Its Not THAT Kind of Handicap

Roll Call reminds us that Golf Digest recently named Senator Saxby Chambliss the second best golfer in the U.S. Senate and the 33rd best golfer in Washington, D.C. It seems that while the Senate was debating Iraq intelligence in closed session, Sen. Chambliss, who serves on the Senate Select Intelligence and Armed Services committees, missed the session because he was golfing at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta.

Instead of being forced to talk about the uncomfortable issue of pre-Iraq war intelligence (or the lack thereof), Chambliss was “the envy of golfers everywhere,” as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution put it. At least until he stepped up to what the newspaper called the club’s “unenviable first tee.”
“That was one of the more intimidating shots I have ever had,” the paper quoted Chambliss saying. “Thank goodness it worked out.”

And thank goodness Chambliss, who sits on the Senate Select Intelligence and Armed Services committees, didn’t have to suffer through the Democrats’ tortuous questions about those elusive weapons of mass destruction and whether the Bush administration manipulated the truth and misled Congress into supporting the war.

No mention of whether Chambliss’ golf handicap suffers from the old knee injury that kept him out of Vietnam. Chambliss received four draft deferments, one because of a knee injury. He then went on to accuse Max Cleland, who won a Silver Star in Vietnam before losing both legs and one arm in a grenade explosion, of being weak on defense. One Republican ad even compared Cleland to Osama bin Laden.

Needless to say, Cleland had seen a number of more "intimidating shots" than those at East Lake.

Also no word as to how many deferments Chambliss will seek of a real investigation into whether the Bush Administration knowingly misled the country in the lead-up to war.