From Air Force Pilot Chris Thomas:
>
> I would like to add my two cents about my John Kerry experience.
> During my
> career as an Air Force pilot, I spent two years flying a small twin
> engine
> prop plane around the Pacific from my base in Okinawa, Japan.
>
> On one trip we had to fly Senator Kerry, his congressional aide, and a
> Navy
> Captain (Vietnam, A-4 fighter pilot) who was also in Kerry\'s party to
> various locations in Vietnam and Cambodia as part of the MIA/POW
> talks.
> When I met him, he was wearing a shirt with a picture of his sailboat
> on
> it. I told him I had a 27\' sailboat in Okinawa, he remarked \"Oh I
> never
> sail on anything less than 135 feet.\" Thanks, Senator, \"I feel even
> better
> about the meager salary I get paid for flying you around the Pacific.\"
>
> When we first flew him into Phnom Penh, he went to the back of the
> airplane and grabbed the pizza that was put aside for the crew and
> passed
> it around to his staff. He was never offered any pizza because they
> were
> supposed to have lunch with the Cambodian government when we landed.
> The
> pizza was the crew\'s only meal for that day and he ate it.
>
> Then when we picked him up in Cambodia, he was an hour late getting to
> the airport. Because fuel was an issue, we could not start the engines
> and
> therefore the air conditioning until he arrived. Phnom Penh at that
> time
> was over 100 degrees with 95% humidity and we were basically sitting
> in a
> greenhouse behind the cockpit windows. When he finally did arrive, we
> were
> wringing out our clothes from the perspiration. He walks out of the air
> conditioned car, into the airplane and asks us \"Could you guys get
> the
> air conditioning running, I\'m a little warm?\"
>
> The other pilot had to physically restrain me from going back there
> and
> picking a fight.
>
> Then we took him into Noi Bai airfield in Hanoi. After we picked him
> up
> the next day (he stayed the night in Vietnam, we stayed in Bangkok) we
> taxied out, ran up the engines for takeoff, and noticed that our
> prop rpm
> was vibrating all over the place. We taxied off to the side to look at
> it,
> but there was a good possibility that there was an engine malfunction
> and
> the engine may fail if we took off with it.
>
> Well, Mr. Senator sticks his head up in the cockpit and says \"This
> plane
> WILL take off, I have a press conference in Bangkok in three hours!\"
> (Maybe this is an indication of how he will run the FAA). American
> service members lives be damned, we had our Senatorial orders. We ran
> the
> engines again, and did not have the problem, so we took off and made
> it
> back. During the flight, he told everyone how he had taken a Cessna
> (a
> small General aviation plane) up with a fighter pilot, and the fighter
> pilot remarked that Kerry was one of the best pilots he had ever
> seen. I
> don\'t know about other pilots out there, but it\'s hard to imagine a
> little, single-engine prop plane pilot being able to show the \"right
> stuff.\"
>
> After Kerry left the plane, the Navy Captain came up to us,
> apologized and
> said basically that \"he knows Kerry is a jerk\" and that we should be
> glad
> we don\'t have to deal with him every day.
>
> Your choice folks. Elections in November. You want a mega-millionaire
> ego-maniac it\'s-all-about-me crew-eating-pizza-ite like Kerry or
> maybe a
> Green Party candidate like Ralph Nader? Or, God forbid, maybe even
> re-elect George Bush, a nice God-fearing Christian bent on protecting
> us
> from terrorist attacks on US soil? Hmmm, let\'s see? Continued freedom
> under Bush or bombs in our backyard under Kerry (who will be sailing
> on his
> \"minimum 135\' yacht\").
>
> As Fox would say, \"we report. You decide.\"
[Edited on 8/14/2004 by Mega X.exe]
Topic: Take a step into the twilight zone
Or my inbox, whichever\'s closer.

