Draft dodgers! Dean and FDR! [View All]

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Both qualified for medical deferments from the draft. Does anyone challenge FDR because he didn't serve in the military? Obviously not. Dean has a medical condition that disqualified him from military service. It doesn't take much of a back condition to disqualify you becasue of the requirement that you pretty much have to be able to live 24/7 with a 75 pound pack on your back.

Lets list a few people who would be given 1-Y or 4-f status at some point in their athletic careers.

- LANCE ARMSTRONG!!!!! - Possibly the greatest endurance athlete of our generation - 5 time Tour De France winner. Cancer survivors have to be cancer free for years before they can even be remotely considered capable of military service. Armstrong is also missing a testicle, a piece of one lung, and was treated for brain tumor. Automatic disqualifiers.

- Mario Lemeiux - also a cancer survivor, missing his spleen, disqualifier (Canadian citizen, though... just an example)

- Bo Jackson while he was still playing Major League Baseball. (hip replacement - no plastic hips in the military)

- Jim Abbott (pretty obvious, but he threw a no-hitter one-handed, so he gets on all these kinda lists)

-Casey Martin (PGA golfer who sued to use cart on PGA tour)

-Here's some links to disabled skiers and water-skiers, too...

http://www.complete-skier.com/Resorts/Country/USA/Utah/Disabled/
http://www.nscd.org/
http://keneva.com/LookMa.htm

Gee... that looks like skiing that FDR could have done were he alive today. Would you be yelling about FDR doing this type of skiing during the Vietnam conflict? I think not. There a lot of different kinds of people on the slopes doing a lot of differnt kinds of skiing. There's Franz Klammer skiing. There's Sonny Bono skiing. Both spent lots of "time" on the slopes. Time spent is clearly not an indicator of ability.