On Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:36:16 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

Frank Boettcher wrote:
Doug, as one who was there I'll offer some additional information
regarding this subject.


Frank, I appreciate & respect your views. I am old enough to remember
the "temper of the times" pretty well. The newscasts are still vivid
in my mind, in fact! Some stuff like the moonwalks, LBJ's signature
'Mah fellow Ah-murricans...' the footage of B-52 raids, and the
growing consensus that the war in Vietnam wasn't really worth it.

Within six months or so, I am the same age as both Bush and Clinton.
I was subject to those same decisions regarding what to do about the
draft similar to each of those individuals. Falling behind in my class
because of lack of money and the neccessity to work, and losing my
deferrment, I chose to join the Marine Corp Reserves, rather than be
drafted. I thought that, if deployed, it would be better to go with
people I know who would be pretrained. If not deployed, I could
continue with my education and life in general.


A good choice IMHO. Not sure what I would have done myself, my family
has a strong tradition of military service and I was not a great
student. With a spiralling recession & talk of reviving the draft, I
enlisted in the Navy in 1978.

Bush joined the Guard much later than I. At the time that the
alledged AWOL took place the military was in a mode of trying to dump
excess personnel.

Well, all his records have been lost, so nobody really knows, do they?
The funny thing is that most vets I know have copies of many of their
important military records, like evals and of course the DD-214. That
a prominent person like George Bush Jr. had his records "lost" and
none have ever surfaced really smells funny to me.


Clinton, OTOH just dodged the draft.

No more so than anybody else on a student deferment.

... Used influence to temporarily
avoid serving

I've never understood this. What influence did he have? He was a great
student but he was a nobody from a broken home and a poor family.

It is my understanding that he had an obligation based on an ROTC
scholarship and an individual holding a General rank in the Arkansas
guard intervened on his behalf to postpone his service until he
completed his Rhodes tour based on his promise to serve at the
conclusion of same. This is from memory, not from the time but later
on. You are welcome to research and prove me wrong, it won't be the
first time.

Frank

..so he could go to England on a Rhodes scholarship with
a promise he would serve on return. He broke that promise.

Possibly so. It wouldn't be the first, most likely, and it wouldn't be
the last. However, since bashing the Clintons has become the nation's
largest industry, and much of the bashing is utter fabrication to my
certain knowledge, I am rather reluctant to condemn Clinton for many
of the things that are flung at him, like this "draft dodger" stuff.
There are plenty of things that we definitely know he did that we can
condemn him for.


I think I have more respect for those that went to Canada to avoid the
draft and a war that was ill conceived and poorly executed, than for
Clinton.

How about the conscientious objectors who went to Vietnam and followed
their units around unarmed? That takes real guts IMHO.

DSK

I've never understood this. What influence did he have? He was a great
student but he was a nobody from a broken home and a poor family.

Frank Boettcher wrote:
It is my understanding that he had an obligation based on an ROTC
scholarship and an individual holding a General rank in the Arkansas
guard intervened on his behalf to postpone his service until he
completed his Rhodes tour based on his promise to serve at the
conclusion of same. This is from memory, not from the time but later
on.

Well, sure... at the time, who had ever heard of Bill Clinton?

It sounds more plausible than other stuff I've heard him accused of.
It's possible that he offered to serve on return and as you said
earlier, they were de-mobilizing and didn't want him. It would be more
in character for him to have conveniently "forgotten," though.


You are welcome to research and prove me wrong, it won't be the
first time.


As you may have guessed, the Clintons are not my favorite people. But
there is certainly a large industrial base of Clinton bashing (so much
that it's being outsourced these days) and a lot of it is pure hokum.
I have no idea where to research anything like this anyway....
probably could find many sources both verifying & disproving it.

My favorite Clintonism is when he declared that he "knew more about
farming than any previous U.S. President." I mean, c'mon Bill, most of
the Founding Fathers *were* farmers themselves! And falling asleep
during Reagan's funeral was a classy move too.

DSK