Posted on 07/16/2004 12:29:03 PM PDT by ArmyBratproud
Seems that Kerry's claims that Bush joined the Air Guard to dodge Vietnam are bogus. The proof of this is at the tail end of this AP Article. Last Paragraph. I have posted this since it seems the Liberal AP is trying to help John Kerry in his bogus claims. The writer of the story is Benac, a liberal AP writer/editor.-
...Udell says Bush asked about a program under which National Guard pilots were assigned to Vietnam, but Udell told him he wasn't eligible because he was certified on the F-102, which the military was phasing out.
Echoes of Vietnam in presidential campaign 35 years later
By Nancy Benac ASSOCIATED PRESS 11:01 p.m. February 8, 2004
WASHINGTON – They were two years apart, these two Yale boys, these sons of privilege, and so the moment of truth came first for John Kerry, later for George W. Bush. Each faced the same life-changing question as did so many others of their generation: what to do about Vietnam.
Kerry, part of the class of 1966, signed on with the Navy late in 1965, then had months to ponder his decision before actually entering officer candidate school after graduation. The war, his decision, his doubts, all hung over him as he spoke at commencement the following June.
"What was an excess of isolationism has become an excess of interventionism," he told fellow students. He had to know his life was set on a course for Vietnam.
For Bush, a member of the class of 1968, his last year in college seemed to signal the end of a time of innocence.
"The gravity of history was beginning to descend in a horrifying and disruptive way," he wrote in his 1999 biography. "By the time the ball dropped in Times Square to welcome 1968, the situation in Vietnam had escalated from a conflict to a raging war. Every night the newscast included a body count."
Bush debated his options over Christmas break back home in Houston, took a pilot aptitude test after he got back to school in January, and chose the National Guard. He would fly planes like his father did in World War II, but he had to know the odds of going to Vietnam were low.
Nearly 40 years later, the choices made by these two young men are reverberating through the presidential campaign as part of a larger debate over patriotism, leadership, duty, character. Each man is defined in part by the path he chose, and by the level of commitment he demonstrated along the way.
"We are all hostage to decisions we made in the past," said Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at the University of New Orleans who has written a book about Kerry's war years. "The bottom line is Kerry went and Bush didn't and it's an uncomfortable fact for a president" who has so eagerly wrapped himself in the flag as commander in chief.
Yet Brinkley said the two-year age difference between Kerry and Bush is an important backdrop to the courses they set.
In 1965, when Kerry decided to enlist, students "still saw the world in black and white," Brinkley said, and "not serving wasn't really an option" for the son of a foreign service officer. "His big decision was which branch of the military to join," said Brinkley. "Did he want to go to Vietnam? No. But how could he live with himself if he finagled his way out of his duty?"
By the time Bush joined the guard in 1968, Brinkley said, the horrors of Vietnam were playing out nightly on television and sentiment against the war was hardening. "By 1968, smart kids weren't going. It became OK not to go. ... So Bush looked for a way not to go," he said.
"If he had been the class of '66, it may have been different for George W. Bush."
Bush spoke about his decision to serve in the National Guard in an interview Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," saying, "I put in my time, proudly so. I would be careful to not denigrate the Guard. It's fine to go after me, which I expect the other side will do. I wouldn't denigrate service to the Guard, though."
Wesley Clark, a retired four-star general, is part of the campaign debate over military service, too, as he tries to keep his Democratic presidential campaign alive.
Clark, who viewed the military as a path of opportunity for a bright, middle-class kid from Arkansas, graduated first in his class at West Point in 1966, then headed off to Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship. He wrapped up his studies there in two years rather than three so he could get to Vietnam quicker, and came home with a Silver Star for heroism.
Clark still has scars on his shoulder, hip and leg, and his right index finger was shortened by a bullet during a firefight with the Viet Cong.
Lately, the campaign discussion has repeatedly turned to the candidates' military histories, with all sides faulting the others for exploiting the issue.
Neither Kerry nor Clark have made a point of personally raising Bush's military record on the campaign trail, but both say when asked that legitimate questions have been raised about the Bush record.
"It's almost like an inverted time warp," said Stanley Renshon, a political scientist and psychoanalyst at the City University of New York. "The point of it is that, 'I'm a war hero and you're not.' And the implication is that because you're a war hero, that gives you a special standing to talk about war and strategy. But it doesn't follow."
Hardly a speech goes by in which Kerry, a decorated war hero, does not invoke Vietnam and its legacy. Vietnam buddies travel with his campaign entourage and appear in his ads. At an emotional appearance just before Kerry's huge victory in the Iowa caucuses, he was reunited with a serviceman whose life he had saved as the skipper of a river patrol boat.
Kerry was awarded the Bronze Star for that rescue, less than a month after earning a Silver Star for beaching his boat and jumping ashore to chase down and kill a guerrilla who had a rocket launcher pointed at the Americans. After being awarded three Purple Hearts for minor injuries, Kerry's request for reassignment stateside six months early was granted.
His campaign mantra, "Bring it on," evokes the same never-back-down approach he had evinced in battle.
"The entire heart and soul of John Kerry's personna is Vietnam," said Brinkley. "What happened to him is so seared into his being that it's almost like rings in an old redwood tree."
Kerry's fierce criticism of the war upon his return to America did not sit well with some veterans, and still doesn't.
As an anti-war leader, he asserted in testimony to Congress that U.S. soldiers had "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads ... randomly shot at civilians ... poisoned food stocks" and committed other atrocities he later acknowledged he did not witness.
Bush, for his part, harked back to his fighter-pilot training last year when he climbed into a flight suit and flew in a Navy jet to land on an aircraft carrier off the California coast. He emerged from the plane with the swagger of a top-gun pilot, cradling his helmet under his arm, and shouted, "Yes I flew it!" to those on deck.
Now, he is facing a new round of questions about his guard service on issues that first came up during the 2000 campaign:
–Whether family connections helped him get into the Texas Air National Guard when there were waiting lists for what was seen as an easy billet. Bush says no one in his family pulled strings and that he got in because others didn't want to commit to the almost two years of active duty required for fighter pilot training.
–Whether he showed up for duty while assigned to guard units in Alabama, where he worked on a political campaign in 1972. Military records show no evidence he reported for duty. "There may be no evidence, but I did report," Bush told NBC, adding, "Otherwise, I wouldn't have been honorably discharged."
–Why he was allowed to end guard duty about six months early to attend Harvard Business School. Bush said on NBC he had "worked it out with the military. And I'm just telling you, I did my duty."
Maurice Udell, one of Bush's flight instructors at Ellington Air Force Base in Texas, remembers Bush as a standout student. "I'd rank him in the top 5 percent," says Udell, now 73 and retired. He rejects the notion that Bush got preferential treatment or that there was anything improper about his time in Alabama or in going to Harvard before his six-year guard commitment had ended.
"I was really a tough instructor but I was fair with him," Udell said, remembering Bush for his excellent memory and standout sense of humor. "I'd give him hell about something and he'd pop a joke and get you laughing and just break up the whole situation."
Udell says Bush asked about a program under which National Guard pilots were assigned to Vietnam, but Udell told him he wasn't eligible because he was certified on the F-102, which the military was phasing out.
Find this article at: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20040208-2301-vietnamechoes.html
bump for later
"Udell, now a 270-pound judo expert who describes himself as a "war-type guy," said Bush had an extraordinary memory and ability to process information. From Udell's perspective, Bush's ability to overcome his aristocratic schooling at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and Yale University and mix with the other guardsmen was more impressive. "It is OK to get a good education, but some of those people are a little off the wall," he said. "I just wanted to make sure that he was in it for real."
Udell said he spent six hours a day for six months training Bush. And that's not all. "We would go to the bar and play dead bug just like everybody else," he said. When someone yelled "dead bug" the pilots would hit the floor and stick their hands and feet up in the air. "The last guy to do that has to buy the next round," Udell said, laughing. "He was really good with folks," he said. But the young pilot did not take insults well: "You can't put him down too easily. He's really tough. He'll fight you." "
Sounds like GW knew how to be a good leader..even as a young officer.
Udell seems to think Bush is very intelligent...Which we all know is true.
Again..thanks for this post ravingnutter....I will add it to my info vault
You should have put this February article on your other thread about the AP court business:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1172788/posts
Air National Guard was not necessarly a good way of decreasing the odds of going to Vietnam. Lots of ANG pilots and enlisted men were activated and served in Nam. Army National Guard would have been a better option to lower the odds.
You should enter the publish date ESPECIALLY when article is from months ago. I didn't realize that it was old when I replied earlier.
bump
Why are you stirring up this story?"
Because unlike too many folks who just sit around crying about how the media is just ignoring the truth and won't let people see the truth blah, blah, blah...
I feel it is better to find that truth and then post it where ever I can so people will see that truth. The more people will do that...the more we can get around those media folks and get the truth out there.
From about 1965 to 1972 anybody who enlisted in something other than the Marines or the Infantry was, in fact, evading the draft and it's probable outcome ~ namely, if you were drafted the odds were good you'd go to the Marines or the Infantry.
Why don't we have anybody running for top office who served in the Marines or the Infantry in Viet Nam during the Viet Nam War?
After the Bush AWOL story had percolated for months, Col. Turnipseed finally remembered another glitch in his story: the fact that National Guard regulations allowed Guard members to miss duty as long as it was made up within the same quarter. And, in fact - according to the Times - that's what Bush did.
"A document in Mr. Bush's military records," the paper said, "showed credit for four days of duty ending Nov. 29 and for eight days ending Dec. 14, 1972, and, after he moved back to Houston, on dates in January, April and May." The paper found corroboration for the document, noting, "The May dates correlated with orders sent to Mr. Bush at his Houston apartment on April 23, 1973, in which Sgt. Billy B. Lamar told Mr. Bush to report for active duty on May 1-3 and May 8-10."
Yet another document obtained by the Times blew the Bush AWOL story out of the water. It showed that Mr. Bush served at various times from May 29, 1973, through July 30, 1973 - "a period of time questioned by The Globe," the Times sheepishly admitted.
As to my name, I got that from a bunch of rabid Dems on another forum during the impeachment. I was still lurking at FR then, but was posting stories (from the original sources rather than FR) that I found on FR on their forum. They called me a raving nutter, which I thought was hilarious, so when I signed up on FR, I used it. I wear it as a badge of honor, LOL!
As I've pointed out, this would have been more appropriately linked on the current news of the day's thread about the AP.
As to your implication this information wasn't thoroughly researched, posted and discussed all along--including this February article--that is false. We are all well-informed here contrary to your insinuations that my question conveyed a lack of interest. I am completely well-versed on this topic.
If you are going to post an old article in the future, please include the date in the headline in parenthesis, and include in your comments that there is a contemporary event that relates to resurrecting the article. Thank you.
I thought I had put that on there.
The point of posting the article was to get the info out there that was buried in the tail end of the article...
That way people who may not have seen it may see it now.
That's where the White House is messing up. Today's dumbed down voters learn by Pavlovian repetition. The AP typically repeats the keyphrase du jour once a paragraph in every story, ever day, for a week or two. By contrast, the GOP still believes stating the truth once a month is enough for people with IQs to absorb.
It isn't. How mmany people still thing the president sais "Niger" and "yellowcake" in his famed (urban legend) 16 word sentence?
Maybe because AP is stirring up the pot again? And sometimes it is best to let a relevant story stand on it's own as a re-post so it will get more attention. I have seen it done on FR before. I think the problem is in not specifying that it was a re-post or an older article. As she/he is fairly new from what I can tell from the sign up date, I see no harm/no foul, it is important info that needs to be brought to the forefront in light of the AP case.
And the average voter stil doesn't know it't out there.
"As to the Wilson saga, there is a grand jury underway and the WH would be fools to make public comment on the issue. The truth IS getting out there"
As with the NG/Vietnam factoid, the point is to NOT let the truth get out there to the average voter until after Novemeber 2. The ploy is to keep the average voter so confused by rumor that they don't know WHAT to believe, and either put in a last minute, defiance vote for the party alleging itse;f a victim of a divisive smear campaign, or don't vote at all.
All the AVERAGE voter knows is that Wilson says he debunked the president's "yellowcake statement" and his wife was "outted" in "revenge" for him going against the administration's wishes. The truth obviously has NOT come into play at all.
Thanks for the repost. Good stuff.
Or the actual title.
You know I'm well-versed on this story, but giving it contemporary context is helpful. I've been aware of the AP court shenanigans.
And as I mentioned...I thought I had placed the Feb date in the published section.
My point is to get the info to those who did not know about it.
The average voter knows Bush served and they are done with it. The AP is trying to resurrect and I contend this article should have been linked on one of those threads. BTW, posting actual headlines are the guidelines.
As to Wilson, that story is getting out there, despite the cries from some that it's not. It would not be right for the WH to speak out on Plame and Wilson at this time. They are cooperating with that grand jury investigation. Patience on that one.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.