Bush Joins FDR & Reagan In Landmark Leader Club

[Tiger in Spain 0]

This article should be enough to get our liberals blood pressure up.

Bush Joins FDR & Reagan In Landmark Leader Club

Chicago Sun-Times

Thomas Roeser

March 6, 2004

His enemies fault him for many reasons, but of this there is no doubt: With 10 months left in his first term, George W. Bush has already become one of a handful of the most important presidents in U.S. history. He toppled two pro-terrorist regimes, sparing America from further incidents of terrorism; revived the economy, and now leads a defense of traditional values by initiating a constitutional amendment to prevent runaway courts from junking the multi-millennia-old concept of marriage.

Any one of these actions would justify him as a memorable chief executive. (FDR supplied confidence to overcome Depression qualms and win World War II; Ronald Reagan bounced us back from recession and won the Cold War.) Considered together, Bush's attainments certify that his energetic presidency has landmark significance.

Despite slender experience as a Texas governor and the marginal nature of his election, he has steered away from the timidity of conventional Beltway tactics, exerting the independence that marks great presidencies. He governs as if he had defeated Al Gore by millions of votes. Yes, his jaunty confidence spurs epithets -- that he is a cowboy, of limited intellect, a religious fanatic -- but that proves he drives his opponents to distraction.

Not that I have always agreed with Bush, but a president with deep faith in God does what he believes is best, confident the results will bear him out. Others would have delayed the invasion of Iraq, would probably have dickered to gain more international support. Not Bush. He dealt the cards in brilliant poker-playing fashion reminiscent of FDR, first leaking word that he needed no Capitol Hill vote, then going to the U.N. Security Council -- not to seek approval but to serve notice that he would not be held captive by them. Finally, he tossed the hot potato to Congress, with the words, ''I can't imagine an elected member of the United States Senate or House of Representatives saying, 'I think I'm going to wait for the United Nations to make a decision.''' Congress folded, endorsing Bush's doctrine of preemption four weeks before the Security Council gave in. When the Democrats balked on homeland security, Bush capitalized on it, took their reluctance to the voters in 2002 and won a GOP-majority Senate. That is the kind of guts you get when a president is determined to lead, not follow consensus.

Twice he gave Congress tax cut programs much larger than it was prepared to accept. The liberals growled about favors for the rich, but Bush has won. The unemployment rate today is 5.6 percent, with 1.4 million civilian jobs created in the past year.

All the while, the United States has been beset with culture wars. His conservative base stirred discontentedly for his delay in espousal of a federal marriage amendment, but he chose the right time. The U.S. Supreme Court threw out the Texas anti-sodomy law; still, he waited on the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Only when it declared that nothing short of gay marriage, not even civil unions, can be accepted, did Bush act, with an amendment of two sentences: the first restricting marriage to the union between a man and a woman, and the second enjoining the courts from imposing a solution.

Article

[Tigermike 3,717]

Right on TIS!

Not that I have always agreed with Bush, but a president with deep faith in God does what he believes is best, confident the results will bear him out.

That is the kind of guts you get when a president is determined to lead, not follow consensus.

Those two statements sure leave John Kerry out in the cold!

[rexbo 104]

That is the kind of guts you get when a president is determined to lead, not follow consensus.

This one statement sums up the huge difference between Kerry and Bush, Bush is a leader, in every sense of the word; Kerry couldn't lead a pack of preschool kids to an ice cream store...

[TexasTiger 14,289]

That is the kind of guts you get when a president is determined to lead, not follow consensus.

This one statement sums up the huge difference between Kerry and Bush, Bush is a leader, in every sense of the word; Kerry couldn't lead a pack of preschool kids to an ice cream store...

Unlike Bush, Kerry led troops into battle. Bush has just ordered them into battle.

[MDM4AU 338]

Unlike Bush, Kerry led troops into battle.  Bush has just ordered them into battle.

Let's see...

Kerry was a "so called" war hero -

Then he was ashamed of it (throwing someone elses medals over the fence at the White House.)-

Now he wants to be recognized for being a "War Hero" once again.

DANG! He was flip-floppin' back then!

[TexasTiger 14,289]

This one statement sums up the huge difference between Kerry and Bush, Bush is a leader, in every sense of the word; Kerry couldn't lead a pack of preschool kids to an ice cream store...

When Kerry was leading troops into battle and being shot at, Bush was leading cheers as a cheerleader at Yale and organizing keggers as the Deke social chair.

[rexbo 104]

Unlike Bush, Kerry led troops into battle. Bush has just ordered them into battle.

Kerry wasn't leading troops into battle, he was commanding a Navy Swift boat. Those were sailors onboard the boat with him, not soldiers or marines. And apparantly all he did was drive up and down the river shooting at anything that moved. He was so good at it, he hurt himself 3 times within 4 months, never bad enough to miss duty, but bad enough they let him go home. Or maybe they sent him home before he commited anymore of all of those war crimes he said were being committed by everyone. Maybe that's why he put himself in with the communist backed anti-Vietnam crowd when he got home, because he felt so guilty. There are lot of unanswered questions about his duty in Vietnam, and why he reacted in such an anti-heroic and anti-American way when he got back...

[TexasTiger 14,289]

Unlike Bush, Kerry led troops into battle.  Bush has just ordered them into battle.

Kerry wasn't leading troops into battle, he was commanding a Navy Swift boat. Those were sailors onboard the boat with him, not soldiers or marines. And apparantly all he did was drive up and down the river shooting at anything that moved. He was so good at it, he hurt himself 3 times within 4 months, never bad enough to miss duty, but bad enough they let him go home. Or maybe they sent him home before he commited anymore of all of those war crimes he said were being committed by everyone. Maybe that's why he put himself in with the communist backed anti-Vietnam crowd when he got home, because he felt so guilty. There are lot of unanswered questions about his duty in Vietnam, and why he reacted in such an anti-heroic and anti-American way when he got back...

Republican logic: John Kerry graduates Yale, enlists in the Navy, serves in Viet Nam and is awarded the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. Republicans smell a rat. War record needs to be scrutinized and speculated upon.

George W. Bush pulls strings, jumps 500 common folk to get in the Texas Air National Guard. When he enlists he checks that he does not want overseas duty. Apparently decides on his own that he simply doesn't want to fly anymore, despite a commitment to do so for 6 years when he asked the taxpayers to train him. Doesn't even show up for a flight physical. Says he went to Alabama, although no credible confirmation has yet to offered. Won't answer questions about drug use during this time. Refuses to even confirm he wasn't doing cocaine. Now he decides to "just say no" to the question. Honorably discharged and thus it is unpatriotic to even question him.

Okay, I got it.

[Ranger12 53]

TexasTiger, I am calling bs on your argument. First of all, it was John Kerry himself a few years ago during one of his re-elections campaigns that said it should not matter what way one served in the military, because anybody that served in any capacity, no matter the branch or what they did, all played an important role. Kerry himself said that military service was not an important part of public service! Of course that was when Clinton was in office and it was taboo to talk about military service. Now all of a sudden it is an issue. So pardon me if I say that your arugment is a bunch of crap based on that alone.

Secondly, as a veteran, I would like to see a veteran in office, but that is not the most important thing. Just because Kerry served and saw combat does not automatically make him a better candidate. Kerry BF his brothers by calling the child killers and rapists not long after he got out, thus why most veterans organizations will not support hime. For him to keep bring up the Vietnam Vet thing, after the way he has handled that part of his life in the past is very funny, yet moronic. I thought you liberals had already learned that the "veteran" approach was not working and had moved on to another plan. Guess I was wrong.

[MDM4AU 338]

We do not need to divide America over who served and how.--John Kerry (IRONICALLY), February 27, 1992 in a letter to Clinton.

[Ranger12 53]

We do not need to divide America over who served and how.--John Kerry (IRONICALLY), February 27, 1992 in a letter to Clinton.

Exactly what I was referring too!

[TexasTiger 14,289]

TexasTiger, I am calling bs on your argument. First of all, it was John Kerry himself a few years ago during one of his re-elections campaigns that said it should not matter what way one served in the military, because anybody that served in any capacity, no matter the branch or what they did, all played an important role. Kerry himself said that military service was not an important part of public service! Of course that was when Clinton was in office and it was taboo to talk about military service. Now all of a sudden it is an issue. So pardon me if I say that your arugment is a bunch of crap based on that alone.

Secondly, as a veteran, I would like to see a veteran in office, but that is not the most important thing. Just because Kerry served and saw combat does not automatically make him a better candidate. Kerry BF his brothers by calling the child killers and rapists not long after he got out, thus why most veterans organizations will not support hime. For him to keep bring up the Vietnam Vet thing, after the way he has handled that part of his life in the past is very funny, yet moronic. I thought you liberals had already learned that the "veteran" approach was not working and had moved on to another plan. Guess I was wrong.

First, you are not really calling bs on my argument, because you seem to have missed my point. It wasn't necessarily to compare military records but to point out the irony, and the gross hypocrisy, of the current Republican effort to smear Kerry as illustrated by this quote from the post I was responding to.

There are lot of unanswered questions about his duty in Vietnam

So Kerry's record deserves scrutiny, but as argued by many Republicans, including several on this board, Bush's does not. How does that work?

I would like to see source for this quote, btw:

Kerry himself said that military service was not an important part of public service!

[rexbo 104]

Some common sense on the comparison of the 2 men's service record. The bottom line is that neither choose the riskiest path, nor the safest path. Given the inherent risk of flying military jets for 2 years on active duty, I would not put Kerry's few months driving a boat up and down a river and shooting at anything that moved any more credence in 'serving his country' than Bush, if personal risk or exposure to danger is how you decide to judge it. My problem with Kerry is his borderline traitorous behavior when he returned.

The Real Facts About Service in Vietnam

The Real Facts About Service in Vietnam

by James Dunnigan

February 17, 2004

The current presidential campaign in the United States is bringing back the debate over "who served" (and who didn't) during the Vietnam war. During that conflict (1965-72), 8.7 million Americans served in the military. About a third of these spent some time in Vietnam. But only about twelve percent of those sent to Vietnam were in combat. Put another way, only about three percent of those who served in the military during the Vietnam war were in combat. And then there was the draft. Some 2.2 million men were drafted during the Vietnam war, to serve for two years. But most of those who served in Vietnam were volunteers. Of course, many men volunteered to avoid the draft and getting put in the infantry. This was the case even before the Vietnam war. Infantry duty is a rough business even in peace time.

There were over a million men becoming eligible for the draft each year during the 1960s, but the most that were drafted in any one year (1968) was 334,000. There were plenty of opportunities to a deferment from the draft and avoid service. Minor physical problems would often do it. (Rexbo-Insert Dean's name here) If you had kids, that would often work.

If you had a college education, and were drafted, your chances of ending up in the infantry (unless you volunteered for it) were very low. The army always had lots of technical and administrative jobs for educated draftees. If you wanted to absolutely avoid the chance of combat in Vietnam, you could enlist in the air force. This meant you would have to serve three years. There was a slight chance you might get a job as a crewman aboard a B-52 bomber (of which a few were shot down) or in an air force security unit pulling guard duty in a Vietnam air base (there were some casualties here.) Military pilots took a lot of casualties, but they were nearly all officers, and volunteers. But, generally, a college grad had little to fear from the military in the 1960s unless they volunteered for combat.

Presidential candidate Senator John Kerry, graduating from college in 1966, joined the navy, went to officer training school, and volunteered for combat duty in Vietnam (as skipper of one of the hundreds of riverine boats the navy operated in the Mekong Delta.) He received three flesh wounds from shell fragments (the worst of which had him off duty for two days), and went home after five months because of a Navy rule about a man wounded three times being allowed to leave the combat zone. Kerry ended up serving four years. President George Bush joined the Air National Guard in 1968, volunteered for officer training school and flight school and was on active duty for 23 months, and in the National Guard for four years. For those serving in Vietnam, there was a two percent chance of getting killed (it was much higher for the infantry, who were about ten percent of the troops in Vietnam, but took over 80 percent of the casualties.) Swift Boat crews got shot at a lot, but suffered fewer casualties than your average half a dozen riflemen. The 17 Coast Guard Swift Boats, for example, reported one per 600,000 miles of patrolling (their boats covered about 4,100 miles a month on patrol.) Navy Swift Boats took more fire, but not a whole lot more. Bush flew the F-102 fighter, one of the more dangerous aircraft to fly during the 1960s (one fatal accident per 40,000 flight hours). Bush took on a one percent chance of getting killed by volunteering for flight training in such an aircraft. It would have been much safer to enlist and get a job maintaining the F-102.

Over 90 percent of those who served in the military during the Vietnam war were not in any particular danger. Avoiding service to "save your life" was a myth. Anyone who wanted to avoid danger, and many did, simply joined the navy or air force (and didn't volunteer for flight school), or volunteered for the army on condition that they get a certain non-combat job (the army encouraged this to get qualified volunteers for those positions.) A college grad who enlisted was almost certain to get a safe non-combat kind of job, especially if he could type. This worked for former vice president Al Gore.

Those who avoided service altogether simply didn't want to be bothered with what most Americans then, and now, call "the service." They call it that for a reason. Being in the military for two years, or four, is often uncomfortable. During Vietnam, it could also be painful, and fatal. But everyone understood that, if no one served, we all would lose, whether there was a war going on or not.

[Ranger12 53]

I'll find you the source about the letter from Kerry to Clinton in regards to military service. I have only heard the letter read over the air on radio and seen parts of it on TV. Trust me, as much as liberals tick me off, I don't put words in their mouths or make up stories about them. With everything they say and do, why would I need to.

[Ranger12 53]

And here it is:

Speech of John F. Kerry - Page S2479 Congressional Record

February 27, 1992

Mr. President, I also rise today--and I want to say that I rise reluctantly, but I rise feeling driven by personal reasons of necessity--to express my very deep disappointment over yesterday's turn of events in the Democratic primary in Georgia.

I am saddened by the fact that Vietnam has yet again been inserted into the campaign, and that it has been inserted in what I feel to be the worst possible way. By that I mean that yesterday, during this Presidential campaign, and even throughout recent times, Vietnam has been discussed and written about without an adequate statement of its full meaning.

What is ignored is the way in which our experience during that period reflected in part a positive affirmation of American values and history, not simply the more obvious negatives of loss and confusion.

What is missing is a recognition that there exists today a generation that has come into its own with powerful lessons learned, with a voice that has been grounded in experiences both of those who went to Vietnam and those who did not.

What is missing and what cries out to be said is that neither one group nor the other from that difficult period of time has cornered the market on virtue or rectitude or love of country.

What saddens me most is that Democrats, above all those who shared the agonies of that generation, should now be refighting the many conflicts of Vietnam in order to win the current political conflict of a Presidential primary.

The race for the White House should be about leadership, and leadership requires that one help heal the wounds of Vietnam, not reopen them; that one help identify the positive things that we learned about ourselves and about our Nation, not play to the divisions and differences of that crucible of our generation.

We do not need to divide America over who served and how. I have personally always believed that many served in many different ways. Someone who was deeply against the war in 1969 or 1970 may well have served their country with equal passion and patriotism by opposing the war as by fighting in it. Are we now, 20 years or 30 years later, to forget the difficulties of that time, of families that were literally torn apart, of brothers who ceased to talk to brothers, of fathers who disowned their sons, of people who felt compelled to leave the country and forget their own future and turn against the will of their own aspirations?

Are we now to descend, like latter-day Spiro Agnews, and play, as he did, to the worst instincts of divisiveness and reaction that still haunt America? Are we now going to create a new scarlet letter in the context of Vietnam? Certainly, those who went to Vietnam suffered greatly. I have argued for years, since I returned myself in 1969, that they do deserve special affection and gratitude for service. And, indeed, I think everything I have tried to do since then has been to fight for their rights and recognition.

But while those who served are owed special recognition, that recognition should not come at the expense of others; nor does it require that others be victimized or criticized or said to have settled for a lesser standard. To divide our party or our country over this issue today, in 1992, simply does not do justice to what all of us went through during that tragic and turbulent time.

I would like to make a simple and straightforward appeal, an appeal from my heart, as well as from my head. To all those currently pursuing the Presidency in both parties, I would plead that they simply look at America. We are a nation crying out for leadership, for someone who will bring us together and raise our sights. We are a nation looking for someone who will lift our spirits and give us confidence that together we can grow out of this recession and conquer the myriad of social ills we have at home.

We do not need more division. We certainly do not need something as complex and emotional as Vietnam reduced to simple campaign rhetoric. What has been said has been said, Mr. President, but I hope and pray we will put it behind us and go forward in a constructive spirit for the good of our party and the good of our country.

I thank our distinguished manager of the bill and the Senator from Delaware.

[Tigermike 3,717]

First, you are not really calling bs on my argument, because you seem to have missed my point. It wasn't necessarily to compare military records but to point out the irony, and the gross hypocrisy, of the current Republican effort to smear Kerry as illustrated by this quote from the post I was responding to.

You want to talk about gross hypocrisy? Gross hypocrisy is democrats doing nothing but operating a smear campaign against President Bush for the past ten months then when Kerry's own record, words and actions are exposed to call it a republican smear campaign.

How did he get the Silver Star?

"Surviving, I guess, is the best way to put it," Kerry explains. "I think most people who walk around with medals in this country, may be proud of the medals. And I am. But we’re much more, sort of thoughtful and remembering of the people who didn’t come home, who are really the heroes. And I just am not comfortable, sort of, going into the story."

LINK

Maybe he should explain just whose medals he threw over the fence at the capitol. Mr. Kerry actually makes Bill Clinton seem honest.

[Ranger12 53]

Oh, and about the "how did he get the "Silver Star" question, who knows, because he will not authorize the release of his records. What does Mr. War Hero have to hide? I am a decorated soldier also and I am proud of them, but I do not go around telling everbody I have them and what all they are because then I believe that get's into a "me" issue. The medals I was awarded was because of the men I was surrounded by more then it was anything I did. I can tell you this, I have seen medals handed out to people that did not deserve them because maybe they were good buddies with the 1st Sgt., company CO, or somebody higher and the after action report was maybe exaggerated a little for that person to get that medal. That has alwasy happened and will continue to happen. In most cases, it is hard to dispute them and it is best to just remain silent about it and let them have their cheap medal. I am not saying that is the case with Kerry, but that question is going to continue to follow him until he gives full disclosure of his records.

[Tigermike 3,717]

ranger,

Tonight at work I was talking to a man who spent 26 years in the Army, four of those in Vietnam. After hearing from both the dems and repubs about John Kerry's medals, I asked him if it were easier for an officer to receive a medal than an enlisted man. His answer was an emphatic yes.

It does seem odd that Mr. Kerry received how many purple hearts? But he never missed any time. He never spent any time in the infirmary? How serious were these injuries? Who OK'ed the medal applications? Why won't Mr. Kerry open his records?

[Tiger in Spain 0]

That's the info I want to know as well. When I was over in the desert last year, I once cut my hand while digging my sleeping pit. My hand bled quite a bit, but I never had any thought of putting myself in for a Purple Heart over it. If I were a selfish man, I could have tried to do so knowing that if I were awarded one, I could get a pretty substancial part of my retirement check designated tax free due to combat wounds. I am too honorable a man to even consider doing anything like that though. My granddaddy taught me that, "a man without honor is no man at all."

Ranger, I too have been to those award ceremonies where everyone knows the award is a load of BS. All this does is cheapen the award in the eyes of the troops, even when someone gets it on down the line that really deserves it. Almost always, the guy has put himself in for the award. These types are the political backstabbers that would rather step on your head to get to the next rung on the ladder than to go about things the right way. There is usually 1-2 of these guys in every unit, and they stick out like sore thumbs to everyone else.

It all comes down to honor, either you have it or you don't. I really don't expect our liberals to understand this concept.

[DKW 86 7,899]

Maybe Kerry left Nam so he wouldnt get fragged?