Little Hawk is right. And it's pretty amazing the transformation that the legacy of Vietnam War has undergone in the last half-dozen years or so. My mother told my brother "you're going to Calgary to live with your Aunt if the war is still going when you turn 18." Lucky for him it ended before his 18th birthday. I have friends who were prepared to go to prison rather than go into the military, and have friends and cousins who were lucky to get those deferments. Going to college was one good way to avoid Vietnam, at least for a time. I also have friends who came back changed, wounded people from time in Vietnam. Now we're plunged into a war as equally divisive as Vietnam, and that was totally preventable (the U.N. was prepared to continue to monitor conditions in Iraq for many years to come).

In a lot of ways, what Dubya did was what many young men wanted to do back then, find a way to serve without having to get emeshed in the immoral war that was in Vietnam. Others did their time and lived to tell about it. Bush wants his cake and wants to eat it to. In this new era of hyper patriotism and arcade game warrior mentality, Dubya wants to be a war hero, though he was always safe away from the fighting and his record of attendance is marginal at best, and bits of it are still missing.

SRS