Digby reminds us of what George W. Bush did while John Kerry was on the Mekong, and how Bush characterizes his actions:
Digby : What Bush says about his stint in the National Guard:"I'm saying to myself, 'What do I want to do?' I think I don't want to be an infantry guy as a private in Vietnam. What I do decide to want to do is learn to fly."
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, 1989
"I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."
Dallas Morning News, Feb. 25, 1990
"I don't want to play like I was somebody out there marching when I wasn't. It was either Canada or the service. ... Somebody said the Guard was looking for pilots. All I know is, there weren't that many people trying to be pilots."
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Nov. 29, 1998
And Ken Layne writes that the Bushies have gone totally insane to have launched all this talk about Vietnam:
Posted by DeLong at August 21, 2004 02:25 PM | TrackBackKEN LAYNE: "...you guys... who now worship the incompetent Bush simply because you were told to do so, you're only making it easier for the Kerry people to win.... Every day, you're pounding home the fact that Kerry fought in Vietnam.... [T]he Kerry people turned the whole Democratic convention into a celebration of the Vietnam War..... You morons have made Vietnam the Democrats' favorite memory and greatest victory. Then you scream hooray when a gang of addled old Nixon bagmen show up in a teevee commercial to bitch about Kerry fighting in Vietnam, and once again the normal people with lives only remember, again, that Kerry fought in Vietnam and Bush didn't."
"But," Tim sputtered....
"Stop that," I said, poking his neck with the corkscrew worm. "Listen to yourself. What are you doing, again? That's right, you're reminding people that the other guy fought in Vietnam. Have you become so brain dead that you think this helps your girly boy Bush? Do you honestly believe the coward boy can beat the War Monster?.... You people can't stop reminding everybody that Kerry was in Vietnam, taking lives like your boy eats cookies. Killing people, saving people, holding Life & Death in his hands like a savage gift. He kills the Viet Cong or anybody else he chooses, he saves a U.S. sailor who fell out of the boat, he walks the halls of the Senate deciding who he'll kill or who he'll save. In Vietnam, Kerry is a death's head of gruesome power, while your Bush hides in Alabama, a scared little girl. And what did little Bush do in Texas?"
Blair grinned, foolishly thinking the ball was again in his court. "He killed many people in Texas. All those executions ...."
"Ha! Your girly Bush killed nobody. He signed off on lethal injections. He's a middle manager in a cubicle at the suburban branch of the Bank of Death, initialing memos he doesn't even know how to read. What kind of Texas oilman is your little girl?....
[...]
Nobody remembers anything in this country, ever, so it might be helpful to be reminded that young Dubya was an inept nobody in 1999, unloved by conservatives, laughed at by the press, a guy who had failed in every aspect of his professional life despite being the son of a President & Oil Baron.... Somehow, over these past three years, Dubya's each and every weakness has been embraced by his mouth-breathing followers -- although his poll numbers have gone from 90-odd percent to the 40s as his nonexistent charm wears off on those finally recovering from Sept. 11. Consider: The nation is attacked and his bumbling administration is helpless to stop it, or even prevent the Pentagon crash with an hour's advance notice. The wuss president then flies around the middle of the country all day.... And now the Oval Office teevee is tuned to "The Daily Show," and there's Clinton laughing it up, saying how Dubya and Cheney and even Big Bill himself were cowards, hiding from the Vietnam War while the God of Life & Death handed out his cruel and random awards on the Mekong....
The only thing wrong with all this is that the chronology is completely out of whack. While Kerry was in combat in Vietnam--December 2, 1968 through March 1969--George W. Bush was training to fly F-102s. Which were, at that time, in use in Vietnam. Flown by Air Nat'l Guard pilots.
By the time Bush was qualified to fly in combat, Nixon had Vietnamized the war and his services weren't needed. And it's the same time Kerry was making a political career for himself by telling lies about Americans who WERE at that very time risking their lives in the field and being tortured as POWs in the Hanoi Hilton.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan at August 22, 2004 03:53 PMand you know, the very first guys they were gonna send were Senator Bush's kid and Senator Bentsen's kid.
That's why they wouldn't let him move out of state to run a political campaign.
Posted by: julia at August 22, 2004 04:07 PMI find it difficult to believe that the F-102 was ever deployed in Vietnam. It was designed in the 1950's as a long range interceptor to shoot down Russian bombers. By the late 60's it was already nearly obsolete. What's the evidence that it was used in Vietnam? What combat mission would it have had there?
"By the time Bush was qualified to fly in combat,[...]"
I bet the airforce would not send such a drunk cocaine-head to real combat anyway... And if Bush jr. ever seriously considered going to combat, don't you think if would have cleaned himself by then?
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns at August 22, 2004 07:35 PM"The only thing wrong with all this is that the chronology is completely out of whack. While Kerry was in combat in Vietnam--December 2, 1968 through March 1969--George W. Bush was training to fly F-102s. Which were, at that time, in use in Vietnam. Flown by Air Nat'l Guard pilots.
"By the time Bush was qualified to fly in combat, Nixon had Vietnamized the war and his services weren't needed. And it's the same time Kerry was making a political career for himself by telling lies about Americans who WERE at that very time risking their lives in the field and being tortured as POWs in the Hanoi Hilton."
Well, then, Patrick, you are left with the need to explain all those comments Bush himself made (as listed above by Delong) on how he was willing to consider "blowing my ear out with a shotgun" or fleeing to Canada to avoid "marching" to war, but decided instead to "better myself [commercially] by learning to fly planes." Now, THAT'S patriotism.
And (how many times must I repeat this?), Kerry did NOT say during his Senate testimony that more than a small minority of US soldiers were war criminals (for which the independent evidence is overwhelming), or that he had seen them committing war crimes himself -- despite the clever attempt (pointed out by CNN) by the latest SBVT commercial to edit his Senate statements to make it look that way:
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=SRTIGERFORCE
http://www.tnr.com/politics/cnote/lane041795.html
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/20/kerry.swiftboat/index.html
http://www.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/JohnKerryTestimony.html
And, of course, we also have the obvious fact that it would have been vastly easier for Kerry to make a political career for himself if (like many other Democratic liberals) he had NOT said that US troops were committing a significant number of war crimes, and that they were themselves absolutely pure and innocent victims of their evil leaders.
Incidentally, Patrick, I'm STILL waiting for you to explain to us which "separate action" you thought Larry Thurlow had gained his own Bronze Star in. (And, should you now be considering switching to Thurlow's line that he never bothered to read his own Bronze Star citation, didn't know that it repeatedly mentions "enemy bullets flying about him", and that this must also have been due entirely to Kerry's supposed lie, we do have last night's Washington Post article: "Even if Kerry did write the March 13 after-action report, it seems unlikely that he would have been the source of the information about 'enemy bullets' flying around Thurlow. The official witness to those events, according to Thurlow's medal recommendation form, was his own leading petty officer, Robert Lambert, who himself won a Bronze Star for 'courage under fire' in going to Thurlow's rescue after he fell into the river. Lambert, who lives in California, declined to comment." As I've said elsewhere, there's been a lot of that going around lately where the SBVTers' testimony is concerned.)
Silly me. I completely forgot this time around to mention Tommy Franks' unhappy but remarkable admission to Sean Hannity -- twice -- that he thought Kerry was probably telling the truth about US war crimes in Vietnam:
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh080504.shtml
Back to Ken Layne's article:
It's scary that all American politics has been reduced to sword and sorcery, Terminator imagery.
Posted by: sm at August 23, 2004 08:02 AMThe F-102 was out of active service and was used by the TXANG as a training vehicle, by the time one Lt GW Bush showed up.
http://www.seanet.com/~johnco/bush102.htm (Google for Bush and F-102 for all the information you could want).
A history of the 147th Fighter Wing, based at Ellington AFB, is available here: https://www.txelli.ang.af.mil/index2.html
Posted by: paul at August 23, 2004 10:21 PM