A recent google blog alert notified us about a post that included the name "Tim Walz" at Right in a Left World, a blog kept in Washington state. Lew Waters seeks the truth in Who Served Exposed.
One point Waters tried to make was that since some lefties call joining the National Guard or Reserves during the Vietnam War era "draft dodging," he'd get back by making a list of Democratic House and Congress members who had joined the Guard or Reserves at that time--perhaps to avoid the draft.
Fair enough, we suppose.
What captured our attention in reading the post, though, was the span of Representative Walz's service: 1971-1996.
Given that Walz was born in 1964, we were surprised to learn that he had joined up at age 7.
We cannot say whether this youthful action meant that the young Timothy was hyperpatriotic and not willing to take his grade school student deferment, or just really, really, really ahead of the curve in not wanting to be called up. But not too smart, since the draft ended in 1973, when Timmy Walz was 9 years old.
Fortunately, Lew notes:
Having served in either the Reserves or National Guard is not considered “draft dodging,” or "avoiding the draft" by me
so Representative Walz's prepubescent enlistment shouldn't become an issue in 2008.
We are so relieved.
OLLIE OX UPDATE: Lew has now corrected his error and claims in his comments section that "1971-1996" was a typo. Yeah, it's easy to type "1971-1996" when you really mean 1981 and 2005, and the point you're trying to make is that Democrats enlisted in the Guard to avoid the draft. Happens all the time. We're happy we saved the screenshot in the thumbnail above.
Nice catch. Lew still hasn't corrected his list despite a comment letting him know how old Walz was.
Posted by: gisleson | February 05, 2007 at 01:13 PM