But the big difference? Clinton didn't campaign as a chicken hawk.
These hypocrites are talking about what they woulda done if... but...
well... you see, they had other things on their plate... mumble mumble
But BY GOD! they're tough now!
What a passel of weasling wusses that don't have the courage to wipe
their runny noses.
Paul Nelson wrote:
BFD. These stories sound like Clinton's during the same period. Except
Giuliani and Romney didn't help to organize anti-war protests.
Paul Nelson
Cell 708-670-6978
Office 512-392-2577
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: cpf0000-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:cpf0000-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Booth Martin
Sent: Monday, November 12, 2007 10:06 AM
To: Open discssion among iSeries Users
Subject: [CPF0000] Rudy and Romney: Artful dodgers
" Rudy and Romney: Artful dodgers
When the most belligerent Republicans start to beat the war drums, it's
important to look at what they're trying to hide.
By Joe Conason
REUTERS
July 20, 2007 | Nothing unites the Republican candidates for president
or excites the conservative base more than their bellicose barking about
war and confrontation. The GOP presidential debates often sound like a
tough-man competition, with Rudolph Giuliani denouncing the
"cut-and-run" Democrats, Mitt Romney demanding a double-size Guantánamo
detention camp, and the rest of the pack struggling to keep pace with
the snarling alpha dogs.
Yet while their rhetoric is invariably loud and aggressive, none of
these martial orators has seen a day of military service -- except for
John McCain, whose prospects are rapidly deflating, and Duncan Hunter,
whose campaign never got enough air for a single balloon. Unfortunately
for those two decorated veterans, their party seems to prefer its hawks
to be of the chicken variety.
None of this may matter much. Most of the Democratic candidates lack
military experience, too. But when the most belligerent Republicans
start to beat the war drums, it's important to look at what they're
trying to hide.
Consider Giuliani, the former New York mayor who has remained among the
most vocal supporters of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. He never
hesitates to suggest that politicians with differing opinions simply
lack guts. When he spoke at the 2004 Republican convention, he gleefully
insinuated that Democratic nominee John Kerry lacked the fortitude to
combat terrorism. Now he denigrates the supposedly spineless Democrats
running for president in 2008.
But he has always confined his enthusiasm for war to podium speeches and
position papers. Born in 1944, young Rudy was highly eligible for
military service when he reached his 20s during the Vietnam War. He did
not volunteer for combat -- as Kerry did -- and instead found a highly
creative way to dodge the draft.
During his years as an undergraduate at Manhattan College and then at
New York University Law School, Giuliani qualified for a student
deferment. Upon graduation from law school in 1968, he lost that
temporary deferment and his draft status reverted to 1-A, the
designation awarded to those most qualified for induction into the Army.
At the same time, Giuliani won a clerkship with federal Judge Lloyd
McMahon in the fabled Southern District of New York, where he would
become the United States attorney. He naturally had no desire to trade
his ticket on the legal profession's fast track for latrine duty in the
jungle. So he quickly applied for another deferment based on his
judicial clerkship. This time the Selective Service System denied his
claim.
That was when the desperate Giuliani prevailed upon his boss to write to
the draft board, asking them to grant him a fresh deferment and
reclassification as an "essential" civilian employee. As the great
tabloid columnist Jimmy Breslin noted 20 years later, during the former
prosecutor's first campaign for mayor: "Giuliani did not attend the war
in Vietnam because federal Judge Lloyd MacMahon [sic] wrote a letter to
the draft board in 1969 and got him out. Giuliani was a law clerk for
MacMahon, who at the time was hearing Selective Service cases.
MacMahon's letter to Giuliani's draft board stated that Giuliani was so
necessary as a law clerk that he could not be allowed to get shot at in
Vietnam."
His clerkship ended the following year but his luck held firm. By then
President Nixon had transformed the Selective Service into a lottery
system, and despite Rudy's renewed 1-A status, he drew a high lottery
number and was never drafted.
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BORDER='0' > </A> </NOSCRIPT> Today Giuliani's problem is
not avoiding military service but explaining how and why he avoided it.
A spokesperson for the candidate recently told New York magazine that he
"has made it clear that if he had been called up, he would have served,"
which doesn't quite expiate his strenuous efforts to make sure that
never happened. Giuliani opposed the Vietnam War for "strategic and
tactical" reasons as well, according to his flack. Of course, that
sounds much like the bipartisan dissent against the Iraq war that he now
dismisses so contemptuously.
If Giuliani has a draft problem, Romney's may be even worse. The former
Massachusetts governor, whose supporters object strenuously to any
discussion of his religious beliefs, got his military service deferred
thanks to the Mormon church.
Like Giuliani and millions of other young American men at the time,
Romney started out with student deferments. But he left Stanford after
only two semesters in 1966 and would have become eligible for the draft
-- except that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in
Michigan, his home state, provided him with a fresh deferment as a
missionary. According to an excellent investigative series that appeared
last month in the Boston Globe, that deferment, which described Romney
as a "minister of religion or divinity student," protected him from the
draft between July 1966 and February 1969, when he enrolled in Brigham
Young University to complete his undergraduate degree. Mormons in each
state could select a limited number of young men upon whom to confer
missionary status during the Vietnam years, and Romney was fortunate
enough to be chosen. (Coincidentally, or possibly not, Mitt's father,
George W. Romney, was governor of Michigan at the time.)
Now Romney echoes Giuliani by asserting that if he had been called, he
would have served. "I was supportive of my country," he told Globe
reporter Michael Kranish. "I longed in many respects to actually be in
Vietnam and be representing our country there and in some ways it was
frustrating not to feel like I was there as part of the troops that were
fighting in Vietnam." Perhaps. But it is hard to blame Romney for
choosing missionary work over military service. After all, the Mormons
didn't send him to proselytize in the slums of the Philippines,
Guatemala or Kenya.
They sent him to France.
