Quote:
Originally posted by PornoDoggy@Feb 16 2004, 10:43 AM
It's kinda funny ... some of the same people who could reach great depths of righteous indignation over Bill Clinton's avoiding service seem very unconcerned about the fact that GW failed to live up to the obligations he took on when he became a member of the Guard. What happened to the concern about the President being a liar?
When you get right down to it, Bush, Clinton, Kerry, and John McCain are ALL fairly representative of their generation and its relationship to "The War." In Bush's case, he used the pull of a Congressman daddy to bypass the waiting lists and get into the Guard.
When Bush told Meet the Press that suggesting his service in the Guard was avoiding Vietnam and an insult to modern Guardsmen, I laughed out loud. Comparing the Guard and Reserves of today to the slackers of that period is the real insult. The pay records prove that Bush may have actually committed fraud, when viewed in the context that there is little else to back up his claim of service, particularly when nobody remembers him. Again - getting yourself assigned TAD to another unit and not showing up was a fairly common trick in the Guard and Reserves at that time, as was getting paid for drills you didn't participate in.
Is it an issue? Yup - it is to some. Is it important? I've always thought the attention given to Clinton's record was pretty stupid. This WAS just as stupid - until lately.
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I didn't loathe Clinton for not serving as much as I loathed him for writing that he loathed the military. The military is not for everyone, and there are some people I wouldn't want in the military anyway -- like Muslims, for instance, given their proclivity to be traitors as we've seen in the news of the last few years, most recently a week ago.
I think it's a good thing for a President to have been a soldier, preferably a combat veteran, since he is the CIC. I think he ought to have some first hand experience suffering what a soldier suffers before he has the power to commit their lives to policy decisions.
Bush served, somewhat, apparently, but his service is not exactly what I'd call distinguished -- at least not in a positive way. Like PD said, it was (and still remains) very easy to "get over" in the Guard, by transferring units, transferring status (active reserve/inactive reserve), starting and quitting various military schools, or even physically manipulating records (security and organization is very loose in the guard/reserves).
Hell, the paperwork could very well have taken 6 months to get Bush processed and he might have been sitting around in rehab for all I know.
Bush is a politician, and as such, I trust him to tell me the truth just about as much as I trust him to volunteer to fight in the front lines anytime he deploys troops.
Kerry's service, while notably superior in some aspects, doesn't exactly classify him as a war hero in my mind (putting in to be taken out of combat after a few scratches). But it's his affiliation to communism which disgusts me more than anything else.
But this is all neither here nor there -- government is no longer answerable to the people -- we have a permanent political class and that will not change, therefore we will always have shitbag, power-hungry, self-serving liars and frauds in power at all levels of government, local, city, state, national. Even the fucking school boards are filled with scumbag shitheads.
What were we talking about?
Last edited by Buff at Feb 16 2004, 12:53 PM