To briefly respond to the tired tactic of calling someone a "chickenhawk," as Mr. Merhoff so disgustingly did on June 10 in agreeing with Mr. Gray's broadside, which I deal with below:

Anyone throwing the insult, "chickenhawk," at me or anyone on the right side of the political divide, is doing nothing more or less than childish name calling that is substituting for adult, thoughtful, reasoning and polite, respectful debate. Such individuals are apparently incapable of forming such reasoned arguments and hence resort to childish name calling. The slanderous term became popular on the anti-Iraq war left when they thought they came upon yet another little bit of shorthand logic (or illogic, as it were) over the fact that decisions to send American military to war, and then to support their continued involvement in said war, were made by many who had never served in uniform.

Proving the hypocrisy is simple: Lincoln--no Army service (local militia with no combat); Roosevelt--no service; Reagan--no service; Clinton--no service. HINT: America's military is set up by the Constitution with civilian control and decision making. You can't have it both ways and ignore the non-military record of president's you like when they act as commander-in-chief, but then throw non-service in the faces of those supporting military actions you disagree with. Either deploying men and women to combat or into harm's way is authorized or it isn't; if it is legitimately authorized by Congress, AS THE IRAQ WAR WAS, you can either support it, or not, hope America prevails, or not, but make the argument, don't just insult and call names, Mr. Merhoff. And unless you're going to rehash the totally discredited liberal arguments of Bush's Texas Air National Guard service (facts: he started too late, and flew aircraft too old, to use in Vietnam; some pilots did die flying Air National Guard planes; and compared to Clinton, Bush was a hero) just stop with the transparent hypocrisy over epithets like "chickenhawk".