The logic in the OP is schizophrenic. Those on the left who presumably were against the Vietnam war should commend the President for what they are accusing him of - avoiding service in Vietnam. What’s the problem again?
Sen. Kerry will ultimately regret bringing up Vietnam, though to be fair it will resonate well with the true believers. Unfortunately, Sen. Kerry’s actions as part of the “anti-war” movement will clearly be problematic. Many of his colleagues were outed in the book “Stolen Valor”, a good read to get a handle on real Vietnam veterans, not wannabes. Hollywood and our “liberal” friends have successfully painted Vietnam veterans as psychotic, drug abusers, wife beaters, unable to hold a job, &c. &c.
Some interesting stuff to throw in the mix (after I congratulate myself for kicking off a thread so energetic yet relatively light on snide…cool beans, e.…)
I frequently check the Daily Howler site, for news on chicanery, lies, and media skullduggery…
Usually has something interesting to say, and they weigh in pretty hard on this issue, and they have over the last several days managed to make the murky utterly obscure. For instance, the following from yesterdays:
"On November 3, 2000, George Lardner did a story in the Post about the re-emerging flap. Like Robinson and Thomas, Lardner cited Bartlett as a principal source, and referred to documents Bartlett had shown him. But Lardner’s report differed vastly from Thomas’. Lardner said nothing about Bush performing any duty before leaving Alabama. More specifically, Lardner didn’t mention the pair of documents Thomas described—the documents showing that Bush had served. Or did he? Midway through his Post report, Lardner described an odd document:
LARDNER (11/3/00): The Bush campaign points to a torn piece of paper in his Guard records, a statement of points Bush apparently earned in 1972-73, although most of the dates and Bush’s name except for the “W” have been torn off…" (emphasis gleefully added)
Today entry goes on at length about the “torn document”, and you wouldn’t have a clue unless you backtrack. (Not so great, Howler guys, a lot of us are dumb…)
Second, my whitey Josh Marshall, of the esteemed Talking Points Memo is also on the case. My money’s on him, but there are some genuine journalistic honchos on this one, so we’re gonna see the pundit fur fly! Anybody want a chunk of media whoreskin?
I don’t really alter my position. If GeeDubya were to say “I was young and callow” I’d probably be willing to write him a pass on it. We already got oodles of ammo, this is some small beer.
But the struggle, the gotchas! between pundits, “journalists” and journalists make a damned interesting public Pit Thread, don’t you think?
“There is great confusion under Heaven, and the situation is excellent!” - Mao
Interesting submission, Tedster. Googling on Stolen Valor I immediately find entusiastic endorsement from Newsmax and Weekly Standard. You one of those guys who sincerely believe that hippies used to walk up to returning vets in airports and spit on them? That we would have won the war if the pansy liberals hadn’t tied the hands of our brave men?
And just what, exactly, do you mean that Kerry’s Viet Nam protest days are “problematic”. To whom?
Let’s clear up a couple of things right off the bat:
Bush was removed from flight status due to failure to report for a required medical exam
Anyone who is a pilot can explain this to you. The way you bush-bashers like to phrase this makes it sound sinister. Like he broke a rule, ducked a medical, and was removed from flight status as punishment or something.
In actuality, here’s how it works: If you are not currently assigned to active flight operations, you can maintain your ‘flight status’ and extra pay by A) flying a certain minimum number of hours, and B) keeping your medical current. Bush was not actively flying at the time, so he didn’t bother to take the flight medical. Once his current medical expired, he was automatically removed from flight status. This is a common occurance. In fact, I personally have been ‘removed from flight status’ by the government for failing to report for a medical. All I have to do is go and take my medical again when I’m ready to go flying, and the ‘suspension’ will end.
Bush scored low on his pilot aptitude exams.
On ONE of them. A test with 5 questions on spatial relationships. On his more comprehensive officer candidate exam, Bush scored in the top 5% of all applicants. Bear in mind that this is the top 5% of people applying to be officers, already a self-selected group of high achievers.
I imagine that it was this high score that gave Bush a shot at flight training. And even if someone used connections to get him into flight training I GUARANTEE that he had to perform as well as anyone else. No one gets put in the seat of a jet fighter unless they earn it. And from what I’ve found, Bush’s squadron mates at the time say he was one of the best pilots in the unit.
Funny how all the sites that mention Bush’s ‘low scores’ never mention that outstanding score on the OCS exam, huh?
Bush joined the guard because he was a coward.
Two answers to this. First, when Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard, it was entirely possible to be sent to Vietnam. TANG units were serving overseas in air refueling duties, and air intercept flights. Bush served in the 111th Fighter Intercept squadron, part of the 147th Fighter Wing. At the time Bush joined up, pilots from the 147th were flying in Southeast Asia. In fact, Bush himself volunteered for a Vietnam rotation and was turned down because he did not have enough flight hours at that time.
Second, Bush volunteered to fly F-102s, which were very dangerous aircraft to fly. I have posted on this before, including cites to accident statistics. Bush was in far more danger of being killed than he would have been had he volunteered for Vietnam duty in the army. In fact, 2 members of his squadron were killed in accidents.
Bush was AWOL, and/or never finished his commitment to the guard
I believe this confusion comes from people thinking of the regular military, and not the Guard. The Guard is a PART-TIME job. In many positions, as long as you put in your minimum time each quarter, you could come and go as you please. The fact is, Bush put in FAR MORE time than was required by his enlistment, as did most fighter pilots. There’s a lot of training, and when you’re done that and you do an active rotation with a squadron, you put in a lot of hours. The New York Times, not exactly a conservative stronghold, did an in-depth analysis of Bush’s record, and concluded that he had done NOTHING wrong.
Then we have this from the Boston Globe (story no longer online):
Here is a pretty good post from an active Guard reservist explaining how the system works:
Because of Bush’s flight training and active fighter ops period, he had racked up a large number of ‘points’ - more than enough to meet his enlistment requirement.
You guys just amaze me. This board is supposed to be about fighting ignorance, but when it comes to Bush you’ll ignore the fact that he has an honorable discharge, and that by all accounts he was a good pilot flying a dangerous aircraft, and instead resort to repeating unproven allegations and outright lies.
Cite that Bush volunteered for an active tour, Sam?
Bush got his wings in 1970, and the F-102 was not deployed in SE Asia after 1969, (cite) so it’s not at all clear how he could have been turned down for having insufficient hours, as opposed to not being part of a unit that was flying an aircraft that was actually being used in Vietnam.
Even if he’d been quick enough, the F-102’s in Vietnam saw essentially no combat:
Kerry fulfilled his commitment with honor and distinction. He should be commended on it. He is not shy about pointing this out, either, nor, can I see why he need be.
Gorsnak: I tried to find a cite for you, but most of the newspapers no longer have articles from 2000 online, at least that I can find. But Bush’s volunteering for a 3-month tour in Vietnam was widely reported back then. I believe it was around July of 1970, just after he had graduated from flight school. He had about 300 hours of flight time then, and the minimum requirement was 500 hours so they refused.
It’s not a big deal, because you can spin that story any way you want. One spin might be that a gung-ho young Lieutenant was itching to test his piloting skills in combat. Another spin would be that Bush knew damned well that he’d be turned down, and volunteered as a cynical ploy to get that on his record for future use. There’s no evidence either way, so take it for what it’s worth.
But there’s no disputing this: When Bush volunteered for the 147th, it was active in operation “Palace Watch” in Vietnam, and continued to be so for almost two years after Bush enlisted. Plenty of other guard units were flying in Vietnam. So Bush had every expectation that he might have to do a tour of Vietnam at the time he enlisted.
Not if, as you stated in your last post, he volunteered specifically for the 102, since he’d have known perfectly well it was being removed from active duty.
Gorsnak: It’s true that the F-102 didn’t see combat, but George Bush had no way of knowing that in 1968. That’s my point. The F-102 had only been in service for 8 years at that point, and was to remain in service for another five or six years. No one knew how long the Vietnam war would last, or how big it would grow, or what requirements for fighters would be required years down the road.
Bush claims that he joined the Guard simply because he wanted to be a pilot. His dad was a pilot, and he wanted to follow in his dad’s footsteps. This is at least a plausible reason.
Speaking as a pilot, I can tell you that while I would never have volunteered to be a grunt in Vietnam, I would have volunteered in a second to fly fighter jets in that war. Bush may not have wanted to wind up in the infantry not because he was a coward, but because he didn’t want to slog through basic training and wind up sleeping in a tent for two years and humping his butt off in the mud every day. Certainly anyone willing to fly an F-102 is not a coward, especially someone who had a dad who was a military pilot and no doubt explained to him exactly what the risks were.
Sam, I know the guard is lax, but I can’t believe that even in the guard you can basically just disappear for the time periods that have been reported about Bush. Thats the part that gets me…here was a guy that managed to swing a dream assignment (for then)…a stateside posting to a guard unit, as opposed to a combat assignment in Vietnam. Getting to fly jets TOO would just be icing on the cake IMO. And then he disappears for long periods of time (seemingly…most articles and Cecil seem to agree on this). It just seems so…irresponsible and even disrespectful…to me. It smacks of a rick kid taking advantage of the system.
Admittedly I was never in the guard (I was in the regular Navy) nor did I go the active reserve route after my enlistment was up, so I can’t speak from experience here. Maybe if someone could show that this was the norm at the time in the guard or something, that would be different. ATM, from what I know, it looks pretty bad on his record…and his character, at least when he was a young man.
As I’ve said before though, I seriously doubt it will make much of a difference either way though. After all, Clinton was elected against Bush I, and Bush I WAS a war hero. Clinton was ALSO re-elected…and his record is no better (and you could make a case it was worse) than GW’s as far as military service goes. It seems military service doesn’t count for much with the American people when it comes right down to voting anyway…it certainly isn’t a major factor when I vote.
Gorsnak: You’re saying that Bush somehow knew in 1968 that the F-102 was going to be removed from service years down the road, and that there was no chance that he’d be sent to qualify in a different jet, and therefore this was his grand strategy to avoid combat? That’s a lot of very crafty analysis for a guy who’s supposed to be stupid, isn’t it?
In fact, the F-102 in the 111th fighter wing remained on runway alert until 1970, and the squadron then continued to train other pilots in the F-102 for some years after. I think it’s ridiculous to suggest that 21 year old George Bush somehow knew exactly the Guard’s plan for this aircraft for years in the future and craftily worked his way into it.
And by the way, you don’t join the Guard and ‘volunteer to fly the F-102’. You join the guard and apply to be a pilot. Depending on your scores in flight tests and written tests, you might make it to fighters. Or you might wind up flying a transport or other support aircraft.
In 1966 the 147th earned an Air Force award as the most combat ready unit in the Air National Guard. Pilots from the unit were actively flying in Southeast Asia, and would continue to fly in SEA for years after Bush enlisted. He would have had every reason to believe there was a chance that he would wind up flying in Vietnam at the time he joined.
xtisme: Did you read the stuff I posted? I have a quote from his commanding officer that says that Guard members were allowed wide lattitude in when they showed up for service as long as they met their quarterly requirements, which apparently Bush did. I quoted a current Guard member who says there’s nothing at all unusual about Bush’s actions. And yet another cite claims that the Guard gives people wide lattitude if they have already put in their required hours of service and are just ‘marking time’. And Bush put in far more than the minimum required hours of service.
The bottom line is that Bush has the official discharge papers that show he was honorably discharged. The arguments on the other side are all innuendo and hearsay about events that happened 30 years ago. This dog won’t hunt.
If Kerry keeps up this line of attack, I expect Bush’s side to come back with a powerful rejoinder: “Why are you slandering the National Guard, John Kerry? Are you saying there is something dishonorable about serving in the Guard? Would you like to explain that viewpoint to the current members of the Guard honorably serving in Iraq and elsewhere?”
Or maybe they’ll just throw this quote back in his face:
Sam, I have no idea how Bush got assigned to the 102. You said he volunteered specifically for it, saying how dangerous it was and how brave that made him.
The 102 was first delivered in 1956, twelve years prior to 1968. Check my second cite. It began being transferred wholesale to the ANG in 65. That means, for the clueless, that it was on its way out. It began being retired from the Guard in 1969, the year before Bush was assigned to it.
Moreover, it was a straight up interceptor. It had no ground attack abilities, and bugger all for dogfighting abilities. It was designed to shoot down bombers, and that was all it was good at. There wasn’t any significant Viet Cong bomber wing. The 102 had next to no abilities in demand in Vietnam, which no doubt explains the very light service it saw there, as outlined in the link I provided. I certainly agree with you that there were no cowards in those century-series fighters, but there simply wasn’t any real chance of being deployed to Vietnam in Delta Dart in 1970 and years following.
I should have thought that an aviation buff would know these sorts of things.
Bush volunteered for the F-102 at some point in his training, no doubt. My point is that when he joined the guard itself, he would have had no way of knowing which type of aircraft he would have been qualified to fly, if any. He could easily have washed out of flight school and wound up having to do something completely different.
Qualifying for fighter jets is not easy. There are about a million ways you can miss that particular job. And I guarantee you this - strapping your ass into one of those things was scary. Fun, but scary. Cowards need not apply.
And you’re spinning when you start saying things like, “The F-102 began to be removed from service in 1969”. Yes, it did. But it remained in service until 1975. Again, Bush had no way of knowing any of this in 1968. For all he knew, the Chinese or Soviets could have entered the war and every intercepter available could have been shipped to Vietnam to stop the Tupolevs from bombing U.S. bases.
Yeah, sure, okay. Whatever you say. Just so long as you’re explicit in admitting it would have taken WWIII to warrant deploying Delta Darts to Vietnam.
Gee, I must have missed WWIII then, because the F-102 DID deploy to Vietnam. The 64th fighter-intercepter squadron flew them out of Da Nang. They were also flown by the 317th FIS, and other squadrons as well. In fact, at the time Bush joined up, the Colorado Air National Guard was flying F-102’s in Vietnam. The F-102 was very active in Vietnam from 1965 until 1969.
I don’t have anything to say in this thread except for this:
What you said may have been true then, and you may not have intended to say what you said about the Guard now, but I assure you that currently the Air National Guard is NOT lax.
As I said, Airman, I was never in the Guard so I have no idea. The implication of Sams arguements was that the Guard WAS lax (or at least operated under radically different rules than my own experiences in the military were), at least with reguards to regular service. Your name implies you are currently in service. What would the result be if you vanished for several weeks/months? I know what it would have been when I was in the Navy.
Just to emphasize my position here: I was NOT putting down the Guard in any way. Not the Guard then, not the Guard now.