Morris, you can save yourself a lot of time by ignoring anything that
Gunner cuts and pastes here. It's usually from an unidentified source
that he picks up in the right-wing nutbag blogs and websites, often
from
a "military officer just returned from Iraq," or, in this case, a
"Vietnam vet who refused a promotion to general." The Special Forces
angle is a nice twist. d8-)

That was my conclusion, too. On the off chance that he might actually
have
metalworking expertise (I have precious little), I won't ignore his
posts - but I won't necessarily keep quiet if my BS detector goes off.

He doesn't bull**** about machining, and he knows quite a bit about
machine
tools and their installation. He's a self-taught machinist, like many of
us
here, and he's frank about the state of his knowledge.

However, if the subject turns to politics, click on to the next message.
g


I don't particularly mind revealing the identity of the ex-military type
on whose judgment /I/ most depend:

http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Misc/DogTags.jpg

nor the fact that I, also, wore these:

http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Misc/Wings.jpg

but I have never been under the illusion that either made my judgment
any
better than anyone else's.

A sensible man. There are plenty of them here; you'll enjoy the company.

--
Ed Huntress


Regarding military service being an advantage in other areas like politics,
I ran into something interesting the other day. I'm in the middle of reading
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and I came across a line about a
certain Roman general that was about to take over the job of Emperor of the
empire. It said that the military experience of a general was useless when
it came to administering an empire. In other words military experience
didn't translate to being a politician or administrator. I find it
interesting that even though they knew this hundreds of years ago an awful
lot of people nowadays don't know that fact and seem to think that being a
good general means you'll be good at everything else. In fact, good generals
rarely make good civilian leaders.

Hawke