GRAPEVINE

By DAVID ELLIS

The Defense Secretary appears to have a double standard when it comes to Pentagon policy on military families. Dick Cheney opposes a proposed law that would excuse one parent from the front lines in the event married soldiers with children are both called to serve. Cheney's position prompted the sponsor of the Military Orphans Prevention bill to remind him about his own history as a noncombatant. California Congresswoman Barbara Boxer points out that Cheney received a deferment from the Vietnam draft in 1966 because his wife Lynne was pregnant. "You . . . felt that your wife and soon-to-be-born child needed you," Boxer wrote Cheney last week. "Our bill . . . is not even that generous."

With reporting by Linda Williams