Ed Rasimus wrote:

On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 17:53:20 -0500, Bob McKellar
wrote:

BTW, Ed, I found parts of your excellent book a more telling indictment of some aspects of the war than a lot of
what Kerry said. ( See page 181 )


I'm not sure that the MiG hunting excursion into rural S. China is
quite the level of indictment that the Senator's anti-war testimony
regarding blanket atrocities by US ground troops implies. No ordinance
was expended, no one died and no unsupportable accusations arose from
the mission.

If anything, it merely indicates the nature of tactical aviators.

Regardless, more to come this fall. Again from Smithsonian with title
still to be determined.

Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8

Well, I thought I put in enough qualifiers in my statement, but I guess I didn't. I was not making any war crime
accusations, just commenting on the stupidity of the whole thing. Risking four expensive aircraft ( not to mention
four expensive pilots, who have other additional non monetary values, to say the least ) to attack a road grader?
( I guess it was a Weapon of Mud Destruction.)

I showed this passage to my pro military college kid. He was stunned. Then, of course, he had to read the whole
book and started in on some other VN references around the house.

Back to the original GWB topic, I don't blame him for using whatever tools he had available to deal with the draft
problem. The Gore's, Cheney's, Kerry's, Kerrey's, DeLay's, Dean's, Quayle's and even Clinton's all had to pick
their own solutions,

They all could have done worse.

Bob McKellar