Posted on 05/12/2003 1:43:25 PM PDT by bogeybob
Hail to the great hyprocrite
Paul F. Macri, Auburn, Maine
President Bush is a great American, a great American hypocrite, that is.
My stomach turned last Thursday night as Bush’s jet landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln and America saw him in a flight suit for the first time since he went AWOL from the Texas National Guard more than 30 years ago.
Don’t those cheering sailors — who truly are brave and did serve their country — know that Dubya conveniently sat out the Vietnam War, not as a protester or Rhodes Scholar, but with a rich boy’s “in” to the National Guard? And he couldn’t even hack that for the length of his sign-up, so he went AWOL his last year to run a Republican campaign in Alabama.
He was never punished, as a regular soldier would have been, and even got an “honorable” discharge.
Karl Rove knows that you can’t lose by underestimating the intelligence of the American voter, so I’m sure we’ll be seeing these pictures soon in campaign ads.
Bush was “unelected” in 2000. Shame on him.
If he’s “unelected” again in 2004, shame on us for having an economic, political and class double standard.
All is forgiven if you went to Yale and then pretended that you were in the military — if your father is a rich Republican and former president of the United States.
Beware being a smart boy from Tennessee who went to Vietnam or a Rhodes Scholar (a true intellectual achievement) from Arkansas. Oh, and also a Democrat.
This isn't quite right. It wasn't flying hours that he made up, it was "drills" and "points". Drills are "inactive duty" training periods of 4 hours. You get 1 point for each drill, or each day of active duty, plus 15 points for "participation". There is a minimum number required per year. Most unit assigned guardsmen or reservists, who use the same system, do 48 drills (1 weekend/month traditionally) plus 14-16 days (two weeks) active duty for training, each year.However not that many points are required to remain in good standing. Individual reservists only do 24 drills and 12-14 days active duty, and with the 15 gratis points, just make the minimum of 50 points, unless they do extra "no pay" drills, or other point gaining activities, such as taking correspondence courses of various types. The points are used not only for retention, but also for figuring "good years" for retirement and for calculating the amount of retired pay for reservists. They basically take the total points accurred, divide that by the total number of days of active duty a person with the same years of service would have if they served it all on active duty, and then multiply the ratio by the amount of retired that "all active duty" person with the same service (years) and pay grade would have.
He wouldn't have been checked out in whatever aircraft type the AL ANG was flying, unless it was fortuitously the same type as his Texas ANG unit flew, the F-102, which it wasn't. The AL ANG was a reconissance unit, flying the RF-84 Thunderflash (although about that time they transitioned to the RF-4C) while Bushs TX ANG unit was and is a fighter/interceptor unit, flying at that time the F-102 Delta Dagger, (about that time they became a transition training unit, training ANG pilots from various states to fly the F-102 and F-101 aircraft)
DU isn't online documentation and you know it. Knock off the disruption crap.
You won't get a response, this clown is just here to disrupt and use bandwidth.
You are always so perceptive.
Can you think of an emotion that creates more delusions than fear/desperation?
(Love, maybe.) LOL
Despite the obvious bias, seems like a good case to me.
It's not, it's based on misrepresentation of what various documents mean. One document, the points accrual for 1973, clearly shows that Lt. Bush put in the required mix of inactive and active duty training days. It's not that unusual for training dates to be changed and new orders, maybe only verbal orders, althouth not usually, so the fact that he did his training on different days than the origainal orders called for is not particularly unusual. You'll note that on the same orders suspending Bush from flying status for failure to accomplish his flying physical, there was a major from the same unit who was similarly suspended. I don't know the reason for either of them to have missed their physical, but it' obvious that Bush was having scheduling conflicts. This can be a real problem for Guardsmen and reservists, who after all have other jobs, some of which may require them to be away from their assigned unit's location, and so those units tend to be somewhat flexible about training days and schedules. As long as the minimum ammount of training is accomplished that is.
The site misorders documents, implying for instance that the denial of transfer to an ARS, was in response to the request to train with the AL ANG, rather than to the ARS, which he wasn't eligible to do, which the ARS CO who approved the reqest, should have known. It also presents fragments of documents, which makes misrepresenting them easier. The "penalty for bad attendence" document is clearly some part of Bush's intial enlistment before he attended basic training and before he was commisioned as a 2nd Lt, not some record of punishment or even "warning" other than one given to all ANG (and reseve) enlistees. I recall recieving and signing something similar myself in 1971, when I entered AF ROTC. (They enlist you into the reserves while you are in the last two years of the program, and/or are on an AFROTC scholarship).
Now to be fair, if he'd wanted to go to Vietnam, he certainly could have gotten into a regular active duty slot. In '68 there were plenty of pilot flying training slots available. But also by '68 it was obvious that we weren't trying to win the Vietnam war, and very few folks who realised that, and weren't professional military (and some who were) wanted to go die in a losing effort. Bush chose service defending the country from attack, however unlikely at the time, over running to Canada, England and/or Russia.
I guess Pauly boy hasn't read up much on this --- or chooses to ignore it.
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