If you want to spread lies like “There were no WMDs” or “Iraq didn’t blow up the world trade center” then we’ll see if we can change your opinion with a free trip to Cuba. The Commander in Chief TOLD you there were WMDs! He told you Saddam was behind 911. If you don’t believe the Commander in Chief during a time of war then you are a traitor and should be shot.

I can just hear them blabbering “Oh, poor me, I want a lawyer!” If you fuck with the US of A then you don’t get a lawyer, you get dogs chomping at your nuts.

But what if they make a mistake, you say? What if they get some of the wrong people? Please. This is the DHS we are talking about here, people. Those guys aren’t fucking around. Do you honestly think they’ll get anyone but the traitors? Please.

If only we could just round up all of the dumb-ass liberals and shoot them. Then we could get on with things in Iraq and Iran.

The dumb-ass liberals say that we are loosing the war. Wrong! We may have lost around 3,800 of our glorious heros, but we’ve taken out probably around 1,000,000 rag-heads. That doesn’t sound like loosing to me. If it weren’t for all the bleeding-heart liberals then we could get down to business and nuke the crap out of them. I bet the Iraq-fucks wouldn’t be blowing up any buildings if they were drowning in a sea of molten glass.

And what’s the deal with liberal idiots who worry about their phone and Internet being read by the DHS? Why worry unless you have something to hide? What, were your grandparents rag-heads or something? The people reading your email are here to protect the fatherland! What do you think they are there for?

Bush and the Administration need all of the tools necessary to fight evil, both internal and external. We are at war. Our leaders need to be able to vanish and torture the right people so that we can win. We need to be able to listen to the communications of all citizens so that we can root out those who challenge the Administration.

I’m old enough to have been “invited” to serve myself, and well remember the way the Boston Navy Yard, which was the induction center, handled matters. The Navy and Air Force didn’t much indulge in draftees (they did - but for specific jobs): those two branches were usually fine for personnel. Bbut the Army and the Marines certainly drafted.

The way it was done in Boston was, they lined everybody up, and asked if people had preferences. Everybody of course wanted to go into the Navy - forget it. The Navy didn’t need bodies. But - having been drafted, you could then “volunteer” to go to the Marines or a specific arm of the Army.

Those who didn’t do so were then allocated according to quota. You got lined up, and you counted off by threes. And then the announcement came: “Ones, you’re in the Army; twos, you’re on your way to Parris Island; threes, you’ll be available for assignment.”

The threes were there to cover the fact that situations would arise, and the Navy or Air Force might need some bodies - usually for heavy lifting or ground-based work. Those branches generally want technically oriented or specifically trained people, but they also have a need for strong-backed “generalists” now and then. Once their quota was filled, the remaining threes went to the Army - or Marines.

Haven’t you realized by now that the fake liberals only see suffering as valid when it is the enemies of America suffering? Did they feel that My Lai was explainable because Americans had suffered from guerrilla style attacks from the VietCong? No. Why? Cause they were Americans, and not the enemies of America, whether Nazi or Communist. The suffering of the proles in Russia, which the Communists used as cannon fodder, now that was glorious, BOok.

And so I’ll say here and now that American and British values, at least as they played out during their peak during WWII, were better than other values.

That’s a warmonger position, Book. Get in the real reality, the nihilist and narcissist reality, and you will understand why such things promote war rather than make things better.

They’re still better, although most Britains, and many Americans (notably House Democrats) seem to have forgotten that fact.

That assumes Robert “KKK Kleagle” Byrd ever remembered such “facts” in the first place. Thou Shalt Not Murder was also glossed over by bon bon Kennedy the still living, as well.

When American values are good, they’re the best.

If something is seen as the best, then this means wars will result in people trying to be the best, trying to steal the best, and trying to overthrow the best, Book. This is counter to the Leftist creed of humanocentric dogma and religion.

You’ve heard me say it before-the two sides are more the same than different and I would submit to you that both sides exploit the troops for their own political purposes.

Such beliefs will prevent war and make a better world, in your view. But they won’t, for they are foolish and false beliefs.

They wanted to win cheaply-which is something quite different-and in the end has cost the nation a lot more than following the Powell Doctrine would have.

The Powell Doctrine was explicitly designed to prevent any kind of war that would take out Saddam. Now you are using it to prop up decades old pipe smoke from the midden heap. Talk about counter-insurgency and next gen warfare, for the Powell Doctrine is something else entirely.

Winningly cheaply is the very definition of the Powell Doctrine. Powell even called up General H. Norman Schwarzkopf to worry about the number of really expensive cruise missiles the General had authorized. In some cases the Powell Doctrine is a very good dog and pony show with the requisite number if illusionary tricks and propaganda advantages, but it would be downright foolish to call it a doctrine concerned over crushing an enemy.

Nostalgia is not something people should indulge in, especially the Baby Boomer generation. For nothing good will come of it. No saved lives. No good policies. No solutions for current problems.

The tone we set now will be the underpinning of American policy for years to come.

The seeming success of the Powell Doctrine in Gulf War 1 did indeed create the underpinning of American policy for years to come. How perceptive of you. You could always blame Bush the elder rather than Powell, but you won’t do that, now will you.

The real point is that if this person had no conception of whether he needed to speak out against WWII or not, given that it is over now and back then when he was able to, he was fighting in it.

People were too busy fighting and worrying to worry about tearing down Roosevelt and becoming the new Caesar of the Americas. The same is not true for today.

I think you’re using “draftee” a bit freely; it sounds to me as if you’re saying everyone who wasn’t part of the pre-Dec. 7 military was a “draftee”, including those who voluntarily enlisted. 8 December 1941 was, I understand, a bumper day for voluntary military enlistment.

There were drafts later on. And wartime volunteers would have been considered “reserve” personnel along with draftees in that their serial numbers would have begun “US” rather than, for example, “RA” (for the Army; not sure about the prefixs for the other branches). But not everyone who fought in WWII but wasn’t in the military before the first actual draft in 1940 was drafted.

In my youth, I read the Bible and thought “how could I ever be persecuted for my belief?”

Now I know — if Islam rules.

Wednesday’s bozoness does not negate Monday’s heroics.

After all, the best fighters Jackson had at the battle of New Orleans were the damn pirates - previously best known for looting, raping, and murder!

But guys like Kerry, Murtha, et al don’t deserve kudos forever, either. I gues it comes down to: honor the actions, not the man. If the man is honorable, fine: honor him too, but otherwise not.

The point is in WWII very ordinary boys did heroic things. And those parents (mine - I was born in 1947) stiffled the anti-semitism they had been taught and taught their children (boomers) that the Jews were Americans, just like us.

So, do not snear at this elderly pilot.

My mom’s upbringing still popped up from time to time — until she died she referred to bargaining as “jewing someone down” and in the WWII years, she named a black lab “nigger” — much to her later mortification.

So, yes, give him a pass. He’s not Hitler.

For example, in 1933 the US Army consisted of 134,024 guys. In 1940 it was 267,767. By mid-1941, when everyone recognized - very belatedly, in this country - that war was coming, (it had already started in China and Europe) the first draft lifted it to 1,460,998. That’s a gain, via the draft, of 1,193,221 almost a 400% increase - in one year.

The newest of the battleships bombed at Pearl Harbor was built in 1923 - “Arizona,” the memorial ship, was built in 1916.

Just before Pearl Harbor, the Marines mobilized everybody - active duty, and air and ground reserves: there were a total of 65,881 of them.

With a large party of people who actually believed WWI was the “war to end wars,” followed by the ravages of the Depression, we didn’t have a military in the prewar years. We had to reinvent it, and that right smartly, to be able to fight WWII. That was done via massive drafts.

Unless this guy was a career Marine and had been in since before the war, he was a draftee. They all were.
Once in he volunteered to fly, sure; but the odds are he didn’t volunteer to be in.