pontechango

I don't know if you have ever served your country, so I'll spell it slowly for you:

D D - 2 1 4

It is the most important document you get when you leave the service. It shows if service is honorable.

Ummm...no. Most of the guys on his own boat thought he did ok. Pretty much every other officer and NCO in his unit, about 250 of them, thought he was a ticket-puncher.

I was talking about his own boat, genius. And if they only "thought he did ok" they wouldn't have, to a person, stood next to him at the DNC.

P.S. Using the phrase "um" just to be snotty? Makes you look like an asshat.

And guess what, as soon as he was eligible to get out of there...he did.

Kerry was eligible to get out of Vietnam before he even deployed. He, like Bush, could have used his family's influence to buy a spot in a service that had no chance of going to Vietnam. But he didn't.

I'm no troll. I meant what I said.

Phil Herup:

All you Bush haters with bumper stickers for "Kerry/Edwards" still on your cars.

Thank you.

You give me something to laugh at when I drive my big, gas sucking SUV, which is black with no bumper stickers.

B/C bumper stickers are for a-holes.

Losers.

Why did you bite? Biatch.

You did not vote? Then get off this thread. Its for ADULT Americans who are allowed to vote.

Sturgeon637:

It is the most important document you get when you leave the service. It shows if service is honorable.


again, this is fark where bush is responsible for everything negative, where clinton is spoken about with the same reverence as jesus christ and where nascar is sacred.

get with the program. its not about the facts, its fark!

nerfball

But it doesn't make sense grammatically. It doesn't matter if the facts don't matter. Bush can't be responsible for a fact, regardless of whether or not it is true. "Responsible" implies possesion. Facts is or isn't. There is nothing to possess.

rg

sorry to threadjack but Ashlee Simpson is singing with her tracks again... on top of it this time... at the ORANGE BOWL no less... some crap about lemonade... boy she's HORRIBLE...

I have never heard booing like that after a half-time show. Seriously..

rg:

Heh heh, yeah did you hear all the people booing after she was done? Classic!

Sturgeon637

Would the DD-214 also indicate the corruption of his commanding officers?

How many of you actually know the difference between absence without leave and desertion? Or the difference between the punishments for the two infractions? Do you know how many pilots on active duty are removed from flight status each year for failure to take a medical exam? The memo above only shows he missed a medical exam in TX, it does not show him as a deserter. What that memo is designed to do is give him a kick in the butt to go out and get a medical exam. Its not a reprimand.

People need to get some perspective on this. The whole idea of Bush's military service should be a non-sequitor because of the Vietnam card being played by the left in 1992 and 1996. Poor service or no service during Vietnam became no longer an issue as soon as Clinton was nominated.

Fark political thread play by play:

Left leaning article greenlighted, Those to the right of the first standard deviation attack the article while those on the left of the curve defend it. Vice Versa for a right leaning greenlight.

Repeat ad infinitem. if we could only harness this and properly time the greenlights, we could create a perpetual bandwidth-eating machine.

Sturgeon637:

2005-01-04 10:33:40 PM Sturgeon637

D D - 2 1 4

Is that form completely un-forgeable and quaranteed to have the correct information on it? Would it theoretically be possible to write something on that form that didnt actually happen? Hypothetically?

Just call me crazy but the DoD records of Bushes service REFLECT the memo. It was a great big kicking up of the dust to obscure the real story. Bushes own records reveal he did not fulfill his duties. He also lied about his service.
What the right-wing bloggers and tehir cohorts in the media did was a great diversion from the real story.

Theaetetus
Is the memo being a forgery important? Yes.

Is the fact that hardly anyone called the content questionable important? Yes. I knew it was true when I heard Laura Bush's Weeners about it.

Is it really relevant to the George W. Bush that we know today? Yes. I think that was a long time ago and he was quite young; perhaps we need to cut the man slack about what happened all those years ago. On the other hand, the fact that he is not honest today about what happened back then speaks volumes of his honor now.

RabidWeasel:

The real story is that Rather was doing what the right has accused him of all along, he was exposed before the entire world as a partisan hack, and everyone in the MSM and the left is pretending that none of this ever happened.

In my book that is a good thing. Now we need to expose partisan hacks on all sides of the table not just the ones that go against your party line. Yes Im looking at you Fox News.

GodsRightHandGimp:

Phil Herup: Get off the computer and get that loser bumper sticker off your slow car.

I'm looking at my car and I'm not seeing this bumper sticker your talking about. In fact why would I have a Kerry/Edwards bumber sticker when I didnt even vote.

Nice try troll, now get back under the bridge where you belong.

Phil Herup:

I'm no troll. I meant what I said.

Phil Herup:

All you Bush haters with bumper stickers for "Kerry/Edwards" still on your cars.

Thank you.

You give me something to laugh at when I drive my big, gas sucking SUV, which is black with no bumper stickers.

B/C bumper stickers are for a-holes.

Losers.

Why did you bite? Biatch.

You did not vote? Then get off this thread. Its for ADULT Americans who are allowed to vote.



Sorry for repeat

pontechango

Sad. You are reduced to slander because "obviously" if the results are not what you want then the military must be corrupt.

Go save a whale.

LOTS of bloggers are stupid, thats why they are bloggers. Just another stupid fad.

To ALL of you people who can NOT let GO of the Past and keep bringing up old accusations about BUSH and VIetnam, PLEASE .... please - listen to THESE words:

Congressional Record -- Senate
(Legislative day of Thursday, January 30, 1992)
102nd Cong. 2nd Sess. 138 Cong Rec S 2479

[*S2479] Mr. KERRY. 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.

So - all of you FAITHFUL democrats, Liberals and .... other
aspects of our fine nation, HEED THE WORDS of your Respected
Eleder ( almost ) leader, and :

LET IT DROP.

So - no more AWOL accusations with out proof, that's slander.

.... Kerry would want it that way ....

Sturgeon637 brings up Bushes DD214. Funny but his DD214 is not one of the records released. The DD214 has not been made public. Also in his discharge notes, Bush was given something other than a standard honorable discharge. The code used is one for "You quit and we won't say you were fired"

TheAgeOfEgos

Baaah partisan sheep. Baaaahhhh.

Truer words have never been spoken.

powerse5

LOTS of bloggers are stupid, thats why they are bloggers. Just another stupid fad.

Except for maybe those words.

Doubt anyone will care at this stage of the discussion, but: the Word version of Rather's document doesn't match the original. Superficially it looks similar, but if you look at individual characters (i.e., B H 1 8 7), there are subtle but consistent differences in the shaping. The original might well have been made with a word processor, but not "Microsoft Word using default settings" as many enjoy saying.

First time the filter got me. That should have been Laura Bush's f i r s t...c o m m e n t

Sturgeon637

Sad. You are reduced to slander because "obviously" if the results are not what you want then the military must be corrupt.

What's sad is that you totally ignored the US News link.

consdubya

Is that form completely un-forgeable and quaranteed to have the correct information on it? Would it theoretically be possible to write something on that form that didnt actually happen? Hypothetically?

Highly unlikely as each DD214 was recorded on microfiche as received at the National Military Records Center.

/begin Reynolds haberdashery mode

Unless Bush went back in time and corrupted the original dd214 before it was recorded on microfiche.

/end foil

STEWART: In terms of absurdity and their world matching up to the one that -- you know, it was interesting.
President Bush was saying, John Kerry's rhetoric doesn't match his record.

But I've heard President Bush describe his record. His record doesn't match his record.

Jon Stewart on Crossfire

Phil Herup:

You did not vote? Then get off this thread. Its for ADULT Americans who are allowed to vote.

Oh I'm allowed to vote but I choose not too. Why would I want to contribute to the decay of the American society? Why would I cast a vote for someone who has no intention of keeping his promises? Why would I vote for someone simply becasue they are the lesser of two evils and more importantly why would you?

I guess what is trying to be said is this:

"We tried our best"!

"Well, your best was an idiot!"

Sorry for the long post but this is seriously old news.


::::::::



He didn't meet the commitments, or face the punishment.

Twice during his Guard service -- first when he joined in May 1968, and again before he transferred out of his unit in mid-1973 -- Bush signed documents pledging to meet training commitments or face a punishment.

In 1973, 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. . . " 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.

Early in his Guard service, in 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 performed no service for one six-month period in 1972 and for another period of almost three months in 1973, the records show.

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. They did neither. 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 asserts 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 infuriates Army Colonel Gerald A. Lechliter.
''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."

Lieutenant Colonel Albert C. Lloyd Jr., a former Texas Air National Guard personnel chief who vouched for Bush at the White House's request in February, agreed that Bush walked away from his obligation to join a reserve unit in the Boston area when he moved to Cambridge in September 1973. By not joining a unit in Massachusetts, Lloyd said in an interview last month, Bush ''took a chance that he could be called up for active duty. But the war was winding down, and he probably knew that the Air Force was not enforcing the penalty."

But Lloyd said that singling out Bush for criticism is unfair. ''There were hundreds of guys like him who did the same thing," he said.

Lawrence J. Korb, an assistant secretary of defense for manpower and reserve affairs in the Reagan administration, said after studying many of the documents that it is clear to him that Bush ''gamed the system." And he agreed with Lloyd that Bush was not alone in doing so. ''If I cheat on my income tax and don't get caught, I'm still cheating on my income tax," Korb said.

Korb said Bush could have been ordered to active duty for missing more than 10 percent of his required drills in any given year. Bush, according to the records, fell shy of that obligation in two successive fiscal years.

Korb said Bush also made a commitment to complete his six-year obligation when he moved to Cambridge, a transfer the Guard often allowed to accommodate Guardsmen who had to move elsewhere. ''He had a responsibility to find a unit in Boston and attend drills," said Korb, who is now affiliated with a liberal Washington think tank. ''I see no evidence or indication in the documents that he was given permission to forgo training before the end of his obligation. If he signed that document, he should have fulfilled his obligation."

The documents Bush signed only add to evidence that the president -- then the son of Houston's congressman -- received favorable treatment when he joined the Guard after graduating from Yale in 1968. Ben Barnes, who was speaker of the Texas House of Representatives in 1968, said in a deposition in 2000 that he placed a call to get young Bush a coveted slot in the Guard at the request of a Bush family friend.

Bush was given an automatic commission as a second lieutenant, and dispatched to flight school in Georgia for 13 months. In June 1970, after five additional months of specialized training in F-102 fighter-interceptor, Bush began what should have been a four-year assignment with the 111th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron.

In May 1972, Bush was given permission to move to Alabama temporarily to work on a US Senate campaign, with the provision that he do equivalent training with a unit in Montgomery. But Bush's service records do not show him logging any service in Alabama until October of that year.

And even that service is in doubt. No one has come forward with any credible recollection of having witnessed Bush performing guard service in Alabama or after he returned to Houston in 1973. While Bush was in Alabama, he was removed from flight status for failing to take his annual flight physical in July 1972. On May 1, 1973, Bush's superior officers wrote that they could not complete his annual performance review because he had not been observed at the Houston base during the prior 12 months.

Although the records of Bush's service in 1973 are contradictory, some of them suggest that he did a flurry of drills in 1973 in Houston -- a weekend in April and then 38 days of training crammed into May, June, and July. But Lechliter, the retired colonel, concluded after reviewing National Guard regulations that Bush should not have received credit -- or pay -- for many of those days either. The regulations, Lechliter and others said, required that any scheduled drills that Bush missed be made up either within 15 days before or 30 days after the date of the drill.

Lechliter said the records push him to conclude that Bush had little interest in fulfilling his obligation, and his superiors preferred to look the other way. Others agree. ''It appears that no one wanted to hold him accountable," said retired Major General Paul A. Weaver Jr., who retired in 2002 as the Pentagon's director of the Air National Guard.

majorhopper:

Don't bring up Jon Stewart. He is teh liberal!!!on1!one11!

I'll admit it -- I voted for Kerry (though I never liked him personally). And I have always believed that Bush benefited from preferential treatment when it came to getting into the Guard, whether or not somebody produces a memo to "prove" it.

So far I'm in agreement with those liberal media establishment types who defend Dan Rather and the memo. Where they part company with me is in believing that a "fake but accurate" memo counts. Somehow they really think that portion of the American public who have not made up their mind on the issue should be convinced by a fake memo (and it's unquestionably fake) just because they, the media, say it's accurate. It boggles their minds that somebody who's not a committed right-winger would respond to the revelation that the memo was fake by becoming more skeptical of what the media claims is the point of the memo.

oh der "lesserevil" you really don't believe what you are saying "They will also IGNORE the fact that while Bush SIGNED his Form 180, giving the public FULL ACCESS to his military records."
Bush was saying he would release the records but he still has not. AP and Reuters went to court to get their FOIA requests fulfilled. Bush did NOT authorize all of his records released. That is the fact. Check Kerrys' website and see a few hundred pages of records.

funny... when I interview the Col who swore G.W. into the guard, he had nothing but praise for him and said he most certaintly did not do anything improper.

Weave

Blame Bush for what?

Weaver, I've read a lot of your posts on other threads, and I respect you. But please, just answer consdubya's question, if only so that your pointless back-and-forth sniping will stop.

The question ("Do you really believe that Bush did not go AWOL, and that he served his entire time honorably?") is relevant because it is what the memos, real or fraudulent, were ABOUT. It would be disgusting if they were fraudulent, but that doesn't mean the underlying message was false.

Uhm, CornFedIowan, you shoulda followed some earlier links...like the White House releasing a document of their own that had those same features. Your link has already been discredited by the White House itself

"They will also IGNORE the fact that while Bush SIGNED his Form 180, giving the public FULL ACCESS to his military records, Kerry REFUSED TO SIGN FORM 180. On top of that, the Pentagon has stated there are over 100 pages in his military records, of which Kerry revealed exactly FOUR PAGES of. Yeah, FOUR."

Bush signed the Federal Form. Bush was in a State NG, which does NOT give all documents to the Federal Government or DoD. He has to sign the Texas version to release his documents. He never did.

Oh I'm allowed to vote but I choose not too. Why would I want to contribute to the decay of the American society? Why would I cast a vote for someone who has no intention of keeping his promises? Why would I vote for someone simply becasue they are the lesser of two evils and more importantly why would you?

Why would I vote for the lesser of two evils? Gee whiz, that is easy. To do my best to prevent the greater evil from coming to power. Kerry was weak. Bush scares the crap out of those who want to kill us.

What is all this crap about the "decay of society"? Life is hard, so what. Anything worthwhile is hard. Life sucked a lot more in the past. Just check your history books.

On a thread dealing with Dan Rather, Weaver95 blames "liberals".

For what? Everything, apparently.

Weaver95 [TotalFark]

"Blame Bush for what?"

Everything, apparently.

Why don't you cite several examples to support this position?

Just kidding Weaver95! - everyone knows you just make shiat up to go along with the dialogue in your imagination.

I'm busy proving a point. Namely that in any given thread where any given liberal is caught doing something that he/she shouldn't have been doing, fark lefties will automatically hijack the thread and blame Bush for something irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Point taken. Now answer the question.