Obama Lies About Signing Up for the Draft

-By Warner Todd Huston

Barack Obama told another whopper about his storied life on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos. In one segment Stephanopoulos asked Obama if he ever considered joining the U.S. military as a youngster. Obama then goes on to say that he did when he was required to sign up for selective service in 1979 when he graduated high school.

One little problem… there wasn’t any requirement to sign up for Selective Service in 1979!

As Tom Blumer of NewsBusters.org and BizzyBlog.com notes, “Obama could not have registered upon graduation from high school as he claimed. His actually registered occurred roughly 45 days after… 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.”

As any look into the facts will note, President Gerald Ford terminated the registration requirements on March 25, 1975 and Jimmy Carter didn’t reinstate the registration requirement until July 2 of 1980. Obama graduated from the private college prep school, Punahou School, in 1979.

The timing doesn’t quite work to make truth of what Obama told Stephanopoulos.

Facts are stubborn things, eh?

Transcript:

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.

So how will the Obamatons explain away this lie?

(Also see Mark Finkelstein’s coverage at NewsBusters.org)

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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston