Free Republic

<p>President Bush received credit for attending Air National Guard drills in the fall of 1972 and spring of 1973 -- a period when his commanders have said he did not appear for duty at bases in Montgomery, Ala., and Houston -- according to two new documents obtained by the Globe.</p>

<p>Michael Moore, the documentary filmmaker, started it, labeling President Bush a military "deserter" during an appearance last month with Democratic presidential candidate Wesley K. Clark.</p> <p>Less incendiary was Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, who charged Sunday that Bush had been AWOL, absent without leave, while a fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.</p>

Protests over the recently unveiled revised oath to be taken by new U.S. citizens has immigration officials working on yet another rewrite. Complaints from those who criticized the weakening of the portion pledging to serve in the military, as well as the elimination of a promise to bear arms, apparently has not fallen on deaf ears, the Associated Press reported. According to the report, immigration officials announced the new oath earlier this month, saying they were revising the language for the first time in 50 years. Officials hoped to remove such archaic language as the promise to "renounce and abjure...

Like many in what he termed "the knowledge class," he had devoted little thought to the workings of the military. He was content to view protecting the country as a job for other people's children. Then he had to come to grips with his son's decision and found himself on an unexpected journey of self-discovery. It forced Schaeffer to confront the prejudice against military service held by his wealthy and well-educated acquaintances — people just like him. Schaeffer encountered widespread ambivalence — even outright antagonism — among those men and women, whose own grandfathers considered it an honor to serve...

Regina Herzlinger is a professor at Harvard Business School. In her circle of friends, she said yesterday, it's not unusual for someone to know someone who was injured or even killed on Sept 11. ``So many were upper middle class people,'' she said. They were bond traders and stockbrokers and financiers; enormously prosperous, wonderfully smart. Yet the soldiers now fighting at least partly to avenge their deaths come from a different America. They're not poor, necessarily, but not rich either. Surely they're neither business tycoons nor investment bankers in training. Look at the daily thumbnail sketches in this newspaper. Most...

~Parents hang a banner with blue star for each child they have in Army~William and Mary Staun are reviving a World War II tradition.A banner with three blue stars on a white background hangs in their window to let everyone know they have three children in the Army, all preparing for a possible war with Iraq."I guess my greatest wish is that even if we go to war that my kids will be safe- not just my kids but everybody's kids," Mary Staun said.The Stauns' younger daughter, Peggy, 19, is in the military police at Fort Benning, Ga.William, 22, is...

<p>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Democratic lawmaker said Sunday he will introduce a bill in the next session of Congress to make military service mandatory.</p> <p>Rep. Charles Rangel, D-New York, said such legislation could make members of Congress more reluctant to authorize military action.</p>

<p>BOSTON -- It was 1968, as U.S. soldiers were being shipped off every day to fight the war in Vietnam, when 22-year-old Robert Reich walked into the Oakland military induction center and made the examining sergeant's day.</p> <p>"Just what we're looking for!" the sergeant said upon sight of the 4-foot-10-inch Reich. "A tunnel rat to flush the Vietcong out from under the rice paddies!"</p>

CANTON -- Rocky Bleier is an American hero. Not for what he did on the football field at the University of Notre Dame and with the Pittsburgh Steelers, but for the 31/2 years that interrupted his career from December 1969 to the fall of 1972. Just four months into his tour in Vietnam, Bleier was wounded in both legs, hit with both rifle fire and grenade fragments when his platoon was ambushed. He was told he would never walk again. Two years and countless hours of rehabilitation followed before he not only walked but ran, rejoining the Steelers. In 1976,...