[Austin Willard Wright]

You're getting old Sink or perhaps didn't have your morning coffee. I early and often *supported* the war in Afghanistan and said so on this site many times. Come to think of it, didn't we talk about this at the time?

Did I have an obligation to volunteer because of this (too old, over forty, anyway)? No. The American volunteer military had plenty of troops to do the job. This was not true in Vietnam.

[sinkspur]

Did you go to Vietnam? Have you volunteered for the military?

[jwalsh07]

Did I have an obligation to volunteer because of this (too old, over forty, anyway)? No. The American volunteer military had plenty of troops to do the job. This was not true in Vietnam.

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.

[A.A. Cunningham]

This was not true in Vietnam.

Bravo Sierra. 2/3 of those who served in Viet Nam were volunteers. 2/3 of those who served in WWII were draftees.

[Howlin]

The American volunteer military had plenty of troops to do the job. This was not true in Vietnam.

Once again you are wrong:

Again:

Of the 26.8 million men who were eligible for the draft between 1964 and 1973, only 2.2 million were drafted while 8.7 million joined voluntarily, according to "Chance and Circumstance: the Draft, the War, and the Vietnam Generation," a 1978 book by Lawrence M. Baskir and William A. Strauss. Mr. Cheney was among the vast majority of 16 million men " about 60 percent of those eligible " who avoided the draft by legal means.