Thread: Truth? or Lie?
View Single Post
Old 07-07-2003, 10:00 AM   #20 (permalink)
Liquor Dealer
Super Agitator
 
Liquor Dealer's Avatar
 
Location: Just SW of Nowhere!!! In the good old US of A
Quote:
Originally posted by HarmlessRabbit
Too bad the story about Clinton is a LIE. Hint to everyone: before posting ANYTHING here, do a quick search on snopes.com.

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/politics/clintondraft.asp

Bush, however, absolutely deserted his post. So anyone horrified by the clinton story should check out this site:

http://www.awolbush.com/

So I suggest anyone who posted on this thread damning Clinton now tell the board how much they hate George Bush.

Since you wanted to go to Snopes lets put what you read on here and let them decide! You did read it didn't you?

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/politics/clintondraft.asp

Origins: The
arc of future President Bill Clinton's activities in avoiding the military draft in 1968-69 are difficult to trace with certainty in regard to all the details. By the time the issue became one of national interest in 1992, reporters and biographers were faced with reconstructing a 25-year-old account from the decades-old memories of those involved; some of the key participants were already dead, and the one person who knew the whole story, Bill Clinton himself, often responded to questions on the subject with misleading or inaccurate information. Nonetheless, available documentation and personal memories have enabled writers to reconstruct the essential elements of the tale.

The story begins when eighteen-year-old Bill Clinton entered Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in the fall of 1964. As required by law of all 18-year-old males, Clinton registered with the Selective Service System on 8 September 1964, and on 17 November 1964 he was assigned a 2-S (student deferment) classification by Garland County [Arkansas] Draft Board No. 26.

As American military involvement in Vietnam escalated in the mid-1960s, Clinton (like other male students his age) would reasonably have expected that his status as a college student would provide him with deferments from the draft for several more years, especially when in his senior year he was one of thirty-two American men selected to receive Rhodes Scholarships to study at Oxford University in England. However, on 16 February 1968 the federal government eliminated draft deferments for most graduate students, and Clinton would therefore no longer be eligible for additional student deferments after he completed his final term at Georgetown in the spring of 1968. Accordingly, his draft board reclassified him 1-A (available immediately for military service) on 20 March 1968.

In mid-1968 Clinton, who maintained that although he was not opposed to the military or war in general, he was morally opposed to the Vietnam War, began to seek ways of avoiding the draft. His first opportunity was provided through the political and social connections of his uncle, Raymond Clinton, and Henry Britt, a Hot Springs lawyer and former judge, who made arrangements with the commanding officer of the local Naval Reserve unit, Trice Ellis, to secure a billet for Clinton in the naval reserve:

The first relief Raymond Clinton and Britt found for Bill was a naval billet. This would not only give him more time -- he would not have to fill it until after the school year ended in June -- but it also would more likely keep him out of harm's way in the war. Trice Ellis, the local naval commander, said he was only too happy to accommodate the request, which he did not consider out of the ordinary, and was "impressed by the chance to enlist someone with a college education." He called the Navy command in New Orleans and secured a two-year active duty billet for young Clinton. Ellis assumed that Clinton would stop by that summer for an interview, but Clinton never did. When he asked Raymond Clinton what happened, Raymond told him not to worry, Bill would not be coming, he had been taken care of in another way.
The "other way" that had "taken care" of Clinton was a favor Henry Britt worked out with William S. Armstrong, chairman of the Garland County draft board, a favor that would provide Clinton with only temporary protection from the draft but would allow him to at least start his first year at Oxford without committing him to military service:

Britt called draft board chairman Armstrong, his close friend, and asked him, as he later recalled, to "put Clinton's draft notice in a drawer someplace and leave it for a while. Give the boy a chance." This is apparently what Armstrong did for several months. Another member of the Garland County Draft Board, Robert Corrado, later remembered Armstrong holding back Clinton's file and saying that they had to give him time to go to Oxford.
As Clinton biographer David Maraniss points out, although the deliberate delay in issuing Clinton's draft notice was undeniably a case of special treatment, it was by no means an unusual consideration granted to Rhodes Scholars:

Special consideration for Rhodes Scholars was not unusual around the country. The draft board in Alameda County, California, was so impressed by the achievements of the only black Rhodes winner that year, Tom Williamson of Harvard, that they granted him a graduate school deferment even though such deferments supposedly no longer existed. Darryl Gless, whose small home town in Nebraska was so proud of him that they strung a banner across the Main Street bank welcoming him back from his successful Rhodes interview, also was given a special deferment. Dartmouth scholar John Isaacson visited his draft board in Lewiston, Maine, and pleaded with them to let him go to Oxford, which they did. University of Iowa scholar Mike Shea went to England "happily but erroneously 2-S" for the first year. Paul Parish's mother in Port Gibson, Mississippi, received a letter from the governor telling her that Paul should go to England because they were trying to get an exemption for Rhodes Scholars. For virtually every member of the Rhodes class of 1968 there was a similar story.
Clinton set sail from New York to begin his first year at Oxford in October 1968. At the end of his first term in December, Clinton received a notice from the Selective Service instructing him to undergo an armed forces physical examination at a U.S. air base near London, which he took (and passed) on 13 January 1969. An Order to Report for Induction from the Garland County Draft Board followed three months later, but because the notice had been sent to England via surface mail, it was late in arriving, and the assigned reporting date had already passed. Clinton had begun another school term by then (the academic year at Oxford consisted of three terms rather than two semesters), and the regulations allowed students who received draft notices to finish out their current terms before reporting, but he would be obligated to report for induction after the end of the spring term unless he found an alternative by his new reporting date of 28 July 1969.

As Clinton headed home for Arkansas from England, his options for avoiding the draft were limited. He did not qualify for conscientious objector status because he did not have a history of opposing military service or war in general, only the Vietnam War specifically. The local Army National Guard and Reserve units were full. He took physicals for the Air Force and Navy officer programs but failed them both. (He was undersize and didn't possess the visual acuity required for the Air Force program, and he failed the Navy exam due to substandard hearing.) Clinton's only available out seemed to be joining the advanced ROTC program at the University of Arkansas, which had no quotas and was open to graduate students, but since Clinton had already received an induction notice, he would have to obtain the approval of Willard Hawkins, the state Selective Service director (an appointee of the Arkansas governor) to enter the program. Clinton called upon Cliff Jackson, an Arkansas College graduate who had been Clinton's acquaintance at Oxford and was now working for the state Republican party, and Jackson in turn asked his boss, the head of the Arkansas Republican party, to arrange a meeting between Clinton and Selective Service director Hawkins. Clinton also received assistance from Lee Williams, an aide to U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas (for whom Clinton had worked as a staffer while attending Georgetown University). Williams, a University of Arkansas Law School graduate himself, contacted the director of the university's ROTC program, Colonel Eugene J. Holmes, to help get Clinton enrolled. After "an extensive, approximately two-hour interview," Colonel Holmes agreed to accept Clinton into the ROTC program on 17 July 1969 (a mere eleven days before Clinton's 28 July induction deadline), although Clinton would not actually be able to begin the program until he completed the basic training camp the following summer. Clinton's draft notice was nullified, and his draft board reclassified him 1-D (reservist deferment) on 7 August 1969.

Clinton apparently did intend to begin attending the University of Arkansas Law School that fall, but sometime during the summer he changed his mind and decided to return for a second year at Oxford instead:

By Clinton's account, he talked to Colonel Holmes and gained permission to return to Oxford for the second year since the basic training that he was required to attend before beginning advanced ROTC would not start until the following summer. Holmes said later that he allowed Clinton to return to Oxford for "a month or two," but expected him to enroll in the law school as soon as possible. But a letter that Clinton wrote in December 1969 in which he apologized for not writing more often -- "I know I promised to let you hear from me at least once a month" -- is the strongest evidence that Holmes was aware of and approved Clinton's plan to go back to Oxford. The rest of the ROTC staff was expecting Clinton to enroll that fall. Ed Howard, the drill sergeant, later recalled that there was great anger when word spread through the ROTC office that Clinton was not on campus.
The details of Clinton's subsequent actions and decisions are murky, but sometime after returning to Oxford that fall (where he later helped organize London anti-war protests), probably between 1 October and 15 October 1969, he changed his mind again and asked his draft board to drop his ROTC deferment and reclassify him 1-A. Given recent policy changes (and rumors of upcoming policy changes) by the Nixon administration at that time -- graduate students who received induction notices were now allowed to finish out their school years rather than just the current terms; Nixon was said to be considering withdrawing 35,000 troops from Vietnam, temporarily suspending the draft, and changing the draft requirements so that only 19-year-olds would be called,and only "those draftees who volunteered for service there" would be shipped to Vietnam; and the administration was reportedly pushing for a draft lottery system based on birthdates which would expose eligible men to the draft for one year only -- Clinton may have calculated that he was not risking much by opting to drop his ROTC commitment in favor of a 1-A classification. As Clinton biographer David Maraniss surmised:

The proponderance of evidence leads in one direction: to the notion that with each passing week there were more signs that he might not get drafted even if he abandoned the deferment. If Clinton, acting through his stepfather, arranged to have the local draft board reclassify him 1-A after October 1, he would have known that it was largely a symbolic act providing him with the best of both worlds -- the ability to say he had given up a deferment, and the knowledge that even though he was 1-A again, he would not be drafted that year.
When the first draft lottery of the Vietnam era was held on 1 December 1969, Clinton's birthdate of 19 August was selected 311th, a number high enough to practically guarantee that he would not be drafted (and indeed he was not). A few days later, Clinton sat down and wrote the now-infamous letter to Colonel Holmes explaining his reasons for reneging on his agreement to enter the University of Arkansas ROTC program.

That Bill Clinton went to great lengths to avoid the Vietnam-era draft, that he used political connections to obtain special favors, and that he made promises and commitments which he later failed to honor, are all beyond dispute. However, the timeline quoted above jumps the tracks when it labels Clinton a "felon," because none of his actions, no matter how unethical or morally reprehensible, were illegal. When Clinton agreed in July of 1969 to enter the advanced ROTC program at the University of Arkansas, his draft board rescinded his induction notice and reclassified him with a reservist's deferment. That he later changed his mind in October 1969 and opted to forego the ROTC program and be reclassified 1-A did not constitute a "failure to report" or make him "AWOL," because he was not due to begin ROTC training until the summer of 1970, and he had the ROTC director's permission to return to England in the meanwhile. At the time of his 1-A re-classification in October 1969 the previous induction notice was no longer in effect, and he was not subsequently re-drafted.

If Clinton had still been obligated to report for induction, his draft board could have got him any time they wanted -- they certainly knew where to find him, yet no one ordered him to report to an induction center, no federal agents arrested him for draft evasion, and no MPs came and hauled him away for being AWOL, because he hadn't broken any laws, civil or military. Likewise, President Carter's executive order of 21 January 1977, which provided pardons and amnesty for those convicted or suspected of violating the Military Selective Service Act between 1964 and 1973 did not apply to Clinton because he committed no such violation.

Although what he did may not have been against the law, Clinton's broken promises and contradictory statements about his efforts to avoid the draft were prime examples of the kind of self-serving doublespeak that later earned him the sobriquet "Slick Willie." As Maraniss concluded in his Clinton biography, First in His Class:

"It was just a fluke," Clinton would say decades later, when first asked how he had made it through this period without serving in the military. But of course it was not a fluke. A fluke is a wholly accidental stroke of good luck. What happened to Clinton during that fateful year did not happen by accident. He fretted and planned every move, he got help from others when needed, he resorted to some deception or manipulation when necessary, and he was ultimately lucky.

What do you think?
__________________
Life isn't always a bowl of cherries, sometimes it's more like a jar of Jalapenos --- what you say or do today might burn your ass tomorrow!!!

Last edited by Liquor Dealer; 07-07-2003 at 10:03 AM..
Liquor Dealer is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360