In the interests of scrupulous fairness, I think that KO could have overinterpreted the juxtaposition of "they pulled me off the golf course" and "I decided it was a bad idea to play golf while Iraq burned". That is, sure, they pulled him off the course that one time to tell him about de Mello (and possibly because they thought he was in danger), but it's still possible that he made his own decision to _stay_ off.

Except that--here are the kickers, for those that haven't read/listened yet--he stopped playing around the time that he stopped running because he'd injured himself, and there are public records and pictures of him playing two months later.