Cold hard facts of life.
Running away to Canada also needs defending, and so far no one seems to have done a very good job of it. Besides, Jimmy Carter didn't heal any wounds with his Draftdodger Pardon.
It was just a matter of time until veterans got a chance to publicize their generally acknowledged beliefs about the relative value of various situations during the Nam.
Right at the top of the list are the guys who volunteered for the Infantry and the Marines, and that includes the guys who were drafted for either service, and went.
Then there are the other people, and it's up to them to sort each other out.
Seems to me the Swift Boat guys have their own Naval oriented criteria, and Kerry is coming up short.
One Navy veteran I know suggested that the soft BS behind his Purple Heart awards may have more to do with a need to coverup the fact they had an officer with VD than any sort of wound to be recognized. I don't know about that, but am assured this did happen in the Navy which has a history of being highly protective of it's officer's public reputations.
Bush entered the Texas ANG in the summer on 1968. At that time The Texas ANG was flying F-102A Delta Daggers in Vietnam.
Excerrts from "F-102, Vietnam & George W. Bush"
George W. Bush's military service began in 1968 when he enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard after graduating with a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University. The aircraft that he was ultimately trained to fly was the F-102 Delta Dagger. A number of sources have claimed that Bush sought service in the National Guard to avoid being sent to Vietnam, and that the F-102 was a safe choice because it was an obsolete aircraft that would never see any real combat. However, those perceptions turn out to be incorrect, as will be seen shortly.
The F-102 made its first flight in 1953 and entered service with the Air Defense Command (ADC) in 1956. About 1,000 Delta Daggers were built, and although eventually superseded by the related F-106 Delta Dart, the F-102 remained one of the most important aircraft in the ADC through the mid-1960s. At its peak, the aircraft made up over half of the interceptors operated by the ADC and equipped 32 squadrons across the continental US. Additional squadrons were based in western Europe, the Pacific, and Alaska.
As the 1960s continued, many of these aircraft were transferred from the US Air Force to Air National Guard (ANG) units. By 1966, nearly 350 F-102s were being operated by ANG squadrons.
One of the primary ANG units to receive the F-102 was the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron (FIS) at Ellington Air National Guard Station, which operated the aircraft from 1965 through 1974. These planes were given responsibility for patrolling the Gulf Coast and intercepting Soviet Tu-95 bombers that regularly flew off the US shore while carrying a payload of nuclear weapons. The 111th was and still is part of the 147th Fighter Wing in Houston, Texas. It was here that George W. Bush was stationed following his enlistment in May 1968.
It is a common misconception that the Air National Guard was a safe place for military duty during the Vietnam War. In actuality, pilots from the 147th Fighter Interceptor Group, as it was called at the time, were actually conducting combat missions in Vietnam at the very time Bush enlisted. In fact, F-102 squadrons had been stationed in South Vietnam since March 1962.
F-102 squadrons continued to be stationed in South Vietnam and Thailand throughout most of the Vietnam War. The planes were typically used for fighter defense patrols and as escorts for B-52 bomber raids. While the F-102 had few opportunities to engage in its primary role of fighter combat, the aircraft was used in the close air support role starting in 1965. Armed with rocket pods, Delta Daggers would make attacks on Viet Cong encampments in an attempt to harass enemy soldiers. Some missions were conducted using the aircraft's heat-seeking air-to-air missiles to lock onto enemy campfires at night. Though these missions were never considered to be serious attacks on enemy activity, F-102 pilots did often report secondary explosions coming from their targets.
These missions were also dangerous, given the risks inherent to low-level attacks against armed ground troops. A total of 14 or 15 F-102 fighters were lost in Vietnam. Three were shot down by anti-aircraft or small arms fire, one is believed to have been lost in air-to-air combat with a MiG-21, four were destroyed on the ground during Viet Cong attacks, and the remainder succumbed to training accidents.
Even in peacetime conditions, F-102 pilots risked their lives on every flight. Only highly-qualified pilot candidates were accepted for Delta Dagger training because it was such a challenging aircraft to fly and left little room for mistakes. According to the Air Force Safety Center , the lifetime Class A accident rate for the F-102 was 13.69 mishaps per 100,000 flight hours, much higher than the average for today's combat aircraft. For example, the F-16 has an accident rate of 4.14, the S-3 is at 2.6, the F-15 at 2.47, the F-18 at 4.9, and the F-117 at 4.07. Even the AV-8B, regarded as the most dangerous aircraft in service today, has an accident rate of only 11.05 mishaps per 100,000 flight hours. The F-102 claimed the lives of many pilots, including a number stationed at Ellington during Bush's tenure. Of the 875 F-102A production models that entered service, 259 were lost in accidents that killed 70 Air Force and ANG pilots.
Nevertheless, we have established that the F-102 was serving in combat in Vietnam at the time Bush enlisted to become an F-102 pilot. In fact, pilots from the 147th FIG of the Texas ANG were routinely rotated to Vietnam for combat duty under a program called "Palace Alert" from 1968 to 1970. Palace Alert was an Air Force program that sent qualified F-102 pilots from the ANG to bases in Europe or southeast Asia for periods of three to six months for frontline duty. ________________ --taken from the Lincoln Heritage Institute:
http://www.lincolnheritage.org/About_Us/Resources/Weekly_Magazine/New_Articles/F-102__Vietnam___George_W__Bus/f-102__vietnam___george_w__bus.html
I would like to start out by thanking you for your service. I feel that the service you performed as being part
of the military presence in Germany was honorable and necessary. Having said that, I sense you have
a deep self-loathing that you were not fortunate enough to have been assigned to Nam and therefore attempt
to disparage and denigrate the honorable service of those that fought and died because they chose one of
the 'safe' and otherwise 'unncessary' branches of the service.
Based upon examination of your recent posts, those who served in capacities other than infantry were, using your term,
Draft Dodgers(DD):
1. Air Force (definitely)
2. Navy (of course)
3. Coast Guard (absolutely)
4. Army/Marine Air (don't leave them out)
5. Atry/Armor (draft dodgers all)
6. REMFs (not used disparagingly) of all shapes and sizes
Everything make sense to me now. While flying SAR missions I thought we were dodging small arms fire, AAA or SAMs
while all along it was just the Draft. Silly me. Most of the men we extracted were also DDs, but not all. Some were also
Infantry/Marine. In retrospect I am shocked they would even have come aboard knowing they were to be surrounded
by DDs.
Oh yes, and lets not forget the missions to recover the remains of the DDs and non-DDs. Another waste of munitions and fuel.
As a result of this new found edification, I believe you should form a special interest group with its charter being the sand-blasting of
all names on the Wall whose MOS is non-infantry. Or perhaps the construction of a yellow wall at the US/Canadian border with
the names of the all of the KIADD (Killed In Attempting to Dodge Draft - has a nice ring to it).
Place the /sarcasm tags wherever you wish.
Yes, you have fell victim to age old ploy where, if you are somehow ashamed of your performance or
feel your performance was under-appreciated, you will denigrate the performance of others so you will not feel
so lonely and insignificant. Kinda sounds like a certain Presidential candidate I heard about.
Perhaps you could have mitigated your exclusion from the war by volunteering for SF or the Rangers. Just
a thought.
You appear learned in things related to the Middle East. I read them to help me better understand the subject.
I will most likely never have the insight into the subject that you possess therefore I would find it hard for me to
contradict one of your conclusions. Similarly on the subject of combat, I prefer exchanging thoughts with one who
has experienced the unique sight, sound and odor that accompanies such activity. By the way, the term 'Incoming'
does not always indicate ' the arrival of a big-breasted blonde babe at your favorite dispenser of alcoholic beverages'.