panzwami

Short answer: If there are titles, I think it makes more sense to have them based on experience. Long answer: I see no real reason to have titles at all, since I don't think people should be making real-life decisions based on what they read on here. That's why people always hedge their posts with "...but ask your instructor." Plus, what's to keep someone from putting down that they have 10,000 jumps and every rating in the book? Don't really see the point, but that's just me. Matt -----

Pooh Bag? Now *that's* one title I'd love to see.... Matt -----

damn....she wasn't that one woman that "lost" her $200 million lottery ticket, was she? You know, the one that turned out to be someone elses because she was totally lying about the whole damn thing? After reading all this, it wouldn't surprise me at all. Matt -----

nice...maybe she can come up with some nice tips on sprucing up a jail cell... Matt -----

I dunno that he beat the big boy (Microsoft). He ended up swapping his website (MikeRoweSoft.com) for an XBox. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/01/26/mikerowesoft.settle.ap/ Matt -----

I wonder if he ever recovered from that nasty bird strike.... Matt -----

"Don't spit in that cop's burger...." Matt -----

From our traditional allies? Actually, we had a great deal of international support, including from "traditional allies" like Britain, Poland, and Australia (et al.) "Because European countries now resolve differences through negotiation and consensus, there's sometimes an assumption that the entire world functions in the same way. But let us never forget how Europe's unity was achieved: By allied armies of liberation and NATO armies of defense. And let us never forget, beyond Europe's borders, in a world where oppression and violence are very real, liberation is still a moral goal, and freedom and security still need defenders. " -President George W. Bush Matt -----

Not to further degrade our international standing? I would argue that our international standing has been greatly strengthened: ----- GEORGE W. BUSH -- GRAND STRATEGIST By Tony Blankley THE WASHINGTON TIMES The Boston Globe - the respected, liberal newspaper owned by the New York Times - ran an article last week that Bush critics may wish to read carefully. It is a report on a new book that argues that President Bush has developed and is ably implementing only the third American grand strategy in our history. The author of this book, "Surprise, Security, and the American Experience" (Harvard Press) to be released in March, is John Lewis Gaddis, the Robert A. Lovett professor of military and naval history at Yale University. The Boston Globe describes Mr. Gaddis as "the dean of Cold War studies and one of the nation's most eminent diplomatic historians." In other words, this is not some put-up job by an obscure right-wing author. This comes from the pinnacle of the liberal Ivy League academic establishment. If you hate George W. Bush, you will hate this Boston Globe story because it makes a strong case that Mr. Bush stands in a select category with presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and James Monroe (as guided by his secretary of state, John Q. Adams) in implementing one of only three grand strategies of American foreign policy in our two-century history. As the Globe article describes in an interview with Mr. Gaddis: "Grand strategy is the blueprint from which policy follows. It envisions a country's mission, defines its interests, and sets its priorities. Part of grand strategy's grandeur lies in its durability: A single grand strategy can shape decades, even centuries of policy." According to this analysis, the first grand strategy by Monroe/Adams followed the British invasion of Washington and the burning of the White House in 1814. They responded to that threat by developing a policy of gaining future security through territorial expansion - filling power vacuums with American pioneers before hostile powers could get in. That strategy lasted throughout the 19th and the early 20th centuries, and accounts for our continental size and historic security. FDR's plans for the post-World War II period were the second grand strategy and gained American security by establishing free markets and self-determination in Europe as a safeguard against future European wars, while creating the United Nations and related agencies to help us manage the rest of the world and contain the Soviets. The end of the Cold War changed that and led, according to Mr. Gaddis, to President Clinton's assumption that a new grand strategy was not needed because globalization and democratization were inevitable. "Clinton said as much at one point. I think that was shallow. I think they were asleep at the switch," Mr. Gaddis observed. That brings the professor to George W.Bush, who he describes as undergoing "one of the most surprising transformations of an underrated national leader since Prince Hal became Henry V." Clearly, Mr. Gaddis has not been a long-time admirer of Mr. Bush. But he is now. He observes that Mr. Bush "undertook a decisive and courageous reassessment of American grand strategy following the shock of the 9/11 attacks. At his doctrine's center, Bush placed the democratization of the Middle East and the urgent need to prevent terrorists and rogue states from getting nuclear weapons. Bush also boldly rejected the constraints of an outmoded international system that was really nothing more that a snapshot of the configuration of power that existed in 1945." It is worth noting that John Kerry and the other Democrats' central criticism of Mr. Bush - the prosaic argument that he should have taken no action without U.N. approval - is rejected by Mr. Gaddis as being a proposed policy that would be constrained by an "outmoded international system." In assessing Mr. Bush's progress to date, the Boston Globe quotes Mr Gaddis: "So far the military action in Iraq has produced a modest improvement in American and global economic conditions; an intensified dialogue within the Arab world about political reform; a withdrawal of American forces from Saudi Arabia; and an increasing nervousness on the part of the Syrian and Iranian governments as they contemplated the consequences of being surrounded by American clients or surrogates. The United States has emerged as a more powerful and purposeful actor within the international system than it had been on September 11, 2001." In another recent article, written before the Iraqi war, Mr. Gaddis wrote: "[Bush's] grand strategy is actually looking toward the culmination of the Wilsonian project of a world safe for Democracy, even in the Middle East. And this long-term dimension of it, it seems to me, goes beyond what we've seen in the thinking of more recent administrations. It is more characteristic of the kind of thinking, say, that the Truman administration was doing at the beginning of the Cold War." Is Mr. Bush becoming an historic world leader in the same category as FDR, as the eminent Ivy League professor argues? Or is he just a lying nitwit, as the eminent Democratic Party Chairman and Clinton fund-raiser Terry McAuliffe argues? I suspect that as this election year progresses, that may end up being the decisive debate. You can put me on the side of the professor. Matt -----

.....and which other candidate would that be? ------ Letters to the Editor - The Washington Times Published February 11, 2004 'Bush and I were lieutenants' George Bush and I were lieutenants and pilots in the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron (FIS), Texas Air National Guard (ANG) from 1970 to 1971. We had the same flight and squadron commanders (Maj. William Harris and Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, both now deceased). While we were not part of the same social circle outside the base, we were in the same fraternity of fighter pilots, and proudly wore the same squadron patch. It is quite frustrating to hear the daily cacophony from the left and Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts democrat, et al., about Lt. Bush escaping his military responsibilities by hiding in the Texas ANG. In the Air Guard during the Vietnam War, you were always subject to call-up, as many Air National Guardsmen are finding out today. If the 111th FIS and Lt. Bush did not go to Vietnam, blame President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, not lowly Lt. Bush. They deliberately avoided use of the Guard and Reserves for domestic political calculations, knowing that a draftee only stirred up the concerns of one family, while a call-up got a whole community's attention. The mission of the 147th Fighter Group and its subordinate 111th FIS, Texas ANG, and the airplane it possessed, the F-102, was air defense. It was focused on defending the continental United States from Soviet nuclear bombers. The F-102 could not drop bombs and would have been useless in Vietnam. A pilot program using ANG volunteer pilots in F-102s (called Palace Alert) was scrapped quickly after the airplane proved to be unsuitable to the war effort. Ironically, Lt. Bush did inquire about this program but was advised by an ANG supervisor (Maj. Maurice Udell, retired) that he did not have the desired experience (500 hours) at the time and that the program was winding down and not accepting more volunteers. If you check the 111th FIS records of 1970-72 and any other ANG squadron, you will find other pilots excused for career obligations and conflicts. The Bush excusal in 1972 was further facilitated by a change in the unit's mission, from an operational fighter squadron to a training squadron with a new airplane, the F-101, which required that more pilots be available for full-time instructor duty rather than part-time traditional reservists with outside employment. The winding down of the Vietnam War in 1971 provided a flood of exiting active-duty pilots for these instructor jobs, making part-timers like Lt. Bush and me somewhat superfluous. There was a huge glut of pilots in the Air Force in 1972, and with no cockpits available to put them in, many were shoved into nonflying desk jobs. Any pilot could have left the Air Force or the Air Guard with ease after 1972 before his commitment was up because there just wasn't room for all of them anymore. Sadly, few of today's partisan pundits know anything about the environment of service in the Reserves in the 1970s. The image of a reservist at that time is of one who joined, went off for six months' basic training, then came back and drilled weekly or monthly at home, with two weeks of "summer camp." With the knowledge that Mr. Johnson and Mr. McNamara were not going to call out the Reserves, it did become a place of refuge for many wanting to avoid Vietnam. There was one big exception to this abusive use of the Guard to avoid the draft, and that was for those who wanted to fly, as pilots or crewmembers. Because of the training required, signing up for this duty meant up to 2½ years of active duty for training alone, plus a high probability of mobilization. A fighter-pilot candidate selected by the Guard (such as Lt. Bush and me) would be spending the next two years on active duty going through basic training (six weeks), flight training (one year), survival training (two weeks) and combat crew training for his aircraft (six to nine months), followed by local checkout (up to three more months) before he was even deemed combat-ready. Because the draft was just two years, you sure weren't getting out of duty being an Air Guard pilot. If the unit to which you were going back was an F-100, you were mobilized for Vietnam. Avoiding service? Yeah, tell that to those guys. The Bush critics do not comprehend the dangers of fighter aviation at any time or place, in Vietnam or at home, when they say other such pilots were risking their lives or even dying while Lt. Bush was in Texas. Our Texas ANG unit lost several planes right there in Houston during Lt. Bush's tenure, with fatalities. Just strapping on one of those obsolescing F-102s was risking one's life. Critics such as Mr. Kerry (who served in Vietnam, you know), Terry McAuliffe and Michael Moore (neither of whom served anywhere) say Lt. Bush abandoned his assignment as a jet fighter pilot without explanation or authorization and was AWOL from the Alabama Air Guard. Well, as for abandoning his assignment, this is untrue. Lt. Bush was excused for a period to take employment in Florida for a congressman and later in Alabama for a Senate campaign. Excusals for employment were common then and are now in the Air Guard, as pilots frequently are in career transitions, and most commanders (as I later was) are flexible in letting their charges take care of career affairs until they return or transfer to another unit near their new employment. Sometimes they will transfer temporarily to another unit to keep them on the active list until they can return home. The receiving unit often has little use for a transitory member, especially in a high-skills category like a pilot, because those slots usually are filled and, if not filled, would require extensive conversion training of up to six months, an unlikely option for a temporary hire. As a commander, I would put such "visitors" in some minor administrative post until they went back home. There even were a few instances when I was unaware that they were on my roster because the paperwork often lagged. Today, I can't even recall their names. If a Lt. Bush came into my unit to "pull drills" for a couple of months, I wouldn't be too involved with him because I would have a lot more important things on my table keeping the unit combat ready. Another frequent charge is that, as a member of the Texas ANG, Lt. Bush twice ignored or disobeyed lawful orders, first by refusing to report for a required physical in the year when drug testing first became part of the exam, and second by failing to report for duty at the disciplinary unit in Colorado to which he had been ordered. Well, here are the facts: First, there is no instance of Lt. Bush disobeying lawful orders in reporting for a physical, as none would be given. Pilots are scheduled for their annual flight physicals in their birth month during that month’s weekend drill assembly -- the only time the clinic is open. In the Reserves, it is not uncommon to miss this deadline by a month or so for a variety of reasons: The clinic is closed that month for special training; the individual is out of town on civilian business; etc. If so, the pilot is grounded temporarily until he completes the physical. Also, the formal drug testing program was not instituted by the Air Force until the 1980s and is done randomly by lot, not as a special part of a flight physical, when one easily could abstain from drug use because of its date certain. Blood work is done, but to ensure a healthy pilot, not confront a drug user. Second, there was no such thing as a "disciplinary unit in Colorado" to which Lt. Bush had been ordered. The Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver is a repository of the paperwork for those no longer assigned to a specific unit, such as retirees and transferees. Mine is there now, so I guess I'm "being disciplined." These "disciplinary units” just don't exist. Any discipline, if required, is handled within the local squadron, group or wing, administratively or judicially. Had there been such an infraction or court-martial action, there would be a record and a reflection in Lt. Bush's performance review and personnel folder. None exists, as was confirmed in The Washington Post in 2000. Finally, the Kerrys, Moores and McAuliffes are casting a terrible slander on those who served in the Guard, then and now. My Guard career parallels Lt. Bush's, except that I stayed on for 33 years. As a guardsman, I even got to serve in two campaigns. In the Cold War, the air defense of the United States was borne primarily by the Air National Guard, by such people as Lt. Bush and me and a lot of others. Six of those with whom I served in those years never made their 30th birthdays because they died in crashes flying air-defense missions. While most of America was sleeping and Mr. Kerry was playing antiwar games with Hanoi Jane Fonda, we were answering 3 a.m. scrambles for who knows what inbound threat over the Canadian subarctic, the cold North Atlantic and the shark-filled Gulf of Mexico. We were the pathfinders in showing that the Guard and Reserves could become reliable members of the first team in the total force, so proudly evidenced today in Afghanistan and Iraq. It didn’t happen by accident. It happened because back at the nadir of Guard fortunes in the early '70s, a lot of volunteer guardsman showed they were ready and able to accept the responsibilities of soldier and citizen -- then and now. Lt. Bush was a kid whose congressman father encouraged him to serve in the Air National Guard. We served proudly in the Guard. Would that Mr. Kerry encourage his children and the children of his colleague senators and congressmen to serve now in the Guard? In the fighter-pilot world, we have a phrase we use when things are starting to get out of hand and it's time to stop and reset before disaster strikes. We say, "Knock it off." So, Mr. Kerry and your friends who want to slander the Guard: Knock it off. COL. WILLIAM CAMPENNI (retired) U.S. Air Force/Air National Guard Herndon, VA. Matt -----

I dunno, an 8-year check is pretty clear. You only get the 8-year once, while the batteries are replaced six times. And if that's not enough to tell you the difference, there's a sticker on theh unit itself that says "8-year" and has the date. Matt -----

I dunno, I'm rather enjoying watching some of the arguments unfold.... Matt -----

Hey, he shouldn't have to take that kind of crap. Matt -----

For personal reasons I won't jump without a cypress. It's all about comfort level and if a person doesn't feel comfortable without a cypress, it doesn't matter how simple the skydive is going to be. Oh no, don't get me wrong. It is a personal decision to be made entirely by the person who is jumping. There is absolutely nothing wrong with not wanting to jump sans CYPRES. My point is simply that not having a CYPRES is not an automatic non-jumping situation. Nowadays, most everyone has a CYPRES, and they are generally considered part of one's gear (as a main or reserve would be). But, thousands of people made thousands of skydives before the CYPRES was invented. Not having one does not automatically mean you can't skydive. Matt -----

So....just jump without a CYPRES. Believe it or not, it's not the end of the world. Just stick to skydives that you know are within your skill limits, and you'll be fine. Incidentally (and this goes for everyone), in the future, if you are thinking about buying a used CYPRES from someone, send an email to [email protected] before you buy it. They can provide you with 4- and 8-year service dates and battery replacement history on the unit. All you need to do is send them the serial number. I was looking at buying a used CYPRES not too long ago that hadn't had an 8-year, even though the seller said it had. Hope this helps. Matt -----

And the suggestion that Kerry is orchestrating the "war hero" stuff is substantiated? I don't see that any more substantiated than the comments of Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, formerly of the Office of Special Planning, on the massaging of intel for Bush/Cheney. I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at here. I absolutely think Kerry is waving his medals around and trumpeting his military service as a means for beating his own chest. His ads say it, his campaign staff say it, and he himself brings it up at virtually every opportunity. As for whether or not he is a "war hero", that is a different question. Personally, I have a very hard time retaining respect for someone whose actions were a direct cause of harm to other war heroes who were not as fortunate as he to be out of harm's way. I have a close relative who was a POW in Vietnam, and long before this debate started, I was given firsthand accounts of the suffering that was endured by countless American heroes because of the actions of kerry and others like him. And instead of apologizing to those people who suffered because of his actions, kerry would rather point to his post-war record as an indicator of his heroism. I don't believe actions like that are indicitive of a true hero. As far as the intel question, I did not at any point in that article see any reference at all to any actions taken at the behest of President Bush himself. It provides no evidence at all that the President was even aware of what was going on in that office, and certainly fails even to begin to show that he ordered it to happen. Matt -----

hmmm, dog you say? Is this a small dog, perhaps suitable for punting? Matt -----

Classic liberal response. Anyone dares make a statement that is not glowingly positive, respond by making an extremely inflammitory, yet unsubstantiated, accusation aimed at pointing the spotlight (read: liberal media) anywhere else. Matt -----

A little simplistic, don't you think? He voted to allow the president to use the military against Iraq as a last resort if UN inspections failed. Unfortunately, he, and the rest of those who voted for that (all but 2) believed Bush would actually live up to his end of the agreement and allow the UN to do its job. Interesting position, but I think you may be mistaken. The resolution authorized the President to use force after *he* determined it was necessary. There is no stipluation that the President get approval to act; rather, it expressly said that he is the one who will determine when force becomes necessary. (source: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:HJ00114:@@@L&summ2=m&) kerry voted FOR this resolution, knowing full well how it was written. Either he was too stupid to read the bill before voting for it, or he agreed with what it said. For him now to stand up and criticize how the President used the authority that kerry himself allowed him to have, in my opinion, is sorely hypocritical. If he wants to stand on a pulpit and ramble about how badly he thinks Bush has handled things, he must first stand on the same pulpit and admit his own guilt. Matt -----

I've got two low-profile D rings that seat very tightly in the harness. The handles are steel, so I don't think they will fold under the webbing. If the whole assembly does get twisted when I put the rig on, it'll be pretty easy to notice. Matt -----

$350 is about right. It includes the course (in my case $200), the books ($55 from the USPA), and the jump tickets for the in-air evals. You will need 2 tickets for yourself and 2 for evaluators, plus any additional tickets for re-jumps of evals you might not pass on the first try. For my course, we spent two and a half days in the classroom doing the lecture and teaching evaluations. The weather wasn't good enough for jumping, so the in-air dives had to be postponed until another day. Matt -----

Interesting reading today, exactly on point: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56316-2004Feb19.html Matt -----

umm....maybe I just don't see the "unfortunately" here... Matt -----

Yeah baby, the legislative process in action! Being a registered voter and skydiver in the great Commonwealth of Virginia, I felt it my civic duty to contact my delegate and voice my opinion on the matter. I sought to change the state for the better, and I was successful! (although my delegate voted against the bill......ASSHAT) Matt -----

Damn, now I'm gonna have to get myself a VX just so I can stay "cool." Matt -----