Did Obama Tell A Lie About Desire To Join Military?
Sep 7, 2008 Political
Barack Obama must need more sleep and after the week he has had he must need a cigarette. The Sainted One was on This Week with George Stephanopoulos and he made two mistakes. The first one dealt with the smears against candidates and he stated that the McCain campaign had not brought up “My Muslim faith”. I know what he meant but it was certainly a slip of the tongue he does not need because under Islam one may lie to further the religion. How many will see it this way? Fortunately for Obama, George was there to correct him like a good Democrat. Obama went on to say how McCain surrogates had been the ones and completely ignored the fact that Hillary and her peeps were the ones to spread this all over during the primary. That is what ticks me off the most about Obama’s answer.
There is one item that is more than likely an outright lie. Obama was asked if he had ever considered joining the military and he said he had. This little tidbit has NEVER been mentioned during the oh so long campaign and according to the news, Obama did not mention this in either of his books. One would think that might be a big deal. It is likely that Obama is lying about this in order to ingratiate himself with people who actually support the military. The second part of the lie comes in when he said he had to register for the Selective Service when he graduated from high school. There was no registration for the Selective Service when Obama graduated.
The draft and the Selective Service registration were ended by Republican presidents (Nixon and Ford respectively) and the new registration requirement was instituted by a Democrat, Jimmy Carter. Yes, Obama was required to register but he graduated in 1979 and the registration was reinstated in 1980. Therefore, Obama was not required to register when he graduated, as he claims in the interview. He was not required to register until a year later.
Obama claims that he decided against joining because we were not engaged in an actual conflict at that time (though we were in a standoff with Iran over hostages, depending when he thought about it in 1979). I guess we are supposed to believe that the guy who wants a defeat in Iraq was willing to join the service, had we been at war.
It is more likely that Obama realizes his life lacks in military service when one considers the other three candidates. Biden has a son in the Guard who will deploy next year, McCain served and has two sons in the service and Palin has a son in the military who is deploying this week. Obama is the odd person out having never served and having children who are too young to serve (and will never serve anyway).
I think this is a huge lie on the part of Obama. People can defend him if they want but the timeline of the draft registration coupled with the fact that he never mentioned this in his books or during this campaign tells me that it was recently concocted.
Source:
Telegraph UK
Neither the Telegraph or Stephanopoulos pointed out the inaccuracies.
UPDATE: It is possible that Obama made a mistake when he said he registered when he graduated from high school but I find it unlikely he would not know that he registered while in college. Besides, he specifically said when he graduated, not after and he made a big deal about being in Hawaii and all the military bases. Bottom line, if it were true that he considered joining he would have mentioned it in one of his books.
Tags: draft, lies, military service, Obama, selective service registration