Ed Rasimus wrote:
(ArtKramr) wrote:

Once you give someone the benefit of the doubt, you admit that there is doubt.
Always lingering, disturbing unsettling doubt.

I've followed all this thread, biting my tongue in the process. What
amazes me is that the resident "if you ain't been, you ain't ****..."
curmudgeon is so eager to condemn someone who has been there.

Anyone who has been, knows that you all sign on--pilots, navs,
bomb-aimers, gunners, EWO's et. al. You go to war. You go with the
folks you are assigned to go with.

War happens in a heartbeat. It sometime works for you and sometime
against. Some folks die and some folks live. The live ones aren't
better or worse than the dead ones, simply luckier.

To second guess circumstances sixty years later, particularly based on
an author's creative account is to demean the whole warrior ethic.

I'm sorry. I survived. I didn't spend years in a POW camp. I wasn't
wounded in action. I didn't lose any crew members. I didn't lose any
aircraft. I saw a lot of losses.

The fact that is incontrovertible is that Bush (41) was a combat
pilot. He was younger than most. He was blooded. He lost an aircraft
in honorable combat. He survived. What is wrong with that?

Additionally, as I've previously noted in this forum, Bush (43) was a
graduate of UPT, a qualifier in a Century Series aircraft, and a
commissioned officer. Those are fine qualifications in my book.

Well said and I agree wholeheartedly. Perhaps Teddy Roosevelt
summed it up best:


"It's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the
strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done
better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the
arena......"