...has not been in office for over 5 years.
...has not been in office for over 5 years.
Earth to Tmy:
Being a fighter pilot is one of the few military jobs where it is almost absolutely certain that one got it due to one's skill, not due to family connections. Sure, family connections might have been used to help the young Bush get into pilot training if the national guard "brass" was reluctant to do so (I don't know if that was the case or not, of course.) But he would never have passed pilot training if he wasn't a decent pilot, for a few obvious reasons:
1). Fighter pilot is a solitary job. You cannot lay back and have the other people in your unit "pick up the slack". The plane is not a commanding officer, who might think twice about busting you in rank if you're the son of a VIP. The plane doesn't care who you are: You screw up, you crash.
2). For this reason, if you don't pass numerous tests during your training, you simply do not get to fly fighter jets, no matter who your daddy is: giving a plane to someone who cannot fly means a). crashing the plane, b). probably killing the pilot. Besides, a flight trainer who "lets slide" a bad pilot's performance out of fear of what his dad would say is running a serious risk of killing himself as well during training. I don't care who daddy is--you won't commit dual suicide with his son, would you?
3). Quite apart from what the plane itself and Bush Jr.'s trainers think, Bush Sr.--you know, the all-powerful papa who got Bush Jr. everything, blah blah blah--was himself a pilot. Sure, had his son flunked out of pilot training, he might have been sorely disappointed. But he of all people would know what planes are like, and would have to be quite insane to tell the course's commander, "sure he can't fly, but do me a favor and let him become a pilot anyway." That would be asking for his son's death warrant, the equivalent of saying, "look, I know regulations forbid it, but just let him shoot himself in the head once in a while--he loves guns!"
4). For all these reasons, had Bush Sr. wanted to protect Bush Jr. from the war, just about the LAST thing he would have done would have been to send him to pilot training. He would have used his connections to get him a desk job in the Pentagon.
delphi_ote
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Skeptic and Tmy, why are you still debating this subject? Glenn didn't say it. It's not real!
Earth to Skeptic.
I have no idea whether it's possible to use connection to become a pilot, but I imagine the national gaurd like to keep a certain safety margin between "suficiently qualified to defend the country in times of war against enemy pilots with misiles and cannons" and "cabable of keeping the plane in the air". So variation of "if he wasn't qualified, he'd be dead" don't wash. Unless of cause you can show me the relevant piece of national guard doctrine that says that a basic ability to keep a plane flying, and perhaps even to land and takeoff with advanced students is all they require.
I have no idea whether it's possible to use connection to become a pilot, but I imagine the national guard...
(snip)
Unless of c[ourse] you can show me the relevant piece of national guard doctrine that says...
I like your attitude, Kerberos: You "imagine" that" the National Guard would do this or that--based on no information whatever--and then ask me to disprove what you happened to "imagine" the National Guard would do by giving you actual military documents.
Well, I am not a pilot, but my information about pilot training comes from conversations I had over the years with close family members and friends who are military fighter pilots.
What's your source--except your imagination, that is?
(snip)
Unless of c[ourse] you can show me the relevant piece of national guard doctrine that says...
I like your attitude, Kerberos: You "imagine" that" the National Guard would do this or that--based on no information whatever--and then ask me to disprove what you happened to "imagine" the National Guard would do by giving you actual military documents.
Well, I am not a pilot, but my information about pilot training comes from conversations I had over the years with close family members and friends who are military fighter pilots.
What's your source--except your imagination, that is?
Hutch
A broken man on a Halifax pier, the last of Barret
Reality has seldom stopped tmy or skeptic...
(where's a good ba-da-bing smilie when you need it? Thanks for the setup line, delphi)
And they told you that the basic ability to keep the plane flying is all that is required to be in the national guard? Really? I think they might have been pulling your leg.
Logic. Common sense. take your pick. I could explain in painstaking detail, why I think that the national gaurd probably likes to keep a safety margin between the minimum standards and managing to avoid crashing all the time, but anybody with an IQ above room temperature should be able to figure it out. In fact I think you know this quite well. Otherwise you wouldn't have felt the need to snip my answer, to disguise just how obvious the point you were objecting to was.
Logic. Common sense. take your pick.
"Ignorance of the subject", actually--or you would have chosen a more convincing source than "logic". Not to be pedantic, but what you think is "logically" the way to train pilots has not the least relation to reality, at least according to the way those I know are fighter pilots described it to me.
This is of course a very common phenomena when dealing with any highly technical field, be it (say) medicine, computer science, commanding armies, or jet flying. What seems "logical" and "the obvious way" to do something from one's armchairs bears absolutely no relation to how things are actually done.
This is not the fault of logic, of course, but of the field in question being far more complicated than what one imagine in one's armchair. You are sitting next to your computer, as an armchair general, complaining that on your utter ignorance of the subject, "logic" and "common sense" tell you that flight training and jet flying should be different than they are.
(shrug)
So what?
"Ignorance of the subject", actually--or you would have chosen a more convincing source than "logic". Not to be pedantic, but what you think is "logically" the way to train pilots has not the least relation to reality, at least according to the way those I know are fighter pilots described it to me.
This is of course a very common phenomena when dealing with any highly technical field, be it (say) medicine, computer science, commanding armies, or jet flying. What seems "logical" and "the obvious way" to do something from one's armchairs bears absolutely no relation to how things are actually done.
This is not the fault of logic, of course, but of the field in question being far more complicated than what one imagine in one's armchair. You are sitting next to your computer, as an armchair general, complaining that on your utter ignorance of the subject, "logic" and "common sense" tell you that flight training and jet flying should be different than they are.
(shrug)
So what?
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Sorry I missed the part where you answered whether you pilot friends told you that all that was required to be a fighter pilot, was the ability to avoid crashing. So if you could just do that please, that would be wonderfull.
LOL.Reality has seldom stopped tmy or skeptic...
(where's a good ba-da-bing smilie when you need it? Thanks for the setup line, delphi)
Tmy
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Reality has seldom stopped tmy or skeptic...
(where's a good ba-da-bing smilie when you need it? Thanks for the setup line, delphi)
HEY!
Ok so Glenn didnt say. But lots of people use the same lines to justify the war. Quite a few JREFers even agreee with the statements.
Mephisto
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I'll agree with you that Bush senior was a fighter pilot, but Baby Bush only pretended. He flew an outdated, high-altitude interceptor which would have been useless even IF they were in Vietnam since the NVA had no high-altitude bombers.
Also, the key players in the Bush administration have a completely lackluster COMBINED mllitary service record, and the Commander in Chief himself can't prove what happened to an entire year and a half of unaccounted time during his tour.
I'm not impressed.
delphi_ote
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(Sigh)
Look, it's simple, really.
The only reason you consider flying fighter jets in the national guard "avoiding" the Vietnam war is that Bush did it. Had it not been Bush, whom you hate, who had done so, you'd consider the idea that fighter pilots in the national guard were cowardly war-avoiders too preposterous to take seriously.
You know damn well that if Bush "avoided" the war, then his wingmates, co-members of the National Guard, and for that matter anybody who was in the Armed forces stateside had also "avoided" the war as were "cowards" as well. But that's OK--the sacred mission of blaming Bush makes it acceptable.
So, please, let us not have all this post-hoc nonsense about how flying jets in the national guard is "really" an act of cowardly malingering, as the only reason you support this preposterous conclusion is that because you have decided a priori what "the truth" is--Bush is a cowardly war-avoider--and will say anything to "support" it.
Had Bush, for example, worked as a nurse in an Army hospital in Virginia, or as a truck driver in a base in California, or a cook in an officer's club in Montana, you'd "prove" to everybody that doing those jobs or comissions were "really" cowardly war-avoiding as well.
It's not as if you determined that flying jets for the national guard is cowardly war avoidence and then found out, to your surprise, that it happened to be the job Bush did during Vietnam. You first knew that Bush flew planes for the national guard, and then set out to "prove" how it's "really" cowardly malingering.
Look, it's simple, really.
The only reason you consider flying fighter jets in the national guard "avoiding" the Vietnam war is that Bush did it. Had it not been Bush, whom you hate, who had done so, you'd consider the idea that fighter pilots in the national guard were cowardly war-avoiders too preposterous to take seriously.
You know damn well that if Bush "avoided" the war, then his wingmates, co-members of the National Guard, and for that matter anybody who was in the Armed forces stateside had also "avoided" the war as were "cowards" as well. But that's OK--the sacred mission of blaming Bush makes it acceptable.
So, please, let us not have all this post-hoc nonsense about how flying jets in the national guard is "really" an act of cowardly malingering, as the only reason you support this preposterous conclusion is that because you have decided a priori what "the truth" is--Bush is a cowardly war-avoider--and will say anything to "support" it.
Had Bush, for example, worked as a nurse in an Army hospital in Virginia, or as a truck driver in a base in California, or a cook in an officer's club in Montana, you'd "prove" to everybody that doing those jobs or comissions were "really" cowardly war-avoiding as well.
It's not as if you determined that flying jets for the national guard is cowardly war avoidence and then found out, to your surprise, that it happened to be the job Bush did during Vietnam. You first knew that Bush flew planes for the national guard, and then set out to "prove" how it's "really" cowardly malingering.
Actually, no. Now what?