Now, Pvt. Conway, you pay the price

You’ve got to hand it to Lt. Gen. James Conway, soon to be Sgt. James Conway, for pretty much telling his commander in chief that he’s full of it. That takes more courage than attacking an enemy bunker with a flag and a hickory stick.

I say “soon to be” sergeant because although you might be a general in the United States by God Marine Corps, you still don’t challenge the president, even if he is George W. Bush. General of the Army Douglas MacArthur tried defying Harry Truman in the 1950s, and it got him drop-kicked down the White House stairs.

Conway actually took on U.S. intelligence, which came up with the idea that weapons of mass destruction were everywhere in Iraq and Saddam Hussein was going to use them on our troops, our children, our puppies and even our corporate CEOs. You couldn’t cross the street in Baghdad, our spies said, without stumbling over a WMD.

Conway, however, told a press conference that “we’ve been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they’re simply not there.”

Now the Democrats, who had been in hiding until the shooting stopped, are suspicious that Bush oversold the WMD threat in the first place or was misled by the CIA. There are all kinds of denials in the wind, with the Pentagon announcing, coincidentally, that it’s going to send a thousand experts to Iraq to find those weapons if they have to empty every flowerpot in the country.

“This war was not waged under any false pretense,” said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a defensive rejoinder that ranks right up there with Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook,” which, of course, he was.

Now a lot of people are wondering why Conway, knowing the political climate, ever decided to take on the Bush administration by implying that maybe the Iraqis were right in saying that all their weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed.

I’ll tell you why: Subtlety has never been a condition of being a Marine. There is nothing in the manual that instructs generals on how to disagree with their commander in chief or when to simply keep their mouths shut. The Marine Corps mission is not to teach political diplomacy but to dispatch an enemy in the most efficient way possible.

I say that as a former Marine, not as an expert on generals. I met a general only once, and that was during the Korean War. He asked me if I was happy. Happiness is relative in a combat zone. I was not at the moment being shot at, so, by comparison, I was happy. So I said, “I guess so, sir.”

Later, a sergeant major explained to me in terms I dare not repeat that if a general asked at any time anywhere for any reason if I was happy, the answer was to be a loud and positive “Yes, sir!”

To simply be in the Marine Corps, the sergeant major reminded me, was as much happiness as a man needed. Yes, sir! It’s a privilege to be dirty and terrified and not know if I am going to live through the night! Sir!

But for whatever reason Cpl. Conway spoke out, I’m glad he did. It was in the grand tradition of the legendary Marine Lt. Gen. Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller, who disagreed with just about everyone. I don’t think he ever criticized a president, but I’m sure he would have if there’d been a reason to. He’d have chewed up old Dubya like a piece of processed salami.

Bush, meanwhile, is maintaining a lofty distance from the smoldering debate. Having declared the war over after liberating the little people from the barbarians, he finds no reason to keep beating a dead horse, as they say in Dallas, or a dead human, as they say on the battlefields.

Bush has moved on from saving Iraq to saving himself and to saving the rich from the poor with his new tax cuts that benefit those with the most money. Not that he suspects the impoverished may have weapons of mass destruction, but they are rather shabby and beery, and you wouldn’t want them trying to get into the nicer restaurants. If God had intended the poor to dine on coq de bruyere, he’d have taught them how to lie and steal.

I’m waiting, right along with you, to see where this whole thing is going. Forget trampling on the have-nots; that’s just the American way. I’m still concerned about what’s going on in Iraq, where the killing continues one by one. I can’t help thinking that the war, which Bush declared over, may be just beginning.

In which case we are more than ever going to need men like Pvt. Conway to keep speaking out, even when it isn’t politic and when bullets of revenge are zinging over his brave and noble head.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.