Match the following staunch proponents of the American war in Iraq (in 2003) with their reasons for avoiding military service in Vietnam:
A. Vice President (and former Halliburton CEO) Dick Cheney
B. House Speaker (and former bug exterminator) Tom DeLay
C. Senate Republican Leader (and former Ole Miss cheerleader) Trent Lott
D. rabid radio host (and drug addict) Rush Limbaugh
1. "Had other priorities"
2. Had anal cysts
3. Claimed there was no room for patriotic folks like himself because minorities had taken up all the slots
4. Had already served instead as a college cheerleader
[Answers: Cheney-1 (other priorities, five draft deferments), DeLay-3 (minorities), Lott-4 (cheerleader), Limbaugh-2 (cysts)]
[While campaigning for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, Wesley Clark allowed firebrand director Michael Moore to appear at one of his rallies and accuse President George W. Bush of having been a deserter. As Walter V. Robinson famously pointed out in a long report in the Boston Globe, Bush indeed skipped a year of his reserve duties with the Air National Guard, starting in May of 1972. In the regular armed forces, according to a U.S. Army Research Institute study published in 2002, "any soldier who has taken an unauthorized leave from his / her training or duty station is considered awol. On the 31st day of awol, this status is officially changed to Dropped From Rolls (DFR), or desertion."]
Sources
Daniel Kurtzman, San Francisco Chronicle, 2002/12/22
