The Chickenhawk Database

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What do George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Britt Hume, Rush Limbaugh, John Ashcroft, Tom DeLay, Trent Lott, Roger Ailes, Bill O'Reily and Jerry Falwell all have in common? They're all listed in the "Chickenhawk Database." Compiled by Vietnam veteran and newspaper editor Steve Fowle, the database lists pro-war pundits who "share three qualities: bellicosity (a warlike manner or temperament), public prominence, and a curious lack of wartime service when others their age had no trouble finding the fight." The Washington Post notes that many of "the nation's most persistent voices in support of military attack on Iraq ... are people who never served in Vietnam or saw first hand the carnage that war produces." Conservative Senator Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam veteran, agrees: "It is interesting to me that many of those who want to rush this country into war and think it would be so quick and easy don't know anything about war. They come at it from an intellectual perspective versus having sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off."