On 8/24/17 8:55 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 8/24/2017 8:05 AM, Keyser Soze wrote:
On 8/24/17 7:57 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 8/24/2017 7:43 AM, Keyser Soze wrote:
On 8/24/17 7:16 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 8/24/2017 7:07 AM, Keyser Soze wrote:
On 8/24/17 7:00 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 8/23/2017 11:14 PM, Keyser Soze wrote:
Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 8/23/2017 8:57 PM, Keyser Soze wrote:
On 8/23/17 8:42 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 8/23/2017 8:00 PM, Keyser Soze wrote:
On 8/23/17 6:38 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 8/23/2017 5:36 PM, Keyser Soze wrote:
On 8/23/17 12:01 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 8/23/2017 11:02 AM,
wrote:
This article offers some interesting insights into some
of the
issues
behind the recent naval collisions:

http://gcaptain.com/separate-equal-look-officer-training-us-navy-merchant-marine/



They make the point that many, if not most, US naval
officers regard
sea duty as something that must be endured on the way to
higher
rank,
as opposed to a career goal in and of itself.

My wife and I once met a recently promoted US Coast
Guard admiral
who
expressed exactly those sentiments in a conversation
with us.Â* We
were
surprised by both the attitude and the candor but that was
probably a
reflection of our inexperience with such things.



I don't know of anyone who was in the Navy, officer or
enlisted,
who relished sea duty.


Then why sign up for it? One might think that if one is
signing up
for the navy, one relishes the idea of serving on a ship
at sea.



Reason number one:Â* It was Navy or the Army.

Actually, the Navy is much, much more than just ships at sea.
There's a vast system for communications, aircraft
squadrons, INTEL
facilities, administration, logistics and supply facilities
that
support the mission of the Navy and the fleet.Â*Â* I don't
know the
breakdown butÂ* I believe that far more Navy personnel are
assigned
to shore duty stations at any one time than assigned to ships.

Typically, the rotation is three years of sea duty and then
three
years of shore duty.Â* But it's more complicated than that
because
some overseas shore duty may be counted as sea duty for
rotational
purposes. I was actually on ships for three years but had
two tours
overseas that also counted as sea duty.Â* My only duty that
did not
count as sea duty was time in schools and my last duty
station in
Annapolis.





Yeah, I know the navy is more than just ships at sea,
but...why would
you join the navy unless you were into ships at sea?


I felt I had an obligation to serve my country.Â* You?

No. I had a passing interest in going to the Coast Guard
Academy, but
that passed. Had I been ordered to report for a pre-induction
physical,
I might have signed up, but I never heard from my local draft
board,
other than getting the signed USPS receipts from the change of
address
info I sent.

So "no" means you felt no obligation to serve your country.Â* At
least
that's honest.





Going to SE Asia to kill SE Asians served the
military-industrial complex.
I don’t believeÂ* it served the country.


Over nine million people served on active military duty during
the Vietnam War.

Of that nine million, one to one and a half million were
stationed in a war zone and actually saw combat.


Yeah, I wasn't an enabler, either. You're making more of this than
I did, as usual. I did what the law required...I registered and I
kept my draft board aware of my address. If I had been drafted, I
would have shown up. I wasn't, so I didn't. In retrospect, I am
happy I didn't help the military-industrial complex kill SE
Asians, produce billets and promotions, and put profits into the
coffers of war-mongering corporations,Â* but I didn't think much
about that at the time.



Going back to the original point ... your answer is still, No, you
felt no obligation to serve your countryÂ* then and obviously have
never felt otherwise since.

That's your right.Â* Others feel differently.

The rest of your BS are just excuses, typical of those who feel a
need to find some.



Oh, please. If it makes you feel happier to rationalize the
assistance you gave to the military-industrial complex that was
involved in killing hundreds of thousands of SE Asians, hey, go for
it. Nothing this country did in the war against Vietnam served
our country.


So, maybe you might have considered serving in the military but only
if it was in total peacetime?Â* Figures.


Have you been sleeping with Fretwell? You went to college...you have
no business trying to use that sort of illogical logic.


I went to college to get the credentials I thought I would need for a
career as an engineer, not to adopt a political philosophy.

As it turned out it was mostly a waste of time and money in terms of
learning technical skills. In hindsight I now realize that Navy
electronic schools of the era in which I attended them provided a much
better education in that regard.Â* The civilian schools taught what an
electronic component was used for.Â* The Navy schools taught how they
worked.

Most colleges today are nothing more than diploma mills.



Funny stuff...you have been sleeping with Fretwell.

On Thu, 24 Aug 2017 07:00:22 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

Going to SE Asia to kill SE Asians served the military-industrial complex.
I don’t believe it served the country.


Over nine million people served on active military duty during the
Vietnam War.

Of that nine million, one to one and a half million were stationed in a
war zone and actually saw combat.


And if you were in the navy or air force the percentage was even lower
than that. Most of the "Vietnam" air force guys were in support bases
in Thailand, Japan or some other place pretty far away. I think the
majority of the air force was in SAC, MAC or some other duty, nowhere
near SE Asia.
The only navy guys actually in country were SEALs or brown water navy
guys along with the Coast Guard running up the rivers. That is what I
tried for ... twice. I was young and dumb I guess.

On Thu, 24 Aug 2017 07:04:42 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 8/24/2017 6:11 AM, Keyser Soze wrote:

Most guys in my age group in the 1960s never got drafted.


You didn't have to be drafted to serve your country.


He could have joined the Peace Corps along with his hero Chris
Matthews.

On Thu, 24 Aug 2017 07:07:27 -0400, Keyser Soze
wrote:


Yeah, I wasn't an enabler, either. You're making more of this than I
did, as usual. I did what the law required...I registered and I kept my
draft board aware of my address. If I had been drafted, I would have
shown up. I wasn't, so I didn't. In retrospect, I am happy I didn't help
the military-industrial complex kill SE Asians, produce billets and
promotions, and put profits into the coffers of war-mongering
corporations, but I didn't think much about that at the time.

You wanted us to support the war monger Hillary Clinton who wanted to
kill more South Asians, Persians and Arabs.

On 8/24/2017 10:50 AM, wrote:
On Thu, 24 Aug 2017 07:04:42 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 8/24/2017 6:11 AM, Keyser Soze wrote:

Most guys in my age group in the 1960s never got drafted.


You didn't have to be drafted to serve your country.


He could have joined the Peace Corps along with his hero Chris
Matthews.



He has told us of the special and unique job he had as a civilian,
searching for bodies in an active war zone. The job apparently resulted
from rubbing elbows with some General in WashDC.

I've searched unsuccessfully for any information on a program such as
this that existed during the Vietnam era. Must have been top secret.

On Thu, 24 Aug 2017 07:14:04 -0400, John H
wrote:

If you had decent qualifications they could have sent you to Germany
to defend us from the godless communists like my computer literate
friend from Maryland. With the qualifications you had, you could have
sat in the Stars and Stripes office in Saigon with Al Gore for a few
months and gone back home. The reality is, most people in the military
in the 60s never saw combat or even got close.

Or me. My first and last overseas tours were in Germany, working on plans to defend us from the
Godless communists! Saddam took our attention away from the Fulda Gap for a while. I wonder if the
forces over there still plan for an 'active defense' in the Fulda Gap.

I think the fall of the Soviets and the, loss for Russia, of all of
those countries between Western Europe and Russia widened the border a
bit and made that surprise attack a little less "surprising".
When Hitler went the other way, he had to take Poland and
Czechoslovakia first.
I do understand why Putin gets nervous when we talk about putting them
into NATO tho. The last time the Russians saw that kind of buildup on
their western border, Barbarosa came next.

On Thu, 24 Aug 2017 07:15:33 -0400, Keyser Soze
wrote:

On 8/24/17 7:04 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:

Most guys in my age group in the 1960s never got drafted.


You didn't have to be drafted to serve your country.



I don't accept your premise. If you volunteered for the military during
those days, you were enabling the slaughter of SE Asians, even if you
were stationed in Germany, Alabama, or Washington, D.C. If you really
wanted to serve your country during those dark times, you could have
become a fireman, a teacher, a social worker, et cetera.

How did I "enable" the killing of Asians when I was sitting in the
North atlantic on a Coast Guard cutter? Were the Vietcong cruising
around there in diesel subs or were they cleverly disguised as the
airliners we tracked flying overhead?

On Thu, 24 Aug 2017 07:17:29 -0400, John H
wrote:

On Wed, 23 Aug 2017 19:49:39 -0400, wrote:

On Wed, 23 Aug 2017 17:09:08 -0400,
wrote:

I don't know of anyone who was in the Navy, officer or enlisted, who
relished sea duty.



===

It's easy to understand why, especially for the married guys with
families

I believe the military is best suited to single people. Otherwise
there is always going to be a conflict.
I agree if you have a nice Pentagon, Meade or Andrews billet, you are
just another commuter but like I said, why bother with the military at
that point, just get a job with a DoD contractor.

Don't know about Meade or Andrews, but most Pentagon billets are not nice unless you're a junior
enlisted. The only nice thing about it is not fighting rush hour traffic 'cause you're going in at
o-dark-thirty and coming home well after sunset.

Like I said, a commuter.
Andrews or Meade were a pretty good gig because there was plenty of
housing nearby that a GI could afford and the traffic was easy. I
assume Belvior is the same but I really never knew anyone there. We
also knew a lot of Navy guys at NAS, NRC (Anacostia) and Indian Head.
Bolling had people from all of the services doing something. One guy
we knew was in the Marines working there but I also knew a few Air
Force guys there.
If you lived in SE DC or "near in" PG county, everyone either worked
for USCS or the military. At places like the gun factory (now the
Washington navy yard) there were far more civilians than military. The
last actual "gun" activity was re sleeving the 16" guns on the Iowa.
That was in the early 60s. My father was working some kind of
intelligence job there but he never elaborated beyond saying he did
"planning".

On Thu, 24 Aug 2017 07:35:15 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

Other than a short stint on a patrol gunboat, most of my military
shipboard service was spent in helping track down and documenting the
locations of Soviet submarines with a new (at the time) system for doing so.

That was a major function of the ocean stations the Coast Guard ran
too. It was a pretty isolated group of guys doing it tho. The SONAR
gang lived and worked separately from the rest of us along with a
couple of civilians. That was the pre SOSUS days.

On Thu, 24 Aug 2017 07:57:34 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:


Oh, please. If it makes you feel happier to rationalize the assistance
you gave to the military-industrial complex that was involved in killing
hundreds of thousands of SE Asians, hey, go for it. Nothing this country
did in the war against Vietnam served our country.


So, maybe you might have considered serving in the military but only if
it was in total peacetime? Figures.

No not a chance. Harry is older than me and it WAS peace time when I
joined (64 reporting Jan 65). LBJ had just told us he would be keeping
us out of the Vietnam conflict.
http://gfretwell.com/ftp/johnson%20vietnam%20lie.mp3

Harry was hiding behind his 2-S