[Ieatcamaros]

I got this in an email a couple of days ago. I thought a few would like to read it.

Another voice heard from Observations by an Air Force Pilot.
> I'm confident that in approximately 15 minutes this article will be in
> the inboxes of every resident of the free world and maybe even a few
> people in France.
> Chris Thomas, Air Force Pilot:
> 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 take off 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?