Katharine Q. Seelye, in the NYT (May 3, 2004):

It was 1959 when Dick Cheney, then a student at Yale University, turned 18 and became eligible for the draft.

Eventually, like 16 million other young men of that era, Mr. Cheney sought deferments. By the time he turned 26 in January 1967 and was no longer eligible for the draft, he had asked for and received five deferments, four because he was a student and one for being a new father.

Although President Richard M. Nixon stopped the draft in 1973 and the war itself ended 29 years ago on Friday, the issue of service remains a personally sensitive and politically potent touchstone in the biographies of many politicians from that era.

For much of Mr. Cheney's political career, his deferments have largely been a nonissue.

In an increasingly vituperative political campaign, Mr. Cheney this week again questioned the credentials of Senator John Kerry and his ability to be commander in chief. Mr. Kerry, who was decorated in Vietnam and has made his service there a central element of his campaign, fired back.

Putting Mr. Cheney's record in the spotlight, Mr. Kerry said that he "got every deferment in the world and decided he had better things to do."

Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, dismissed the criticism, saying that Mr. Kerry was delving into a subject that he had said he would not touch. Mr. Schmidt said that Mr. Kerry was trying to divert attention from what the spokesman said was Mr. Kerry's reversals on other topics.

While Mr. Cheney's deferment history was briefly an issue when George W. Bush picked him as his running mate in 2000, the Democrats did not focus on it after Al Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee, who had served in Vietnam, picked as his running mate Senator Joseph Lieberman, who also had not served.

The issue also received little attention during Mr. Cheney's Senate confirmation hearings as defense secretary in 1989 under the first President Bush, largely because the Armed Services Committee had just completed a bitter and protracted battle over the president's original choice, John G. Tower. Mr. Tower had faced questions about philandering, drinking and conflicts over defense contracts before he was rejected.

Senators of both parties were so eager to confirm Mr. Cheney quickly that they were relatively undemanding, not pressing him on the draft but merely asking him if he had anything to say about it.

He said he "never served" because of deferments to finish a college career that lasted six years rather than four, which he attributed to subpar academic performance and the fact that he had to work to pay for his education.

He added that he "would have obviously been happy to serve had I been called."

Away from the hearing room, he told the Washington Post that he had sought his deferments because "I had other priorities in the 60's than military service."

"I don't regret the decisions I made," he added. "I complied fully with all the requirements of the statutes, registered with the draft when I turned 18. Had I been drafted, I would have been happy to serve."

But others contend that Mr. Cheney appeared to go to some length to avoid the draft.

"Five deferments seems incredible to me," said David Curry, a professor at the University of Missouri in St. Louis who has written extensively about the draft, including a 1985 book, "Sunshine Patriots: Punishment and the Vietnam Offender."