Posted on 04/15/2007 3:02:41 AM PDT by Liz
.... Rudy Giuliani carries a lot of baggage - but it's his draft-dodging past that may prove the biggest drag, prominent veterans tell New York magazine in tomorrow's issue. Speaking about terrorism and the Iraq war last week, Giuliani boasted, "It is something I understand better than anyone else running for president." But it was draft deferments that kept Giuliani, 62, out of Vietnam while he attended law school. He was granted a 2-A occupational deferment for his job as a law clerk in 1969 after his boss, the late Manhattan federal Judge Lloyd MacMahon, wrote a letter to the local draft board - a move criticized years later as rare and questionable. Law clerks were not on the 1968 list of critical jobs that qualified for occupational deferments. Giuliani "has made it clear that if he had been called up, he would have served," Giuliani spokeswoman Katie Levinson told New York magazine. He was opposed to the war in Vietnam on "strategic and tactical" grounds," she added, although she wouldn't offer specifics.
"If Giuliani is the nominee, we're going to hammer him with ads, and it's going to be easy because the issue is simple: He's a draft dodger," Jon Soltz, an Iraq vet who served as a captain and runs VoteVets.org, a left-leaning version of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth .......a sense that a candidate can handle the role of commander-in-chief remains important to most Americans.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Jet Fighter pilots, not involved in actual combat, have the lowest mortality rates of most all specialty ratings in the Military. It is one of the SAFEST forms of duty in respect to hours flown/exposure and fatal accidents.
They also had special privileges that the average GI did not get.
The most risk was shared by all Helicopter pilots and their crews, door gunners being the highest at risk.
It would be helpful if you learn the facts first before making any further “Pseudo-factual” statements.
And he strangles baby's with his hands. He's a Friday the 13th Nightmare on Elm Street!
God, I hate the Gay Games!
At what cost? And how would this improve our military effectiveness. No military leader wants to reinstitute the draft. We have over 32 million people [men and women] in the 18 to 26 age cohort. What size military do you recommend? Can we afford it?
“It was seen as an escape route from Vietnam by many men his age, and usually had a long waiting list. Bush had scored only 25 percent on a “pilot aptitude” test, the lowest acceptable grade. But his father was then a congressman from Houston, and the commanders of the Texas Guard clearly had an appreciation of politics.”
BS
There were other factors taken into account as well, such as physical exam and leadership qualities. He obviously excels at both.
Plus Bush DID volunteer to serve in Vietnam. The document is floating around out there. It’s been posted to FR. It was called the “Palace Alert” program, but he was never sent because he flew air-to-air F-102 and there was air superiority over Vietnam for the rest of his stint.
I’m not Bush’s biggest fan, but I will defend him against mendacious lies.
Flying any sort of high performance aircraft is not a safe profession. Lets not cloud our judgement for the sake of the argument.
The statistics point that out as well. You should actually check those statistics out yourself. (Which would help your clouded judgment out considerably)
Hillary served as an infantry officer in Vietnam for two years.
:)
I spent 8 years as a naval officer including a year in Vietnam. I came by my "ignorance" the hard way.
Jet Fighter pilots, not involved in actual combat, have the lowest mortality rates of most all specialty ratings in the Military. It is one of the SAFEST forms of duty in respect to hours flown/exposure and fatal accidents.
What "specialty" ratings are you referring to? More pilots are killed/injured in training accidents than Supply Officers, Doctors, JAGs, submariners, etc.
They also had special privileges that the average GI did not get.
LOL. What special privileges? Because they are all officers?
The most risk was shared by all Helicopter pilots and their crews, door gunners being the highest at risk.
They are pilots as well. And you are mixing apples and oranges if you use the example of door gunners in peacetime.
It would be helpful if you learn the facts first before making any further “Pseudo-factual” statements.
Have you served in the military? Have you ever been at the controls of a high performance aircraft? Have you ever experienced landing or taking off on an aircraft carrier? I have.
They crash and kill the pilots on a regular basis.I find your argument irrelevant. I don’t understand the need to diss a particular group of veterans service.
But then we must still be talking apples and oranges here.
And yes, I did serve in actual combat, (See several previous posts on this thread.)
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 was a supersonic second generation fighter designed in the early 1950s for the US Air Force. The primary mission of the aircraft was to intercept columns of Soviet nuclear bombers attempting to reach targets in the US and destroy them with air-to-air missiles. The technologies incorporated into the aircraft were state-of-the-art for the day. The F-102 set many firsts, including the first all-weather delta-winged combat aircraft, the first fighter capable of maintaining supersonic speed in level flight, and the first interceptor to have an armament entirely of missiles. Among the many innovations incorporated into the design were the use of the area rule to reduce aerodynamic drag and an advanced electronic fire control system capable of guiding the aircraft to a target and automatically launching its missiles.
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. It was during this time that the Kennedy administration began building up a large US military presence in the nation as a deterrent against North Vietnamese invasion.
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 even 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 F-15 is at 2.47, the F-117 at 4.07, the S-3 at 2.6, and the F-18 at 4.9. Even the Marine Corps' AV-8B, regarded as the most dangerous aircraft in US service today, has a lifetime accident rate of only 11.44 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.
You can read more at the link about Bush's service.
Hahaha! Gotcha. ;)
It is one of the SAFEST forms of duty in respect to hours flown/exposure and fatal accidents.And your answer:
What "specialty" ratings are you referring to? More pilots are killed/injured in training accidents than Supply Officers, Doctors, JAGs, submariners, etc.He was talking about pilots.
I can say the same about this thread in general. There are many forms of service. Even in Rudy’s case, he served the public for many years, (even back then) which is more than most of the people who were given deferments, can say. What is so disrespectful about that? As far as President Bush, yes, he did serve and he was available to fly in combat and would have had they assigned him to do so.
Nobody here is arguing any of these facts.
As I have provided in my post #212, the F-102 Delta Dagger was a very difficult and dangerous plane to fly. To suggest that Bush was a draft dodger by joining the ANG is nonsense and to minimize the risk he took being a pilot of a high performance jet aircraft is sophistry. If preservation of his skin was Bush's primary motivation to join the ANG, why be a pilot?
Served where and in what capacity?
“Served where and in what capacity?”
Bad form, dude.
bttt
About how many Presidents could you have said that at age 23?
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