What is the purpose of a "reunion" site- one where we come back together to just discuss on the net, or, in fact, actually set up reunions and talk amongst friends? For most of us, it is a chance to rekindle friendships or find old friends- maybe make some new one's in the process- reflect upon our service or help us remember the many good and bad times- celebrate our service or contribution to the Cold War- find out what has happened to others, or the unit(s)...

It is important to remember that 20 or more years have passed for everyone- we all may have different opinions or positions than we did years ago- we may be very different politically or personally (socially)- but most importantly, probably and hopefully, we have all matured and perhaps refined ourselves a bit.

There was (and still is, although most of the time it is a wasteland) another "discussion/reunion" site for the 4th USAFAD started prior to this one and our associated message boards. Initially, all went well for a few months on the other site. After that, it slowly became apparent that many were not happy with the content of the board(s), especially the America bashing vitriol coming from the Administrator, Thomas Miller. Additionally, scores of Michael Jackson sex with kids jokes, as well as countless tasteless Terry Schiavo jokes being posted by a "Moderator" of the site, by someone named "Miles", who also contributed some nice stick figure animations of two people engaging in oral sex, and a nice little snippet of someone blowing their head off in the back of a car.

Once the "class" began to disappear, so did many or most of the members. A large fight ensued as well, and even though they were warned for some time about the effect of such comments and postings and pictures not being conducive to creating a welcoming environment for the "adults" who would be slowly over the years searching out a good site to find old friends from the 4th on, they never let up (until the place looked like a ghost-town), and even argued things such as not honoring their oaths of service under the current administration, accusing our troops of being "busy killing civilians in Iraq based on lies", and stating the 4th's mission was a joke...

Interestingly, some of us never knew those responsible for those remarks... But after finding folks on the new site who DO know those people, the response has been, across the board, that they are "not surprised" at the lack of class, or the content of their messages.

In our opinion, Military Reunion sites should not contain such crap- but the reasons for exempting that kind of content should not be due to "censorship"; nor due to trying to restrict 1st Amendment rights; nor due to people being prevented from engaging in healthy, infromed, respectful and truthful debate (as opposed to partisan bickering)--- but a reunion site should restrain from lowering the "class" level of the content just out of respect for each other... we don't come here for that (bickering, hate, partisan politics)... the reasons for exempting that kind of content should be due to self restraint based on maturity, respect, and common sense... Those on the 'other' site had little of any of that.

In light of the developments on that 'other' site, those who administered the site have tried to make some changes. Most of it has been a feeble, desperate attempt to try and reverse and change the site so it is more attractive- oddly enough, the most apparent method of doing this is getting them to shut up about their radical views!!! Imagine that. Weeks go by with a post or two, max, much of the time someone saying nothing interesting but trying to drum up conversation by responding to some dead thread that nobody has posted to for WEEKS (or even months, in some cases) while on the new site, we will experience 20 times the posts, or more.

One interesting development was the "appointment" of a new site Admin. - "Duran". Unfortunately Mr. Duran was in agreement with the "busy killing civilians in Iraq based on lies" comment from the previous Admin. Sad...

Another very interesting development was the recent attempt to restore the site by having administrators and moderators apparently go into "private" forums to discuss the reason for the site's decline, and ideas for improving the site. Nary a thought seems to have been had on how to improve the site- at least one cannot see any on the surface. Who knows- they might even have talked about deleting posts that were offensive to people... but the joke there would be, those offensive posts were made by the moderators and administrators of the site who would be discussing the deletions!!! The SAME people who refused to listen when it was explained to them that the site would die if they continued to post what they were posting- and they just scoffed and touted "freedom of speech"... Wouldn't it be ironic if they have discussed opressing and deleting their OWN speech in order to rejuvenate the site.

Pathetic- ironic- hypocritical. For that exact reason, the pages that they might delete in the future have been saved for posterity sake, and linked on this page.

Those who started the new site (this site and the one at 570thusaag.com) felt that, well- you and your fellow Vet's deserved more class than that. And that you should not have to get excited in finding a nice place for folks to get back together only to find out that it is run by adolescent insolent punks that still act as they did when they were fresh little E-2's.

With that in mind, we created the new site, and the people have been great, the traffic great, the topics and quality of conversation great... And we hope you will come and join in with some old friends in a classy environment.

We do encourage dissent and intelligent discussion, political or otherwise. But for the most part, we just get together for fun, and try to leave those aspects of life to the "other sides" of our lives...

Hope to see you there!!! 4th USAFAD Meassage Boards