Inside the Beltway

No poker for Dick

Paying a visit this week to Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., Vice President Dick Cheney suggested he’s not one to place bets with reporters.

Speaking in the same gymnasium where President Harry S. Truman and Britain’s Winston Churchill made rhetorical history in the spring of 1946, Mr. Cheney noted:

“I was interested to learn that Truman and Churchill traveled here from Washington on the presidential railroad car. The evening before they arrived, Churchill had five scotches before dinner and then joined Truman, members of the White House staff, and probably a few reporters for an all-night poker game.

“Well, that was a different era,” Mr. Cheney said. “And I can tell you that we had a lot quieter time this morning on Air Force Two.”

Solitary service

Constituents from one end of Rep. Sam Johnson’s district to the other contacted this column yesterday (not too surprising, considering the popular congressman captured 74 percent of the most recent vote.)

Former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, we’d written yesterday, labeled six Republican lawmaker-veterans who are critical of prospective Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry “a bunch of chicken hawks who never went to war, never felt a wound, but are so quick to criticize a man who went to war and got wounded doing it.”

We drew attention yesterday to the distinguished war record of one of those six congressmen — Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham — but overlooked the fact that Mr. Johnson, Texas Republican, served in the Air Force for 29 years, flew 62 combat missions in Korea, and survived two tours of duty in Vietnam. He earned more medals than we can possibly list here, including two Purple Hearts. But most noteworthy, he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Last week, the 73-year-old Mr. Johnson inserted into the Congressional Record: “On this date in 1971, John Kerry stated that America violated the Geneva Conventions in Vietnam. Mr. Speaker, when Mr. Kerry made these remarks, I just emerged from nearly four years of solitary confinement in Vietnam. Trust me when I say the Vietnamese regularly violated the Geneva Conventions, not the other way around.”

Honoring Hammond

After 36 years in limbo, the remains of U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Dennis W. Hammond have been positively identified by the Pentagon and will be laid to rest with full military honors on May 22 in Bremond, Texas.

Sgt. Hammond was captured by the Viet Cong on Feb. 8, 1968, and died in March 1970 at a prisoner-of-war camp — numbered ST18 — in Quang Nam province. For a brief moment, he tasted freedom.

“He attempted escape with the other POWs in the spring of 1968 and was shot in the leg by Montagnards in a nearby village,” reveals Rep. Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey Democrat, who announced the positive identification.

(The majority of Montagnards, a largely Christianized tribal people living in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, supported U.S. soldiers during the war. It is estimated more than half of the tribe’s males, labeled “savages” by the Vietnamese, were killed alongside Americans during the war).

Rest of the story

Let’s give the late Florida Sen. Thomas Ward Osborn his due, starting with a plaque at the base of the Washington Monument — which otherwise might not be standing today.

While the cornerstone of the Washington Monument was laid on July 4, 1848, owing to the Civil War and a lack of funding, the monument wasn’t completed until Oct. 9, 1888.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, explains that many considered completion of the monument a “waste of money.” But Osborn, out of a sense of patriotism, was instrumental in passing legislation to finish the job (albeit, the design was altered to a 555-foot obelisk that Mr. Grassley says “is so recognizable today as the symbol of an exceptional man and an exceptional nation.”)

Mr. Grassley has now written to the Interior Department, requesting some form of recognition for Osborn. Meanwhile, U.S. Park Service rangers stationed at the Washington Monument have been briefed on Osborn’s efforts to share with visitors.

• John McCaslin, whose column is nationally syndicated, can be reached at 202/636-3284 or jmccaslin@washingtontimes.com.