On 04 Jun 2004 16:48:14 GMT, (ArtKramr) wrote:

From: Ed Rasimus
Date: 6/4/04 8:46 AM Pacific Daylight Time

On 04 Jun 2004 14:02:04 GMT, (ArtKramr) wrote:

What military service?
.
Arthur Kramer

Art, you of all people should respect someone who earned a commission
in the USAF and completed AF pilot training, then went on to
operationally qualify in a single-seat/single-engine fighter and fly
it for four and a half years.

Did you serve that long?

Ed Rasimus

Yeah you are right. I am ashamed of myself with my measly combat record of 50
missions over Germany being no match for the no-show Bush who hid in Texas
while the Nam war war raged. Mea Culpa. Mea Culpa.


Arthur Kramer

No, Art, you shouldn't be ashamed for your service. You are
justifiably proud. But, you should be at least a bit sheepish for
continually repeating an assertion that has no merit.

George Bush served in the TANG. He spent many years (my point was that
his length of service was at least equal if not longer than yours.) He
did make a choice, but his choice to take a commission, go to pilot
training and fly a fighter might be arguably superior to folks like Al
Gore, who despite his college education and leadership capabilities
chose to serve as a private admin clerk and spend less than half of
the required combat tour in-country. Or John Kerry who chose to demean
and insult his fellow warriors calling them traitors, war criminals,
rapists and murderers.

Bush "showed" for a year of pilot training, several months of various
survival schools, almost a year of F-102 qualification and a couple of
years of operational alert. His eight months in Alabama after all of
that service is the time in question and there are still the facts
that the organization he was attached to was in transition from an
aircraft he did not fly to another aircraft he was not qualified in.
It was a simple administrative posting of an ANG officer. Duty
requirements were minimal and that was exactly the reason he had
requested the posting.

Bush flew an airplane that could have killed him on any given day. He
could not have known the future when he started, but at that time the
F-102 was in Vietnam and it was flown predominantly by ANG pilots. By
the time he was qualified in the system that was no longer the case.
And, as previously mentioned ANG pilots don't get to pick and choose
between systems. The fly what their state owns.

You can have whatever political opinions you want, but you have to
stop ignoring the facts and making these groundless assertions.
Respect others as you wish to have them respect you. Different people
serve in different ways and for different reasons.



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