Mighta Joined If He Coulda Capped Some Cong

September 7th, 2008 7:55 PM

From ABC's This Week today.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: One of our viewers wrote in—you talk about service—and asked, Brenda Godfrey Bryan, Marietta, Georgia: did you ever consider joining the armed services to protect and serve our country? If not, why?

BARACK OBAMA: You know, I actually did.

STEPHANOPOULOS: When?

BARACK OBAMA: You know, I had to sign up for Selective Service when I graduated from high school. 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.  But keep in mind: I graduated in 1979. The Vietnam War had come to an end. We weren't engaged in an active military conflict at that point. So it's not an option that I ever decided to pursue.

Got that?  Barack might very well have gone Rambo, but the end of the Vietnam War and the absence of any hot action elsewhere tragically deprived him of the opportunity. If only Obama had taken Hillary, who wanted to join the Marines, he could have a ticket of two would-be warriors, but for the cruel intervention of circumstances.  

Observes the Telegraph [via Drudge] with exquisite British understatement: "The aspiration was not mentioned in either of his two volumes of memoirs."

Will the MSM pursue this story?

PS: When John McCain graduated from high school in 1954, America wasn't engaged in any hot wars either.  But he chose to enter the Naval Academy anyhow.  And what do you know? A conflict eventually came along. They usually do.