Kevin Craig writes:

The crowd who espouse "Candidate 'X' dodged service in Vietnam because
he didn't serve there", are denigrating a HUGE majority of their fellow
veterans.

There are roughly 9 million Vietnam-era veterans. Only (roughly) 3
million served in Vietnam. Those who bash service in the Air National
Guard (which, BTW, served in the very ACTIVE role of nuclear intercept
missions in defense of CONUS), or who bash Army National Guard, or who
bash active duty vets who were assigned to Germany or Japan,
effectively bash TWO-THIRDS of Vietnam-era veterans.

Not everyone went to Vietnam. Many were subject to deployment. Get over
it.

It didn't quite work that way back in the '70s. The ANG was a lot different
than today's ANG, and was mostly a refuge for those who didn't want to go but
didn't want to say so.

Nuclear intercept missions? From a part-timer, who didn't show up his last
year? They trained, on obsolete equipment, for a mission that never happened.

And that latter part is the crux of the problem most of us have with Bush's
military service. It took connections and string yanking to get him into the
Guard. When he decided 'enough was enough' he lit out, with no repercussions,
and still got an honorable discharge.

I can assure you, as a former corporal in the USMC, that there was no actual
'bug-out when it gets rough or boring' option that ended with an honorable
discharge. At least not for the average guy, which is what Shrub tries to
portray himself as.

Charlie Self
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral
philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for
selfishness." John Kenneth Galbraith