Goomba38 wrote:
> aem wrote:
>> jmcquown wrote:
>>> Doubtless you have more military experience than my father who was
>>> a 30 year Marine and retired a full bird Colonel. Yeah, he really
>>> enjoyed writing letters of condolence to the folks back home; it
>>> was one of his fondest duties. He saw enough action, sweetums,
>>> since he was shot twice. And sadly, those teenagers sent to Nam
>>> were nothing but stupid... they didn't want to be there (who did?)
>>> but they also didn't know how to follow orders.
>>
>> That is an outrageous and an outrageously stupid thing to say. More
>> than 59,000 young American men were killed over there, some of them
>> my
>> very good friends. Some of them for not following orders, I'm sure,
>> others for following stupid orders, and many others because that's
>> what happens to young men in war. You should shut the **** up
>> because you
>> don't know what the **** you're talking about.
>
> My cousin was a Green Beret chopper pilot in Viet Nam when he had fly
> some visiting blow hard Congressman around to see the action. He
> repeatedly told the Congressman it was not a good day to fly... a
> dangerous day in fact.
> He was shot in the air by enemy fire when the Congressman insisted.
> He followed "orders" yet would you say he was stupid Jill? Lucky for
> him
> he lived to tell about it instead of having some letter written to his
> mother by someone who had no clue what really happened.
> Goomba

I know full well what happened there. So does my father. Dad could have
stayed stateside. He'd achieved sufficient rank to ask for specific tours
of duty. But he believed in what the government told him so he did two
tours over there.

By the way, a Congressman has no authority to give a military chopper pilot
"orders" so who was the stupid one? The politicos who told the pilot to
fly? Yessiree, stupid. The pilot for not saying "No sir, sorry sir!" and
getting their butt out of there? They should have grounded that Congressman
in enemy territory... left him there to get his political butt shot off with
full photo ops.

Jill