Posted on 09/03/2004 7:15:01 AM PDT by Bob Hyneman
Cheney’s “five deferments.”
[b][color=orange]In the summer of 1967 D ick Cheney was a married 26 year old man with a daughter.[/color] [/b] Twenty-six year old men cannot be drafted but (gasp) he was married and had a daughter BEFORE he turned 26 and that means he had two deferments!!!
[b](Everyone who had a daughter in 1966 was draft dodger right?).[/b]
Anyway, a half-truth is as good as a truth to John Kerry, so all you need to know is the two deferments part right?
Except, that many many years before the draft, D ick Cheney had also - attended Community College - and then University. Since any slick lawyer-type can tell you transferring schools can legally be counted as two deferments, that brings the total to four. (Never mind that he acquired both of these [b][u]years[/u][/b] before Vietnam was a war, or had draft, or could even be found on the amp by most Americans).
So what is number 5? Well in 1965 the US sent its first contingent of 3,500 Marines to Vietnam. (The draft would begin in earnest in 1966-67), Only a few years earlier in 1964-65, that damn D ick Cheney began applying for graduate schools and grad school acceptance counts as another. (This time Mr. Kerry DID successfully count to five).
So, if you believe John Kerry’s version of events, D ick Cheney began dodging the Vietnam draft five (or six) years before troops were being drafted and sent there. (Look this is politics and ad hominem attacks are allowed but if that is the best you got then you ain't got ad hominems)
[b]The fact is that D ick Cheney: - was accepted to community college - was accepted to the U of Wyoming - was accepted to graduate school - was married - was an expectant father all MORE THAN A YEAR before the draft began.[/b]
I note here that Cheney was married and an expectant father both during grad school and after Kerry COULD count that as SEVEN deferments, (but that would imply the ability to count to seven).
I suppose a 26 year-old daddy with a graduate degree and a newborn daughter COULD have volunteered to go to Vietnam, but I don’t think it is altogether honest to portray him as a draft dodger, do you?
Did you go to Vietnam? Have you volunteered for the military?
Let me add regarding the draft back in 1964-
The list basically went this way
single men were 1A and lots were available
single men in college
married men without children
married men
When a person was drafted they could be sent to the army, navy, or marine corps. Whichever service needed men.
Kerry was graduating from college and he was 1A so he went to his draft board and requested a deferment so he could go to Paris and study for a year. This was at a time of the greatest buildup of troops and his deferment was turned down. Because he was afraid that he could end up in the infantry he went to the Navy and enlisted because he thought he could avoid Vietnam. He did for a while on the Gridley but then, allegedly a close friend was killed and he requested duty with the swift boats. As we see he, unlike others who served at least a year, he got out as soon as he could. (since my husband spent 14 months in Vietnam I resent that Kerry cut and ran after 120 days)
(the above info is from the Harvard Crimson and the Boston Globe)
Then he betrayed his country and his fellow soldiers.
Possibly because Clinton was so blatant in worrying about his "political viability" in such a cynical fashion, and possibly because there is a difference between a man with a wife and child to support and an unmarried student.
Look, I admit you have a point. However, I am bothered by the knee jerk attitude of many people on both sides. I hated Clinton's guts (look me up on this site for some of my screeds against him) but what he did in avoiding the draft was perfectly legal as well....and I don't recall anyone giving him this kind of slack! Why not? Partisan poltics pure and simple. At least Clinton opposed the war. Cheney didn't. If people are going to throw stones, they should be reading to take it as well as dish it ou.
ping
The true answer is more simple: Clinton was a Democrat.
When the Vice President was draftable there was not yet a lottery. The lottery began in 1969.
As another poster pointed out, they sent you a draft notice and you filled out an accompanying form if you had deferment status and then you mailed it back.
Not true. My brother and I tried to enlist after 9/11. We are both 50 something. Because our time served plus the time remaining to retirement age was less than 20 years we were not eligible and they told us to go home. Had we been 40 something we would have been eligible.
There are a lot of folks who, knowing what they know now, wish they would have served in the military. They are good Americans and good patriots but times are different now than during the Vietnam Era.
Thanks to the MSM and men like John Kerry, the military was a very unattractive option after about 1971. Soldiers were portrayed as animals and the US as an imperialistic nation. Both lies but that was the prevailing thought. Tough to enlist after being pounded with that crap 24/7 but many did.
I would bet that Cheney wishes he had done it differently but he didn't. We all make mistakes. I wish I had enlisted sooner but I didn't. Can't change it.
But Edwards and Cheney are in the same boat, neither one served in the military. When Kerry attacks Cheney, he necessarily attacks his own VP candidate. Its a stupid move and I hope he continues to make Vietnam the issue of the campaign because the evidence is in, he loses. And he loses because overwhelming majorities of boomers did exactly what Cheney and Edwards did and though lots regret it they don't want it rubbed in their noses.
Keep lying Senator Kerry and keep the campaign set in 1971. It really is a beautiful thing.
"I lost my defense deferment, got a low lottery number (i.e., Number one was first to go--I had #37--the top 100 was surefire induction), and promptly enlusted in the Air Force for a 4 year stint."
I graduated in March 1970, lost my student deferment, but got number 300 in the lottery. Hence I never got the call from my local draft board & got married in June 1970. Most draft-age males never got the 'call', and even fewer volunteered (especially after '67 - '68). I never considered myself a 'draft dodger' since I never got the 'call'.
Many were eligible for the draft and did not get drafted. My father had a deferment since he was in college at the time (born in 1951 - wasn't eligible for the draft until '69). With the birthday lottery system, his "number" each year still would not have been caused him to be drafted before the war was over.
So my dad - who by some freakish definition "dodged" his duty by not volunteering for combat - still managed to raise two young conservatives, one of whom HAS volunteered for military service in the midst of the war on terror. You don't have to serve in a combat unit, or serve in the military at all, to support a war or support the people fighting it.
"Spin it anyway you want. Cheney stayed home while fifty thousand Americans died in a war he supported."
Cheney stayed home, Edwards stayed home, Clinton ran like a girly man to Oxford and millions of other Americans stayed home. And yes, 56,000 Americans died in the name of freedom.
No one, except his boatmates and unitmates have a problem with John Kerry's Vietnam experience. And they are calling him on the carpet for it and Kerry refuses to answer the accusations.
In addition, upon arriving home from Vietnam, John Kerry blasted, mocked and denigrated the people that were sent to die in the name of freedom. That is what Kerry has to answer to the people of the United States for. And we want the answers.
Failure to do so not only makes him irresponsible but a coward to boot.
Good info. Thanks.
Once they got back the pool of eligibles who could be drafted pre-1969 how did they select the ones to go?
Not to mention the fact that the US had more than one military mission in 1969!
Some ANG units (including the dual-tasked unit Bush joined) were needed to support NORAD requirements to provide for air defense of the North American continent.
And yes- the Texas ANG was tasked to guard the "skies of Texas" and other areas, which is why pilots like GWB pulled alert duty 24/7.
In the late 1960's and thereafter, Russian bombers were routinely flying along our eastern coastline (collecting intelligence and practicing for wartime bombing/mine-laying runs) - swinging out in the Gulf of Mexico toward the entrance to the Panama Canal - and then recovering in Cuba.
And the Cuban air force was receiving an extensive inventory of modern Soviet aircraft to use for missions against US targets, like our ports and military bases, along the southern coast in the event of general warfare (a 90 mile hop gives a pretty good mission radius to even a MiG).
So here's to the unsung ANG "cowards" who VOLUNTEERED to sit alert 24/7 for dozens of years as our last line of defense in the Cold War.
And Kerry was back here screaming about the war being immoral and soldiers were baby killers. They were encouraging people to go to Canada, for goodness'sake. You are a brave, moral, principled war protester if you go to Canada, but you are a draft-dodger duty shirker if you get a legitimate deferment?
My head is going to explode!
No, the true answer is that people can tell the difference between someone getting a deferment for school and a person getting a deferment because they have a family at home to support.
Yes, I heard that on Larry. Kerry tried to get a deferment to study in France for a year, then joined the Naval Reserve. I don't remember how Larry explained he was then on active duty.
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