Editor,
This letter answers Jason Darensburg's question in Friday's Daily Lobo about why anti-war demonstrators are being met with counter-protesters who support our troops and President Bush. The main reason is because we are so tired of the bovine excrement perpetrated by people like Darensburg in this country. Let's get the record straight.
About 1.5 percent of Congress has children in the military, more than twice that of the adult population of the U.S. as a whole, about 0.6 percent of which has children in the military. Vice President Dick Cheney got five draft deferments. His first deferment was in 1963, two years before a large military offensive in Vietnam. His fifth deferment was in 1966, when he was married and his wife was pregnant. Deferments were common in the '60s and were received by more than 5.2 million men.
Darensburg believes that freeing 50 million people from tyranny is nothing. We disagree. Far from being nothing, it shows our profound respect for the common man, wherever he may reside. Darensburg stated our leaders are using the poor for cannon fodder. Actually, the number of poorer recruits declined from 18 percent in 1999 to 13.7 percent in 2005, according to the Center for Data Analysis report, "The Demographic Characteristics of the U.S. Military Enlistment, 2003 to 2005," by
Tim Kane.
We understand that the war against terrorism is a resounding success. After all, there were 4,417 accidental deaths in the military between 1993 and 1996 during peacetime. So there are the facts, not the same old bilge Darensburg, the media and Democrats would have us believe. Are we really starting to make Darensburg angry? We've been angry since Sept. 11, 2001.
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J. Torrey Baird Jr.
UNM alumnus
