-->eine Email an RR:

A LITTLE TOUCH OF ARROGANCE.

Subject: John F. Kerry

Writer Hal Cranmer:

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
Kerry, he was wearing a shirt with a picture of his sailboat on it. I told
him I had a small 27 sailboat in Okinawa, he remarked"Oh I never sail on
anything less than 135 feet."

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 once we landed. The
pizza would have been our only meal that day. Then when we picked him up
in Cambodia, he was an hour late getting to the airport. 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 Kerry 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). 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.

Russell Comment -- If true, God save our Republic. Hey, maybe he's changed.