Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Document on Drudge Report Reveals Bush Did Not Meet Obligations

A document that Matt Drudge has linked to to defend Bush against charges he lied about being in the Air Force may have backfired - showing instead Bush did not meet his military obligations in 1972, 1973 and 1974.

Bush had previously claimed he was in the Air Force as well as in the Air Force Reserve. The document that Drudge provides shows that while undergoing training he was technically on active duty. Drudge clearly doesn't know that active duty is NOT the same as being in the Air Force.

Worse than that further down in the document it lists Bush's required service requirements while in the Reserve (pdf).
h: Satisfactory participation during my menership in the Air National Guard will be attendence and satisfactory performance of assigned duties at 48 scheduled inactive duty training periods and 15 days field training (active duty for training) annually, unlessed excused therefrom by proper authority.

After April of 72 Bush never meet his annual training requirements according to documents the White House has released. U.S. News and World Report:
Bush's own records show that he fell short of that requirement, attending only 36 drills in the 1972-73 period, and only 12 in the 1973-74 period. The U.S. News analysis also showed that during the final two years of his obligation, Bush did not comply with Air Force regulations that impose a time limit on making up missed drills. What's more, he apparently never made up five months of drills he missed in 1972, contrary to assertions by the administration.

See also The AWOL Project by Paul Lukasiak and Lechliter 32 page analysis (pdf).

USA TODAY: Dean Roome, a former fighter pilot who lived with Bush in the early 1970s, said that during the first part of Bush's pilot service, he was a model officer. But he described Bush's Air Guard career as erratic - the first three years solid, the last two troubled.

"You wonder if you know who George Bush is," Roome said. "I think he digressed after a while. In the first half, he was gung-ho. Where George failed was to fulfill his obligation as a pilot. It was an irrational time in his life."

Pressed for details during the 2002 interview, Roome declined to elaborate. In February this year, replying to an e-mail from USA TODAY, Roome wrote that he admires Bush and does not want to be seen as attacking him. "Only George W. Bush knows why he was unable to continue flying in the Guard," Roome wrote.

President Bush' former Harvard Business School prof says his ex-student supported the Vietnam War but wanted somebody else to fight it.

NY Daily News: NeYoshi Tsurumi said yesterday that Bush told him his father's connections got him into the Texas Air National Guard. "But what really disturbed me is that he said he was for the Vietnam War," said Tsurumi, who has also taught at Baruch College and the City University of New York. "I said, 'George, that's hypocrisy. You won't fight a war that you support but you expect other people to fight it for you.' He just smirked."

"He was very casual about it," the professor said. "I said, 'Lucky you, how did you manage it?' He said, 'My dad had a good friend who put me at the head of the waiting list.'"

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