Good points, indeed. I think the field of politics is so rapidly changing that what Reagan could get away with is no longer passed over by the press or the public. Politics is just too dynamic. A candidate needs to adapt. Reagan obviously got away with a bunch of whoppers. He was the king of the “tall tale” to be sure. Woe be it unto today’s candidate who tries to use this approach. People just aren’t going to stand for it. That goes for Gore, Bush, or anyone. While, to many, Gore seems to be having a harder time with this impression, I don’t think Bush should be held to a different standard.
Not to belabor the point even further, but here’s what ABC news had to say about who was telling the truth and who was not in the second debate:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/debate001011_truthsquad.html
I would score this 4 to 1 in Bush false statements over Gore false statements. I’m giving Bush the benefit of the doubt on the gun lock issue because I think his intent is probably on track, even if the program isn’t and I’m giving Gore the benefit of the doubt on the statement “I think that we should require states to test…” even though his plan doesn’t reflect mandatory testing. Policy does not always reflect personal ideals. If Gore had said “My plan calls for mandatory testing…”, then that would have been a clear falsehood.
Apparently, “cum laude” can indeed mean both “with honors” and “mediocre” at Harvard.
Myrr21: I’m sorry you’re not familiar with Bush’s F-102 flying, but it’s general knowledge and not my job to correct your ignorance. Go look it up yourself if you don’t trust me.
Here are some specifics about his Texas ANG experience: He was admitted to flight training school with dubious qualifications, but later his commander considered him to be in the top 5% of his pilots. After flight training, he went on active duty between 1970 and 1974, but he stopped flying the F-102 in 1972. In 1970, he volunteered for a rotation in Vietnam, but was turned down because at that time he only had 300 flying hours, well below the minimum required (some sources say the minimum requirement for combat duty was 500 hours, others say 1000 hours). The skeptical among us can speculate that he knew he couldn’t be accepted when he volunteered.
Anyway, I have been unable to find the exact number of hours Bush flew in the F-102. But we do know that he had 300 hours in July 1970 when he volunteered for Vietnam, and that he stayed on active flight status until April 1972.
To stay on active flight status requires that you fly a minimum of 6-8 ‘missions’ per month. That probably amounts to at least 10 hours per month (just to retain flight pay you need 48 hours per year). So if Bush flew 10 hours a month after that, he would have racked up a minimum of 150 more hours before he stopped flying, bringing his total F-102 flying hours to 450 (in reality it was probably much higher than that, since some missions would be several hours in length, and these were the minimum requirements). He could easily have racked up over 1000 hours in that time.
The Crimson Hipster Dufuz Said:
My research skills are fine, thank you. I tried all of that at the start of this debate. I also tried the Air Force safety archives (most of which are blocked to non-.mil domains), the NTSB archive, The Texas ANG archive, I looked for web sites for the 407th FW and the 111th Fighter Squadron, I searched for Century Series safety in general, ‘F-102 accidents’, etc. I tried all these searches at google, metacrawler, Northern Light, and AltaVista.
I found lots of anecdotal evidence backing up what I said - quotes from fighter pilots saying, “It was pretty dangerous in those years”, a quote from Bush himself saying that his squadron lost a couple of pilots to accidents (I tried following that up and got nowhere), etc.
I want to point out that I’m being as skeptical as possible. For instance, I’m not using Bush’s claim that his squadron lost ‘a couple of guys’. If they did lose a couple during his time there, then that would point to significant risk since there were only 24 fighters in the first place. But for all I know, those pilots died in that squadron over a 30 year period. Since I don’t know, I’m not using it.
And I’m afraid you’re being insulting. I wasn’t pulling numbers ‘out of my ass’. I was extrapolating from what data we have. We know that A) One squadron lost 8 airplanes to accidents in 9 years. B) A high-ranking air force officer was quoted as saying that this was ‘an excellent safety record’. C) That squadron comprised only a tiny percentage of F-102 operations. D) 873 102’s were built.
From that, we can assume that there were a lot more crashes.
How many more would be an estimate, which is why I put such big error bars around my numbers (10-30 per year). As a percentage of the total fleet, that number is quite high. In fact, if those 8 crashes were the only crashes in F-102 history, that would still comprise almost 1% of all F-102’s built. That alone is close to the overall casualty rate for servicemen in Vietnam.
We can further fact-check this by looking at accident rates for military fighter aviation in general during those years, and they’re certainly in the ballpark (in fact, they are in the low range).
Look: Flying fighter jets has NEVER been a particularly safe way to spend your time. The Century series fighters were more dangerous than most.
Well, that paragraph had the distinction of being a total non-sequitur. The number of people killed by putting guns in their mouths and pulling the trigger is lower than the number killed in car crashes too, but I’d rather drive my car than put a gun in my mouth.
To compare accident rates, you need to look at the number of hours spend doing each activity. Flying in an airliner has a fatality rate less than 1/10 that of driving a car, per hour. Flying in a small airplane like mine is statistically much more dangerous - about on par with driving a motorcycle. Flying in a military fighter jet in the 1950’s would be yet again an order of magnitude more dangerous.
My airplane (a Grumman AA1) has a fatal accident rate of 4.73 for every 100,000 hours flown. If I flew it for 1000 hours, I would have about a 4.7% chance of dying in that time. (Of course, I like to think that I’m safer than average and don’t carry that much risk, but the people who crashed probably thought the same thing).
If we assume that flying a military fighter jet is even just twice as dangerous, then if Bush flew 1000 hours there was almost a 10% chance that he would have been killed. And even if the F-102 was as safe as a modern civilian light plane, the pilots would still be exposed to more risk than I am, since the missions they fly (ground attack, dogfighting, etc) are much more dangerous than what civilian pilots typically do with their airplanes.
Which brings me back to my original point: Flying Fighter jets is dangerous. Lots of fighter pilots die in accidents. The chance of dying in a fighter accident in four years of full-time flying is greater than the risk of being killed in Vietnam as a random draftee.
Excellent links. And from them, we see that 2.7% of the people who served in Vietnam were killed. But only about 50% of all servicemen actually went to Vietnam. Bringing the total casualty figure for all members of the services up to perhaps 1.4%.
We’ll also note that this is over the entire span of the war. A draftee doing a 2-year hitch had a significantly lower possibility of being killed.
While you’re at it, you’d better remove the statistics for accidental deaths like motor vehicle collisions, and from illnesses like cancer,since people die from accidents and sickness at home too. That accounts for about 8,000 of the U.S. casualties.
Geez, it looks like I would have had a better chance of surviving 2 years in Vietnam than I did flying my own airplane for a couple of years.
Your own figures prove my case.
I want to note for the record that I am not making light of the war, or suggesting that it was safe or a fun time or anything else. It was horrible, and 50,000 dead people is a horrendous tragedy. But we tend to have a perception that an individual who was sent to Vietnam had a good chance of being killed, and it just wasn’t the case, unless you happened to be an infantryman or Marine in a battle zone. But remember that many draftees never saw combat.
I’m not particularly interested in the safety record of F-102s, but I am a stickler for statistical reasoning.
Can I simply point out that this method of computing probabilities would mean that if youo flew your plane for 100,000 hours you would have a 473% chance of dying in a fatal crash? Is that observation sufficient to point out that your analysis is flawed?
I also not that in computing casualty rates for servicemen during the Vietnam War you seem to switch arbitrarily between those sent to the conflict and those not sent. I believe the original comparison was
So, the numbers for servicemen not in country are entirely irrelevant.
Sorry, I thought I had originally said a random draftee. My mistake. So fine, let’s make it a TDY in Vietnam.
Then the question comes down to whether or not a person who enlists in the guard, trains and flies F-102 fighters for 4 years has a greater than 2.7% chance of being killed.
I believe the answer to that is unquestionably YES.
And let’s not forget that 2.7% is too high, since that was the figure for all casualties over the entire course of the war, not a 2-year enlistment. And it also includes accidents and illnesses, which people also have at home (about 8000 of the people who died in Vietnam died from accidents and illnesses - about what you’d expect from a population that large).
And you are picking nits with my statistics. If I say you have a 5% chance of being killed if you jump off a bridge, of course that doesn’t mean that you are certain to be dead if you jump 20 times. In fact, your chance of being killed in 20 jumps is about 64%.
That doesn’t change the statistic, or the danger that it implies.
Look, you can argue trivialities all day long. The stats for aviation accidents don’t count number of takeoffs and landings. Nor do they account for currency or whether the flight was at night, the age of the pilot, etc.
The simple question to be answered is: “is the chance of being killed flying a 50’s era fighter jet for X hours greater than 2.7%?” X in this case is the number of hours Bush flew, which is somewhere between 450 and perhaps 1000-2000. I can’t find that specific number, but it can be no lower than 450, since he had 300 hours in 1970 and flew for another year and a half.
I believe the answer is yes.
Here’s one piece of information that may corroborate this -
In 1954, the Navy and the Marine Corps crashed 776 aircraft, an average of two a day. In 1996, they lost 39.
That gives you some idea of how much more dangerous jet flying was back then. Of course, there were more jets, so the numbers would have to be adjusted for that. But they didn’t have 200 times more jets.
Another way to put the safety issue in perspective is that between 1984 and 1994, there were 42 commercial airliners destroyed in crashes. During that same period, the military lost 1,523 aircraft.
The military crashes during that period killed more than 1,600 people. The number of passengers killed in the commercial crashes was almost identical.
This is from CNN.
I’ll keep digging for more data.
point about grade points.
a “B” aveage at an Ivy League school, is still something to be proud of. Even if 80% of the students there achieve it, that says more about the screening process to get in than relative “mediocacy” of the individual student.
now, a “B” average at Anywhere Community College may mean something quite different.
In order to get INTO an Ivy League school, you have to be among the top of the top. to say that Gore “only” managed to be within the top 80% of that group is still pretty impressive, IMHO.
Quite true, undoubtedly. No argument from me, there.
Or, have a father who is a well-respected Senator, and who sent you to a prestigious DC prep school. Now, I’m not saying that this is wrong, or that Gore enjoyed advantages that Bush didn’t (Bush, too, can credit many of his accomplishments to family influence). But I think that Gore’s academic background pre-Harvard was such that, if the admissions committee did not know who he was, they would not likely have extended him an invitation for admission. His upbringing screams “Ivy League” while his academics do not seem to. Again, I’m not saying that Gore was undeserving of admission. It’s the American way to make use of whatever avenues you can to get ahead. I, for one, am glad that universities look at things other than a GPA.
A Harvard degree is certainly something to be proud of. I do not suggest otherwise. Gore has every right to be proud of what he has accomplished. He is, after all, the Vice-President of the United States. (And what’s that joke about “What do you call the person who graduates last in his medical school class?”-----“Doctor”)
This entire tangent stemmed from me taking issue with claims about how smart Gore was/is. I probably should not have pushed the issue, or taken the thread on this particular tangent. But what’s done is done.
I don’t even know where to begin with your general lack of understanding. As you quoted the figure earlier, 2.7% of the people who went to Vietnam died. There is no time factor involved here. The way the figure was stated (albeit from your reporting, I looked at the links but fifn’t read carefully), it doesn’t matter if you were there for 20 minutes or 4 years. Was the number 2.7% per X amount of time?
So, I’ll carefully re-check the site, and you think through this…
As for the rest of your “statistical analysis”, my head hurts, and I need to sleep. But the simple matter is that people were being shot at with guns on a daily basis, and I seriously doubt that’s even on the same order of magnitude as flying a plane in the national guard. But the numbers will still be there tomorrow, so they may wait…
You’ve since amended your statement to something I agree with. Gore isn’t really Stephen Hawking, sure, and he sure got some bad grades, and obviously his family connections didn’t hurt him in any way, but I think the amount of distinctions awarded to Harvard graduates argues more to the talent among Harvard seniors than anything. Thus, I think it a mischaracterization to call Gore “mediocre” or even “a mediocre student.” He does seem to be about average among Harvard students, but that might be like being average among NBA players
It certainly can be lower than 450, as the information I have looked at, admittedly somewhat cursorly, suggests Bush was flying for 22 months.
It seems, though, mostly because you want to
“back then” being 15 years before George Bush flew an F-102a, and the navy is flying at least some of those from carriers, which is a fairly new thing in 1954, at least as jets go.
And, you know, the ANG is flying from solid ground in the day time in the USA.
I think they have more planes, though, and more flights, and at least occasionally combat or combat related deployments
I’m going to figure that combat related deployments in south vietnam balances against relative inexperience on training manueovers in the USA, and, using what we know about the relative safety record of the F-102 (certainly not a dangerous plane by 1969), all things being equal, 15 crashes in 10 years is, given one plane flying one mission a day is about, oh, .5% fatality? (and you know they didn’t just fly one plane a day) So, the texas ANG is about .5% deadly
.5% is much lower than 2.7%, in fact it’s about five times lower, and my methods sure seem generous as to the danger associated with flying the F-102a.
Now, driving drunk like Bush seemed to like to do, that’s pretty dangerous, so perhaps he should bring that up to prove his courage relative to Al Gore.