Also - I never vouch for anything or anyone unless I can personally do so from my own knowledge.. Hardly quibbling - just being honest.
Of course - given that I've heard the scuttlebutt about Nugent for years, I'd be more prone to believe the worse about him than most... Interesting too, that with all the "talk" there doesn't seem to be a very prominent or public attempt by Nugent to kill the story.
By whatever means Nugent secured his "deferment", it appears by all the information available that is was secured by lies or a scam or possibly both...
Lots of folks pulled the same deal... I can deal with that, and still respect much of what Nugent has done since then..
However - even if ONLY the misbegotten student deferment was used to continue "rocking and rolling" while someone else bore his responsibility - it gives me the cold creeps to see or hear the fellow mouth and dress the role of macho man....
Could perhaps one of my beloved Marine brothers still be alive to share old age with me - if Nugent had stood up and fulfilled his own responsibilities in an honorable fashion?
In my mind, Nugent is one of the most reprehensible "chicken hawks" out there.... He should simple shut the hell up about his bravado.. The only warm blooded creatures Nugent has shot at or killed were four legged - and couldn't shoot back. They were unarmed.
I don't know Ted personally, so I have to assess him through second hand accounts from others and from his own personal writings. To me, he seems like someone who has made errors in his past and is now trying to make the best of his present by doing what he considers the correct course of action now. Like all of us, he can't undo his past mistakes, but he can try to make amends for those errors by doing better in the now. His recent writings mostly put him on my side in this cultural war we are engaged in, so I try not to judge him too harshly for his error ridden history. You may be right when you speculate that had he not gotten a deferment and had entered the service, then one of your friends might still be alive to help celebrate your old age, but then again maybe not. Ted might have gone in, and died instead of your friend, but that friend might have then come home and been killed in a car wreck or become another John Kerry. Speculation about alternative choices always have at least two sides. That is why I don't like to speculate after the fact. It just does not do anyone any good.
Ted has a very outrageous personality, and I can understand why you have some antipathy for him. I just hope that you don't have that same antipathy for all of us in that same age range who didn't serve. And to be totally honest here, many of us who drew high numbers in the lottery mentioned above felt we had been blessed and given a new lease on life, myself included. Looking back, I feel some shame for having felt that way, but when you are young and your life is in front of you, sometimes abstract concepts like honor and integrity and service to others aren't the force in your life that they will become later on. In a way, I envy those who were drafted during that time because they learned those abstracts a lot sooner than the rest of us. Their innocence died much sooner so that ours could be extended, and for that, I again say thank you.