During his 2010 run for the Senate, then Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was revealed to have lied about serving in Vietnam. Over the years, Blumenthal had made much of his service in Vietnam as a Marine but it was revealed that not only had Blumenthal not served in Vietnam, his USMC service was limited to being a member of the Marine Corps Reserve which, along with his college deferments, kept him out of Vietnam.
Let me pause here of a moment. I don’t have any huge objection to men who grew up in the 1960s using the system to avoid being drafted any more than I object to people using an accountant to minimize their tax liability. The government makes the rules and if they make stupid ones…and the draft law was chock to the gills with really stupid rules…then I don’t see where you are under a moral, legal, or ethical obligation to say, “hey, that rule is dumb but I’ll not take advantage of it and go ahead and screw myself so that I can show the world what kind of a righteous person I am.” Where my tolerance ends is when you say you served in combat. --
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