Kevin Brooks wrote:
"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?

Nobody said anything about specific equipment qualifications. We all are aware,
or should be, that people transitioned from one type of equipment to another
quite commonly, as the needs of the services demanded.

......Ed's point stands, while you are heading off in another direction.

Funny, I had the impression that you were the one wandering 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?

I don't recall that I made any kind of point about it piquing my curiosity.
What of it? Is it not permitted for some reason? In plain English, some Nixon
staffers (if not Nixon himself) considered him a dove during the war while the
shooting was going on, and now he's clearly a hawk and running the show. The
dichotomy certainly does interest me, not to mention the timing of the change.


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,

That'd be three more than the President, or anybody half a world away, got.

.....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?

He satisfied the published rotation requirements. Anybody who thought they were
too generous did a disservice to his fellow servicemen by failing to bring it up
at the time.

.....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?

Never heard of My Lai, I guess. I remember reading stories in the press at the
time about GIs cutting off the ears of dead VC for mementos. As for his
testimony, he testified only as to so-called atrocities that he had heard other
servicemen testify to under oath, along with his personally taking part in free
fire zone operations, which he considered to be an atrocity. As for reserve
duty after his early release, I don't remember it being questioned.....I imagine
he did about the same as Bush did when he got out of the Texas ANG early.


.....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.

That doesn't matter in the least, since that is precisely the point.....that he
could have even as a reservist but didn't. Becoming a hawk isn't hard when you
know that you won't have to expose yourself to the potentially painful
possibility of having to pay the price.


.....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?

I don't think the claims he made were unsubstantiated, since they were all based
on sworn tesitimony of returned servicemen who had either participated in those
activities or had observed others doing those things. As for it being
widespread, I think that would be your characterization of it, not his. Show me
a transcript where he's quoted as saying that everybody was doing that sort of
stuff. I don't think one exists, but take a stab at it if you think it's worth
the effort.

....And why did he have that speechwriter draft his testimony?

I don't know why he would do that, if in fact he did. Perhaps he just wanted to
make sure that what he said would be accurate, and not colored by the emotional
strain of giving such testimony.

.......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.