KERRY ENLISTED!!! Yeah right! It is a fact but why is the question.

The late 1960's was historically a time of great turmoil in our country. Liberal Democrats doing what liberal Democrats generally do.

Then President Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert McNamara the "whiz Kid" Secretary of Defense, were busy playing their elitest games and became deeply embroiled in a typically liberal generated "quagmire".

LBJ, the "Boss" politician with the Democratic ego driven mentality and the N.Y.Times "golden boy" the "brilliant" McNamara were "expertly in charge" prosecuting the brutal French instigated Southeast Asian war.

Unfortunately for the 58,000+ young American hero KIA's along with many, many thousands more physically maimed and emotionally devastated young veteran heros, there was no end game.

Enlisted Army and Marine recruits, ROTC graduates, Army, Marine, Air Force, and Navy pilots as well as conscripted infintry draftees were pawns on LBJ's war game board. Back then they were euphemistically called..."cannon fodder" by military who understood what was taking place.

A political war run by politicians. General Westmoreland wasn't making battle decisions, the "Brilliant" Robert McNamara was.

Contrast this by the way with the two Iraqi wars under Presidents G.H.W. Bush and G.W. Bush. The idea that wars prosecuted by those trained to be warriors tend to be "just a tad" more successful don't they...

Well, getting to my Kerry point... I remember how it worked, those that lost their school deferrments were scheduled for "cannon Fodder" status. The course of action for most in that group was to be drafted and become a McNamara game piece. A young 1/A classification could attempt to join the relatively safe National Guard or Reserves, although most of those units were frozen and left young men vulnerable to team LBJ.

Running to Canada became an option for some overly pragmatic cowards, and the last resort for the rest of the healthy able bodied young men who hoped to avoid combat was to join! Join the Air Force or the NAVY!!! The odds of entering combat were greatly reduced... of course the Navy SEALS would be a different story but most 60's naval enlistees were neither mentally nor physically qualified for that elite unit.

Senator John Forbes KERRY, the Yale Graduate and brand new 1/A designee joined the NAVY but somehow by, maybe a little poetic justice, became a gunboat commander on the rivers of the Mekong Delta. I would suspect that the 1960's Mr. Kerry never expected to become "cannon fodder" material when he took his oath as an officer in the United States Navy.

Was Mr. Kerry decorated for heroism? Yes.. but so were many, if not most of the young men who survived that disgusting Democrat/French blood bath.

The John F. Kerrys and Jane Fondas of the late 60's and early 70's were the reason these true HEROS were spat upon and ridiculed. Their lies, flag desecration, grandstanding and vociferous attacks prolonged the Nixon effort to disengage from that LBJ/McNamara abomination.

The North Vietnamese government stated after the American withdrawal that the protests gave them the will to hang on, they knew America would lose its will to win because of the anti war activity within its own borders...(the John Kerrys and the Hanoi Jane Fondas and their comrades)

How many young men died because of the N. Vietnam will to hang on while John F. Kerry and Hanoi Jane Fonda did their work? How long was the war extended? By Half? Do you think 25,000 REAL American Heros died because of this radical politician and his odious friends did more damage than North Vietnam division?

Yes, Mr. Kerry has his medals... the same ones he never really threw over the White House fence... but the NAVY "enlistee"... what really was his motive to become a "sailor".

From the original Harvard Crimson article in 1970:

"At Yale, Kerry was chairman of the Political Union and later, as Commencement speaker, urged the United States to withdraw from Vietnam and to scale down foreign military operations. And this was way back in 1966.

When he approached his draft board for permission to study for a year in Paris, the draft board refused and Kerry decided to enlist in the Navy.

The Navy assigned him to the USS Gridley which between December 1966 and July 1968 saw four months of action off the Vietnam coast. In August through November, 1968, Kerry was trained to be the skipper of a patrol boat for Vietnamese rivers. For the next five months, until April of 1969, Kerry was the commanding Lieutenant of a patrol boat in the Mekong Delta. He was wounded slightly on three different occasions and received a Silver Star for bravery.

His patrol boat took part in Operation Sealords, mostly scouting out Viet Cong villages and transporting South Vietnamese marines to various destinations up and down narrow rivers covered with heavy foliage on either side.

One time Kerry was ordered to destroy a Viet Cong village but disobeyed orders and suggested that the Navy Command simply send in a Psychological Warfare team to be friend the villagers with food, hospital supplies, and better educational facilities. "

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1075941/posts

Here Here, Thank You, That Was An Excellent Piece
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This is my own personal story:
The draft, in one form or another, had been around for a long time. In 1969 a change was made in the method of determining who would be called-up first. For the first time since 1942, a lottery was used for the draft. Bringing back a lottery changed the "draft the oldest man first" method, which had been used to determine the "order-of-call". Instead, capsules containing birth dates were drawn by hand from a large glass bowl to assign an order-of-call number was assigned to each birth date.

Draft Lotteries were held in 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1972 to determine the order-of-call or "draft number" for draftees in the following year. The drawings were broadcast on nationwide television. The capsules were drawn, the birth dates were read, and a draft number was assigned to each birth date.

The draft lottery of 1969 was for men born from 1942 through 1950 and everyone whose birth date was assigned the numbers of 1 - 195 were drafted in 1970.

The draft lotteries of 1970, 1971, and 1972 were for men born in 1951, 1952, and 1953, respectively. They were used to determine who would be drafted in 1971, 1972, and, 1973.

If a young man did not want to be drafted into the army, there were options available. You could volunteer for the army and hope for a non-combat assignment; or you could join the navy, or the air force, or the coast guard. You could claim a religious objection to war; you could join the peace corp; you could be a college student and claim a student deferment. Many men left the U.S and went to Canada for a few years (fully pardoned by Jimmy Carter in 1977) to avoid being drafted.
· 27 million men were of draft age during the Vietnam War.
· 9 million men voluntarily enlisted in one or the other of the armed services.
· 2 million men were drafted.
· 172,000 men successfully claimed the legal status of conscientious objectors.
· 700,000 men "resisted" the draft by going to jail or fleeing to Canada.

Everybody had to make a choice. My brother chose the Air Force. George Bush chose the Air National Guard. John Kerry chose the Navy.

When "my" lottery was held on July 1, 1970, my birth date was assigned the draft number 126. At the time, I was an 18-year-old college student just trying to stay in school. After my lottery was held, and I was assigned a low draft number, I went to my local National Guard unit and talked about joining. They added my name to their waiting list. Early in 1971, everyone with a draft number of 1 - 125 was sent a draft notice to report for duty. I went back to my local National Guard unit and told them I was still interested in joining up. In March of 1971, the draft board notified me to report for my physical evaluation. I passed the physical and was told to stand by for further instructions. I went back to my local National Guard unit for a third time. This time they told me they would find a place for me and signed me up. I went to basic training in Fort Polk Louisiana and to advanced training in Fort Sam Houston Texas from May 1971 - November 1971, and then I served with my local National Guard unit for 6 years until May of 1977. Hardly anyone in my unit, including the officers, were older than their mid twenties. Those who were older had chosen to get out in order to make room for the younger guys who wanted to get in. My draft number "126" was never called. Number 125 was as high as they went in 1971. So, as it turns out, I didn't "resist" the draft. As it turns out, I would not have been drafted anyway.

No male who came of age during those years looks back on those days with any kind of fondness. There are a lot of old wounds that are better off left alone. This was an old book on the shelf gathering dust that was better off left unopened. It was a very strange time. But, just the other day, Feb. 4, 2004, John Kerry said this during an interview with FOX News:

"I've never made any judgments about any choice somebody made about avoiding the draft, about going to Canada, going to jail, being a conscientious objector, going into the National Guard. Those are choices people make."

In John Kerry's mind, my choice to join the National Guard is the same thing as someone else's choice to flee to Canada or being sent to jail.

In my mind, John Kerry can just kiss my red white and blue behind.
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