Posted on 04/15/2007 3:02:41 AM PDT by Liz
.... Rudy Giuliani carries a lot of baggage - but it's his draft-dodging past that may prove the biggest drag, prominent veterans tell New York magazine in tomorrow's issue. Speaking about terrorism and the Iraq war last week, Giuliani boasted, "It is something I understand better than anyone else running for president." But it was draft deferments that kept Giuliani, 62, out of Vietnam while he attended law school. He was granted a 2-A occupational deferment for his job as a law clerk in 1969 after his boss, the late Manhattan federal Judge Lloyd MacMahon, wrote a letter to the local draft board - a move criticized years later as rare and questionable. Law clerks were not on the 1968 list of critical jobs that qualified for occupational deferments. Giuliani "has made it clear that if he had been called up, he would have served," Giuliani spokeswoman Katie Levinson told New York magazine. He was opposed to the war in Vietnam on "strategic and tactical" grounds," she added, although she wouldn't offer specifics.
"If Giuliani is the nominee, we're going to hammer him with ads, and it's going to be easy because the issue is simple: He's a draft dodger," Jon Soltz, an Iraq vet who served as a captain and runs VoteVets.org, a left-leaning version of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth .......a sense that a candidate can handle the role of commander-in-chief remains important to most Americans.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Newt was responsible for retaking control of the House of Representatives for the first time 40+ years.
I don’t think he would be an appealing Presidential candidate, as he has too many negatives, and has no executive experience, ie. wasn’t a Mayor or Governor.
I also base my views on personal experience, 8 years as a naval officer, and on commonsense. You don't build a military based on mandatory military service, but rather on the mission. You have failed twice to answer my question, "What size active duty military do you want?"
'Entltlements should be slashed with a meat axe as should the rest of the central goobermint.
Now suggest something realistic. Do you really believe that Congress will slash entitlements with a meat axe? Be realistic. We have $65 trillion of unfunded liabilities represented by the entitlement programs. SS will start being a black hole instead of a cash cow in 2017. Medicare is in worse shape with 2012 or 2013 being the date it starts going belly up. We will soon be facing the same choices that Europe has been making for years, i.e., between guns and butter. Our aging population will increase the costs of the entitlement programs and we will be squeezed in other areas as well. It is going to be harder and harder to maintain the existing levels of expenditures on defense.
Defense and character building is job # 1 of our military
No defense is the #1 job of our military. Character building is the job of parents, schools, and churches.
Please don't wave the entitlements issue at me because I don't believe in them.
Then you don't understand the issue. In 1950, there were 16 workers paying Social Security taxes for every retired person receiving benefits. Today there are 3.3. By 2030, there will be only 2. Today, 48 million Americans receive Social Security benefits, including 33 million retirees, 7 million survivors, and 8 million disabled workers. By 2030, there will be 70 million Americans of retirement age--twice as many as today. And entitlement benefits are on automatic pilot, i.e., the amount of the benefits are determined by a fixed forumula outside the normal budget process. We are headed for a major train wreck.
The Bush Administration's budget request for FY 2008 through FY 2012 shows a number of external and internal pressures on the defense budget. The external pressures are posed by the continuing and projected growth in spending for the three major entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If these entitlement programs are not reformed, the growth in entitlement spending will crowd out needed defense funding. This comes at a time when defense expenditures relative to GDP are already relatively low.
Our politicians would like to see the status quo in respect to the military because if they didn't have the underachievers the Mexican illegals (Guest Voter Program) would definiately have to go in order to make room for those not qualified to serve in our military.
No, many Dems would like to see the draft reinstituted. They see it as a way to restrict the use of the military. People who are forced into a military that goes to war are not happy campers. They can be used as leverage by the Dems, who are not happy that our college campuses are no longer hotbeds of antiwar activity.
Forget the women (any nation that places females in combat jobs isn't worth defending) you include in the 18-26 category, then subtract the underachievers and you have a figure that is easily managed.
So women get a pass, which leaves 16 million males in the 18-26 cohort. How big a military do you want? Do you want all 16 million to serve [minus those who can't meet the physical and military qualifications]? Do you know what the annual intake is now in terms of new recruits? What you are suggesting is insane and not embraced by the military.
I don't know if you served in the military and don't care. There was a classification used in the Army until those in that classifcation could be released from active duty due to their poor IQ. That classifcation was Duty Soldier..
Your call for mandatory military service bears no relation to the mission, the threat, or the costs. You are living in a fantasy world. The DOD budget request for 2008 is $647 billion. How much will your proposed massive increase in personnel add to those costs? Our money would be best spent on incentives to increase the number and quality of volunteers to an all-volunteer force than to force millions into it with no benefit to our war fighting capability.
If Rudy were a real draft dodger, I’d be among the first to attack him. But being granted a 2-A deferment is not a draft dodger. Being drafted and then running, or leaving the country before being drafted is a draft dodger. Next they’ll be saying that anyone that served in the national guard is a draft dodger...and that’s not the case. Only if you can prove that a person gets drafted AND THEN after being drafted is allowed to join the national guard...are they a draft dodger.
We don’t know the circumstances around the decision to grant him a deferment. So in my opinion, he gets the benefit of the doubt.
I’m not voting for him though. And it’s got nothing to do with his lack of military service.
My grandfather was sent back home from boot camp durning wwii because his employer cried and cried that if his construction superintendent(my grandfather) left the company, the company would not be able to function. I wouldn’t call him a draft dodger for that. I have 5 uncles served during the early part of vietnam and not one of them ever set foot in vietnam, but they are all considered vietnam vets. That makes no sense to me, but the army says they are veterans, so that’s what they are.
That’s not a draft dodger unless he joined the national guard after being drafted.
In fact, all McCain is known for is getting shot down in his A4 over NVN and beiong captured by NVA. If he was a better pilot, perhaps that wouldn’t have happened...
I will not vote for Giuliani, but I have a feeling this “draft dodger” story came up when Giuliani was Mayor. (Just a guess.) The Post is probably bringing it up now just to cause trouble, or at the behest of another campaign.
I believe he is known for standing up to NVA torture for 5 year.
So is john kerry
Whoopee. He’s a professional politician. What should we expect?
So your “so does kerry’ comparison is inaccurate and misleading, to say the least.
Kerry is a decorated vet.
That’s all I said. And that is factually correct. Medals don’t mean sh1t.
I may or may not vote for hunter...but it won’t have anything to do with his medals.
I agree. It's how you served, not the medals you got. I know how Kerry served. I know how Hunter served.
I may or may not vote for hunter...but it won’t have anything to do with his medals.
No, but it has everything to do with his mettle. As it should with any Presidential candidate.
McCain also refused to be released before the other POW’s he was with.
The NVA wanted to turn him loose because of his daddy, but McCain said no.
I won’t vote for him in the primaries, be has earned my respect.
I’ve heard this too.
I don’t completely understand what the circumstances are though. When a POW, aren’t you still in the service and still respecting rank of your fellow inmates and still taking orders from your superiors? aren’t your captives supposed to clear anything with the highest ranking prisoner first?
So shouldn’t McCain have told them to go talk to his superior and then do as his superior says?
That’s pretty much how it worked. But I think his superior would have OK’d the deal. Not sure on that.
But his dad was a 4 star Admiral, and the VC wanted the publicity releasing John would have given.
To his credit, NcCain said no. That took guts, IMO.
GWB volunteered to go to nam
Man who swore Bush into Air Guard speaks out
I am no fan of Rudy, but how does that make him any different than the current commander-in-chief who avoided Vietnam by learning to fly jet fighters in the US?
Rudy never served. He got a deferment.He was granted a 2-A occupational deferment for his job as a law clerk in 1969 after his boss, the late Manhattan federal Judge Lloyd MacMahon, wrote a letter to the local draft board - a move criticized years later as rare and questionable. Law clerks were not on the 1968 list of critical jobs that qualified for occupational deferments.
President Bush enlisted. Bush actually did volunteer for Viet Nam but the airframe he was qualified to fly had been phased out of that theater and they didn't allow him to requalify in another aircraft.
Read the links at post # 297.
If you don't see the difference, it's because you refuse to.
You can't see any difference between being a jet fighter pilot and a law clerk? I'm guessing that like the liberals Bill Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, you never served in the military.
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