Presidential candidate and House Armed Services Committtee chairman Duncan Hunter (R-CA) appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washiington Journal” this morning.  A caller asked for his reaction to Rep. Charles Rangel’s (D-NY) advocacy of a return to the draft.  Hunter’s response:

My son volunteered for the Marine Corps, and volunteered for two tours in Iraq.  There is a lot of kids that did that and a lot of young men and young women who did that.  So Charlie’s idea that only the, the only people that have no alternative — it’s a little bit, it has a little bit of the resonance of John Kerry’s statement, whether his statement was intended or unintended, which is that the losers go to war and the winners stay home and live the good life. and i don’t believe that.  My dad had an exemption in World War II and he joined the Marine corps and fought in the South Pacific. And I didn’t do anything special, but I showed up in Vietnam as a volunteer and my son joined the Marine Corps and went off and fought in Iraq and I think a lot of folks do.  So I don’t see a need to have a draft.

Tomorrow is Veterans Day. But today is the birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps.

My old friend Orson Swindle — who served in the Hanoi Hilton with John McCain during the Vietnam War and then went on to an illustrious political career, including top strategist for Ross Perot’s 1992 presidential campaign — tells an amazing story about his life as a Marine captain after getting shot down in Vietnam.

I found the story recounted here at Defenselink, and I’ve excerpted my favorite part:

The period in captivity wasn’t without humor, and the men celebrated their small victories where they could find them. Swindle takes particular pleasure in telling the story of how he convinced the North Vietnamese captors Nov. 10 is National Doughnut Day in the United States.

He said one interrogator liked to practice his English by bragging about his country’s 4,000-year history. Once during an October spent there, this individual was bragging about an upcoming Vietnamese holiday and taunted Swindle by telling him the United States is such a young country it couldn’t have any meaningful holidays.

Swindle convinced him a major American holiday was right around the corner, National Doughnut Day, on Nov. 10. He described doughnuts as similar to something the men got served on rare occasions in the prison camp. Periodically the Vietnamese would take old, dirty bread and fry it and sprinkle it with a little sugar. The men took to calling the concoctions “sticky buns.”

As soon as that interrogation session was over, Swindle “got on the wall” and tapped out what he had done so the others would respond in kind. Sure enough, on Nov. 10 that year, the North Vietnamese brought around these sticky buns in celebration of National Doughnut Day. Swindle had gotten their North Vietnamese jailers to unwittingly celebrate the Marine Corps birthday.

And the greatest twist to Swindle’s story? He was shot down 40 years ago tomorrow: Nov. 11, 1966.

Semper Fi, Orson — and all veterans.

We learn in the Post this moring that the military’s North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is planning to shutter it famous reinforced war room at the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center.

Makes us all nostalgia for this line: Shall we play a game?