Blighted, to no small degree, by hypersensitivity to R.R.E. (Republican Rhetorical Excess). Sorry, but you’re gonna have to learn to deal with it… I was born with Dick Nixon’s grace and good humor, not Ronald Reagan’s.

And as neither of you were around for my original rant of about 8 months ago (I’m still amazed I didn’t get banned on the spot), you haven’t the slightest idea of what constitutes “out of line” comments about Boomers.

Exactly correct. The whole dance of choosing sides had a lot of undercurrents, but anything actually connected to the actual war was only coincidental.

Of course, as a leading edge boomer, my memory is no doubt tainted by the same process.

I don’t think they are letting VP aircraft fly ground strike missions even with JDAM. For one thing the fast movers don’t like a glorified airliner doing their job. It might imply something about their manhood. I could see them using SLAM/SLAM-ER (land attack Harpoon variant) for some special targets but I doubt the powers that be would approve of that.

During GWI, the Harpoon equipped P-3s were not allowed to engage the enemy because of the “risk” to the AC. They were really saying that if a P-3 could do maritime strike in coastal waters why would you need to spend big money on dedicated strike AC. However, maritime strike is one of primary missions for the P-3 since harpoon was introduced.

Any other questions from the ’70s?

Well, now that you mentioned it…

- how many times did John Kerry meet with officials of the North Vietnamese government? What was discussed? What actions did John Kerry take on behalf of the North Vietnamese government and how was he compensated?

- Did John Kerry’s VVAW pressure families of POWs to testify, falsely or otherwise, in return for mail access to their POW family member?

I could think of a few more, but those will do for starters.

Regarding military reports, I have to remember my CAP records. It’s 1LT.

The Navy doesn’t have such a rank, of course – it’s JG and then LT. My father was a JG at the end of WW-II. Ironically he was in a seaplane tender, which meant he was in the VP navy just like me. He did know how to drive the ship, while I have never in my life been on an active Navy ship.

My take on the National Guard stuff is its nonsense, but a coordinated smear by the MSM that will never admit it (for a laugh, read the BGlobe’s statement that they just happened to make their way through the data in time for this week).

The National Guard service shows one thing most people won’t think of: Bush was brave. Those aircraft were very dangerous and the ejection seat didn’t work near the ground. Bush flew night intercepts (an easy way to lose orientation) over the gulf – not a good chance of survival on bail-out.

From a standpoint of evaluating him, it’s a waste of time. What question is of relevance today? We know he became a drunken flake, and then solved that.

Any other questions from the ’70s?

The running updates are fascinating – we get to watch point-counterpoint in something approaching real-time.

The question remains, however – why doesn’t the MSM go through this sort of vetting of the information they put out?

I’ll wager on forged plants at this point. The only “wait a sec” type counter so far is that someone who was in the military around that time worked for the PR office somewhere and says they had plenty of access to variable font typewriters but also states that nobody liked using them. Somehow it doesn’t seem plausible to me that a type of typewriter available to the PR people that even they didn’t like to use would be the commander’s “memo to file” machine.

A couple interesting things (OK, interesting to me but I’m a whackjob)…

The Whitehouse apparently “released” copies of these documents – the copies that had been faxed to them by CBS! Does this suggest that they don’t know, or don’t particularly care much, what the full ANG files might contain? (I suspect that is true – Bush would have no way of knowing if some commander was typing up Memos to Self for File or if some base brass was discussing any “pressure” they were feeling.)

Looks like the standard issue IBM … with which I’m infinitely familiar, since I was one of the few people in my ROTC battalion who could actually type.

In that case LTC is USA/USMC and Lt Col is USAF