[Vision2020] Bush's National Guard Service and his fighting al Qaeda

[Nick Gier]

Greetings:

Below you will find a response to Gordon Johnson's DN letter to the editor 
on Monday.  His letter is appended below mine.

To the Editor:
         I would like to respond to Gordon Johnson's letter (Letters, Aug. 
16) about Bush's National Guard Service and his record on fighting al Qaida.
         Johnson is simply wrong when he claims that Bush would have gone 
to Vietnam if he had been called.  First, he was trained to fly F-104s and 
they were not used in Vietnam. Second, and more significantly, he did not 
show up for his physical in Texas, so he could not have flown any type of 
aircraft at all.
         Furthermore, Bush claims that he reported for duty in Alabama, but 
no one, except one fellow who obviously lied, remember seeing him 
there.  The Doonsberry cartoonist is feeling pretty safe with the $10,000 
he has offered to anyone who can attest to Bush not being AWOL.
         Johnson boasts about all the al Qaida operatives Bush has caught, 
but none of these arrests were before September 11, 2001. Richard Clarke 
and the 9-11 Commission have demonstrated that Bush was focused on Iraq, 
where no terrorist cells existed, rather than our immediate enemies.
         Bush and Cheney continue to claim that Saddam Hussein had 
"terrorist" ties, but there is still no proof of this.  A Boston Globe 
reporter was on the ground when U.S. troops raided an Ansar al-Islam camp 
in Northeast Iraq.  Documents were flying in the air and the reporter and 
his interpreter could not find a single one that linked that group with 
Saddam.
         Other than a brief medical visit to Baghdad, Jordanian Al 
Zargawi's alleged links with Saddam has been thoroughly investigated by 
European intelligence agencies and nothing has been found.  Thousands of 
documents found in Iraq since the invasion should have produced a 
connection to al Qaeda if there was one.
         So, Mr. Johnson, Clinton did in fact go after al Qaida more 
vigorously than Bush did before September 11.

Nick Gier

Too much Democratic whining
The rhetoric over service records seems to be all important now that a good 
one is in the favor of Democrats.
It wasn't long ago when the Republican was the war hero and the Democrat 
was not, then it mattered not.
Now Democrats are decrying the fact that John Kerry is being pushed to 
prove his record and, of course, according to Democrats its all unfair 
politics and dirty tricks.
George W. Bush proved his record by opening it all to the public, while 
Sen. Kerry has refused to open all of his.
Democrats are threatening TV and radio stations with lawsuits if they run 
certain ads about his service record.
All the while, it was Democrats that started it all, and now blame 
Republicans.
Terry McCauliffe started it all by proclaiming George Bush a deserter on 
"Meet the Press," and Democrats thought they had a winner. Certainly they 
should have known there would be a backlash. Were Republicans supposed to 
sit by and let it happen? I don't think so.
Bush did nothing illegal. He was not AWOL, he was on a leave of absence. He 
didn't go to Vietnam because his unit was not called: had it been, his 
leave would have been canceled.
I doubt that his father had anything to do with it, since he was way down 
on the favors list then. I don't know one way or the other. If Democrats 
want to push it they need to expect more backlash. Contrary to the 9/11 
report, I lay a lot of blame for our present position, right where it 
belongs, on Clinton.
He did nothing about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the 
USS Cole, our embassies, and refused to take bin Laden when he was offered 
to us.
Bush is now arresting terrorists every week and imprisoning them. How many 
did Clinton go after?
Gordon Johnson
Moscow




"Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be 
discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part 
by itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on the 
interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our intellectual 
life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between science, religion, and 
art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its various parts." 
--Max Planck

Nicholas F. Gier
Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho
1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843
http://users.moscow.com/ngier/home/index.htm
208-883-3360/882-9212/FAX 885-8950
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/ift/index.htm