I had already watched a friend unsucessfully go through the whole ordeal of trying to get CO status, and I wasn’t interested in doing that. After all, I have nothing against fighting in self defense, to protect your rights, your property, or those you care about. But the USA has never fought a real war of self-defense during my entire lifetime, and I’m now 56 years old. The USA is all about aggression and fascist coercion for profits and power.

During the early 1970s I sent a half dozen postcards to the Oregon Selective Service Office from various parts of the country, facetiously telling them how much I wanted to get a low lottery number, and serve the cause of US fascism in Viet Nam by murdering innocent people. From 1967 until the end of the Viet Nam War, I attended every major anti-war rally (including the Student Strike in summer 1970) that was held in Portland, and also a few in other cities. However, my lottery number was always high.

In 1974, when the Selective Service was ‘phasing out’ the draft, I recieved a phone call from the SS that they wanted me to come to their Portland office in person. At the SS Office, a clerk obtained my original shit-encrusted draft registration form, every page of which the SS had sealed in plastic. “We just need to verify that this is indeed your draft registration form. Is it, Mr Fegel?” “That’s it,” I replied. End of inteview.

I despise the US government. I’ll be glad when it collapses. It just occured to me that I should consider submitting my Federal tax return with each page margined in shit. Dang! I could have been doing that for the past 38 years!

But then we also select who gets off and who doesn’t for “following orders,” don’t we.

Do we let the Nazis that “followed” orders off? How about the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor?

Something to think about…

As a reward for being a good American I now have cancer caused by Agent Orange.

I am not sorry I joined to defend my country BUT I AM sorry I fell for the lie that I was defending my country. To this day I’ll be “first to fight” for my country but not for corrupt politicians and BS.

Semper Fi

But back to the crux of the matter … there would have been an easier way for you, for the rest of those who didn’t want to go to VietNam, and especially today, for those who don’t want to go to IraqNam. THE SERVICE DOESN’T WANT ANYONE WHO REFUSES TO USE A SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER. I call it a slave serial number or a socialist slavestate number. Social Security says its use is 100% voluntary and not required to live or work in the United States nor is it required to have just for the sake of having.
If you simply refuse to use that number for any reason whatsoever, I guarantee that the military will want no part of you. This would have been true back during the ‘Nam and it is even more true today.

About one of the very, very, very few instances where an SSN/other individual taxpayer ID number (ITIN) is REQUIRED is federal employment. The draft board can hound someone up one side and down the other, but they CAN’T FORCE ANYONE TO SIGN THEIR NAME TO ANYTHING, especially not for volunteering to obtain a taxpayer ID number of any sort, which is done by application.

True, living without a socialist slavestate number is difficult, in that you will have to fight thru a wall of ignorance constantly, but guaranteed, refusing to use that number will keep you out of the military.

Pete