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Touche' on the Kerry anti-war statements. Once I heard them, I did want to vomit. You do not turn your back and say crap like that when your guys are still fighting and dying.

Bringing up My-Lai, my father in law a Marine GySgt who received two Purple Hearts from action in VietNam and Korea, and a man I greatly respect once told me that he could understand Calley's actions because you never really knew just who the bad guys were.

Not sure if I am totally sold on the obsolete plane explanation. While it is true that it was an old plane, he always could have qualified on a up to date plane and flown in active duty service if he had chosen to do so. He just did not want to go to VietNam.

Not true.

Bush was flying a "modern" enough plane, but one specifically designed for high-altitude bomber intercept missions.

It didn't have the right bomb racks, cannon, and rocket fire control systems to be useful in air-ground missions in Vietnam. The very few North Vietnamese planes that did get up in the air were taken out by fighters already present (F4's for example) that were already near the target.

He (bush) DID volunteer to go to Vietnam (to either the one squadron that was tried over there, or to retrain and go in a different type of plane).

Hhe was turned down by the USAF because he )Bush) had fewer flight hours than other, already qualified pilots who already had combat experience! So, knwoing that the war was turning down at that point (71-72), and because the USAF was reducing pilot strength, and because he DIDN'T have the combat experience to replace pilots returning from Vietnam who were already "biumping" him from the seat, Bush effectively "stopped' flight qual's.

(This is the period when the democrats claim he was AWOL by not taking the flight physical! But a flight physical isn't required if you're not going to be flying, and a regular physical isn't required.)

Shortly after, Bush transferred his "duty drill weekends" to the Alabama base.

I don't think I could argue that he was begging to go, but he was available, he just got lucky if you want to put it that way.

As for your uncle, that was pretty much how I felt, that I could understand how it happened and why. But I read some reports from a helicopter pilot that witnessed what they did and was so horrified that he actually ordered his gunner to shot any American that did not stop killing villagers. I also read a statement from one of the soldiers on the ground about what they did. Said they rounded up everyone, men, women, children, infants. Threw them in a ditch and killed them all. Scalped some, mutilated some. Those boys lost that day, it in that place. But I was not there so.....

Back to your Indianapolis survivor comment. That actually happened to me, in a Sears Auto Center near Pittsburgh, PA.
Very humbling.

he always could have qualified on a up to date plane and flown in active duty service if he had chosen to do so

At last we see what your problem is; you are spouting off about things of which you know nothing.