The Unauthorized Randy “Duke” Cunningham Page

Now this should prove interesting - http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/25/hunter.president.ap/index.html

Interesting indeed, and surprising.

If Duncan Hunter ever becomes a serious presidential contender, he will certainly be exposed to intense scrutiny. And given his close relationship with Cunningham, and a similar pattern of campaign contributions and defense contractor relationships, his past would likely be investigated even more than others. One wonders what skeletons lurk in his closet.

Very true. See some majors disclosures if John McCain gets serious about running. Some of us know John. Few Naval Officer will talk I expect, but the word will get out.

Just for starters, read the book The Nightingale's Song by Robert Timberg

Ensign, just read the section on McCain. Forget reading the big words. Check into his cross country flights with enlisted women in the back seat of the TA-4. Check out his current wife's drug habit. Check out his sexual harrassment history with both women enlisted and officers. Check into his drinking. Think Teddy Kennedy is a lush?

Of course he is likely cleaned up now; but there is a history.

This could be a fun election.

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Well ya gotta reward those women for the night before. When TDY in Japan our CO and the Ops boss got frisky with a couple of Navy nurses. Those nurses got to go flying in an F-4 the next day.

My big gripe with McCain is he teamed up with Kerry and sponsored and got passed some bill that has since and even more covered up the MIA/POW thing in 'Nam.

Sure would like to find out, and surely be so extremely embarassing for this country to see what did happen to the POW's where were known to be alive and well and didn't come home.

Can't imagine it so awful that McCain, after his experience, would want to cover it up...but sure would like to know. As would the National Alliance for Families, still actively seeking info on Speicer (sp?) from Gulf 1, and others.

The issue of the POWs that were left behind is very painful to all of us that flew with them and knew them. However, at our level, we are so powerless. See Paul Newman's closing argument in his excellent movie, The Verdict. That is so much of what many of us feel about this matter.

It is what makes it such a tragedy is that I see young men and women marching off to another useless war, this one over big oil’s lust for that Iraqi LSC – Light Sweet Crude.

I still see my friends, and not friends, people I knew and flew with in my mind’s eye as they were then when they died in that uselessness. I still see my roommate the time he walked out of the ready room, flipped me the bird and flew off to his appointment with his destiny. They still visit me today, though not as often these days. But they still visit me at unguarded moments during most days, and especially in my dreams. I am old, and they are still young, gallant Lions.

Audi Alteram partem. I wonder who are the fortunate ones . . . they who passed so young or those of us that remain to remember them in our old age? As long as we remember them, does it prove they existed? When all of us have passed, does the proof of their existence pass with us? Is this the true reasons for memorials to war? To prove the existence, not of the war, but those who engaged in it?

When I was a young Lion, I had all the answers to all of the questions. Now n my later years, I have so few answers to anything.

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Yeppers....as we earlier discussed, my focal point is Harley Hall who would have turned 69 on 23 Dec., and the fact that he was held in captivity for many years, probably in the USSR.

I chat via email with his sister nearly every day....and she gets very sad and down every 27 Jan...the day of his shoot-down and the "last day" of that stupid war.

Harley Hall . . . what a guy. A water walker. He was sent to VF-143, the Pukin Dogs, to get it back on track after after Bill Albertson and Mace Neel had completely screw it up as successor C.Os. When Doc Townsend had -143 it reached it zenith, then the drunks took it down hill.

Orders, no orders, Harley had no business going up in to that flak and MiG trap where he got popped. The war was over, it was a useless mission. Another crew that were shot down in that same trap earlier were Mike Doyle and Jack ''Fingers'' Ensch off the Midway. When I flew that race track, I always turned back short of the trap.

But Harley, god bless him, was a ''can do/will do'' Navy guy with Admirals stars written all over himself. After the Russians beat everything of use out of him, I too believe that he lived and worked in a slave camp in Siberia for years. Likely on the trans-Siberian gas pipeline.