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" I was commanding officer of a supersonic fighter squadron, F-8 Crusaders. "
James Stockdale
Squadron
Officer
Fighter
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" And we had our own laws. I mean, I wrote them. And we had our own customs, and traditions, and proprieties. "
James Stockdale
Our
Traditions
Wrote
" On the eighteenth of December 1972, when we thought we were getting another of the hundreds of little tactical air raids, we heard the bombs going in out there in the railroad yards and this went on for about thirty minutes. "
James Stockdale
Going
Thirty
Railroad
" I'm a grown man. You know, I've been in a lot of scrapes, but I never felt like I got so - there are probably a lot of things I should have done that I didn't do. "
James Stockdale
Like
You
Done
" Yeah. I mean, it just seemed to me that it was - I felt so helpless to this business of not having any papers. That seems like a throwback to a schoolboy. "
James Stockdale
Mean
Business
Throwback
" There was nothing there but black water and American fire power. "
James Stockdale
Black
Fire
Power
" In order to do something you must be something. "
James Stockdale
Must
You
Something
" Well, first of all, I was asked by Ross Perot on a telephone call in March of 1992 if, since he had committed on the Larry King Show to becoming a candidate for president, to get on all 50 ballots. "
James Stockdale
King
First
President
" But there were highs as well as lows, it was as though they said everybody was picking on the man who had more practical real life experiences than the whole batch of them put together. "
James Stockdale
Real Life
Life
Together
" And so, I mean, he declared war right there and then in so many words and Alex says later in the book, nobody in the White House from that point on had any doubt that we were going to bomb the mainland of Asia. "
James Stockdale
White
War
Doubt
" They were heading out to the middle of the bay - the Gulf - that's another thing that became kind of standard practice, we didn't hurry the destroyers around the beach any more, when it got dark, we'd take 'em out thirty or forty miles out in the middle of the Tonkin Gulf. "
James Stockdale
Practice
Thirty
Got
" He's a novice, but he's had these - he's experienced in leadership in tight circumstances. He started - he dropped the first bomb, led the first air strike into North Vietnam. "
James Stockdale
Circumstances
Started
Air
" So the first thing that went on was to decide... trying to find a time when we could get reprisal raids out. "
James Stockdale
Decide
Trying
Time
" I was tortured fifteen times, that's total submission. They did that with shutting off your blood circulation with ropes, giving you claustrophobia and pain at the same time, bending you double. "
James Stockdale
You
Giving
Time
" They can shout down the head of the physics department at Cal Tech. "
James Stockdale
Shout
Physics
Head
" The guy that just arranges things so that the stock market holds up is nobody in my - in my estimation. "
James Stockdale
Stock Market
Things
Up
" I think character is permanent, and issues are transient. "
James Stockdale
Character
Think
Permanent
" We couldn't generalize on the people. Some of them were known to be tough guys and they didn't say much, but some of them were kind of soft-headed, but they did that. That was an East German film. "
James Stockdale
Say
Film
Kind
" Half the issues they - are so polished they're talking about - are dead by the time they get into the office, and into the midst of their tour where they're really productive. "
James Stockdale
Dead
Where
Time
" I mean, I didn't - I should have demanded attention of the boss maybe, or something like that that might have backfired. This I would just take as it came. "
James Stockdale
Boss
Like
Just
" I never had a single conversation about politics with Ross Perot in my life; still haven't. "
James Stockdale
My Life
Politics
Conversation
" Sybil's my wife, and on the first day of October, that's the first time I knew Ross was going to run. "
James Stockdale
October
Run
Going