:rolleyes: As I already acknowledged in the cite you keep ignoring. I thought this would have made it clear that my latest quip was referring to the period of time during which Bush was actually flying the things, but apparently some people endlessly nitpick things unless they’re explicitly repeated over and over and over and over and over again.
Very active? Good lord, did you read the cite I provided?
I’m sure some A-4 or F-105 jockeys would have killed for some of this “very active” service. Jesus Christ.
Anyways, it all (what there was of it) was wrapped up before Bush had his wings, which makes it a tad irrelevant.
Whence comes your obsession with defending these big-spending arch-social-conservatives, anyways?
“Anyone who is a pilot can explain this to you….In actuality, here’s how it works:”
Are you basing your following assertions as a pilot? Do you have any special understanding of the flight status procedures in effect in the Texas ANG during the time in question? As it relates to the necessity for medical examination? Since you are a self-confessed Canadian, one might reasonably wish to know how it happens that you are so knowledgeable. Unless, of course, you are relying on someone else’s expertise, in which case you neglected to mention it.
A bit unclear. Do you mean to suggest he took more than one pilot aptitude test, and those outstanding results were suppressed by the dastardly liberal media? Or, as it seems, are you suggesting that his pilot aptitude test is somehow not as significant as his OCS aptitude test?
And of course it has questions on spatial relationships! Would one expect essay questions? A splendid officer might have no aptitude for piloting at all. It is entirely reasonable to question how someone with the minimum, repeat, minimum acceptable score found himself “leapfrogged” into acceptance.
The assertion that GeeDubya proved to be an excellent pilot is all to the good. But it doesn’t have any ex post facto implications, it doesn’t affect the unavoidable question, based on his pilots aptitude scores, why the Texas ANG was so eager to have young George as a pilot trainee.
Not in the slightest. Why should they? We already knew he graduated from Harvard. Hell, I know Aggies who did well on their OCS tests!
And then, of course, you quote a blogger. We’ve talked about this, haven’t we, Sam? I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure we discussed this. Imagine my shock to find the blogger in question has An Agenda. A wee bit less than complete disclosure, is all I’m saying. Also, I missed the part where she can assure us that the procedures she is knowledgeable of today are precisely those procedures in effect 30 years ago.
We call them “cites”. Same as Canadians, but you pronounce it “sooots”. You produce the same sort of thing as we, yet you aver that when we do it, we’re lying, and when you do it the Truth wafts down from On High, like a Golden Shaft, when all about you is Darkness….
And finally…
I will sleep better tonight knowing the surrealism is not dead.
John Kerry (AKA “Liveshot”) served in the US Navy, as commander of a small boat team. There are a few points that I would like to raise about his record.
(1) As an admirer of JFK, Kerry strove to emulate his hero. To document his (Kerry’s) heroism, he had a crewman film him using an 8 mm camera(hence the “live shot” tag. According to my father (retired US Navy), bringing ANY camera into a theatre of operations IS a court martiable offense! I have never heard of any actions by Kerry’s superior officers regarding this episode.
-(2) Kerry has brought out his former crew to endorse his candidacy-I have yet to see exactly how their statements square with why he was doing all of this in-combat filming.
-(3) Kerry later became an aide to an admiral (after his tour); I wonder if his connections had anything to do with that assignment?
Anybody know more about the curious film career of Lt. Kerry? Was he a photographer,like another Vietnam veteran (Al Gore)?
I agree that past military record should be less important than civilian achievments... but that was until Iraq was invaded. Colin Powell and other vietnam vets turned politicians would be way more cautious about sending people into meat grinders... and once they do decide going to war one supposes its worthwhile since they know at a personal level what WAR means. Bush has no idea of what WAR means.
So when you have Bush, Cheney and Wolfowitz beating the drums of war with so much enthusiasm when they evaded their service it stinks of hypocrisy. War is a game for them… send troops there… kill enemies somewhere. Clinton didn’t go to war… Bush did.
This is disingenuous. The reality is that Bush was assigned to what was then called the “Champaign Division” of the National Guard. It was specifically set aside as a haven for rich boys and politicians’ kids. The whole point of the division was to keep rich kids out of combat. Bush was given an obsolete aircraft to specifically insure that his candy ass would see combat. It was not a surprise to him. He knew that he was going to a sanctuary. He knew that he had no chance of going to the shit. He knew his daddy’s friends were taking care of him.
You can spin this however you ewant, Sam, but the little fucker got taken care of just like a lot of other rich boys got taken care of. I don’t begrudge him that. I would have taken the same way out if I was in that situation (Hell, I would have high-tailed it up to Canada if I had to, eh).
What bugs me is absolute disregard for his duties once his safety was assured. It’s bad enough he was grounded for missing a drug test (and that is why he was grounded, that “medical examination” horseshit is code for “he was too coked up and drunk to pass a drug test”) but the fact that he felt no obligation to show up for duty for over a year is disgusting and indefensible. The little prick went AWOL for a year. You can’t tell me that if Al Gore or some other democrat had done the same thing that the Pubbies would not make it the central fact of every campaign.
You seem to be quite badly misinformed about all this. First of all, it was commonplace for soldiers to carry cameras in Nam, and riverboat crews were no exception. Your daddy is talking out of his ass.
Secondly, the “film crew” allegation stems from a single misreported incident after a firefight that Kerry was involved in. The acusation was made by one Bill Keller, a columnist for the NY Times. Keller later retracted his allegations:
Move on, dude. There’s nothing to see here…and you should have more respect for war heros.
Dio, old pard, you are due a mild bit of scolding. In my recently minted objectivity and non-partisanship, one simply must insist on holding you to the same standards as Sam, the Canadian Eagle.
I too recall hearing the words “Champagne Division”, but can’t tell you where, or what context. Without such context, we are reluctantly forced to regard this as hearsay. “Cite it or shut it” is the law of our special little jungle.
Similarly with the medical exam. That ball is clearly still in play, your presumption that GeeDubya ducked it so as not to reveal unseemly chemical habits is unsupported by cites, hence borders on slander. One cannot spike the ball on the 40 yard line and cry “Touchdown”. We must play on the square, that sort of thing is for Cheeseheads and Republicans. Prove it or lose it, its only fair.
That said, the way you harpooned that “Liveshot” canard is a thing of beauty, entirely in line with the standards we have come to expect, and demand, of you.
Admittedly, my sources for “Champagne Division” allegation are pretty much lefty sites that I won’t bother to link to. I’ll just say I believe it.
Here is the document which states that Bush was grounded for missing a physical. The physical included a drug test. We may draw our own conclusions.
The Bush stuff was just my usual ranting but the Kerry thing really needed a retort. How hard are the Pubbies reaching if they worst they can say about Kerry is that he carried a camera whilst deep in the shit?
The Pubs would be fools indeed if they try to disparage Kerry’s Vietnam service. Besides, his legislative record on military issues has plenty of grist for the mill.
And I fully expect the Dems to wring out whatever truth there is in the allegations against Bush. To the extent that they don’t, it only lends credibility to Bush’s side of the story.
I’m going to hold off until the MtP interview on Sunday to come to a conculsion. With this issue having surfaced, I fully expect TR to ask the hard questions. To the extent that Bush evades the questions, he will be indicting himself.
The point is obsolete now anyway. The issue 4 years ago was how seriously and maturely Bush understood the responsibilities of the office. The draft-dodging story was a guide to that at the time, but now we have more direct and current evidence of his attitudes and their effects. That’s what we, like most voters, will consider this time.
So what? SO WHAT?!? I don’t believe for a minute that you really don’t understand, but I’ll type slowly here, so you’ll be sure to get it…
Apart from purely domestic issues, one of the things the White House Occupant during the next term is going to have to deal with is our military activities. Of greatest concern in this area is: Can we keep Iraq from turning into a Viet Nam-like mess? Will the number of soldiers who died on a wild WMD-chase be kept in the mid-three-figures? The man (the only woman dropped out) to pick will be one who understands deeply what mistakes were made back then.
We look at Kerry, who served to the fullest of his abilities, and then evaluated that the war as a mistake.
We look at Bush, and see a man who, all current evidence indicates had no regard for the lives of the American soldiers and Iraqi civilians whose lives he sacrificed on the grounds of what a former Colin Powell subordinate brilliantly described last night on 60 Minutes II as “faith-based intelligence”.
Those who defend the administration’s actions blame the intelligence community, although weekly revelations indicate otherwise, we leaves us with nothing to clear the matter up but to examine his history: Was this current mess strictly a matter of bad information leading to too strong a response? Or is there some indication in Bush’s past that his respect of all things military is something less than full?
This whole ANG business shows that 35 years ago, this son of privilege had little or no respect for those who went off to fry while he stayed home, not even enough to commit fully to the cushy situation he finagled his way into while some of the people behind him in line went off into danger. Given that he exibits the exact same traits now, it the job of his supporters to provide convincing evidence that he ever became this better person who succumbed to poor information handed off by lackeys.
I direct your attention to an article in todays Salon.com (you will have to click your way through thier advertising…tiresome, but brief…)
First off, I should point out that the document concerning GeeDubya’s failure to take his medical exam was right under our collective nose all the time, specificly, http://users.cis.net/coldfeet/grounded.gif
(To my regret, and Dio’s as well, there is no reference to being “too coked up to cope with it”)
AS to the previously mentioned “torn document”, the following excerpt:
Oh, dear. Not quite as advertised, it would appear.
I’d like to reprint something I posted long ago in this thread. I’ve added some current comments in bold parens.
I reprint this so I can point out that here is at least one example where a regular guy got a break not because he was some Senator’s grandson, but because Army officers made a common-sense decision.
To extrapolate, the F-102 was more or less a pig by the time Bush was on reserve duty. The (arguably) amore capable F-105 was taking a beating over in the 'Nam anyway. The war was expensive, and planes are extremely expensive to maintain and fly. It makes sense to me that someone higher up would have wanted to cut costs by not flying reserve planes so much. Even had someone higher up wanted to maintain readiness, the guys at the bottom might have realized it wasn’t going to work.
Or maybe Bush’s ah… superlative abilities… were already recognized and he was given a broom to fly when he bothered to show up and not missed when he didn’t.
The point is that there are many possible explanations which don’t require privileged influence, cowardice, or extreme dereliction of duty. Minor dereliction, as my anectdotal evidence hints above, may have been common in the reserves at that time. And I have a hard time believing that when Elvis and Muhummad Ali could be called up, the son of a minor war hero wouldn’t be.
My opinions about this President are a matter of record here. This issue, however, is easily explained. Bush did serve. He didn’t get called up. He wouldn’t be any different from most guys if he was glad about that.
That gives me all the reason in the world to question his experience and ability to command, without having to resort to pure mud-slinging.
I agree that this would be the one obvious way to clear up this issue.
But, your cite about the “time-honored tradition” offers scant evidence of this tradtion. Only a reference to pre-service activities, not active service records, and one instance at that. Is it, in fact, a “time honored tradation” to release military records in the sense that tax records are routinely released? How many presidential candidates have released their full military records in modern history? I have no idea. If you want to make that claim, you should be prepared to back it up better than that.
I’m not subscrbed to Salon.com, so if the article offers further evidence of this “time honored tradition”, can you cite it?
All well and good, friend Sofa, and I’m pleased to note that your brain is not clotted by unrequited harpy-lust, and still functions to a level best described as “entirely adequate.”
But your Dad ain’t President. Your Dad, I presume, doesn’t wrap himself in the flag to defend his blunders, and, I presume, allow underlings and syncophants to impugn the integrity and patriotism of those who disagree. This is an entirely different kettle of piranha.
As I’ve said, if GeeDubya simply 'fessed up and took his lumps, my regard for him might well rise from abysmal to merely contemptuous. But no such candor is forthcoming, and it is reasonable to suspect that it is due entirely to a concern for political advantage.
In which instance, fuck ‘em. "Don’t start nothin’, won’t be nothin’", as Sophocles once remarked.
No subscription is necessary, you simply must endure a brief but mind numbing appeal from Salon, rather like pledge week on PBS. I commend the full article to you as worthy summation of the issues at hand.
As to the question of releasing the records, and whether or not this is a “time honored tradition”, I pass. I don’t really think any significant argument stands or falls on whether this wording is strictly accurate. As I am citing a source, if you have a beef, in all fairness, it is with him. After all, I am a consumer of intelligence, not a fabricator, nor am I a “fact-checker”.
If you find the wording “time honored” to be dishonest, I am entirely willing to shrug it off, there is no shortage of ammunition. Besides, as you yourself note, releasing the records is an obvious and direct means of clarifying. If, indeed, clarification is Our Leader’s intent. Failing that, isn’t it really up to him to provide a rationale why this cannot be done? To your knowledge, has he?
How great would it be to hear a politician just say, “Hey, I was 19 years old. I was against that war. I didn’t want to get my ass shot off and I did whatever the hell I could to not get sent over there.”
I think a little honesty would probably be greatly appreciated by voters.
This one is a cinch. Of course Bush will acknowledge Kerry’s service at debates, without damaging his own image at the same time. The exact words are probably already written and being rehearsed. The book on how to debate a veteran already has three chapters:
Quayle vs. Bentsen, or how not to do it;
Clinton vs. Bush Sr., or how to do it;
Clinton vs. Dole, or how to do it again.
I’m sure Bush camp is studying tapes of all those three debates right now.
Another source I’ve admired before, and this time he has the “torn document” (this years “blue dress”) on display. I invite the Gentle Reader to ascertain what, if anything, this document might be held to prove.
I share Dio’s heartfelt dreams of candor, it is second only to my fantasy of watching Paul Wolfowitz committ seppuku in the Rose Garden.
