Thanks for that ref to the Examiner, I think this is their lead columnist from today's internet edition:
Bill & Scud's excellent adventure
ROB MORSE
EXAMINER COLUMNIST
Feb. 18, 1998
THE NATION'S leading draft dodger is about to
lead the nation into war.
You could put it that way, but a lot of kids back in
the '60s were avoiding a rotten war by any means
they could. So let's be more charitable to President
Clinton.
This guy got the best deferment of all during the
Vietnam War. Sure, he wheedled his way into
ROTC after he got his draft notice, and then
wormed his way out of ROTC when the draft
lottery gave better odds to avoid the quagmire. But
that was a minor game of draft-card monte.
Clinton's military service was deferred 30 years so
he could enter as commander-in-chief and bomb
the Third World country of his choice.
Be all you can be. B.S. all you can B.S.
You've got to admit, Clinton is slicker than the rest
of us baby-boomers. All I got was a six-month
delayed enlistment to recover from mononucleosis
before reporting to Parris Island to have my head
shaved.
Having heard Clinton's speech on Tuesday steeling
the American people for war with Iraq, it's
interesting to look back at the letter he wrote Col.
Eugene Holmes, director of the University of
Arkansas ROTC program, on Dec. 3, 1969.
It was a time when the U.S. was bombing another
recalcitrant little country, but the letter is mostly
about the anguish of ambitious young Bill Clinton.
The letter is alternately whining, confessional,
principled, self-pitying and misleading. In a way, it's
more a preview of how Clinton would deal with
issues of sodomy than issues of Saddam.
At one point, young Bill ended a passage on his
commitment to public service with: "But the
particulars of my personal life are not nearly as
important to me as the principles involved."
Enough about Bill, what about his principled angst?
He wrote of his pain at getting a deferment for
joining ROTC after receiving his draft notice.
"(T)he anguish and loss of my self-regard and
self-confidence really set in. I hardly slept for
weeks and kept going by eating compulsively . . ."
That sounds believable.
Then Clinton told how he stayed up all night writing
a letter to the head of his draft board "stating that I
couldn't do ROTC after all and would he please
draft me as soon as possible."
Then El Schmucko wrote:
"I never mailed that letter, but I did carry it on me
every day until I got on the plane to return to
England. I didn't mail the letter because I didn't see,
in the end, how my going in the Army and maybe
going to Vietnam would achieve anything except a
feeling that I had punished myself and gotten what I
deserved. So I came back to England to try to
make something of this second year of my Rhodes
scholarship."
Aww. Pity poor Bill. Feel the pain he felt at
Oxford.
The sufferings of Bill Clinton weren't for naught. He
maintained his "political viability," as he said in his
letter, and became president. Now, like Lyndon
Johnson before him, he has learned to love moving
model aircraft carriers around a board.
In his letter to the ROTC commander, Clinton
admitted "loathing the military," yet now he is about
to send the military into the most dubious kind of
battle - air raids against a pain-in-the-butt little
country in a big volatile region.
You'd think a man who hated the Vietnam War
would have learned about the uselessness of air
raids and their tendency to kill civilians.
It would be nice if this all works out without finding
out what happens when a 2,000-lb. bomb blows
up a bunker full of anthrax. The war hasn't even
started, and already we have a new military toy
with the name "bunker buster," which is cute unless
you happen to be a civilian told by Saddam to take
shelter in the bunker.
Perhaps the bombs won't have to be dropped.
Perhaps Clinton can bring Saddam to his knees
voluntarily - a highly developed Clinton skill,
apparently.
Which brings up that "Wag the Dog" thing.
There doesn't seem to be any urgency to destroy
Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" (as if we
don't have any). Why not wait until the woman in
the beret goes away before bombing the bad guy in
the beret?
Never mind Clinton's saber-rattling. Presidential
spokesman Mike McCurry was on to something
this week when he said that Clinton's relationship
with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky
may turn out to be a "very complicated story."
McCurry said: "We are not in a position to provide
a full and complete account, so the art is to make
sure everything we say is truthful and credible."
In other words, Lewinsky hasn't spoken yet, so
Clinton doesn't know what lies to tell. Meanwhile,
there's nothing like a nice little war to preempt the
Monica Show.
"No government really rooted in limited,
parliamentary democracy should have the power to
make its citizens fight and kill and die in a war they
may oppose, a war which even possibly may be
wrong, a war which, in any case, does not involve
immediately the peace and freedom of the nation."
The young Bill Clinton wrote that. When an older
Bill Clinton comes to Stanford on Feb. 26 for
Parents' Day, perhaps he should see what a good
Bay Area anti-war demonstration looks like.
The only ones he took part in 30 years ago were in
England.
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