On ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Barack Obama said he considered joining the military after high school:
Wow. Who knew?
But there are a couple problems with his story. For starters, he said he had to sign up for Selective Service after high school. But, there was no Selective Service when he graduated:
Obama could not have registered “when I graduated from high school,” as he claimed.
He actually registered roughly 45 days after the first post-Proclamation 4771 registrations took place in 1980.
Obama’s statement, that “I had to sign up for Selective Service when I graduated from high school,” is inarguably false.
Further, the correct timeline casts serious doubt on what Obama said between the ellipsed segments of the first excerpt above:
And I was growing up in Hawaii, and I had friend whose parents were in the military, there were a lot of Army, military bases there. And I always actually thought of the military as some ennobling and honorable option.
More likely: He signed up when he did because he had to. Nothing more, nothing less.
Another thing I have to take issue with is his statement that “we weren’t engaged in active military conflict at that point.”
I think those folks in Iran would disagree.
The Iran hostage crisis (Persian: تصر٠سÙارت آمریکا) was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States where 52 U.S. diplomats were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, after a group of terrorists took over the American embassy in support of Iran’s revolution.
Pajamas Media’s Bob Owens shows that Obama’s “effective registration date was September 4, 1980.” Operation Eagle Claw happened months prior to that, so American was, in fact “engaged in active military conflict at that point.”
So, why was it you didn’t join again?
