Forgive me if I don’t join in the pundit plaudits for Bush 41. A WW II hero? The main reason he joined the military was to take the spotlight off his father, Prescott Bush, who was a Nazi sympathizer (http://www.dailykos.com/...) and was involved in the plot to kidnap FDR and take over the White House (http://www.eclectica.org/...).
When George W. Bush was shot down during a bombing run over Chichi Jima, he was flying a Grumman TBF Avenger, a very solid aircraft. He bailed out immediately, and left his two crewmembers to plummet into the Pacify and die. A real hero might have tried a water landing, which would have allowed all 3 to escape.
His real legacy though, was walking away from Afghanistan following the Afghan rout of the Soviet army in 1989. All the arms we left there were picked up by the Taliban and the power vacuum that was left was filled by them. To top it all off, he sent 26,000 American troops into Somalia without any plan or clearly defined mission. That led to the Blackhawk Down fiasco, all of which was blamed on Bill Clinton in 1990. I will piss on his grave when he is dead.