Posted on 09/07/2004 1:24:21 PM PDT by Calpernia
Excerpt:
"If I got three Purple Hearts for three scratches, I'd be embarrassed," said Ted Sampley, who fought in Vietnam and publishes U.S. Veteran Dispatch. He remembers soldiers turning away awards for minor injuries.
Mr. Kerry has said none of his Purple Heart injuries, only one of which removed him from the field for two days, was critical.
After his third Purple Heart, Mr. Kerry requested and was granted permission to return to the United States to work behind a desk in New York. Even while still a Navy man, he began traveling to antiwar rallies with leading war protesters such as Adam Walinsky, a former speechwriter for Robert F. Kennedy.
Mr. Walinsky recalled that Mr. Kerry flew him around the state of New York for several Vietnam Moratorium protests in October 1969.
"He was a guy who had been in the war," he said. "We spent a lot of time talking about the campaign, the presidential campaign and the Vietnam War."
Mr. Kerry has said he did not take part in the protests, but was intrigued by Mr. Walinsky's views about the war. The two men stayed in contact and "became reasonably good friends," Mr. Walinsky said.
Others were shocked by the Naval officer's association with the antiwar movement.
"He gets this cushy job in his hometown, goes around protesting the war, then asks to get out six months early," Mr. Sampley said. "What regulations were busted when Kerry as a Naval officer and still on the payroll was flying around protesting the war? And who had to stand in and fight for John Kerry after he left six months early?"
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
http://abcnews.go.com/onair/nightline/clintonyears/clinton/etc/draftletter.html
Clinton's ROTC Letter As Entered in Congressional Record (Page: H5550) 7/30/93
Dear Col. Holmes,
I am sorry to be so long in writing. I know I promised to let you hear from me at least once a month, and from now on you will, but I have to have some time to think about this first letter. Almost daily since my return to England I have thought about writing, about what I want to and ought to say.
First, I want to thank you, not only for saving me from the draft, but for being so kind to me last summer, when I was as low as I have ever been. One thing that made the bond we struck in good faith somewhat palatable to me was my high regard for you personally. In retrospect, it seems that the admiration might not have been mutual had you known a little more about me, about my political beliefs and activities. At least you might have thought me more fit for the draft than for ROTC.
Let me try to explain. As you know, I worked in a very minor position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I did it for the experience and the salary but also for the opportunity, however small, of working every day against a war I opposed and despised with a depth of feeling I had reserved solely for racism in America before Vietnam. I did not take the matter lightly but studied it carefully, and there was a time when not many people had more information about Vietnam at hand than I did.
I have written and spoken and marched against the war. One of the national organizers of the Vietnam Moratorium is a close friend of mine. After I left Arkansas last summer, I went to Washington to work in the national headquarters of the Moratorium, then to England to organize the Americans here for demonstrations October 15 and November 16.
Interlocked with the war is the draft issue, which I did not begin to consider separately until early 1968. For a law seminar at Georgetown I wrote a paper on the legal arguments for and against allowing, within the Selective Service System, the classification of selective conscientious objection, for those opposed to participation in a particular war, not simply to "participation in war in any form."
From my work, I came to believe that the draft system itself is illegitimate. No government really rooted in limited, parliamentary democracy should have the power to make its citizens fight and kill and die in a war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may be wrong, a war, which in any case, does not involve immediately the peace and freedom of the nation. The draft was justified in World War II because the life of the people collectively was at stake.
Individuals had to fight, if the nation was to survive, for the lives of their country and their way of life. Vietnam is no such case. Nor was Korea an example where, in my opinion, certain military action was justified but the draft was not, for the reasons stated above.
Because of my opposition to the draft and the war, I am in great sympathy with those who are not willing to fight, kill, and maybe die for their country (i.e. the particular policy of a particular government) right or wrong. Two of my friends at Oxford are conscientious objectors. I wrote a letter of recommendation for one of them to his Mississippi draft board, a letter I am more proud of than anything else I wrote at Oxford last year. One of my roommates is a draft resister who is possibly under indictment and may never be able to go home again. He is one of the bravest, best men I know. His country needs men like him more than they know. That he is considered a criminal is an obscenity.
The decision not to be a resister and the related subsequent decisions were the most difficult of my life. I decided to accept the draft in spite of my beliefs for one reason only, to maintain my political viability within the system. For years I have worked to prepare myself for a political life characterized by both practical political ability and concern for rapid social progress. It is a life I still feel compelled to try to lead. I do not think our system of government is by definition corrupt, however dangerous and inadequate it has been in recent years. (The society may be corrupt, but that is not the same thing, and if that is true we are all finished anyway.)
When the draft came, despite political convictions, I was having a hard time facing the prospect of fighting a war I had been fighting against, and that is why I contacted you. ROTC was the one way in which I could possibly, but not positively, avoid both Vietnam and the resistance. Going on with my education, even coming back to England, played no part in my decision to join ROTC. I am back here, and would have been at Arkansas Law School because there is nothing else I can do. I would like to have been able to take a year out perhaps to teach in a small college or work on some community action project and in the process to decide whether to attend law school or graduate school and how to begin putting what I have learned to use.
But the particulars of my personal life are not near as important to me as the principles involved. After I signed the ROTC letter of intent I began to wonder whether the compromise I had made with myself was not more objectionable than the draft would have been, because I had no interest in the ROTC program itself and all I seem to have done was to protect myself from physical harm. Also, I had begun to think that I had deceived you, not by lies--there were none--but by failing to tell you all of the things I'm telling you now. I doubt I had the mental coherence to articulate them then.
At that time, after we had made our agreement and you had sent my 1D deferment to my draft board, the anguish and loss of my self regard and self confidence really set in. I hardly slept for weeks and kept going by eating compulsively and reading until exhaustion brought sleep. Finally, on September 12 I stayed up all night writing a letter to the chairman of my draft board, saying basically what is in the preceding paragraph, thanking him for trying to help in a case where he really couldn't, and stating that I couldn't do the ROTC after all and would he please draft me as soon as possible.
I never mailed the letter, but I did carry it with me every day until I got on the plane to return to England. I didn't mail the letter because I didn't see, in the end, how my going in the army and maybe going to Vietnam would achieve anything except a feeling that I had punished myself and gotten what I deserved. So I came back to England to try to make something of the second year of my Rhodes scholarship.
And that is where I am now, writing to you because you have been good to me and have a right to know what I think and feel. I am writing too in the hope that my telling this one story will help you understand more clearly how so many fine people have come to find themselves loving their country but loathing the military, to which you and other good men have devoted years, lifetimes and the best service you could give. To many of us, it is no longer clear what is service and what is dis-service, or if it is clear, the conclusion is likely to be illegal.
Forgive the length of this letter. There was much to say. There is still a lot to be said, but it can wait. Please say hello to Colonel Jones for me. Merry Christmas.
Sincerely,
Bill Clinton
Ping
Ping
Line from "Stairway to Heaven":
"Mmmm, and it makes me wonder..."
Would that be the case involving rice in his posterior?
-- John O'Neill
As September approached, Bill Clinton fails to enroll at the University Arkansas and returns to England around mid-September of 1969. It is quite clear that major changes in the draft would be forthcoming in the next few days or weeks. Clinton's appearance at Oxford was unexpected and he had to sleep on the floor in his friend's room.
In October and again in November 1969 Clinton organized and led anti-war demonstrations in London, England with the support of the British Peace Council, which was backed by the World Peace Council who was a front for the KGB.
October 30, 1969 Clinton was automatically reclassified to 1-A eligible for induction, after he failed to enroll at the University of Arkansas. Bill Clinton today, claims he volunteer for the draft but has no proof. Regardless, by this time a freeze was put on the draft until the lottery was established.
The Selective Service Lottery was held on December 1, 1969. Clinton's birthday draws number 311 in the first lottery. This high number guarantees Clinton will not be called up for the draft.
Two days later Clinton writes his infamous ROTC letter to Col. Holmes thanking him for saving him from the draft.
-----------------------------------------
Now, look at the date for Kerry.
Mr. Walinsky recalled that Mr. Kerry flew him around the state of New York for several Vietnam Moratorium protests in October 1969.
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I think they knew each other from these protest groups.
I always found it interesting that Adam Walinsky was one of Robert Kennedy's top aides opposed to the war, when it was Robert Kennedy's brother JFK who got us into Vietnam, selected incompetents like McNamara, Rusk and the Bundy brothers to run and ruin the war (kept on by LBJ) and who turned against it when his brother's strategy went haywire.
bump
bump
I swear, this Kerry stuff makes me want to puke. Add the Draft Dodger to it and you almost put me over the edge...
That's right.
I love our military....bmp
I know this will be like the dems in seeing no connection between al quaeda and Iraq...even though it's staring us in the face.
Repeat it with me...John Kerry and Bill Clinton did not have any relations during anti-war events. /sarcasm
Thanks for the info...something to think about anyway.
So do I.
Which is why he's not gettin' my vote & I don't care what he has to say.
Once a liar.
...always a liar.
Rush did mention this today!
I can attribute this to me, posting this story 1st!
In 1973, the draft ended and the U.S. converted to
an All-Volunteer military.
Edwards turned 18 in 1971.
John Edwards COULD have served during Vietnam BUT didn't.
Instead he went to college from '70-'74
He enrolled at Clemson University
but dropped out in his first year,
after a football scholarship fell through
http://www.johnedwards2004.com/john_edwards.asp
He must have broken some military rules with that, one would think.
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