Posted on 05/11/2004 2:42:11 PM PDT by FairWitness
The subject of President Bush's National Guard service and how it compares to John Kerry's service record in Vietnam is relatively quiet right now, though there were a couple of relevant threads as recently as a week ago: Bush's flights of fantasy fail to crack Kerry's rep [Guard Service = Draft Dodger!] and Gaps remain in Bush Guard Service (Barf Alert! CBS tries to help Kerry) .
However, I think it would be too good to be true to think we have heard the last of this subject. This "vanity" is something I put together for my own benefit to help visualize where G. W. Bush, John Kerry and Dick Cheney were in their lives during, and immediately after, the Vietnam years. It is intended to be "just the facts" rather than argumentative. The most basic point is that Dick Cheney is almost 3 years (> 34 months) older than John Kerry, who in turn is almost 31 months older than President Bush. Cheney was almost 26 by the time Kerry started active duty and Kerry was already discharged from active duty and starting his war protest phase by the time Bush "got his wings". This doesn't mean that Cheney and Bush could not have been "in-country" if that had been their choice, but I think that age must have had some influence on their choices (I am almost the same age as Cheney, with a similar education history and I know it influenced my choices - not proud of it, just the facts). I definitely believe that "strapping on an F102" as Bush did was not an easy or cowardly way out of service.
George W. Bush - from Wikipedia |
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Thanks for catching that. I'm not sure what I was reading when I made that entry under 1967, but I sort of remember something about "secret talks", so maybe I put down something different than the official version and then forgot to double-check.
Thanks for the info, and thanks for your service to our country. I hoped to learn from replies to this posting, and your reply has been most illuminating.
There seem to be a number of article around the confusion of "reserves", "active reserves" and "inactive reserves". I didn't bookmark most of them, but here is one example: Airbrushing John Kerry's Military Service
Thanks a billion :-)
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