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Politics : Did Slick Boink Monica? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Janice Shell who wrote (14422)	4/22/1998 2:07:00 PM
From: LoLoLoLita	Respond to of 20981

why didn't he just buy her a uniform to wear? you know, like those bunny outfits that Playboy used to have. work uniforms are legal. employment is voluntary.

To: Janice Shell who wrote (14422)	4/22/1998 3:03:00 PM
From: Catfish	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20981

MILITARY IN TAILSPIN FROM SEXUAL POLITICS Creators Syndicate 4-22-98 Paul Craig Roberts MILITARY IN TAILSPIN FROM SEXUAL POLITICS Paul Craig Roberts APRIL 22, 1998 In Ayn Rand's classic novel "Atlas Shrugged," productive people walk away when government policies become overbearing. This is now happening in the U.S. military. The best pilots are leaving in droves despite a doubling of the bonus for signing on for another five years. Two years ago, six out of 10 Air Force pilots took the $60,000 bonus and stayed. Today, not even three out of 10 will stay for twice the bonus. In the first five months of the 1998 fiscal year, the Air Force lost 775 pilots -- 23 percent more than it lost in all 12 months of 1997. With attrition rates outstripping replacements, the Air Force expects to be short about 1,000 pilots this year. The situation is worse among Navy carrier pilots. The Associated Press reported that this year only 10 percent of the Navy's top flyers have accepted bonuses to stay. The Navy Times conducted a survey to find out what was driving out the best fighter pilots. Among the top two reasons for leaving, 50 percent of Navy officers cited "loss of confidence with leadership." As one flight officer put it, "The current leaders of the Navy are now reaping the rewards of their politically centered short-sightedness." Pilot morale has been destroyed by Navy admirals and Air Force generals who sold out their services for one more star on their shoulder or sleeve. The trouble began with the "Tailhook" scandal that was orchestrated by radical feminist Pat Schroeder, a Democratic member of Congress at the time. The scandal was turned into a witch hunt by radical feminists and used to break down the Navy's opposition to placing women in combat. The admirals choose career over loyalty to the Navy and aligned themselves with the feminists' sexual politics. Soon, female quota pilots were flying F-14s with disastrous results. One was permitted to keep flying despite the warnings of her flight instructor that she was a danger to herself and others. She crashed and died. To hide the fact that the pilot was killed by the Navy's quota policy, Navy Secretary John Dalton put out a false report that the mishap was caused by engine failure. The Navy personnel aboard the aircraft carrier who witnessed the event saw more than the crash and death of a pilot. They saw the breakdown of military integrity under pressure to hastily acquire female jet-fighter pilots. When I wrote about this three years ago, Admiral S.R. Arthur penned the Navy's obligatory cover-up letter-to-the-editor in response to my column, which he dismissed as "tripe." The Navy's pilots, of course, already knew the facts, and they saw Arthur's letter as more lies to cover up the Navy's double standards in flight training. Since Arthur's cover-up letter, the facts have burst out all over the place. There has been a Navy report citing numerous pilot errors as the cause of the crash. The woman's flight instructor, Lt. Patrick J. Burns, a braver man than Arthur, released training records that showed beyond any doubt that women were being pushed through F-14 qualification school irrespective of failures that would have washed a male out of flight school. The Navy has had to ground other female fighter pilots that it once claimed were qualified, and Arthur himself has since admitted that the Navy may have pushed female fliers too quickly into combat squadrons. Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness issued a number of documented reports that show the destruction of pilot morale by sexual politics and the Clintonista service secretaries who have forced the dangerous double-standards into flight training. Integrity at the top is so perverted that Dalton has attempted to deflect attention from his deadly quota policy by censuring Lt. Burns for telling the truth. Demoralization has spread beyond the pilots. Last year only 30 percent of first-term sailors re-enlisted. That is substantially below the retention rate necessary to maintain a steady-state force. Retention has also fallen below target levels for second- and third-term sailors. Indeed, the Navy Times reports that 75 percent of officers and enlisted personnel are "planning or leaning toward leaving the Navy." The Republican Congress and armed-services committees could stem the departure tide by washing Dalton out of service, but Republicans are too cowardly to do anything that might appear manly. The next time Clinton threatens to bomb Iraq, he will first have to borrow some pilots from our allies. *** To find out more about Paul Craig Roberts, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 1998 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------