In article ,
"HeyBub" wrote:
Billy wrote:
What difference does the president make in their decision? As for
being a draft-dodger, if the worst you can say about Bush is, that
in time of war, he joined the National Guard...
The Air National Guard and then didn't show up. The guy is all hat and
no cattle.
He qualified as a pilot for a close attack fighter and it wasn't a
correspondence course. Of the three squadrons in his unit, two were already
deployed in VietNam and his was scheduled to rotate in when the Pentagon
took the plane in which he was qualified out of combat (because that model
crashed a lot). His job was, therefore, made redudant. Had the National
Guard been a private business, he would have been "let go."
" . . . it should be noted that at the time Bush was accepted in the
Texas Air National Guard, there was a waiting list of roughly 500 men
and it usually took about a year and a half to get to the top of the
list.
When asked about the waiting list issue, Bush spokesman at the time,
David Beckwith, claimed that Bush was more qualified. "A lot of people
weren't qualified" he said, "so special commissions were offered to
those willing to undergo the extra training required."
However, Charles Shoemake, chief of personnel at the Texas Guard from
1972 to 1980, publicly denied that there was a shortage of pilots or
qualified applicants. "We had so many people coming in who were
super-qualified," he said.
Any claim that Bush was more qualified than 500 other men is laughable
being he only scored 25% on the Pilot Aptitude Test, which happens to be
the lowest score permitted for a wannabe pilot at the time.
http://www.counterpunch.org/pringle05292007.html
Welcome to the New American
Century. All Profit, All the Time.
Proft is good.
It's blood money from people who trusted him.
Whatever. Profit is good.
Blood is better. Especially, if it's yours and not spilled all over the
place.
Hell, the ones who got killed are
the lucky ones. It's the other 90% who got broke and are coming home
with post-traumatic stress disorder, who are going to suffer.
Regrettably, you're correct. We'll do the best we can to provide for
them, but, ultimately, that was the choice they made.
Like Walter Reed. As soon as the spot light is off the VA, it will be
business as usual.
I agree. VA hospitals are much like other governmental agencies; resting
grounds for the incompetent, the lame, and the lazy. And I'm not talking
about the patients. Fortunately, there is a fix: Abolish VA hospitals. Have
the government pay for veteran's treatments at private facilities. There are
more private hospitals and they are better located.
And you
want to put a happy face on it? Jesus Christ man, the troops did
what they were told. They went to Bagdad and occupied the Ministry
of Oil and left the munition dumps unprotected.
Well, yeah. But they did kill a great number of terrorists and
potential terrorists.
Once they saw that we were an occupying force, the **** hit the fan.
And we killed them so fast, we couldn't stack the bodies fast enough. I was
particularily amused by those bands of miscreants using Toyota pickups with
a .50 cal mounted on the back attacking Abrams tanks and Bradleys.
You'll probably find the WWII Polish cavalry attack on German Panzers
humorous too. One man's fool is another man's hero.
The people of Bagdad were happy to see us. They wanted to thank us.
But we treated them like dirt and kicked them in the teeth.
----------
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...age-grows-afte
r-fallujah-massacre-537969.html
Iraqi rage grows after Fallujah massacre
By Phil Reeves in Fallujah
Sunday, 4 May 2003
Nearly a week after troops from the 82nd Airborne Division randomly
opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators here, prompting the US
military to announce an inquiry, commanders have yet to speak to the
doctors who counted the bodies.
[...]
Potential terrorists.
My ass, it was the ****in' PTA. The war was over. The 82nd Airborne
set up shop in a neighborhood school. The locals wanted to send their
kids back to school. They demonstrated and got shot. Not the way to
win the hearts and minds of the locals.
Strange they'd have to go to school to learn you don't "demonstrate" against
heavily armed troops. And where'd the come up with the notion that
"demonstrating" would get them anywhere? I'm sure in 34 years of Sadaam's
rule that little trick never came up.
You dodged the question. Only the 82nd Airborne said there were shots
fired from the crowd. This wasn't substantiated by foreign journalists.
These folks went out to meet an invading army to ask for their
children's schoolhouse back. Are we having a conversation or, are we
just here jerkin' off?
Uh, who "pushed" the Arabs into the World Trade Center?
The World Trade Organization, that's who. Part of their job is to
squeeze the last dime or drop of blood out of a debtor nation by
getting them to follow 18th century neo-liberal economic policies.
This includes cutting all social services and extensive
privatization. Only problem is, wherever it is employed, it doesn't
work and riots break out. Sometimes, as Ward Churchill has pointed
out, when you push people, they push back.
Ward Churchill (the faux Indian) and the WTO? I'm sure, in your view, that
the Illuminati, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Masons played only
minor roles else you would have mentioned them.
Doctor "faux Indian", if that means anything to you. Don't like that
reference? Try, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins.
There is no "Iraqi Resistance." Virtually every one (that we have
killed or know about) of the bombers, insurgents, and leaders of
such in Iraq are not from Iraq. Except for Sadaam, of course.
Want to corroborate that? No DoD press releases please. In the mean
time, I would direct you to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_insurgency .
Well, it's the DOD that keeps track of that sort of thing. And Wikipedia is
not allowed to be used as source material in elementary schools, so I guess
we'll just have to disagree. In the meantime, here's an NBC report
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8293410/
From the above website:
The NBC News analysis of Web site postings found that 55 percent of
foreign insurgents came from Saudi Arabia, 13 percent from Syria, 9
percent from North Africa and 3 percent from Europe.
FOREIGN INSURGENTS, not locals.
(Side note: we are selling $20 billion worth of armaments to the Saudis
and their neighbors this year and, GIVING $30 billion in weapons to
Israel.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/28/2834/
It's just like in Iraq, where we arm both the Sunnis and the Shias. They
kill each other some and, they both kill Americans.)
You may be right about the numbers. I suspect someone from Saudi Arabia or
Yemen or wherever comes to Iraq with his pockets bulging and hires those who
do the actual work.
Wake up. You are being played for a chump.
I'm a volunteer. I accept the risks.
Thanks for being patriotic, just don't leave your brain under the bunk.
These damn wars are costing America lives, health care, education,
infrastructure, loss of civil rights, and indebting the US to China.
--
Billy
Bush, Cheney & Pelosi, Behind Bars
http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/site/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movemen...George_W._Bush