:: Da' Militant One's Lair ::

:: Saturday, March 20, 2004 ::

The Problem with "Dick" Cheney

Here is the problem I have with Dick Cheney:

Elizabeth Cheney, Deferment Baby
How Dick Cheney dodged the Vietnam draft.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Thursday, March 18, 2004, at 2:09 PM PT


"[T]he Senator from Massachusetts has given us ample doubts about his judgment and the attitude he brings to bear on vital issues of national security," Vice President Dick Cheney said during a March 17 visit to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. He was talking, of course, about John Kerry, the putative Democratic presidential nominee. During the past three years, we've all become better acquainted with Vice President Cheney's judgment and attitude toward national security, which are a good deal more hawkish than Kerry's. A widely observed irony is that the dovish Kerry saw combat in Vietnam while the hawkish Cheney accepted a series of student and family-related draft deferments. Cheney's unself-consciousness about this is (or at least was) so pronounced that in 1989 he told George C. Wilson of the Washington Post, "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service."

What Chatterbox never realized until recently, however, is that Cheney's eldest daughter, Elizabeth Cheney, likely owes her very existence to her father's avoidance of the Vietnam draft.

The Washington Post's Phil McCombs made the intimate calculations in a profile published in April 1991, when Cheney was defense secretary. The timeline:

Aug. 29, 1964: Dick and Lynne Cheney marry.

May 19, 1965: The Selective Service classifies Dick Cheney 1-A, "available immediately for military service."

July 28, 1965: President Lyndon Johnson says draft calls will be doubled.

Oct. 26, 1965: The Selective Service declares that married men without children, who were previously exempted from the draft, will now be called up. Married men with children remain exempt.

Jan. 19, 1966: The Selective Service reclassifies Dick Cheney 3-A, "deferred from military service because service would cause hardship upon his family," because his wife is pregnant with their first child.

July 28, 1966: Elizabeth Cheney is born.

Jan. 30, 1967: Dick Cheney turns 26 and therefore becomes ineligible for the draft.

Dedicated students of obstetrics will observe that Elizabeth Cheney's birth date falls precisely nine months and two days after the Selective Service publicly revoked its policy of not drafting childless husbands. This would seem to indicate that the Cheneys, though doubtless planning to have children sometime, were seized with an untamable passion the moment Dick Cheney became vulnerable to the Vietnam draft. And acted on it. Carpe diem!

In a nutshell, you have a wuss trying call out a combat veteran on national defense. A candy-a*s that was too cowardly to voluteer or be drafted. For all of John Kerry's "issues" and he does have some "issues", I will trust John Kerry, who, by the way, VOLUNTEERED for service during Vietnam, to take care of the national defense instead of a weak and cowardly windbag who now does not mind sending other young men and women to their deaths. What an utter fraud! As a republican, I am truly disgusted by the hypocrites and liars that now masquerade as republicans. It started with the Reagan Administration and has taken full flight under the Fraudulancy's Administration. The state of the country reflects the poison that this Administration has been dispensing for three years. Give me the lyin' Bill Clinton any day. The only thing that they ever proved that he lied about was his triste with Monica. However, this current administration relishes in lying to the American public openly and with great conviction. I only hope the the rule of law finally catches up with these weasels and show them want true "conviction" really is. I'm betting on at lest probation and 200 hours of community service!

:: DM1 3/20/2004 10:10:00 AM [+] ::
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