"George Z. Bush" wrote in message
...

"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 6 Mar 2004 16:38:43 -0500, "George Z. Bush"
wrote:


If you will return to my comments, you will see that I never in any way
found
fault with the fact that he was able to and did in fact pursue a
complete
military career in the Reserve forces right up through retirement.

However, snide remarks about red herrings aside, this'd be the
appropriate
place
to repeat my question. Are you suggesting that a Navy 0-4 or 0-5 on
flying
status during the period from say 1968 through 1975, who is as gung ho
a
warrior as our present Sec/Def obviously is, could not have found a
way to
make
a more direct contribution to our war effort in Viet Nam if he had
wanted to
than by staying current in the active Reserves? That suggestion is
insulting
to
the numerous Reserve and ANG fliers who managed to find their way into
active
units committed to prosecuting that war, some of whom were undoubtedly
in
your
own unit at one time or another.

So, S2F pilots are a critical resource and a Navy reservist who is
serving in Congress should resign his seat, request activation and go
drone around the boat. That simply doesn't make sense.

He resigned his Congressional seat in 1969, so amend my time span to read
from
1969 through 1975. Did you mean to say "drone around the boat" or was
that just
a figure of speech or slip of the tongue? Are you suggesting that our
Senator
from Arizona ended up in the Hanoi Hilton, along with numerous other Navy
pilots, because they got lost shooting touch and go's off their carriers?
Characterizing their contributions as "droning around the boat" is a put
down,
and I hope you didn't really intend it that way.

Uhmm..that Senator from Arizona was not flying S2F's, either, was he? Ed's
point stands, while you are heading off in another direction.


If you can serve in Congress and still meet Reserve qualifications you
are both contributing to the nation and helping the defense
establishment. Can't see how that's any sort of strike against the
man.

I concede that, so let's limit the discussion to when he was no longer a
Congressman.

And pray tell how, if he *was* still in a flight status (I don't think he
was--USNR types often give up their primary specialty when they leave active
duty and enter into the reserve realm due to their location, or the lack of
reserve billets in their particular specialty; my brother-in-law left active
duty as a submariner and served his reserve career out without ever again
doing any duty on a sub), how would he have been able to get an active duty
tour in Vietnam (or environs) flying an aircraft that was not essential to
the war effort, protecting against a North Vietnamese threat that did not
exist (i.e., they had no submarines for him to hunt)?


But, we can certainly find a lot of SecDefs on both sides of the
political spectrum without ANY spit-shined brogans in their
closet--dare I mention Les Aspin, Robert Strange McNamara, Robert
Cohen, etc?

Talk about red herrings. I see you're not reluctant to toss a few
around
when
it suits your purpose. By way of comparison, how many of those you
just
mentioned were Reserve or ANG fliers on flying status during whatever
wars
they
were involved in supervising? That would be a valid
comparison.....what you
just did was toss our a bunch of apples and dared us to compare them
with an
orange. Not the same thing, and you know it.

My point was that if we are setting criteria for SecDefs, we should
acknowledge that a lot of folks held the job with absolutely no
military experience at all. None of those I just mentioned were
Reserve or ANG fliers, which was precisely my point.

We are not setting criteria for SecDefs....we are talking about one in
particular who's quite hawkish these days but apparently was far from that
in
those days. AAMOF, if you look into what others have reported of comments
made
by Nixon and members of his staff about Rumsfeld, they apparently
considered him
far too dovish in those days to suit their tastes.

Having served his active duty committment, and then going on to serve the
rest of his career in the USNR, makes his somehow "far from hawkish"? That
is an illogical statement.


It returns to the issue about whether there is a relationship between
active and reserve component service, between officer and enlisted
service, between peacetime and wartime service, between combat and
combat support service, between home base and deployed service, etc.
etc.

Well, maybe that's what you want to use as a basis for arguing, but I'm
not in
the mood for fish tonight, so I guess I'll pass.

Why? You have already strongly inferred that his prior active duty service,
coupled with his subsequent reserve service, is somehow lacking. So why not
have the balls to jump all of the way into the water and say it?


Some people got to see the elephant and some didn't. I was there
involuntarily the first time and got to see more of it than many, but
not as much as some. I was voluntarily there the second time, but will
quite honestly tell you that it wasn't about patriotism.

I've got no problem with people who served but didn't get to go
downtown.

Am I out of line asking, then, how you feel about the criticism of Kerry
over
his service in the theater, very often from people who weren't anywhere
near
Viet Nam when the shooting was going on? Any defense for his
contributions,
whatever they were? Or doesn't that count as downtown?

Kerry's personal service, and the manner in which he obtained his early
return from his combat tour, would never have been a subject of discussion
had not he himself tried to impugn the Guard service of the current
President. When he did that, he opened the door to the questions of just how
he received not one, not two, but three seperate flesh wounds, and how he
actively worked to secure his own early return from the theater under a Navy
rule that stated an individual who had suffered three wounds of *any*
severity level could be returned from the theater, "after consideration of
his physical classification for duty and on an individual basis". It was not
a hard-set three wounds and you are out policy. Now how does that wording
apply to a guy who suffered a grand total of what, one or two lost duty days
for *one* of his three wounds? Not to mention the question of whether or not
Kerry himself actually performed any reserve duty after his later (again
early) release from active duty. As to his contributions...is that what you
call his testifying that US troops were conducting widespread atrocities
(using a speech drafted by RFK's former speechwriter, no less, and based
upon the since discredited, and Jane Fonda sponsored, "Winter Soldier
Investigation" "testimony") and criminal acts, accusations which were never
validated even after further investigation by the services?


.....I do have a problem with people who aggressively avoided any
kind of service,

I could provide a list of people who fit that bill who come from both
sides of
the aisle and, I, like you, have a problem with them. BTW, as a
sub-category, I
gather that you don't have a problem with military people who one way or
the
other avoided the possibility of serving in a combat theater? Mr.
Rumsfeld
might find his name on my list there, not because he never got there, but
rather
because he didn't try when he could have as opposed to how hawkish and
war-like
he became subsequently when he was quite safely entrenched behind a desk
in
Washington, D. C. or a Naval Reserve outfit in the Washington suburbs.

By then he was a reservist who had already done his turn in the active duty
barrel. You get no points for that attack.


.....with people who undermined their brothers-in-arms,

I think we can admit to a difference of opinion there. I don't consider
people
who attempted to shut down a war that apparently could not be won as
undermining
their brothers-in-arm when, in fact, they were only attempting to save the
lives
of those of their brethren still engaged in a losing war. I wasn't one of
them
at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight, I can see where I was
wrong and
they were right.

Whoah. Firstly, Kerry's conversion to raving anti-Vietnam critic came only
after he found he needed an "issue" that would get him some publicity--read
BG Burkett's "Stolen Valor", published (1998) well before the current
political campaign began:

"Kerry did not return from Vietnam a radical antiwar activist. Friends said
that when Kerry first began talking about running for office, he was not
visibly agitated about the Vietnam War. "I thought of him as a rather normal
vet," a friend said to a reporter, "glad to be out but not terribly uptight
about the war." Another acquaintance who talked to Kerry about his political
ambitions called him "a very charismatic fellow looking for a good issue."

Given his flip-flop on the medals-tossing issue ("They weren't really
mine"), this adds up to a man with political ambitions who jumped on the
VVAW bandwagon as a way of getting himself recognized, not because he came
home with a burning ambition to get US troops out of Vietnam. Had the latter
been his objective, why did he resort to making unsubstantiated claims about
widespread atrocities? And why did he have that speechwriter draft his
testimony?

Brooks


.......and with people who claim to be something that they are not.
(Those
aren't all the same person in any of my statements.)

And there's another category of people whose names would fill our list and
who
come from both sides of the aisle. Is there any point in pursuing that?

George Z.