AWOL Bush Finally Exposed in US Media

As Lloyd Bridges might have said in Airplane 2004, "Looks like I picked the wrong time to give up blogging."

Boston Globe:

President Bush fell well short of meeting his military obligation in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.

-- Twice during his Guard service - first when he joined in May 1968, and again before he transferred out of his unit in mid-1973 to attend Harvard Business School - Bush signed documents pledging to meet training commitments or face a punitive call-up to active duty.

-- He didn't meet the commitments, or face the punishment, the records show.

-- The reexamination of Bush's records by the Globe, along with interviews with military specialists who have reviewed regulations from that era, show that Bush's attendance at required training drills was so irregular that his superiors could have disciplined him or ordered him to active duty in 1972, 1973, or 1974. But they did neither. In fact, Bush's unit certified in late 1973 that his service had been ''satisfactory" -- just four months after Bush's commanding officer wrote that Bush had not been seen at his unit for the previous 12 months

-- Lawrence J. Korb, an assistant secretary of defense for manpower and reserve affairs in the Reagan administration, said after studying many of the documents that it is clear to him that Bush "gamed the system." And he agreed with Lloyd that Bush was not alone in doing so. "If I cheat on my income tax and don't get caught, I'm still cheating on my income tax," Korb said.

-- "It appears that no one wanted to hold him accountable," said retired Major General Paul A. Weaver Jr., who retired in 2002 as the Pentagon's director of the Air National Guard.

The AP(!) flatly says the Bush campaign was lying.

Bush's 2000 campaign suggested the future president skipped his medical exam in part because the F-102A was nearly obsolete. Records show Bush's Texas unit flew the F-102A until 1974 and used the jets as part of an air defense drill during 1972.

Why, next they might even say Michael Moore was right, Bush was a deserter.

Will Peter Jennings now apologize to Michael Moore and Wesley Clark?

Political Strategy may have been first. This will be the topic in blogville and finally perhaps this time in the US media.

I wrote this last night but couldn't get Blogger to post it. Let me add an update and try again.

Sixty Minutes tonight covered how Bush avoided Vietnam and was never held responsible in the Texas Air National Guard for deciding he was going to walk away from his duties. It has been reported there was a big fight over at 60 minutes over the little bit they did put on.