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Did Joe Biden dodge draft after bloody Tet offensive?
911FamiliesForAmerica.org ^ | September 4, 2008 | Tim Sumner

Posted on 09/04/2008 7:04:38 AM PDT by Sergeant Tim

Click on image for the actual September 2, 2008, front page

After seven years of initial eligibility, Joseph Biden was removed from the military draft pool just when it was most likely he would be drafted and sent into the Vietnam War. The American death toll was rising rapidly -- 11,153 in 1967. Thousands more had died since the Tet offensive began in January, 296,000 men ages 19 through 25 would be drafted during 1968, Joseph Biden had run out of college deferments, and he would not be safe until November 20, 1968, his twenty-sixth birthday.

During the Democrat Party convention, Joseph Biden was spoken of in glowing terms on the pages of the New York Times on August 28, 2008:

As Democrats often do, [at the convention, Biden] paid tribute to Mr. McCain’s military service and his more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. That is not sufficient qualification for the presidency, Mr. Biden said in as direct a way as any Democrat this year has. “The choice in this election is clear,” Mr. Biden said. “These times require more than a good soldier. They require a wise leader,” he said, a leader who can deliver “the change that everybody knows we need.” ... The self-described “kid from Scranton” paid a moving tribute to his 90-year-old mother, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden. He said she had taught him honor, loyalty and bravery. She also helped him overcome his stuttering, telling him, as he put it, “it was because I was so bright I couldn’t get the thoughts out quickly enough.”

Despite two runs for President, in 1988 and 2008, and 36 years in Congress, Senator Biden's 1-Y reclassification has never appeared in the Times, to include this Associated Press report from August 31, 2008:

Officials with Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's campaign released Biden's Selective Service records at the request of The Associated Press. Less detailed records were available from a National Archives facility in Philadelphia [emphasis added mine].

According to the documents, Biden, 65, received several deferments while he was an undergraduate at the University of Delaware and later as a law student at Syracuse University. A month after undergoing a physical exam in April 1968, Biden received a Selective Service classification of 1-Y, meaning he was available for service only in the event of national emergency.

"As a result of a physical exam on April 5, 1968, Joe Biden was classified 1-Y and disqualified from service because of asthma as a teenager," said David Wade, a campaign spokesman.

In "Promises to Keep," a memoir that was published last year and became an instant best-seller after he was tapped as Obama's running mate, Biden never mentions his asthma, recounting an active childhood, work as a lifeguard and football exploits in high school.

Along with some other leading Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has pointed out Vice President Richard Cheney's five draft deferments during the Vietnam War yet never mentioned those of Senator Biden.

The details of his April 5, 1968 medical examination -- to include who examined Biden and sent the 1-Y reclassification card to his draft board -- remain undetermined by the mainstream media.

Senator John McCain and Senator Biden are touted for their foreign policy experience that Senator Barack Obama and Governor Sarah Palin are said to lack.

The difference is John McCain entered the Naval Academy in 1955, served in Vietnam, spent 5 1/2 years being tortured in the Hanoi Hilton, and retired from the United States Navy in 1982. Neither Barack Obama nor Joseph Biden have served in the military. Sarah Palin "merely" served as the Commander-in-Chief of the Alaska National Guard.

Apparently, Congressman Pelosi and the New York Times do not want the American people to know that Joseph Biden may have dodged the draft during Vietnam.


TOPICS: Editorial; Extended News; Politics/Elections; US: Delaware; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: 2008; 2008veep; biden; bidenrecord; marklevin; mccain; obama; obamatruthfile; palin; tet; vietnamwar
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To: gracesdad

What was a 1Y deferment? I recall 1S was scholastic deferment and 4F was physically unable to serve.


41 posted on 09/04/2008 8:42:44 AM PDT by AZFolks
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To: AZFolks
What was a 1Y deferment? I recall 1S was scholastic deferment and 4F was physically unable to serve.

I don't know for sure, but the 'Y' could stand for YELLOW. ;-)

42 posted on 09/04/2008 8:47:59 AM PDT by MarkLevinFan
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To: svcw
Even some here on FR feel the same way

You're right, we do have some CommieRATs here.

43 posted on 09/04/2008 8:49:29 AM PDT by ASA Vet
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To: Sergeant Tim

And WHO was the President that sent our boys to die in Vietnam without supporting them?

Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson, or LBJ. Someone said the Johnson’s made lots of money transporting materials and equipment over there. Don’t know if it’s true.

I do know that he tied their hands so that they could not win. So much for a what a Democrat President and Congress can accomplish. Do we want that again?


44 posted on 09/04/2008 8:54:39 AM PDT by wizr ("Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition." - Chaplain Maguire, Pearl Harbor, 1941)
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To: Sergeant Tim

JOE BIDEN & THE POLITICS OF BELIEF - READY TO ANNOUNCE FOR PRESIDENT, HE DISMISSES THE POLLS ‘I’M GOING TO WIN’
Washington Post - June 9, 1987
Author: Lois Romano, Washington Post Staff Writer

EXCERPT

Biden entered the University of Delaware in 1961 and studied history and political science. The summer of his junior year he met Neilia Hunter, who would become his first wife, and in 1965 he enrolled at Syracuse for law school so she could finish her undergraduate work there.

His law school years were a time of campus activism, but while he may court the ‘60s generation today — drawing on collective memories of marches and protests — he wasn’t really moved by the war himself. He never did march. He wore blazers to class.

“It wasn’t going on when I was in college, and when I was in graduate school I wasn’t hanging around at the student union,” he says. “I was hanging around with other married couples.”

Others, he says, “felt more strongly than I did about the immorality” of the Vietnam war. “My view of it was it didn’t make sense. It was lousy policy ... It really came down to my rejection of the rationale that somehow there was this monolithic communism spreading through the countryside, and next thing you know they’d be marching under the Golden Gate Bridge.”

Biden says he received a draft notice after graduating from law school, but failed the physical because of an asthma condition. He had hoped to be a pilot.

“My feeling about it at the time was like a lot of things in my life have been: That there must have been a reason for it. I was prepared to go. I was not anxious to go, because I didn’t think, ‘My God, I can hardly wait to go and join the military.’ “


45 posted on 09/04/2008 8:57:04 AM PDT by maggief (Difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull ... lipstick!)
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To: Will88
Matter of opinion. If someone stayed in school just to maintain their II-S status, then it was draft dodging, or at least draft avoidance.

I believe you're sugar coating it. The really bad part is that these cowards were not known for their high intellect - so they went for the easiest of degrees so they wouldn't flunk out of school. Their degree in most cases was in education. That is the part that really burns my a$$....these pu$$ies are the people that poison my children's mind in the classroom.

46 posted on 09/04/2008 9:11:03 AM PDT by Retired COB (Still mad about Campaign Finance Reform)
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To: Clint N. Suhks; Sergeant Tim

I’m confused. Was Sergeant Tim a caller on Plante’s show today?

I was a caller YESTERDAY, not today.....


47 posted on 09/04/2008 9:21:11 AM PDT by SilvieWaldorfMD (Airlines can take their $15-per-checked-bag surcharge and shove it!)
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To: Non-Sequitur; svcw

“...do we really want to pissing contest over our draft dodgers vs. their draft dodgers?”

Questioning a medical exemption, especially one as conveniently timed as Biden’s, is a far cry from casually throwing a “Draft Dodger” label around. In fact, by the standards used by the dims (as well as you), I’m a DD, since I both had student deferments and then enlisted to avoid being drafted when those deferments went away.

Actually, I don’t really give a rat’s a$$ if Biden’s medical deferment was fraudulent or not. I don’t think that I’d have wanted him anywhere around me back in The Day, in combat or no, and I promise that I won’t hurt his or anyone’s little feelings by calling ‘em by any name at all.

JMHO, considering the perfect sh**storm the libs and their pets in the MSM usually lay on anyone they consider an opponent and especially the all-out gang rape they’ve administered to the entire Palin family (unborn infants and all) it’s about time to take off the gloves and give the bast**ds a little payback.

If this deferment thing has any wheels and Biden so much as mentions the military, I’d say we wrap all the documentation we can find around a very long, sharp stick and jam it right up every lib a$$ available, beginning with Biden and the entire staff of the NYSlime.


48 posted on 09/04/2008 9:26:46 AM PDT by Unrepentant VN Vet (Dealing with a situation with a speech or voting "Present" just doesn't hack it.)
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To: Retired COB

“I believe you’re sugar coating it. The really bad part is that these cowards were not known for their high intellect - so they went for the easiest of degrees so they wouldn’t flunk out of school. Their degree in most cases was in education. That is the part that really burns my a$$....these pu$$ies are the people that poison my children’s mind in the classroom.”

Except of course all our Republican leaders who stayed in school to avoid the draft., Right?


49 posted on 09/04/2008 9:29:44 AM PDT by gracesdad
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To: Sergeant Tim
Apparently, Congressman Pelosi and the New York Times do not want the American people to know that Joseph Biden may have dodged the draft during Vietnam.

If this is dodging, then we have lots of draft dodgers. Do you think Dick Cheney is a draft dodger?

No, the real story here is that the MSM would call Cheney one, but won't even cover Biden's record.

Let's not let the MSM's hypocrisy drive us to the same.

50 posted on 09/04/2008 9:31:37 AM PDT by TankerKC (Those are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others.)
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To: AZFolks

“What was a 1Y deferment? I recall 1S was scholastic deferment and 4F was physically unable to serve.”

1Y basically meant you had a physical condition that disqualified you from being drafted, but it wasn’t so serious that you couldn’t be called in a national emergency. 1Y was discontinued as a category in 1971.

Rush Limbaugh was 1Y because of a cyst on his rear end. Ken Starr was deferred because of psoriasis. More than 1 person got out because of “bad knees” but then went on to play pro or college sports or later became an avid runner. Medical deferment was very fluid if you had enough influence and the right doctor.


51 posted on 09/04/2008 9:45:15 AM PDT by gracesdad
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To: MarkLevinFan

“I don’t know for sure, but the ‘Y’ could stand for YELLOW. ;-)”

Limbaugh was 1Y.


52 posted on 09/04/2008 9:46:19 AM PDT by gracesdad
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To: svcw
Medical and college deferments are not draft dodging.

Nor is(was) joining the National Guard, as Quayle and Bush 43 did. Also, it is not a mark of patriotism to trundle down to the Post Office to register for the draft, knowing full well that flat feet, asthma, bad kneees, bad back, or whatever will save your bacon should a draft actually occur.

53 posted on 09/04/2008 9:50:12 AM PDT by gundog (John McCain is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.)
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To: gracesdad

I said, “AFTER deferrments for schooling..”

I know the era, I know the Army, and sometimes my gut says something doesn’t measure up.


54 posted on 09/04/2008 9:55:40 AM PDT by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain -- Those denying the War was Necessary Do NOT Support the Troops!)
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To: gracesdad
Except of course all our Republican leaders who stayed in school to avoid the draft., Right?

I don't know any of our Republican leaders who were schoolteachers with the exception of Dennis Hastert (a high school coach).

55 posted on 09/04/2008 10:19:32 AM PDT by Retired COB (Still mad about Campaign Finance Reform)
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To: Unrepentant VN Vet
Questioning a medical exemption, especially one as conveniently timed as Biden’s, is a far cry from casually throwing a “Draft Dodger” label around. In fact, by the standards used by the dims (as well as you), I’m a DD, since I both had student deferments and then enlisted to avoid being drafted when those deferments went away.

Then what qualifies one as a 'draft dodger' in your eyes? Biden's asthma apparently does. What about Buchanan's knee or Limbaugh's cyst? Were those conveniently timed? How much timing went into all the deferements that Giuliani and Rove and Thompson and Lott and Graham and all the others arrainged.

You want to limit draft dodgers to Democrats then have at it. Most will not use your oh-so-convenient definition, and any attempts at hanging that label on Biden 40 years later is going to also hang it on the GOP leadership as well. And if that prevents Biden from even mentioning the military then a large sampling of GOP leadership and pundits had better keep their mouth's zipped on the services as well.

56 posted on 09/04/2008 10:19:57 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: Non-Sequitur

Your opinion of whatever I “apparently” use as criteria does not qualify as fact.

Read my entire post again, then parse words, please.


57 posted on 09/04/2008 10:45:31 AM PDT by Unrepentant VN Vet (Dealing with a situation with a speech or voting "Present" just doesn't hack it.)
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To: gracesdad

gracesdad, tell the truth. Who do you think would be more likely to have received a legitimate medical deferment, Limbaugh or Biden? It may be hard, but please tell the truth.


58 posted on 09/04/2008 10:54:40 AM PDT by MarkLevinFan
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To: xzins
I agree with what you posted, but I do not think it is something worth trying to present as a negative for the campaign.

Clinton truly is a dd and he remains one of their party leaders.

There is so much really good stuff for us to hit Biden with we can leave his 1Y status in the dustbin.

Plus, Biden has a kid in the military (a lawyer, and we all remember how the lawyers in our patrols always insisted on walking point) and that is the current situation which trumps anything he did back in the 60's.

59 posted on 09/04/2008 10:55:19 AM PDT by There's millions of'em (Palin: the remedy for the Kennedy myth)
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To: Sergeant Tim
The self-described “kid from Scranton” paid a moving tribute to his 90-year-old mother, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden. He said she had taught him honor, loyalty and bravery

I'm afraid the poor woman failed miserably.

60 posted on 09/04/2008 11:09:35 AM PDT by T. Buzzard Trueblood ("the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of "personal discovery."" Gov. Sarah Palin)
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