On Sun, 7 Mar 2004 14:22:16 -0500, "George Z. Bush"
wrote:

Ed Rasimus wrote:

I'm not saying it comes into play, but have you ever heard of "duty
and travel restsrictions"? Limitations on duty postings for folks who
have recent experience with certain levels of classified information
(the sort of thing a congressperson might have.

In all honesty, I hadn't even thought of that. However, do we know that those
restrictions applied in his case or are we just supposing that they might have.
I do have some sort of recollection that there have been elected officials who
have resigned their offices and entered the military during times of war.
Unfortunately, no name comes to mind at the moment.

My quote above starts with "I'm not saying it comes into play..." IOW,
I don't know but have given a valid possiblity--no more, no less.

And, "some sort of recollection....no names come to mind" does little
to bolster your argument.


.....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.

So, are you having a problem with Rumsfeld because he is too hawkish
or too dovish?

Both....it's the reason or explanation for the change that interests me.

Maturity, growth in the job, increased understanding, a cataclysmic
attack against the United States....

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?

No defense for his contributions at all. Four months in theater of a
one year tour? Three PHs with no missed duty? Beaching his boat under
attack, thereby removing his mobility? Going ashore to dispatch a
wounded peasant already shot with a .50 cal? Then rushing home to tell
tales about the atrocities being committed wholesale by American
service men?

I guess if you were his boss, you'd have courts-martialed him. His boss chose
not to. So what purpose is there in your second guessing him? You're hardly
qualified to do that since you were neither a Naval officer nor a competent or
qualified swift boat commander. Do you really think that being a fighter jock
gives you all those skills and aptitudes?

As a career military officer I know what a PH is and what it requires.
I know what a combat tour of duty was and what it requires. I know
from two COMPLETE tours of duty in the war what the ROE were, what the
responsibilities of an officer are, what integrity is, what a
free-fire zone was, and, surprisingly, what a Swift boat's
capabilities are.

.......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?

Yes, there is a point in pursuing it. I am demeaned by every dirty,
bearded, fatigue-jacketed, drug-addled wannabe who claims to be a
Vietnam vet and has become the stereotype of what happens to men who
experience war.

Well, that's where you're wrong. Every one of those dirty, bearded,
fatigue-jacketed, drug-addled Vietnam vets left this country as clean-cut
American kids.

You are so eager to refute you don't read the statement you are
refuting carefully. "...wannabe who claims to be a Vietnam vet."

You've been pointed several times at Burkett's very relevant work,
"Stolen Valor". You'll find that despite what you read in the liberal
media and the revisionist movie making of Oliver Stone, that the
stereotype is quite false.

In general, those who left this country as "clean-cut American kids"
returned as clean-cut American men.


Many of them may well have been volunteers as well. We as a
society are responsible for failing to adequately equip them to cope with the
conditions we were going to throw them into. If they were weak-willed to start
with, they should have been weeded out and not sent there to be destroyed by the
experiences they were exposed to. You can't blame the victims for having become
victims. Who in his right mind would consciously choose to come back so badly
damaged if they could have handled it or otherwise avoided it?

We as a society are responsible for nothing of the kind. Individuals
are responsible for themselves. Sherman thought "war is hell" but Lee
said "it is good that war is terrible, lest we come to love it too
much."

The wannabes are not folks who were there--that's the definition of
wannabe! The number of people who today are claiming to have been
SEALs, SF, POWs, decorated warriors, etc, or simply using a made-up
background of participation as excuse for their victimhood is
astonishing.

......Failure to identify the liars and poseurs is abrogation of my
responsibility to tell the truth and stand up for what I believe in.

You may wish to deny it, but you still have to accept responsibility for turning
those young Americans into the liars and poseurs you obviously despise. They
didn't arrive in Nam that way for the most part. All I do when I look at them
and what happened to most of them is to count my blessings that something like
that didn't happen to me. A little bit of that kind of humility might stand you
is some good, if you'd allow it to.

I don't have to accept responsibility for a liar and poseur. You don't
seem to understand that these are not people damaged by an experience,
but damaged people who claim an experience they didn't have!

I've got nothing to be humble about in that regard.



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