Not Sure Which Palins Are In The Mile High Club, But Sarah Is Indeed On her Way To Century Club Membership

Sarah Palin's got a gun-- and a passport

DownWithTyranny has a sister blog, the Around the World Blog. When we're not excoriating Republicans and Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, we're trying to remember details of trips to places like Sri Lanka, Nepal, Myanmar, Morocco, Turkey, Sicily, Japan, Iran, Egypt, Afghanistan, Paraguay and dozens of other countries. Canny readers may have just jumped up and said, "Wait! Sicily is not a country," They would be correct... except in one sense.

Have you ever heard of the Travelers' Century Club? I never had either until I met a woman from New York City at the Ushuaia airport in Tierra del Fuego. Tierra del Fuego is an island off the southern tip of South America, on the way to Antarctica, that is divided between Chile and Argentina. The woman told me that Tierra del Fuego doesn't count towards Century Club membership. I didn't know what it was and she explained it's a club-- more formal than the Mile High Club-- for people who had visited 100 or more "countries." If you count-- as the rules allow-- places like Hawaii, Alaska, Corfu, Sicily and Hainan, then I'm nearly a member. I think my trip to Mali and Senegal will put me over the top. The rules, however, don't necessarily make you an expert on... anything.

In fact, the rules also favor a bit of a head start for Sarah Palin. Although Idaho, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas, states she has been to in the United States do not count, Alaska, as I mentioned, does. And, more important, so do "even the shortest visit... even if only a port-of-call, or a plane fuel stop."

Even though Sarah Palin is the country's foremost foreign policy expert on Russia-- being able to see it from her front porch on a theoretically clear enough day-- she has never actually been there. She has, she claimed been to Kuwait, Iraq, Ireland and Germany (and she talked on the phone with the president of Georgia last week). Phone calls don't count towards Century Club membership but her phone call with Saakashvili probably counts a bit more than most of her foreign travel in the McCain campaign's shrill insistence that she's a foreign policy expert.

It now turns out that although her plane's refueling stop in Ireland does count towards Century Club membership... it doesn't count for anything else, except for experiencing... a refueling stop. As for Iraq... well, she keeps revising her story.

Her visit to Iraq itself was during a short stop at Khabari Alawazem Crossing on the second day of her two-day trip to the region.

Palin arrived at Camp Buehring in Kuwait, where she held a town meeting with soldiers and reviewed various training programs designed to prepare troops to deploy into Iraq, said Lieutenant Colonel Dave Osborn, commander of the 3d Battalion, 207th Infantry of the Alaska National Guard, who was in charge of the 570 local troops serving in Kuwait and Iraq.

"The whole intent was to check on the Alaskans," Osborn said in a telephone interview yesterday.

On the second day of the trip, he said, Palin was flown to the border crossing, about 100 miles north of Camp Buehring, where she spent the morning meeting with troops and presiding over a ceremony in which an Alaska National Guard soldier extended his enlistment.

But she did not venture into Iraq, Osborn said. "You have to have permission to go into a lot of areas, and [the crossing] is where her permissions were," he said.

Palin did not stay the night in Iraq, and spent the rest of the second day at Camp Virginia and Ali Al Salem Air Base, Osborn said.

So was she in Iraq? I can't tell and we'll have to leave that for the Century Club to sort that out someday. She was in Canada and there is now an unsubstantiated rumor that she was also in Mexico. The Century Club does not require substantiation of anything and I suspect many Republican voters don't either.

Palin also told ABC that she had traveled to Mexico and Canada. Her campaign had previously mentioned a Canada visit, but not a trip to Mexico. Comella said yesterday that Palin had visited Mexico on vacation, and Canada once last year.

"We did not have 100 percent confirmation about the Mexico trip in the initial days we were being asked. It was a personal trip," Comella said.

Palin's campaign did not respond to requests for details about when she traveled to Mexico and where she went, nor did it provide details of her 2007 Canada trip or indicate whether it was for business or pleasure.

It has been confirmed, though, that Sarah Palin obtained a passport in 2007. That alone makes her far more traveled than most Republicans. In fact in Rep. Robert Wexler's book, Fire-Breathing Liberal he talks about the incredible value of his many trip abroad as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and mentions that this is disdained by many of his Republican colleagues who detest the very notion of getting a passport or leaving the United States. It's reflected in their policies. And when you do find a Republican who goes overseas, it is bound to be someone like Frequent Flyer David Dreier, a closet queen who gallivants from gay hot spot to gay hot spot-- Iceland, Fiji, Sri Lanka, Argentina-- with his very well-paid, so-called chief of "staff."

Not the Fountains of Wayne, but... big over at Playboy: