where you might bleed, like a combat tour in Iraq.) Being with the USO does not give him any more credibility in National Defense than it does to theDenver Broncos Cheerleaders, the Cleveland Cavaliers Cheerleaders, or for that matter the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. (Ummm, the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders have also been to Iraq more often and longer than he has, and overall have done 56 USO tours to lousy places over the years. So I suppose they should start doing Larry King as well, right?)
Here, then. are some new "Chuck Norris Facts" for the Larry King show bookers: Chuck Norris is the basis for a drinking game -- just like Love Boat used to be back in the '80s. Chuck Norris is not a combat veteran, though a plastic version of him might be able to lay claim to that title. Chuck Norris may have claimed to have "nerves of steel and strikes to match" -- but that was when he was a cartoon character back in the 80s. Chuck Norris only plays Soldiers and/or Marines in make-believe movies. He has not done a tour in Vietnam, nor rescued POWs there (that was a movie). He has never actually been in Delta Force (that, too, was a movie). And he has never done a tour in Iraq, let alone two, regardless of what he says on your TV show.
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