Even White House spokesman Tony Snow had trouble spinning Vice President Dick Cheney’s comments that seemed to endorse torture. Snow said that Cheney wasn’t referring to "water boarding" when he said last week that dunking terror suspects in water was "a very important tool." Snow, however, couldn’t explain what Cheney meant.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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74 Comments
It was rather amusing watching Snow try.
They are not “dunking terror suspects in water”. They are force bathing them!
/sarcasm
They should waterboard wetbacks as well; they could all stand for baths! :)
V.L.R.B!!
We’re so used to the Bush administration lying their brains out that it doesn’t even make news any more.
Of course, Cheney was lying. He was talking, wasn’t he?
Pretty effective technique I hear. No wonder liberals do not approve.
Heh, yeah, dj. Just look at all the great intel we got on WMD’s in Iraq and the connections between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
Torture victims say whatever their torturers want to hear.
It’s not only illegal–it’s not effective.
But I know you conservatives believe that there’s nothing that raw power can’t accomplish.
Just look at your gun fixation.
A shotgun is a tool too. Look at what Cheney did with one of them!
Actually, Cheney is the tool.
It doesn’t matter if all of the info is correct since the object is to save lives not live up to the standards the liberal democrat party dreams up for America so foregn nationals and illegal aliens will like us.
So, according to you, bad information that leads us on a wild goose chase and kills thousands of Americans is a good thing?
Speaking of being a tool, I think Liberal Idiots is coming close to the mark.
“Liberal Idiot’s” only objection to torture is that he isn’t the one getting to do it. He likes having men before him in a helpless, supine position.
You guys are right, terrorists are much more compassionate, they’ll just chop your head off after first making you convert to Islam.
Problem is, JM, we don’t know that the ’suspects’ are guilty. We have rounded up thousands of ordinary citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan by raiding their homes. And many others have been captured and subsequently released without charge after being tortured. A Canadien citizen was released recently after having been held and “interrogated” using these methods.
If it is truly in the name of protecting us from real terrorists where were have good evidence and good information, I say do it. Do whatever you have to do to catch the bastards.
If I could be sure of who we catch, but …
I suppose most of you support the random check of an 80 year old woman in an airport because she was designated number 20 or whatever thru a gate versus a 20-something male of middle eastern orgin.As long as we are looking for the weapons of terror versus the terrorists, it is just a matter of time before another attack occurs in the US.
Nope, I don’t support that at all. Searching Grandma is just dumb. It may sound reasonable in the theoretical world, but not the practical world.
You are correct.
I know people scream “that’s racial profiling!”. Call it whatever you want. It’s what needs to happen.
For Cheney Torture is a Slam (against a wall) Dunk (till you’re half drowned)!
What you know as “waterboarding” is actually an interrogation technique that was adopted from our former enemies; the Japanese Imperial Army of WWII. How ironic that we would use such a technique we considered as torture, when the Japanee used it on American POWs.
What am I talking about? America has it’s own standard of laws which everyone else in the world isn’t entitled to. Guess we never could get rid of that Law of the Jungle thing huh?
I love it when white midwestern conservative angry people claim that racial profiling needs to happen and that it is OK. Of course, if they were the ones being nailed right and left, we’d put a stop to it as a violation of their rights REALLY quick. There is no conspiracy against angry conservatives! You hold all the power! Stop thinking the world is against you!
And by the way, there’s plenty of LEGAL hispanic people getting racially profiled as muslims. Just ask them.
If it isn’t torture, maybe Cheney would be willing to have it used on him each time he wants it used on someone else.The main problem with torture is that it doesn’t lead to good intelligence, just what the tortured person believes his torturers want to hear. I have yet to hear of a single instance where torture produced vital information that saved lives. I have heard if instances where innocent people were tortured, and all that accomplishes is to make us more enemies that we already have!
I keep wondering if someone in our gov’t can render Cheney to Albania and have him “interrogated” to find out why we really invaded Iraq.
Of course, it’s the oil. But it’d be nice to get the man on record saying it.
Cap’n,While we’re at it, maybe it would be a good idea to question him about big oil and the administration’s energy policy, and the location of the minutes of that meeting that formulated their policy!
I guess none of the bloggers went through mock POW camps in the military. :)
- hands tied behind your back, your forehead leaned up against a tree with rough bark. (yeah it’s uncomfortable)
- blind folded, hands tied and shoved into a pit (which was only 5 feet deep, but seemed deeper)
- tied down, a 15 pound bag of sand cinched across your chest.
- carrying a heavy 20 pound object in drenching rain and about 10 degrees F, wait..nm that was guard duty. :)
The way I understand both President Bush and Vice President Cheney it’s OK to aggressively interrogate prisoners epically if they are not signers of the Geneva Convention. Since North Vietnam did not recognize or sign the Geneva Convention, what happened to the Americans held there was justified as aggressive interrogation and the interrogators did nothing wrong.
JM–
Too bad that Bush and Cheney and Wolfowitz and Richard Perle and Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh didn’t go through that training.
‘Cause none of them were in the active military.
Meanwhile, the people that were actually in the military like Jimmy Carter (Navy) and George McGovern (bomber pilot) and John Kerry and John Murtha and Wes Clark and Colin Powell are saying that Iraq is Arabic for “Vietnam.”
Too bad that all the guys you worship only saw combat on a movie screen . . .
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot–Al Gore did a tour in Vietnam while GW was all liquored up somewhere in Texas . . .
CapnAmerica,
I worship no man.
Just because a person wasn’t in combat, doesn’t mean they are not courageous.
I believe President Bush flew fighters in the Texas Air National Guard. Not sure if you ever had the opportunity to get in chair with a rocket attached to your buttocks, but it takes a special kind of person to do that calmly. I’ve found fighter pilots among the most courageous people I’ve ever met.
Lincoln was a President that saw little action as a military man in the BlackHawk war. However, when he became President, as Commander-in-Chief he was required to make difficult decisions on military matters.
CapnAmerica,
Lets get serious, Al Gore took pictures in Vietnam with a personal entourage of security attached to his hip.
I am not going to talk bad about his service, but don’t you try to use it to say he is better than Bush.
Bush served just as honorably in the Air National Guard.
There’s an interesting contest in Pennsylvania between Rep. Curt Weldon (R) and challenger Joe Sestak (D, retired vice admiral). Weldon is another of the draft-evading chickenhawks who thinks it is fine to put other people’s children in harm’s way.
The Framers of the Constitution envisioned George Washington, a career soldier and war hero, when they assigned commander-in-chief duty to the president. They never envisioned military-service-evading cowards being given reign over the military. To the conservatives here, I ask this: What do you find trustworthy about people who are ardently gung-ho for war–but only when OTHER PEOPLE are doing the fighting and dying?
Heartlander,
If the Framers had wanted the Commander in Chief to have had military experience they would have placed that requirement in the Constitution.
One would have to naturally assume that most people in the political process will not have served in the military. In every decision to go to war it will be decided by men and women who have never served and who do not serve.
We have elected these people to make these decisions for us. We are a Representative Republic. This is how it works.
On another note, former Navy Secretary Jim Webb, Senate candidate in Virginia is being neg-campaigned with graphic-sex quotes from earlier novels he wrote. Wolf Blitzer challenged Lynn Cheney about her lesbian-affair book “Sisters” and denied having written material that CNN has researched and found to be in it. So, Webb doesn’t deny what he wrote, and he explains its purpose. Ms. Cheney dissembles. (Wikipedia has a really great presentation of the various methods Mr. Cheney used to avoid military service, including knocking up the Missus when the draft standard changed from excluding married-without-children men to excluding only married-with-children men. He declared being a father at 12 weeks pregnancy, which in those days was about as early as pregnancy could be reliably detected, and the baby was born 9 mos and 2 days after the rule change. That’s a man of action! Good thing his weenie and sperm worked, otherwise he may never have gotten to be defense secretary and VP.
Hey Nathan?
At least Gore was IN Vietnam. Bush was AWOL with the national guard!
I have credited you too much I think Nathan. You are “in the rear with the gear”. Now make no mistake I wish no harm to come to you. I’d like you and those more exposed to danger out of the disastorous Bush excursion into Iraq. But you HAVE posted that you are in charge of weapons dispersal. Today we have knowledge that lots of US small arms are MISSING. (Sorry no link.)
Are you blogging for bush when you should be doing your job? How IS your inventory of small arms Nathan?
Nathan, of course there is no formal requirement, but there was a natural presumption that the CIC would understand war from experience. The expansionary colonies had been engaged in chronic warfare against native Americans for more than a century even before the Revolutionary War. The Framers figured in advance that Washington would become president, and they tacked on CIC duties. That made absolute sense.
Absent military experience, the only sane thing a president can do is to defer to the judgment of the joint chiefs of staff, i.e. experts in warfare. Turning this upside down, and telling them how to fight a war, e.g. with far too few troops, to test out a new theory of high-tech, limited-troop warfare was, and is insane–unless the real goal was never to win. I.e. if the goal had been to win, the administration would have said in late 2003 or early 2004, “We learned a lesson, our theory was wrong, now let’s do what the experts advise to correct our error and win this war.” I don’t know if Clinton “dissed” our brass or not. I do know that he thoughtfully negotiated a multilateral NATO and UN effort in Bosnia, and it worked. Bush 41 did similarly, and it worked. BushCo concocted a bogus “coalition” whose members contributed miniscule numbers of troops, except for UK, which now wants its 1000 soldiers out.
We did “Shock and Awe”, and it was televised worldwide. It killed more civilians than enemy fighters. We’ve totally wrecked a country. In arresting, detaining and humiliating innocent people, we’ve sown an enlarging terrorist crop.
BTW. Iraq is “the cradle of civilization”. If we look at them as primitives, there should be a lesson. Empires are born and grow, and then they age and die. If you visit Egypt, Italy, and Greece today, it is hard to envision them as the creators of civilization. If you want to humiliate Iraqis, who know that their history of advanced achievements is a lot older than yours, you’re setting yourself up to learn a painful lesson.
Addendum: In the pre-Revolution period, we also fought the French.
JR,
Bush was never AWOL. No matter how much you try to lie about his service it is still just that… a lie.
Bush recieved an honorable discharge from the Air National Guard.
You do prove something I have always said, and that is you pick and choose military service to exemplfy.
I may be in the “rear with the gear”, in Camp Falujah, in the Sunni Triangle, right next to the most attacks, recieving IDF almost every day…
LOL, if you even knew what “in the rear” meant.
I am the Battalion Armory Cheif. I fix the weapons and I am responsible for their security.
You wouldn’t even begin to know anything about CMR’s or phyiscal security of weapons.
You continue to show what a small pathetic little man you always were JR. I guess the only way my service in the Military would mean anything to you is if I was dead so you could use it to further your politcal Bashing of Bush.
Almost every person out here has access to the internet in some form. It is part of troop welfare. They go out of their way to try to make things as nice as possible here for us. But feel free to try to use that against me to. LOL
Nathan
I have spoke up for you here that you are in the place your convictions place you. I have questioned your stance….but not called you names.
You have called me a “miserable coward” and just now a “pathetic little man”.
I wonder if the military taught you to be so abusive of civilians who regard their highest duty to keep you out of harms way unless absolutely neccesary? Apparently so.
Me being cynical: Sure, Bush was never AWOL, he just took long vacations…
Nathan: “I guess the only way my service in the Military would mean anything to you is if I was dead so you could use it to further your politcal Bashing of Bush.”
No, Nathan. The only way that it would mean anything, is for you to honor that uniform of yours. That you are bound by obligation to always stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. Even if it goes against your best interest and personal beliefs.
“I believe President Bush flew fighters in the Texas Air National Guard. Not sure if you ever had the opportunity to get in chair with a rocket attached to your buttocks, but it takes a special kind of person to do that calmly. I’ve found fighter pilots among the most courageous people I’ve ever met.”
George W. Bush trained on obsolete fighters in the TXANG. Rumor has it that he managed to crash one of them, a rumor he has yet to call false. He was never certified. He never took the physical required for certification.
Just how many fighter pilots have you known, JM? I know more than several from the KANG, and many of them served in Vietnam. Courageous? Well, in an insane sort of way.
Sounds like the enemy has more of our weapons than we do.
“About the last thing the United States ought to be doing in Iraq is funneling weapons into black-market weapons bazaars.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/opinion/31tue1.html?th&emc=th
“Bush was never AWOL. No matter how much you try to lie about his service it is still just that… a lie.”
True. Technically, he deserted (AWOL for more than 30 days). Or to be more honest, he defrauded the U.S. Government, having been paid for days that were never accounted for, i.e. he was a no-show.
“Bush recieved an honorable discharge from the Air National Guard.”
Got proof? Like, do you have the form number for that? (HINT: I have a link, but I’d rather let you hunt for it.)
There’s no record that he actually served in the Alabama ANG. No one remembers seeing him there, even the CO. And wouldn’t someone with the family pull that GW had be considered a celebrity? He certainly was in the TEXANG. While it’s true that one can’t prove a negative, Bush hasn’t been able to prove a positive=his fulfillment of service in the ANG.
Prior to the 2000 election, Bush’s service was being scrutinized, basically because of the Republican attacks on Kerry The Bush document dump did not include pay records, relevant medical records, sign-in sheets, and defense of six months AWOL, but did include a disciplinary grounding letter and report Of 300 day absence.
And here’s a nifty little quote concerning that and most of his service.
Grant Lattin, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who once served as judge advocate and is now a Washington military law attorney, explained, “Somebody could have missed a year’s worth of Guard drills and still end up with an honorable discharge.” That’s because, says Lattin, “the National Guard is extremely political. … If George Bush junior is in your unit, you’re going to bend over backward not to offend that family. It all comes down to who you know.”
I was once in the Navy Reserve, a little over two years. God help me if I ever had to prove anything aout my service then!
Back when I was in the reserves and when GW was in the guard, record keeping was stoneage by today’s standards. Our reserve unit didn’t even have a Xerox machine. IBM selectrics were still in the future.
Our records were boxed up periodically and sent to New Orleans. Never to be seen again!
In GW’s case the F-102 fighteres that he was trained and qualified in were rendered obsolete about a year before he was due to get out of the ANG. Because of the short amount of time left on his tour, they did not wish to certify him on the F-106 fighter that was replacing the F-106.
Ther are no ‘unanwered questions’ about Bush’s service. only people that persist in bashing Bush.
http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=9259
Hank
Hank, I must agree.The time for swift boating is over.Neither GW or Kerry are even relevent to this election.
Oh, and RD,
Here’s proof of his honorable discharge:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/bushdocs/2-Discharge.pdf
Hank
For those of you who still seem to have no clue how the Reserves or Guard works.
It is a one weekend a month, two weeks a year job.
You are certified for satisfactory years, not months.
You accumulate points over the course of the year and you have to have a certain number at the end of the year to have a satisfactory year.
I have seen several people at my unit who have not showed up for an entire year come in at the very end and serve a few weeks to make up for all the time and get a satisfactory year.
Bush could have missed several months. Who cares?
Did he complete his total time? Obviously yes, he received his honorable discharge.
This is the same old political crap spoken by people who have no clue what they are talking about with no other cause than to further their hate bush rhetoric.
Hank,
Those discharge papers were from the TEXANG and for the purpose of transfer. Read them again, please. The date was 1973, and Bush enlistment ran to Oct. 1974. The link you’re looking for is close to what you posted. Again, USATODAY.http://www.usatoday.com/news/bushdocs/11-2_2004_Personnel_File.pdf
You’ll have to scroll down to find the correct paper. The question there was whether the final discharge paper referred to Form DD 258F or DD 256F. I’ve discovered that it depends on how you look at the numbers. If you want it to be 256, it is. If you prefer 258, it is.
Hank, do you have a copy of your discharge papers? At that time, were those DD 214’s or did they go by another number? Just curious.
Nathan,
My ex retired from the KANG after 20 years of service. Skipping guard drill was severly frowned upon. In fact, if done often, disciplinary actions happened. I remember him attending on crutches one month, because he was told to be there, no matter what. He was also required to make up any time he missed due to wheat harvest.
His years of service? March 1970-March 1976 and October 1984-January 1999. We met in Sept. 1970 and married in 1976, so I was there for most of it. Bush’s enlistment time was October 1968-1974.
Perhaps there was a difference between how the KANG was handled and how a champagne unit in the TEXANG was handled. Or perhaps there was preferrential treatment.
“I have seen several people at my unit who have not showed up for an entire year come in at the very end and serve a few weeks to make up for all the time and get a satisfactory year.”
You’re assuming that Bush made up the lost time, yet there are no documents to support that. The pay records for that period of time are missing. Could be, as Hank said, that they vanished by mistake. Or…
RD- At that time the DD214 was used.
More bush doc.shttp://www.glcq.com/bush_at_arpc1.htm
And you might want to look at page 32 of the usa docs. Bush signed a statement in which he promised to enlist in the Massachusetts NG when he went to Harvard because he had not finished his 6 years and yet there is no record of him doing so.
Hank,
The F-102 fighters were in use until 1974.
Why did Bush fail to get a physical in May 1972, and ground himself? That was 30 months before his flight commitment ended.
Lot’s of info, docs, etc at,http://www.awolbush.com/index.html
I have credited you too much I think Nathan. You are “in the rear with the gear”. Now make no mistake I wish no harm to come to you. I’d like you and those more exposed to danger out of the disastorous Bush excursion into Iraq. But you HAVE posted that you are in charge of weapons dispersal. Today we have knowledge that lots of US small arms are MISSING. (Sorry no link.)
JR,Are you questioning the integrity of Nathan’s service? Or are you questioning his competence at performing his duties? JR, given your history on this blog yu have proven yourself to be anti-war, I didn’t know a part of that was ridiculing our soldiers. Are you the type of person that calls black and hispanic soldiers “ignorant minorities” because they are enlisted? I believe so.
And yet more proof that Bush didn’t meet his obligations:http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/09/08/bush_fell_short_on_duty_at_guard/
” On July 30, 1973, shortly before he moved from Houston to Cambridge, Bush signed a document that declared, ”It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months. . . ” Under Guard regulations, Bush had 60 days to locate a new unit.
But Bush never signed up with a Boston-area unit. In 1999, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett told the Washington Post that Bush finished his six-year commitment at a Boston area Air Force Reserve unit after he left Houston. Not so, Bartlett now concedes. ”I must have misspoke,” Bartlett, who is now the White House communications director, said in a recent interview.
And early in his Guard service, on May 27, 1968, Bush signed a ‘’statement of understanding” pledging to achieve ‘’satisfactory participation” that included attendance at 24 days of annual weekend duty — usually involving two weekend days each month — and 15 days of annual active duty. ”I understand that I may be ordered to active duty for a period not to exceed 24 months for unsatisfactory participation,” the statement reads.
Yet Bush, a fighter-interceptor pilot, performed no service for one six-month period in 1972 and for another period of almost three months in 1973, the records show.
The reexamination of Bush’s records by the Globe, along with interviews with military specialists who have reviewed regulations from that era, show that Bush’s attendance at required training drills was so irregular that his superiors could have disciplined him or ordered him to active duty in 1972, 1973, or 1974. But they did neither. In fact, Bush’s unit certified in late 1973 that his service had been ‘’satisfactory” — just four months after Bush’s commanding officer wrote that Bush had not been seen at his unit for the previous 12 months.
Bartlett, in a statement to the Globe last night, sidestepped questions about Bush’s record. In the statement, Bartlett asserted again that Bush would not have been honorably discharged if he had not ”met all his requirements.” In a follow-up e-mail, Bartlett declared: ”And if he hadn’t met his requirements you point to, they would have called him up for active duty for up to two years.”
That assertion by the White House spokesman infuriates retired Army Colonel Gerald A. Lechliter, one of a number of retired military officers who have studied Bush’s records and old National Guard regulations, and reached different conclusions.
”He broke his contract with the United States government — without any adverse consequences. And the Texas Air National Guard was complicit in allowing this to happen,” Lechliter said in an interview yesterday. ”He was a pilot. It cost the government a million dollars to train him to fly. So he should have been held to an even higher standard.”
RD,
So, you are basically admitting that there is no proof to your allegations, yet you still make them?
It is so obvious that you bush haters will stretch the truth and lie about anything you can to attack the man.
He was HONORABLY discharged.
You have nothing but baseless attacks on his military service.
Like I said, it’s a little late and a lot irrelevent at this point.Nobody is going to remove him from office, even if he pissed on his commanding officer’s desk.
Nathan,
Honorable discharge?You should read the top section at http://www.awolbush.com/faq.asp and the links.
Nathan,
I’m saying it’s questionable. It has nothing to do with hating Bush, since I don’t hate him. I’m often disgusted by him, distrubed, distrustful and whole lot of other things, to the point of disliking his actions and words, but saying I hate him is not true. If he would do something commendable, I’d commend him. Until that happens…
On the other hand, you see him as sitting at the left hand of God. In your eyes, the man can do no wrong. How would it make you feel if you found the allegations of his leaving the ANG before he was officially released so he could serve on a political campaign were true? If you had the proof given to you, would you believe it? And if you did, would you consider his actions fair play?
Is it okay with you that he bought his way into the TEXANG because of his daddy’s connections, by-passing hundreds of others on the list? Not that he was the only one who did it. I’m sure there have been many others.
It works both ways, Nathan.
RD,
John Allen Muhammad got an honorable discharge in 1985, even tho,http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/92867_muhammad25.shtml“In 1983, however, he was charged with striking a non-commissioned officer, stealing a tape measure and being absent without leave. The court fined him $100, sentenced him to seven days confinement and busted him to a Specialist 4.”
RD,
There is not any credible truth to your alegations that Bush bought his way into the Air National Guard.
Even now you weave your distortions into your comments. It is pathological.
I have plenty of critique for the man, just not for the reasons you do.
So nathan, why didn’t you response to my post(s)? Can’t be bothered with the truth?
Are we still fighting over George W. Bush’s national guard in Texas? Get over it already.
He did bypass Vietname and everyone knows it – but so did alot of other rich, well-connected young males. Again, what does hashing and rehashing this issue bring us today?
We are in a mess in Iraq and for whatever reason, Bush does not want to do anything else but stay the course.
That being said, this country needs to be able to come up with a new strategy that will be winnable with some dignity. If George W., Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld doesn’t want to adapt to the new strategy, then we need to find new people that will.
Plain and simple.
Dave s,
What truth would that be?
Your article says that Bush did make up those drills. What it fails to prove or show are those “regulations” which stipulate it had to be done withing a certain time before or after the drill period?
You know why? That is because that is not what the regulations say.
Things might have been different back then, but right now you have the year to make up your drills.
The former speaker of the Texas state House, Democrat Ben Barnes, now admits he pulled strings to get Bush his coveted guard slot, and says he’s “ashamed” of the deed.
Oh, cool! Now I’m pathological!
Nathan, I think you mean critical, not critique, but I get your drift.
Sorry, I meant criticism. Now you have me confused.
Lee Harvey Oswald had a honorable discharge for awhile too, until somebody figured out that he had lied about his mother’s “sickness” to get an early discharge.
The man who signed the “dishonorable discharge” was one John Connelly, the man who would a few years later be riding in front of JFK the day he was shot in Dallas.
Some folks have speculated that Oswald the former marine was actually shooting at Connelly and missed, heigh ho.
Nathan–
1. Bush used family connections to avoid getting drafted after graduation in 1968.
“Bush did not get drafted. Instead, two weeks before graduation, he joined the Texas Air National Guard — a so-called “champagne unit” that included other sons of rich and influential Texans. He signed up for a six-year term. There was a waiting list, as was the case at most Guard and Reserve units throughout the country, because such service was generally considered a likely way to avoid combat (5,977 reservists and 101 guardsmen died in Vietnam). But according to one highly visible source, Bush didn’t have to wait.
Former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes told the CBS program “60 Minutes” on Sept. 8 that he’d used his political influence to jump the young Bush ahead of “hundreds” of others to get the Guard slot. He’d first said this publicly after testifying in a 1999 federal court deposition, saying he’d done the favor at the request of a Bush family friend. At the time Bush joined the Air Guard, his father, George H.W. Bush, was serving his first term as a congressman from Texas.”
Colin Powell wrote in his book “The policies — determining who would be drafted and who would be deferred, who would serve and who would escape, who would die and who would live — were an antidemocratic disgrace,” Powell wrote. “I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well placed … managed to wangle slots in reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country.”
2. In 1972, the Air Force instituted mandatory drug testing as part of the required physical for pilots. At that point, Bush never took another physical, he was grounded and never flew again.
“In a fitness report supplement released by the White House this year, an administrative officer wrote, “Not rated for the period 1 May 72 through 30 Apr 73.”
http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.php?f=1-AIRPAPER-357916.php
Strangely, documents that should be available to account for why a pilot refused a physical for two years are “unavailable.”
“WASHINGTON – Documents that should have been written to explain gaps in President Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service are missing from the military records released about his service in 1972 and 1973, according to regulations and outside experts.
“For example, Air National Guard regulations at the time required commanders to write an investigative report for the Air Force when Bush missed his annual medical exam in 1972. The regulations also required commanders to confirm in writing that Bush received counseling after missing five months of drills.
“No such records have been made public and the government told The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that it has released all records it can find.”
Sunday, September 5, 2004 by the Associated Press
Just think of the mileage Rush Hannity OReilly Savage Malkin Coulter would get out of this if Bush’s name were Kerry.
IOKIYAR.
A waste of time Capn.
Nathan cannot be reached because he WILL not be reached.
Nathan posted once that he grew up in public housing and on food stamps. Apparently this was all his father could provide for him. As his father was in the military, one could little blame the man his circumstances. We truly DO treat our military badly. More so under the bush administration.
(Somebody get a link to the record of Democrats vs. Republicans on veterans benefits and just who fights for what.)
But Nathan does not want to remember where he came from. He wants to preserve where he is. See? His dad managed to later marry money. And boy they are gonna keep that new lifestyle and everyone else be damned. And damn them again for even questioning them.
JR,
Once again you live in fantasy land.
Your little revision of my life story is false.
Perhaps you need to look closer at your own family affairs before you start attempting to bash mine.
I know you are jealous because the choices you made in life led you to be the pathetic little man you are, but really, show some decency man!
Nathan,
You now have the proof you asked for regarding George W. Bush’s enlistment in the TEXANG. Will you choose to continue to deny that he was given preferential treatment and allowed to join before others on the list were?
More namecalling Nathan?
THAT is why I am taking the gloves off.
DISPUTE anything in my previous post. I INVITE you too. IF I am wrong I WILL apologize.
That is NOT a courtesy you and your father have afforded me and my family.
The beauty of this forum is that one way or another, posts live forever. Halloween night is a good night for a “haunting”.
Nathan you posted that you “grew up in public housing and on food stamps.” I can find it. Don’t call me a liar for having a good memory.
Ya know what? I wrote a whole lot more and then deleted it. I’ll leave it there………for NOW.
Back off the name calling Nathan.
“Show some decency man.”There is nothing indecent in telling the truth. For now, I will not say more. THAT makes me FAR more decent than you and yours.
Ah . . . isn’t that the way it goes.
Interesting, JR. I commend you for keeping it private all this time under the outrageous provocation of the Prices’.
But you’re right. There’s a time when the truth must be told.
Back then it was “thank heavens for the food stamps.” Now, it’s “let poor people starve.”
“To live like a Republican, you have to vote Democratic.” Harry S Truman