You should point out that he called out Murtha by name. Outside of volunteering for Vietnam and receiving the Bronze Star with Valor device, two Purple Hearts and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, what does he know about the military.

That's like Eggfart complaining that liberals can't spell.

[T]he majority of the most vocal of the war critics have never even worn the uniform of our country.

Pretty funny. Aside from the obvious comparison to Republican chicken hawks, he doesn't seem to consider analogous observations. For example:

The majority of the most vocal critics of big government have never even served in public office.

No shit, Sherlock.

....neither have the advocates...

Parlor game: is there any group in America of whom Thomas' statement is not true? ("Former soldiers" is cheating.)

(Actually, "airline pilots" might qualify, but I'm having trouble coming up with more.)

LOLOLOLOL x infinity

W. Thomas Smith over at NRO: If there is any aspect of this war that is a mess, it is the militarily stifling mess created by the micro-managing politicians who think they know something about warfighting and the classic principles of war (you know, the basics as fleshed out by the likes of Clausewitz, Jomini, and Frederick the Great).

Well, I don't claim to be any great student of any of those three, but I think the following quote from Clausewitz is telling: No one starts a war—or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so—without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.

Since we achieved the stated aim of ridding Iraq of WMD's, it's time to go home. Since there never were any WMD's in Iraq, we could have achieved the stated aim by doing nothing at all. Oops, sorry about all those dead people.

The great marker of sociopaths and republicans is a complete lack of introspection or self-analysis. So this kind of insane remark is perfectly logical to them.

"...the uniform of our country."

Does he mean a NASCAR jumpsuit???

It's just stunning how intolerant some right-wingers are of dissent - they perceive any dissent as 'giving comfort to the enemy.' And speaking of chutzpah, I ran across this gem - another Republican caught with his pants down: Fl. State Rep. Allen

W. Thomas Smith - what a tool. The one and only Pale Rider slapped the shit out of him at my place a while back.

[I, for one, am in no mood for the egbert troll.]

Ramesh Ponnuru's uterus must have produced a lot of babies, as he is so much admired at the NRO Corner for his principled opposition to abortion.

War supporters always get in a snit when someone brings up the chicken hawk argument, but it seems to me to a perfectly reasonable issue to bring up. If one is healthy and of military age and believes that the war was and is a good idea, why is it inappropriate to ask people why they have not decided to take direction to support the cause? I really don't get it.

There have been some hysterical responses when people have been asked this question. Not too long ago, smarmy Matthew Continetti, the intellectual progeny of even smarmier Bill Kristol, tried to evade a questioner on this topic on C-SPAN, and, of course, there's Max Blumenthal's video made at a Young Republicans convention.

Slimeballs all.

"Meanwhile, real Americans and war supporters have served in wars or supported the war effort."

Hey, spermbert, er, umm, egbert. Don't presume to speak for me or any other Viet Nam vet without posting a copy of your DD 214. Put it online next to Cheney's and Wolfowitz's.

So you have joined up, then egbert?

I mean, I'm a Citizen, even if we let Heinlein define it. I am a "real American" too - hell, I was born on a Navy base. And I oppose this war and have since before it started.

I called this shit in 2002 - and I am not apologizing for being right. You, however, should apologize all day every day, you fucking chickenshit moron.

Uh, what she says.

http://www.awolbush.com/whoserved.html

Check out the enclosed list of who has served their country....

Wow. Rove is getting brave. He is now trying to go after the one thing they can't run from...the chickenhawk label. Good luck geek. I really hope you keep pushing this shit. In fact, I double dog dare you to...

...and the land-slide brought 'em down

ah, kevin. don't you know jim webb gave up his veteran status when he spoke against dear leader?

Sixty-two years ago today we incinerated 100,000 CIVILIANS in Hiroshima.

Too many are posturing for war. This is always dangerous for ordinary people who must suffer the effects.

I am always suspicious of anyone who adopts a "get tough" posture, regardless of party.

Are you?

Wow, Smith really drank the crazy-juice today. This is my second-favorite passage:

"Then there are my favorites like Reid, Pelosi, Biden, and Murtha, all of whom have consistently given aid and comfort to the enemy with declarations of a 'lost war,' a 'disaster,' and a 'failed policy;' as well as referring to our Marines here in Anbar as being 'cold-blooded' killers. What do they — save perhaps the agenda-driven turncoat Murtha — really know about war?"

Yes, to the Smiths of the world this is a "war we have won" that has been a "triumph" in every way, with a "winning policy" to boot. Any dissent from that line is treason.

Wow.

Just wow.

These yellow-faced chickenshit cowards dare to say this shit without even a trace of embarrassment. Where was this jackshit when his recruiter called? Where was Rove, Bushie, Cheney, etc when boys were dying in agony in 'Nam and their country needed them?

they are beneath contempt. They are traitors and as Republicans, they are dismantling this country and doing the terrorists' work for them.

Good work Rethugs.

I do not know this W. Thomas Smith guy, but I wonder in the real sense if he has a low IQ, I mean is he really stupid? Wouldn't most people who oppose war not join the military voluntarily and since the US military has been a volunteer force since the 1970s, ergo, a majority of anti-war people are not military.

Just wondering where freaks like W.T.Smith come from?

Yea, deejaayss I get very suspicious.

You gotta admit, it takes balls for someone writing for National Review to even bring up the subject.

Nope. It only takes a complete lack of self-awareness. What is remarkable is that a creature lacking self-awareness can be smart enough to write complete sentences.

Beauchamp story ends. Of course, you can delete this like the others.

"Beauchamp story ends."

Finally. Now will someone pull the plug on TNR and put it out of all good progressives' misery?

And, so Beauchamp lied.

So that means Iraq really was the right thing to do, hooray! We can finally win now that he is out of the way!

Wow, I'm so glad that's over with. Let the victory commence.

Of course just like Matt Dirty Sanchez, the Weekly Standard has super duper top secret Jack Bauer types in the military who update them regularly about such sensitive matters.

Mike K: Beauchamp story ends. Of course, you can delete this like the others.

Sure.

After military interrogators had their way with him, Beauchamp recanted.

Wow, what a surprise.

Same folks who covered up the Tillman episode and lied about Jessica Lynch get to interrogate and cow Beauchamp in Iraq where he is subject to a "friendly fire accident" into a false statement and Mike K thinks that ends it.

Well, he is an apologist for all things Bush and all things pro-war.

After military interrogators had their way with him, Beauchamp recanted.

No shit. You get caught doing this kind of thing in the army, I can only imagine what they threatened him with.

Beauchamp story ends

I will say it again - somewhere in the middle lies the truth. On the one hand you have a heavily armed fighting force, and the only thing standing between order and "The Lord of the Flies" is the Honor Code. You have Nate Sassaman himself pissing all over the Honor Code and losing his career.

Everyone has been eager to rush to judgment. On the right, and the left, everyone was ready to issue indictments. Everyones patriotism was questioned and across the land, tar and feathers have been on backorder for a week.

And nobody learned anything about waiting until the god-damned facts were in and they will do it all over again the very next opportunity. Idiots.

(As to what he was threatened with: probably clerical work - no soldier wants to be a titless WAC in a war zone.)

This part is just a lie:

Then there are my favorites like Reid, Pelosi, Biden, and Murtha, all of whom have consistently given aid and comfort to the enemy with declarations of a "lost war," a "disaster," and a "failed policy;" as well as referring to our Marines here in Anbar as being "cold-blooded" killers.

Murtha said that, very specifically about Haditha.

These people are just nuts.

So according to the logic of some idiot at NRO, if an elected official openly criticizes the blatant mishandling of this war, that is somehow the same as giving aid and comfort to the enemy?

How unbelievably fucking stupid are these people?

Clinical profile of a psychopath
(as defined by Hervey Cleckley, MD, cinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia)

1. Superficial charm and above average intelligence.
2. Absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking.
3. Absence of nervousness or neurotic manifestations.
4. Unreliability.
5. Untruthfulness and insincerity.
6. Lack of remorse or shame.
7. Antisocial behavior without apparent compunction.
8. Poor judgment and failure to learn from experience.
9. Pathological egocentricity and incapacity to love.
10. General poverty in major affective reactions.
11. Specific loss of insight.
12. Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations.
13. Fantastic and uninviting behavior with drink, and sometimes without.
14. Suicide threats rarely carried out.
15. Sex life impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated.
16. Failure to follow any life plan.

Who does this remind you of?

Karl Rove.

Who does this remind you of?

Tony Soprano?

BGRS, we still don't have the facts. I'm sorry to have to say this, but the military propaganda office doesn't really have a lot of credibility. How many times does the military get to go out and tell lies to the American people before one must rely on sources other than the official military line?

Here's what we do know: rape, murder and degradation have all occurred in Iraq under the noses of the military command. Some of those criminal acts have been prosecuted. But we also know that some of the worst atrocities occurred with the knowledge of the chain of command; Abu Ghraib and the "Shock And Awe" bombing of Iraq come to mind (bombing a city for the purposes of arousing fear in the population is the very definition of terrorism. Using air bombing to assassinate the leader of a nation is not only wildly inefficient it is a war crime under the prevailing conditions in 2003).

[T]he majority of the most vocal of the war critics have never even worn the uniform of our country.
------------

Uh, what about the credential of being a United States Citizen who is a Taxpayer? The government serves _US_ not the other way around, the last time I checked the Constitution. Wars are financed with MY wallet and I demand accountability for those dollars. IF that can't be provided to my satisfaction then I do not want my representatives in Congress to spend a single dime more on this bullshit.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp--author of the much-disputed "Shock Troops" article in the New Republic's July 23 issue as well as two previous "Baghdad Diarist" columns--signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods--fabrications containing only "a smidgen of truth," in the words of our source.

"Our source" being the supergenius talking monkey that lives in their ass.

BGRS, we still don't have the facts.

Nope, we sure don't - that is why my condemnation is broadcast 360 degrees. I think there is plenty to go around.

National Review employees all take part in extremely taxing, ongoing bootcamp training, with daily morning scrimmages using live chickens instead of soccer balls, and have thrice weekly bayonet practices using the corpses of dead Chinese prisoners. Don't you know that??

It takes a great degree of intestinal fortitude to crush every last vestige of honor, decency, and basic logic within oneself, but the folks at the National Review and the Wall Street Journal editorial page are up this challenge.

Or are you for the terrorists?

Oh, that was good Anon...

Maybe my view of this is limited, but on this board at least the bulk of the argument has been between: "It never happened" and "Sorry, we have already seen worse and haven't seen any evidence this is false."

That second argument seems to have emerged pretty much unscathed. The recantation has all the credibility of Inner-Party dicta.

Let’s not forget the chicken hawk commander and chief. I am of the Viet Nam generation. Of my colleagues, some served, some went to Canada, and some like me were lucky to have bad eyes and a high draft number. But the fact remains; the waiting list for a run of the mill infantry national guard position was over two years. Yet W. claims he just walked into the Texas Air National Guard Office and they were looking for jet pilots. Hell, I would have flown F102’s if they had offered it to me (what young male wouldn’t have?). The fact that Bush can tell the story with a straight face means he is not only a chicken hawk, but a liar (yah, I know, real news flash). The irony is he couldn’t even fly F102’s over the Gulf (Gulf of Mexico, not Gulf of Tonkin) for a few years. He still ended up going AWOL.

"...the uniform of our country."

"Does he mean a NASCAR jumpsuit???"

No, he means the hairnet and smock of your local Wendy's.

What percentage of National Review writers has ever served in the military, ya think? Maybe just a little over zero?

This "you can't criticize the war unless you were once a soldier" mentality is just another draconian attempt by the right to shut people up who they don't agree with.

If you universalize this view, we couldn't get anything done at all in America. Think about it -- what if we applied this principle to domestic policy:

"You can't have views about disaster relief unless you lived through a flood . . ."

"You can't have views about poverty if you haven't lived in the ghetto"

"You can't have views about the health care unless you have been severely ill."

It's quite reasonable to hold views on issues we haven't directly lived or experienced. That's what education is for. God forbid we should all have to experience war first hand before we could say it is not desirable.

What's hypocritcal is assuming the mantle of a soldier the way Bush and Cheney do without ever having been one, and then questioning the patriotism of those those who disagree with them. Heck, lots of soldiers disagree with Bush and Cheney and the Administration still says they are giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The issue isn't really about having been a soldier, it's about repressing dissent by trying to classify people as so unpatriotic they are unworthy of being listened to.

I call bullshit on W. Thomas Smith.

This business of war critics not having been veterans bugs me. I'm of the Vietnam War generation and not a veteran, but if I'd been a year or two older, flunked out or run afoul of the law, I would have had to contribute a few years of my life to Uncle Sam. At Berkeley back then it was taken for granted that guys past the age of graduation would be veterans.

I graduated in 1972, my lottery number was 139, and it must have been high enough; I never got the letter from my draft board. Most of my male friends older than I did serve, though to a man they loathed the war.

Why am I bothering attempting to refute a typical slander from the sort of child who plays with action figures?

signed a sworn statement admitting

LMAO.

Here in Chicago, when you hear that some perp has signed a sworn statement admitting guilt to some crime, the only pertinent question is were the electrodes placed on the genitals or the nipples.

Fafner

If I recall correctly, the F102 Starfighter had overly small wings (an otherwise excellent design, but optimised for high level interception of Soviet Bombers, ie very high rate of climb), and was something of a 'widow maker'.

So it's possible that the objection to reporting for duty was that the F102 was actually a reasonably dangerous plane to fly.

Could we add cowardice to the charge 'dereliction of duty'?

I don't know if you read David Kaiser's blog (History Unfolding) but I suspect that historians are going to be so down on this Administration (ranking it in the Harding/ Coolidge sort of level, or maybe the Carter Administration or the one in 1850? (Buchanan?)) that it won't matter.

I really like Kaiser's blog, because he is a diplomatic historian (increasingly rare in history departments) and a political historian, with a speciality on postwar US. So his comparison of Bush v. Nixon, say, is incredibly apt-- his piece on Nixon and Vietnam and Bush and Iraq is classic.

http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/

As one US general said at a conference (I can't remember who/where), if there's anything the last 6 years prove, it is that it does matter who you elect to the Presidency. If you elect a guy who is not too smart (in a policy sense-- in a political sense I think he is a brilliant politician) and not too worried about the details, well, it shows.

If you universalize this view, we couldn't get anything done at all in America. Think about it -- what if we applied this principle to domestic policy...

"You can't have views about poverty if you haven't lived in the ghetto"

Isn't this now being applied to John Edwards?

Among military members and their immediate families who responded to a national New York Times/CBS News poll in May, two-thirds said things were going badly, compared with just over half, about 53 percent, a year ago.

Fewer than half of the families and military members said the United States did the right thing in invading Iraq.

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F30D14F7345A0C768DDDAE0894DF404482

Why do the troops hate the troops?

I pray that my children see the day when Americans stop glorifying the military and the United States no longer has a standing army or navy, as our Founding Fathers envisioned. Only then will reason and compassion reign and revenge, small-mindedness and hatred won't be the guiding lights of our foreign policy. I doubt that will ever happen, though.

All great empires eventually collapse from overreach and overspending on their military. I see the same thing coming for the United States. In fact, it may not be more than 10 or 20 years away...

Smith is right. It's absolute hypocrisy for liberals to oppose the war without having served in the military. They are opposed to democracy for Iraqis, but they probably have never voted themselves, either. But for that we should be thankful.

[T]he majority of the most vocal of critics of the war critics have never even carried a protest sign.

"You can't have views about poverty if you haven't lived in the ghetto"

Isn't this now being applied to John Edwards?"

Right, snicker-snack. Except that he has been poor. But you can't have opinions on poverty unless you're poor *right now*.

ever heard of the old guard ? you know , the one that requires a white house security clearence. al, can kiss mt ass.& bring'm home now.

If I recall correctly, the F102 Starfighter had overly small wings...
Posted by: Valuethinker on August 7, 2007 at 4:29 AM

You're thinking of the F-104 Starfighter, "Value"thinker, not the F-102 Delta Dagger.

But I wouldn't expect a liberal to be knowledgeable about such things.

[This is a warning. I've had enough of your hateful, divisive garbage.]

Speaking of chutzpah, what was that chest-thumping quote you had about predicting the outcome of the Beauchamp story, again, Kevin.

Man, that $hit sandwich you're eating has got to taste a lot like crow right now, huh? Regret the premature gloating, yet?

BGRS: (As to what he was threatened with: probably clerical work - no soldier wants to be a titless WAC in a war zone.)

Tell that to the soldier who sent out the Abu Ghraib photos. He received death threats and was forced to move from his home town. For telling the truth. Nice message to any soldier who wants to tell the truth: you speak the truth, you die. Not hard to imagine why no one in Beauchamp's company would corroborate his story with death threats hanging over them, not to mention what the military itself has done to these truth-tellers, which is not merely assigning them desk jobs.

The military has repeatedly lied about atrocities in Iraq and has covered them up. Only a few brave and honorable soldiers have been able to pierce the green wall.

Nevertheless, even assuming that Beauchamp lied, that one lie pales in comparison to the ubiquitous lying by conservative soldiers. There are scores, even hundreds of soldiers who lied about Abu Ghraib, some of them of very high rank, soldiers who were endlessly quoted on winger blog and media sites.

Not a single apology from wingers for quoting them.

Not a single acknowledgement of error on the part of wingers.

Just excuse and rationalization after rationalization and excuse, and then they have the gall, the absolute and utter gall, to say that the single incidence Beauchamp would represent if he is lying is damaging to the left.

Wingers are pathetic hypocrites who tolerate 1000x the amount of lying the left has ever tolerated and about much more serious matters.

And they still won't admit that many winger sites said Beauchamp wasn't even a real soldier and they still won't apologize for getting it wrong.

Chickenhawks, all of them.

RW: Regret the premature gloating, yet?

"Mission Accomplished"

Now, there's some premature gloating.

Only, soldiers died because of it.

I also seem to remember some predictions about how liberals were going to have egg all over their faces when "massive stockpiles of WMDs" were found throughout Iraq, along with a nuclear program just about to deliver a nuclear weapon, not to mention how liberals were going to look foolish when Abu Ghraib torture and abuse claims turned out to be false.

The Right's lies and acceptance of lies concerning the war and Abu Ghraib makes any lie Beauchamp might have told pale by comparison.

You ate the bigger sh*t sandwich on the war and Abu Ghraib, RW; hope you enjoyed it - the 3500 soldiers who have died and the torture victims certainly didn't enjoy your premature gloating.

"Whoooo hoooo, Mission Accomplished!"

Suck. On. It.

Propaganda requires big bold lies to countervail reality.

Remember Republicans create their own reality. They don’t run think tanks worthy of the name or journals worthy of the name. They run propaganda shops that are concerned with maintaining the economic distribution of power and control of the war gravy train.

People who value liberal democracy, or Christian justice, or the notion of good government may be concerned with truth, but not those who want power and only power. For these people good government is for suckers and only for home consumption.

Now THERE'S chutzpah -- Al attacking someone for being stupid.

Ah, the terror that must have struck the hearts of those poor Victorians on Vancouver Island recently, when the SS "Lollypoop" Noordam sailed in with the fierce crew of Lt Col Jonah Goldberg, Major Smith, and Lt Fuzzchin Lowery. Such a manly crew sailing aboard on a manly NRO cruise. A lot of "discipline" must have been applied by all while sailing from Alaska. Goldberg running amok in his tutu yelling, "Cat-o-nines, cat-o-nines".

While cruising and a'flailin aboard the Noordam, Goldberg took a moment to send out a column which the "Ever Fair and Balanced" Oregonian printed Sunday.

In his column, Jonah made a couple of points, seemingly about Iraq, but... He wrote, "And while government can't make a good society out of a bad one, a bad government is unlikely to create a good society. Indeed, the denial of civil liberties within the context of a free political system is a bigger problem than poverty when it comes to terrorism. 'When nonviolent means of protest are curtailed, Krueger told the WSJ that malcontents appear to be more likely to turn to terrorist tactics'."

Hmmm, Jonah, or even just voting the bastards out. Great crop you and your ilk have sowed, Jonah, the reaping is nigh.

Smith says : "classic principles of war (you know, the basics as fleshed out by the likes of Clausewitz, Jomini, and Frederick the Great). Those birds on the Hill have obviously never read any of the three "
I suggest he himself read up on Lenin's ruthless take over of Russia and appointing only Jewish Generals that slaughtered 10 million only Christians and let's not forget the killings of Czar and family of 21. More like Catspaw to me :(
Seems Bush is in the same league as Lenin-mass killer of Arabs.

Vote for your favorite Democrat in the FreedomWorks presidential straw poll:

http://www.freedomworks.org/strawpoll2/

If I recall correctly, the F102 Starfighter had overly small wings...
Posted by: Valuethinker on August 7, 2007 at 4:29 AM

You're thinking of the F-104 Starfighter, "Value"thinker, not the F-102 Delta Dagger.
Posted by: Al on August 7, 2007 at 8:55 AM

F-102 was pulled out of SEA because of poor radar (inability to reliably see anything below them), no gun, and poor missile capability. Pretty much obsolete by the 'late '60s and in no danger of being sent into serious combat. (An ANG unit flying these aircraft was perfectly immune from being sent overseas into combat.) Used in Korea as a 'trip-wire' because they could get airborne faster than anyone else (but couldn't do much once they got there except slow down the opponent enough for more capable aircraft to arrive on the scene). Only technically supersonic by that time because of airframe fatigue and limitations.

I worked on them while in the AF for a year and a half.

Oh sure, DaveE, some solid technical info, but, please explain why MIGs were soooo unsuccessful over West Texas?

Lt Cokehead must have done something right!

What makes me crazy is the broad brush of who opposes this war. Sure there are a number of people on the "left" who, rightly, oppose this war, but there are those of us in the great "unwashed" middle who recognize the folly.

As a former Marine & an Annapolis graduate (Like Jim Webb), it is easy to see from studying Clausewitz what the outcome would become. Clausewitz wrote extensively of the will of the people to resist. Like Britain in 1940-41, our actions have galvanized their "will" and due to mismanagement, deceit and outright lies, our "will" has been broken.

I truly resent those that use our military as props or a shield. It is both disgraceful and cowardly.

Leadership is leadership. We have a void in this area that has put us in peril.

Oh sure, DaveE, some solid technical info, but, please explain why MIGs were soooo unsuccessful over West Texas?

Lt Cokehead must have done something right!
Posted by: thethirdPaul on August 7, 2007 at 10:33 AM

I guess that if the Soviets had stationed high-altitude bombers in Cuba (oh, wait, Kennedy took care of that) or the drug-runners out of the Caribbean decided to come in at high-altitude instead of 'on the deck', that plane MIGHT have been some use there.

But, since neither of those scenarios normally happens, other practical explanations elude me . . .

Kevin should be "eating crow" on the Beauchamp story? What are you talking about?

[reads]

Oh yeah, the bullshit statement issued by the Army yesterday. I read this yesterday and immediately dismissed it once I realized it had nothing to back it up- just the word of the Army. In the 90s I would have taken the Army at its word but no more.

Wake me when your source has more credibility than a tabloid.

meanwhile...

A veteran general hears echoes from Vietnam in Iraq
By Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy NewspapersMon Aug 6, 10:08 AM ET
WASHINGTON — Volney Warner thinks big. A retired Army four-star general who helped craft counterinsurgency doctrine during the Vietnam War, he's made a career out of thinking about how U.S. military strategy should advance America's global interests.
How does domestic politics shape military tactics? How and why did U.S. civilian and military leaders fail in Vietnam and Iraq ? What has Iraq taught the U.S. military about unconventional war?
Warner is more than a detached student of America's current conflicts: Seven of his immediate family members have served in the military, five of them in Iraq or Afghanistan . They include his two sons, one a retired brigadier general and the other a retired colonel; a son-in-law who trained local troops in Iraq as a brigadier general; a granddaughter who's a captain in the Army Reserve ; a grandson serving in Iraq and another grandson at West Point who'll be commissioned as an officer in June and probably ordered to a war zone immediately.
Also, Warner's 24-year-old granddaughter, Army 1st Lt. Laura Walker , who served in Iraq in 2004 and was killed by a homemade bomb a year later on her second combat tour, this time in Afghanistan . Her death makes Warner ponder, sometimes publicly, who was responsible for sending his granddaughter to two war zones without a sound strategy for victory.
A highly regarded expert on counterinsurgency who enjoys a reputation among his peers as a sharp thinker who pulls no punches, Warner asks why the U.S. military— with all its tradition, training, equipment and support— has failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam and apply them to Iraq . He gave his answers in a series of interviews with a McClatchy Newspapers reporter.
Iraq and Vietnam , he said, are both products of failed civilian and military leadership. Presidents John F. Kennedy and George W. Bush began with flawed aims and assumptions, and in both cases they produced military strategies that were doomed to fail.
"If the strategy is wrong and the policy is wrong, you can't blame the people implementing it. They are trying to implement a political strategy that won't work. It's very difficult to turn the train around," said Warner, who at 81 heads a defense consulting firm in McLean, Va . "I have to believe that military leaders in positions of trust and confidence may have made stupid decisions (in the course of fighting an insurgency), but never with malice aforethought towards the country that spawned them and certainly not with intent to destroy the lives of those soldiers who believed in them, trusted their decisions and carried out their orders to their deaths."
The flawed assumptions of Vietnam and Iraq are nearly mirror images of one another.
In Vietnam , Kennedy and other policymakers believed in the "domino theory": If South Vietnam fell, other U.S. allies in the region— Thailand , Malaysia , Singapore , the Philippines , Indonesia — also would fall to the communists.
In Iraq , Bush and the neoconservative policymakers in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office had a democracy theory: Implanting democracy in Iraq would be easy, and from there it would spread to Syria , Egypt , Saudi Arabia and beyond. The fact that the most democratic nation in the region, by most standards, is Iran and that Islamists dominate some of the region's most popular political parties, including Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon , seems not to have made much of an impression.
One of the lessons of Vietnam and Iraq , however, is the same: Some wars can't be won by the U.S. military alone. They can be won only by local populations.
The Warners and tens of thousands of other U.S. officers have volunteered for the task of making the Bush administration's Iraq and Afghanistan policies work. Unlike many in the military, members of the family also contribute to the public debate over those policies. Warner posts his views on military e-mail lists, in books written by friends, in essays he shares with his circle of comrades.
He insists that his conclusions about what's happening in Iraq and Afghanistan are shaped largely by his time in Vietnam , not by his family's experiences.
Warner spent 10 years working on Vietnam policy, in different positions from the Mekong Delta to the White House. He rose from major to commander of the 3rd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, the division his granddaughter later joined. He helped implement counterinsurgency strategy in Vietnam , and by the end of his tour he felt that the U.S. had helped nurture a self-sufficient society in the Delta but not in the northern part of South Vietnam .
He came to the realization then that civilian advisers are a key piece of making a counterinsurgency plan work, and that the local population must rally behind a sense of national identity, not ideology. He concluded that advanced Western militaries shouldn't fight insurgencies; instead, the U.S. should come up with better diplomacy in order to avoid confronting such situations.
The U.S. government and especially the military establishment concluded, wrongly, that it should only seek to avoid insurgencies, and it abandoned training and preparing to do so, Warner said. "The majority of what we learned about counterinsurgency was judged not to be relevant to the world of the future. No one intended to be involved in it again, and counterinsurgency just faded away," he said.
Warner knew was a mistake, but he didn't realize how big a mistake it was until the Bush administration began talking about invading Iraq .
America had been building up its conventional forces and preparing for contingencies such as Bosnia and Somalia , where the military's focus was protecting its forces, not the population, the antithesis of counterinsurgency practice.
Warner was dubious when, 30 years after Vietnam , Bush proclaimed a new doctrine that called for promoting democracy as a means of defeating terrorism. But when his granddaughter, Walker, a West Point graduate, asked for advice before her first deployment, Warner didn't preach to her about policy, leadership or strategy.
She needed more practical advice, he reasoned. He reminded her of things she'd learned in training. Avoid the side of the road, because that's where bombs are planted; the first vehicle in a convoy is the most vulnerable; carry plenty of water, he told her.
He and Walker often wrote about how they viewed the war, often on Web sites and widely distributed military lists. His postings came from the perspective of someone who'd fought such battles before, confident that he could predict the ominous outcome. His granddaughter wrote about what it was like to fight a counterinsurgency campaign for the first time, excited and patient to see what the military could accomplish. Theirs was a dialogue between the Vietnam and Iraq - Afghanistan generations.
Warner's granddaughter was to build a road that Afghans would use to participate in what were then considered historic elections.
"Road construction in theater . . . is best described as an endurance sport; not for the faint of heart or the easily distracted," she wrote on a Defense Department Web site in 2005. "Traditionally progress is made a few hundred meters at a time."
Many now think that the U.S. called for elections too early in Afghanistan and Iraq , leading to shaky regimes that have little control over their newly formed governments. Warner agrees. It's not clear whether his granddaughter did. Back then, she was excited about moving the mission forward.
"With elections on the horizon, extending transportation routes into more rural areas of Afghanistan will play an essential role in encouraging the democratic process," Walker wrote two weeks before she was killed. "Election dates have been pushed back twice due at least in part to the logistical difficulties of coordinating between provinces. Success in road construction here means not only making day-to-day life easier for the citizens; it facilitates the success of the first democratically elected government in Afghanistan . No matter the outcome of elections, the extension of routes into rural Afghanistan provides much potential in strengthening the new government's credibility. The completion of the road couldn't come at a better time."
Warner tried to remain optimistic about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan . In his Christmas 2004 newsletter, he wrote: "We grandparents will be delighted if sufficient security is provided in Iraq to hold elections at the end of January 2005 , after which the new Iraqi Government might well ask that the 'Americans go home!' While not a popular view, it certainly is a personal one that we subscribe to in large measure."
Two years later, he described a dire scenario: "In my view, there are situations in the world the U.S. cannot resolve militarily or otherwise. Vietnam was one of them. Iraq is another. Neither war was ours to win and both were theirs to lose. . . . We always have been very poor at making distinctions between military and political victories and losses and prone to supporting the losing side on Civil Wars— except for our own."
In between, in August 2005 , Walker had been killed by an improvised explosive device that detonated beneath her Humvee. The big-picture vs. on-the-ground thinking that had defined the way the two generations thought of their respective counterinsurgency wars collided.
Warner said that even though his daughter, Walker's mother, had told him not to, at times he felt guilty and fretted about how much his war stories had shaped Walker's decision to join the military.
She was the first female graduate of West Point to die in combat, and she was buried at West Point. Warner commissioned a painting of her in her uniform. It hangs near the U.S. and Army flags that stand in a hallway of his home. The picture is hung so that his eyes meet hers when he walks by it every day.
As Warner described his granddaughter's death, he no longer talked about the lessons of Vietnam or what he knew about counterinsurgency. His point of reference was much sharper.
"My view of Iraq ," he said, "is shaped by the loss of my granddaughter."

08-02-07

And now, for a proper burial of things ridiculous:

Iraq is Not a Mess, Just Extremely Complex [W. Thomas Smith Jr.]

No, Iraq is a sectarian-driven civil war, replete with ethnic cleansing.

AL QAIM — Early afternoon here as I watch two wicked-looking Harriers roar across the desert beyond me. Over the past couple days, I've seen Harrier jump jets and Cobra helicopters (flown by Marine pilots) as well as the two permanently stationed Black Hawk medevac helos (flown by the Army). Rarely do I see transports like C-130s out this way (in fact, I don't think I've seen any) unless they are picking up or delivering. After all, this is the proverbial last American outpost — counting battalion HQ, all the battle positions and combat outposts — in western Iraq.

You have to love how a flaming asshole wingnut gets his war fetish on in public, don't you? How poetic to call this the "last American outpost" when it is, in fact, just a base linked by air to other bases in a vast, flat desert country. There is always one "last" outpost, dimwit.

I used to say Iraq is a mess, but winnable. I was wrong. Iraq is not a mess. It is complex, and, yes, still winnable.

Iraq is not winnable. Iraq was lost when we decided to destroy the city of Fallujah in order to save Fallujah. We have repeated the same mistake over and over again and we have to stop trusting the people in charge. They have FUCKING LOST THE WAR because they think they can keep dropping JDAMS on terrorists. All they have done is killed more and more people. The body count is horrific, isn't it? Yes, we've killed tens of thousands of insurgents. You'd think we'd be winning by now, right? And yet, the war goes on.

If there is any aspect of this war that is a mess, it is the militarily stifling mess created by the micro-managing politicians who think they know something about warfighting and the classic principles of war (you know, the basics as fleshed out by the likes of Clausewitz, Jomini, and Frederick the Great).

Those micro-managing politicians are INSIDE of the Bush Administration--they created the Coalition Provisional Authority, didn't they? And I wish I had a nickel for every time someone cited Clausewitz to make themselves look intellectual. Clausewitz is beyond irrelevant and offers nothing remotely timely or constructive to understanding modern statecraft, thanks to the reality of globalization. Jomini? Frederick the Great? The classic principles of war?

How about "The Art of War?" How about "Life in the Emerald City?" How about "Dereliction of Duty?" How about "A Bright Shining Lie?" How about "The Best and the Brightest?" In those books you will find the reasons why trusting this administration to continue this war is absolute insanity. How about basic fucking common sense? You know, the one where you don't give your enemy the initiative and allow yourself to be bogged down in a protracted land war in Asia?

Those birds on the Hill have obviously never read any of the three. And the majority of the most vocal of the war critics have never even worn the uniform of our country.

Exactly. Well, except for the ones who are actually critical of the war in substantive ways. Like Webb, Murtha, Kerry, General Clark, LTG Odom, MG Batiste...you know. The heavily decorated ones with purple hearts don't count, I guess.

Yet some have even gone so far as to suggest that they have military backgrounds based on their holding seats on armed services committees.

Yeah, what would Daniel Akaka know about war?

Like many of his generation, Senator Akaka’s youth was interrupted by World War II. Upon graduation from high school, he served as a civilian worker then in active duty in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from 1943 to 1947.

Whoops! Senator Akaka is a member of the Greatest Generation. What the fuck does he know? Grr...!

Oh, and Jim Webb fought in Vietnam as a Marine and served Reagan as the Secretary of the Navy. What does he know!?!

Oh, and Senator Jack Reed is a West Point Grad. What the fuck does he know?!? All he ever did was serve as a goddamned Army Ranger, a Platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne--what a fucking candy ass!!!

Then there are my favorites like Reid, Pelosi, Biden, and Murtha, all of whom have consistently given aid and comfort to the enemy with declarations of a "lost war," a "disaster," and a "failed policy;" as well as referring to our Marines here in Anbar as being "cold-blooded" killers. What do they — save perhaps the agenda-driven turncoat Murtha — really know about war?

So why aren't they being shot for treason? If you say they gave aid and comfort to the enemy, I would think by now they would have been shot. What, isn't that what we do?

This is not to suggest that they might not have flown in for a bite of lunch at Camp Victory out by Baghdad International Airport, or gotten a guided tour of the Green Zone. But I personally can't imagine any of them spending any real time out here on the ends of the earth. And how can they possibly make claims that the war is "lost" and a "disaster" unless they've actually experienced it? There is simply no way that anyone so eager to pull the plug on this effort can appreciate the realities of Al Anbar much less Iraq unless they've suffered in this heat, driven multiple times up-and-down these dangerous supply routes, patrolled the cities and towns, interacted with shepherds, shopkeepers, and the sick, aging, and unemployed living in some of the most impoverished villages on earth. How can they appreciate the realities of this effort unless they've been shot at a few times, sat for endless hours — sometimes days — with exhausted Marines and soldiers under the sun and stars of an isolated battle position.

No, but what good is a dog and pony show in Iraq when you can go to Walter Reed and see our troops living in squalor? And, really--does anyone think an American politician is going to see a member of our military in anything other than an air-conditioned dining facility? Please.

Fact is neither the politicians nor the most vocal of the antiwar crowd have a clue as to what is really going on — the good and the bad — out here. But they've somehow convinced much of America they do.

Yeah, but Joe Lieberman knows what's going on. So does Lindsay Graham. They have the sunglasses and the cheap rugs to prove it.

You gotta love the wingnuts--they fuck over the military and leave them with slashed benefits, no facilities, no access to rehabilitation and no access to mental health counseling. Suicides in the military, during active duty and right after active duty, are soaring. Their answer? Cut VA benefits! You can't make this shit up! They cut their combat pay, send them to Iraq, send them home for less than a year, then send them back to Iraq.

Rotations five and six are nothing new for members of our military. And they still get deployed with substandard body armor, forced to use vehicles that are not properly armored. That's taking care of the troops isn't it? Over four years later, they're still waiting for body armor and vehicles. They're still firing M-4s at Iraqi insurgents who used to be Iraqi policemen, who actually got their weapons courtesy of the Bush administration--thousands of insurgents get to use AK-47s against our troops.

If they weren't so fucking incompetent at lying about this shit, one would think we had already won the war.

This is the FACT they are running from:

George W Bush chose incompetent men to manage the war in Iraq and their blundering incompetence has broken our military and lost the war.

Pale Rider: Amen...tp

Pale Rider,

Very glad to see you posting as such again - Excellent use of your very broad talents.

Al

Does the passive-aggressive behaviour ever wear on you?

DaveE

Thanks for the update. I vaguely remember the Delta Dart, one of those nuclear bomber era fighters that lost its mission.

CF101s (Voodoos) were the 'widow makers' rather than the CF104s, and that was partly simply due to the age the Canadians kept them flying at. But I do remember the West Germans crashed a lot of F104s when they first had them: as I recall, the manufacturer (Lockheed?) and the Germans blamed each other.

The National Review is the equivalent of an internet troll. Your outrage is their goal.

While there are too many writers at NRO to look into all of them, here's a look at some of the bigger names.

John Derbyshire -- Never served. A self-admitted racist, homophobe and blamer of murder victims.

Kathryn Jean Lopez -- Never Served. She has, however, fought many battles against double cheeseburgers. Current record: 0 - 2,983,698.

Andrew Stuttaford -- Never served. Typographically stalks Cameron Diaz.

Kate O'Beirne -- Never served. Her husband, however, was responsible for making sure Iraqi contractors were part of the forced pregnancy movement because, you know, having actual experience in anything really doesn't matter when reconstructing a country.

John Podhoretz -- Never served. But a five-time champ on Jeopardy.

Mark Steyn -- Never served. A Canadian, which according to his own magazine, makes him a pansy.

Rich Lowry -- Never served. Thinks it's okay to be a bigot toward Muslims.

Jonah Goldberg -- Never served. Pretends he does on the weekends, though, as he dresses up in his Bobba Fett costume.

Larry Kudlow -- Never served. Big fan of blow, booze and Enron.

Byron York -- Never served. Does have a wonderful mullet.

So yeah ... the thought of anyone at NRO criticizing anyone else for not serving seems a bit ridiculous.

So Al, by your logic, it is even worse for war supporters who have never served to be so cavalier about sending other peoples children to die for their ideals. No Brats of Privilege have served, much less died.

(an aside to anonymous - that crack way up-thread was an inside joke for about 2% and definitely in poor taste.)

DaveE,

Yes, a practical use for the 102 could have been in the eye of the beholder - Especially one who knew that they would not be sent to Nam, and who failed to complete F-105 hours.

A touch bitter, because of remembering a chap from years long by, who won the silver at Rome, just missed qualifying for Tokyo, and wanted to try again for Mexico City - Unfortunately, he did qualify for a 105 and never returned from over North Viet Nam. Because of this very fine young fellow, I was once privileged to sit with Wilma Rudolph and the American track team performing in Stuttgart. He is sorely missed.

Wait a minute! Isn't "the uniform of our country" one of those little flag lapel pins?

I give no credence at all to the slavering fucking fools who have no perspective at all on service. I remember this and this

Al vomitethed forth:

"It's absolute hypocrisy for liberals to oppose the war without having served in the military."

Shall we break that down? Let's begin by refreshing our memories as to the meaning of "hypocrisy". Al, just so you know, one establishes the meaning of a word by referring to a book called a "dictionary". I am using Webster's II: New Riverside University Dictionary published in 1988. It provides:

hypocrisy - 1. The practice of expressing feelings, beliefs, or virtues one does not hold or possess. 2. An act or instance of hypocrisy.

That's pretty straightforward. In other words, if you say you believe something, but you don't, you're a hypocrite. The problem with proving that someone is a hypocrite, of course, is that it' difficult to know what a person actually believes.

In most cases, you have to look to a speaker's actions as an indicator of whether or not they are a hypocrite. Assuming most people are not hypocrites, you should typically expect some congruence between the values a speaker espouses and the values they represent with their actions. Thus, if a speaker believes X, a speaker should be expected to do X.

So, for the sake of argument, let's see do a statement/action analysis for both Chickenhawks and War Opponents.

Chickenhawk Statement: I support having our armed forces in combat in Iraq.
Chickenhawk Action: I oppose/d having myself in combat in Iraq (or Panama, or Vietnam, etc.).

War Opponent Statement: I oppose having our armed forces in combat in Iraq.
War Opponent Action: I oppose/d having myself in combat in Iraq (or Panama, or Vietnam, etc.).

What I think you can see, Al, is that there is a remarkable consistency between war opponents' statements and actions, and a remarkable inconsistency between chickenhawks' statements and actions. Seems to me, it's the chickenhawks who need to step up and prove that they believe combat is the proper option, not the war opponents.

Now, with that said, I've got to assert that "hypocrisy," as a whole, is a terrible way to conduct an argument. Sure, it feels good to prove that someone is a hypocrite, but what does it really achieve? So most of you cheetoh-stained, typists of the Fighting 101st Keyboardists are hypocrites. So what? This ain't trial by jury. I can impeach your character (though you seem to do a fine job at that all by yourself), but it adds no substance to the debate. In politics, and that's what this all is, character doesn't matter. You (and I) have got to find better arguments to convince folks that it's necessary to stay in or leave Iraq than screaming "hypocrite".

You gotta admit, it takes balls for someone writing for National Review to even bring up the subject. Credit where it's due.

—Kevin Drum

_______________

No.

Actually I don't "gotta admit it takes 'balls'" for some pencil-necked geek at NRO to denounce others for their lack of military service.

What it takes is s'more a that garden-variety ol'-time unexamined hypocrisy and world-historical stupidity for which W. Thomas Smith and his hyperventilating bedwetter brethren are so deservedly known.

Typically when a frothing wingnut makes such an observation (in which he is dead-fucking-nuts guilty of the very charge he is levying unto others), he does so within a magical realm -- the hermetically-sealed vacuum of his own unself-awareness.

It's sorta annoying, actually, Kevin, how you routinely mistake simple wingnut incapacitating stupidity and a congenital inability to argue anything but ass-covering bias for "ballsy chutzpah". Ballsy chutzpah it ain't. W. Thomas Smith's is the audacity of unexamined stupidity, which deserves no honorific, even obliquely, such as you bestow.

Joe Namath guaranteeing a win in Super Bowl III is ballsy chutzpah.

W. Thomas Smith's pathetic hypocritical projection is evidence of a crippling mental and emotional defect.

There's a difference, and you'd do well to note it.

Regarding the F-102, there's quite a bit archived on this site, back when the AWOL story resurfaced, IIRC, in January 2004 or even earlier.

Comments were just lousy with shills putting word out that Bush was straight outta the Right Stuff mold. What a hoot! About that F-102: The airplane was at the end of what is called its "useful life in the fleet," having first been test flown at Edwards in something like 1954.

In 1968 it had been, um, practically retired to NG service with its part-time pilots.

And as for the "coward" label. Absolutely. The once more-or-less promising (and politically well connected) young pilot who reported gratfully for stateside duty in 1968 appears to have completely lost his nerve within a few years--gossip about why young Bush asked for leave focuses on his failing newly stringent required drug tests and possibly loss of nerve upon learning that his squadron was being advanced to a new fighter, not the F-102. He went to Alabama to work on that campaign, acted like the thoroughgoing asshole he is, and never flew alone again. Just in two-seat trainers. And he's president now.

The Kevin Phillips and Molly Ivins books both covered the lost years and may have good information.

[T]he majority of the most vocal of the war critics have never even worn the uniform of our country.

[T]he majority of the most vocal of the war supporters have never even worn the uniform of our country.

All great empires eventually collapse from overreach and overspending on their military. I see the same thing coming for the United States. In fact, it may not be more than 10 or 20 years away...

Mor like less than five.

DaveE,

Yes, a practical use for the 102 could have been in the eye of the beholder - Especially one who knew that they would not be sent to Nam, and who failed to complete F-105 hours.

A touch bitter, because of remembering a chap from years long by, who won the silver at Rome, just missed qualifying for Tokyo, and wanted to try again for Mexico City - Unfortunately, he did qualify for a 105 and never returned from over North Viet Nam. Because of this very fine young fellow, I was once privileged to sit with Wilma Rudolph and the American track team performing in Stuttgart. He is sorely missed.

I can imagine . . .

You mentioned the F-105. When I hear that designation, one Leo Thorsness springs to mind. I think he might have been in the Reserves but was activated to fly 'Wild Weasel' missions. More 'cajones' that I ever hope to have!

Hope he's still alive and lives to be a ripe old age. Medal of Honor winner.

Who was your '-105 driver? I'd like to know . . .

Not to put too fine a point on it, but isn't this like saying that someone who's never killed anyone couldn't be against murder?

Yes the comment showed balls, tiny, angry, raisen looking rodent balls.

Oh, forgot to address the "Widowmaker" moniker business raised upthread.

IIRC, that was a term used in West Germany (witwenmacher) to describe the F-104 Starfighter. A rash of Luftwaffe crashes in the F-104 appears to have been caused by inadequate training and bad weather.

So can we divide the war critics into two flocks - chicken-eagles (those that have served), and chicken-doves (those that haven't)?

Just askin'.

Sorry Barringer, not wanting to assault innocent people doesn't make one a chicken anything. Knowing that Iraq was not a national security threat merely makes one observant.

Tell us Barringer, when was the last American killed in Iraq prior to George W. Bush's invasion? Did it occur within five years of Bush invading? How about this, how would Saddam Hussein have delivered a WMD to the United States?

No one, answering those questions honestly, could suggest that Iraq was a real threat to America.

ThethirdPaul

Thank you for sharing that about your friend. I think everyone of that generation has a few such stories (John Kerry's was about Dick Pershing, the grandson of the US commander in France in 1918, and his high school roomate. Pershing, who was very short sighted, was obsessed with living up to the family name, so he wangled a transfer to the 101st Airborne 'Screaming Eagles' and died in the Central Highlands in 1964 (I think)).

DaveE

Yes the 105s took a pounding, the brunt of the bomb trucking for 'Rolling Thunder'. Someone told me they called it 'Thud Ridge' because of its ?shape? but I also heard they called it Thud Ridge because so many 105s died there.

I don't know if you have read James Salter's 'The Hunters' about F86 pilots in Korea, but it is very vivid. Not sure if there is a comparable novel about the Vietnam Air War.

Wild Weasel was not a fun mission to fly: waiting up there for the other guy to take a pop at you.

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj98/spr98/werrell.html

[quote]
The F-105

The Republic F-105 Thunderchief in many ways symbolizes Air Force performance in Vietnam. It was an aircraft that looked good from any angle. It was fast and stable, a machine that pilots called "honest." It could carry a heavy bomb load a long distance at a high speed. In short, it was a fine aircraft, a pilot's plane, well designed for the single purpose of fighting a nuclear war.2

Just as the Korean War erupted in June 1950, the Air Force asked Republic Aviation to conceive a successor to its F-84F. What emerged was an aircraft designed around a bomb bay that could accommodate a nuclear weapon and extensive avionics to lighten the workload of the pilot flying at high speed and at low altitudes. This would allow Tactical Air Command to participate in nuclear warfare, which was the primary emphasis of the American military during this period. The F-105 could carry eight thousand pounds internally and another four thousand pounds externally and turned out to be the largest and heaviest single-seat American fighter up to that time. It replaced the F-100D as Tactical Air Command's principal aircraft. (It had twice the bomb load and 50 percent more speed than the F-100 Super Sabre.) It also mounted a rapid-firing 20 mm Gatling gun. To be very clear, however, the F-105 was primarily designed as a bomber, and its air-to-air fighter capability was secondary.

During its first flight on 22 October 1955, it exceeded the speed of sound. When the aircraft was modified into the B version, it featured such innovations as a “coke bottle� fuselage, “clover leaf� speed brakes on the aircraft’s tail, and the all-flying tail.3 The first squadron was equipped with the Thunderchief in 1959.4

Although designated as a fighter (F-105), its size and weight, not to mention its bomb bay, brought this designation into dispute. Early on it was saddled with such uncomplimentary nicknames as “Lead Sled,� “Ultra Hog,� and “Thud.� Some write that it earned a poor reputation mainly due to the poor reliability of the avionics and the pilot’s unfamiliarity with the fighter. The aircraft’s low in-commission rate and high cost of maintenance were both disturbing and frustrating. The aircraft and its systems were complex and new to the Air Force, and spare parts were short. More dramatic and more important to its reputation were crashes. An examination of the records of other fighters of the century series, however, indicates that at least early in its career (up to 53,000 flying hours), the Thunderchief’s accident record was only bested by the F-106.5 Regardless, it was the Air Force’s primary strike aircraft during the decade of the 1960s and what the Air Force had when the Vietnam War began. It flew three-quarters of the Air Force’s strike missions during Rolling Thunder, the American strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam between 1965 and 1968.6

The F-105 did not fare well in combat. The Thunderchief served as a fighter-bomber but was limited by its avionics designed for nuclear, not conventional, missions. Ironically, the bomb bay was used to carry a fuel tank, not bombs. At low level it was the fastest aircraft of the war, but was at a disadvantage in air-to-air combat because of its lack of maneuverability.7 More than half (397) of the 753 F-105Ds and Fs built were lost in the war. Overall, the F-105 had the highest loss rate of any US aircraft operating in Southeast Asia and over North Vietnam.8 Why such heavy losses? The political restrictions certainly played a role, allowing the North Vietnamese to build up and adjust their defenses. Another factor was that the tactics that had been developed for a short nuclear war proved costly and inappropriate in a long conventional air campaign fought against extensive ground-based air defenses. The introduction of surface-to-air missiles (SAM) made matters even worse for the airmen. A third factor was the aircraft itself.

The F-105 was neither as rugged nor as survivable as its World War II predecessor, the P-47, which was rightly celebrated for its toughness. The Thunderchief was designed to fight a nuclear war in which the delivery of one nuclear weapon at low altitude and high speed was all that was required. Little thought was given to a campaign consisting of hundreds of missions extending over years. Therefore, survivability was not a major design consideration; ruggedness, redundant systems, armor, and the like were not priority items. In fact, some survivability factors were traded off to enhance other performance. Two such instances proved critical. First, the fighter’s two sets of hydraulic lines were run close together, apparently to ease manufacture and maintenance, so that a hit on one could easily take out the other. A loss of hydraulic pressure caused the stabilizer to lock in the full “up� position, pushing the nose down. Second, the internal and bomb-bay fuel tanks were not self-sealing. Such was the combat norm since 1940, for good reason, as one 1950 study found that 80 percent of American, British, and German aircraft losses in World War II were directly caused by fire, most from damaged fuel systems. At the very least, even a small caliber hit could cause a leak. This helps explain why the F-105 was so vulnerable to fire and explosion, three times as likely as the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom to be lost to fire or explosion.9

As early as December 1965, the F-105 was being unfavorably compared with the F-4, as it was believed that it was 1.5 to 2.5 times as vulnerable as the Phantom. One study indicated that when hit by hostile fire, the F-105 had a 15 percent higher rate of loss than the F-4. This led to a recommendation that the Thunderchief be shifted from action over North Vietnam to the less lethal skies of South Vietnam, and it spurred a number of studies to assess the vulnerability of the aircraft and search for remedies. One conclusion was that if the F-4 and F-105 were fairly compared (using similar time periods, similar missions, and similar risks), their loss rates were about the same.10

The Thunderchief was modified to deal with some of these problems. By mid-1965, the flight control system had been changed so that if the hydraulic system was hit, the pilot could mechanically lock the horizontal stabilizer at an optimum setting. He could then use an electric toggle switch to control roll and pitch with the wing flaps along with differential engine power to fly the plane. This could at least get a pilot out of the immediate area before he was forced to eject from the stricken aircraft. A rocket ejection seat was fitted into the aircraft to enhance pilot survivability. Self-sealing tanks and bomb-bay fire extinguisher modifications were also added.11

It is hard to put a positive spin on the F-105’s service in Vietnam. One might say diplomatically that its record could be called “mixed,� but that really doesn’t say anything. To cut to the heart of the issue, the F-105 could not overcome the limitations of its basic design, the peculiar conditions of the war, the role in which it found itself, or American tactics. At best, it proved to be a mediocre performer in difficult conditions. Similar to the military, it served honorably and capably in a losing cause. What more could be expected? The last F-105D unit returned to the US in late 1970, to be replaced by the F-4 in the fighter-bomber role.
[/quote]

Yes the 105s took a pounding, the brunt of the bomb trucking for 'Rolling Thunder'. Someone told me they called it 'Thud Ridge' because of its ?shape? but I also heard they called it Thud Ridge because so many 105s died there.

I heard it was named after the sound that the '105 made when it plowed into the ground after being shot down.

Because so many were.

i'm a veteran of the first gulf war, i was against this one from the beginning. i dont think one need have served but it is worth pointing out that all of the cheerleaders of this debacle haven't

I agree with the logic. Further, I always say that nobody has a right to oppose abortion unless they have had an abortion.

"Where was Rove, Bushie, Cheney, etc when boys were dying in agony in 'Nam and their country needed them?"

Ooooh, pick me. I can answer this one.

Rove was sitting on his backside, so much so that he developed some sort of bedsore-like abscess that must have been really bad because it kept him out for a really long time.

Bushie was AWOL from the Texas/Arkansas Air National Guards, as we all know.

And President Cheney "had other priorites at the time."

j'm off scale in favor of the war as long as the only people getting their asses shot up are pwans
(= poor whites and n****s)

if, however, they start drafting real people (i.e. non-pwans) then i'm off scale against the war

MIGHTY RIGHTY(*)

(*) i'm only a little to the left of genghis khan and attila the hun

DaveE,

Cliff Cushman - University of Kansas - Won the Silver Medal for 400 meter hurdles at Rome in 60. Tripped on the last hurdle trying to qualify for the 64 team going to Tokyo.

Here's a list of prominent chickenhawk Republican leaders WHO AVOIDED MILITARY SERVICE: Dick "The Impregnator" Cheney (daughter Elizabeth Cheney's birth date falls precisely nine months and two days after the Selective Service publicly revoked its policy of not drafting childless husbands), Karl Rove (somehow maintained a "full-time student" deferment even after going part-time, coincidently while working for the RNC), John Ashcroft, Dennis Hastert, Tom Delay, Roy Blunt, Dick Armey, Bill Frist, Mitch McConnell, Rick Santorum, Trent Lott, Jeb Bush, Newt Gingrich, Bill Bennett (author of "Why We Fight"), Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Phil Gramm, Paul Wolfowitz, Spencer Abraham, Judd Gregg, Henry Hyde, Jack Kemp, Don Nickles, J. C. Watts, Bill Simon, Saxby Chambliss, Marc Racicot (somehow avoided the draft despite a lottery number of 23), P. J. O'Rourke (author of "Give War a Chance"), Bill Kristol, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Joe Scarborough, David Horowitz, Mike Savage, George Will, Pat Robertson (his senator father helped get him out of Korea when war began), Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell, Ken Starr, Gary Bauer, Alan Keyes, Roger Ailes (Fox News President).

TC-14

Shouldn't Rush Limbaugh be on that list, on the subject of the uber-belligerent?

Kagan of course (the younger one, who authored the Surge). Young enough to be post Selective Service, but he might have volunteered.

Daniel Ellsberg quit Harvard to volunteer for the Marines-- looking at hawks (now doves).

Of course, Mike Dukakis, who was ridiculed for sitting in a tank for a photo op, did serve in the US Army. (whereas Margaret Thatcher was not). And Al Gore served in Vietnam.

As Bob Dole (badly injured war hero) said of Ronald Reagan (given a lieutenancy for his stage entertainment work) said 'President Reagan was very proud of his lieutenancy'.