From the transcript as provided by the Newsbusters:
BARACK OBAMA: You know, I had to sign up for Selective Service when I graduated from high school. And I was growing up in Hawaii, and I had friend whose parents were in the military, there were a lot of Army, military bases there. And I always actually thought of the military as some ennobling and honorable option. But keep in mind: I graduated in 1979. The Vietnam War had come to an end. We weren't engaged in an active military conflict at that point. So it's not an option that I ever decided to pursue.
Barack Obama admits he graduated high school in 1979. But Selective Service was terminated by Gerald Ford in 1975:
On March 25, 1975, Pres. Gerald Ford signed Proclamation 4360, Terminating Registration Procedures Under Military Selective Service Act, eliminating the registration requirement for all 18-25 year old male citizens. Then on July 2, 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed Proclamation 4771, Registration Under the Military Selective Service Act, retroactively re-establishing the Selective Service registration requirement for all 18-26 year old male citizens born on or after January 1, 1960.
In 1980, as it says, Carter put the registration requirement back. For people who turned 18 between 1975 and 1980, the rules were as follows:
Only men born between March 29, 1957, and December 31, 1959, were completely exempt from Selective Service registration.[2] The first registrations after Proclamation 4771 took place on Monday, July 21, 1980, for those men born in January, February and March 1960 at U.S. Post Offices. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays were reserved for men born in the later quarters of the year, and registration for men born in 1961 began the following week
As Barack was born in August of 1961, he was required to register starting around July 28, 1980 -- almost a full year after his graduation.
Now, a lot of people have asked if he ever really signed up for Selective Service. I have no idea, but I would be surprised if he didn't.
But what I am completely certain about is that he is lying when he says he had to sign up when he "graduated high school" in 1979.
I suppose he could just be really stupid -- but since this was obviously a planned question and Obama had all the time in the world to write the answer, you have to wonder if he is so completely stupid that he would mess up a simple fact like this in an answer that otherwise was so unbelievable that it needed SOME hook to reality.
I mean, nobody believes Obama really wanted to be in the military. And since Obama wrote two books about himself and never ONCE said he wanted to be in the military, it's likely that he only wants to HAVE BEEN in the military now that he is running for President as a totally unqualified candidate against a decorated war hero.
Sorry, Barack, but wishes aren't deeds -- and wishes aren't even wishes when you make them up 30 years later.
4 comments:
Actually he didn’t lie. If he was applying for college grants or loans he probably would be required to register.
While I respect John McCain’s military service, in McCain’s day ALL men HAD to go into the military. Many guys went ahead and enlisted, because they knew they were going to get drafted anyway. Enlisting was a way to have some say about what branch of the service they could get into.
But would McCain have enlisted if there was no draft? No one knows that.
McCain’s being in the military was a legal requirement of his generation, and to suggest he would have enlisted without a draft is only a guess.
Considering how wild and selfish McCain was in his youth (his own words), I doubt he would have enlisted without a draft.
John McCain enlisted in the Miltary before there was a draft, so your suggestion he enlisted to avoid a draft is without merit.
At the time Obama would be applying for College Grants, there was no selective service, so there is no way he could have registered at that time. Selective Service was suspended until 1980, which was after Barack started College.
Obama is about two months older than I am and we graduated High School at the same time. And, yes, the revival of the registration was not long after I graduated. And, yes, you had to register or lose your grants and/or loans for college. So he was off by months. Big fat hairy deal.
This is pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. We're talking 30 years ago. You think people can remember precise dates for events 30 years ago? Are you even old enough to HAVE memories of 30 years ago?
The GOP runs a man that doesn't even know what the Internet is and a ditzy beauty queen from nowhere Alaska but Obama has to precisely state exact dates of events 30 years in his past?
What the GOP has become has me ashamed I used to be a Republican.
Actually, I am sympathetic to the notion that it's hard to remember what happened 28 years ago.
But not so much that you could, 28 years ago, have been influenced to do something based on something else that factually occured a year later.
It's not that Obama got a date wrong. It's that there is no way that signing up for Selective Service made Obama think about going into the military instead of going to College.
So, if what happened 28 years ago really doesn't matter (and in many ways, it doesn't), why did Obama, 2 months before the election, talk about something he THOUGHT about doing 28 years ago?
This is like when Obama, talking about what Palin brings to the ticket, says it's like putting "lipstick on a pig", but a day later blames McCain for talking about lipstick instead of issues.
If Obama doesn't want to discuss things that happened 28 years ago, then he shouldn't talk about them. If he talks about him, you can hardly blame us for deciding to join him in the conversation.
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