Posted on 02/13/2004 11:26:52 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
WASHINGTON -- Seeking to stop the political battering over his 1970s Air National Guard duty, President Bush released hundreds of pages of records Friday that filled in some of the blanks about his service and left others open.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the president decided to release the documents, shortly after they were supplied by the Defense Department, to counter "ridiculous suggestions" that "were leaving the wrong impression with the public."
The records failed to directly confirm Bush did any service in Alabama, where, according to some critics, he shirked his Guard duty in the United States during the Vietnam War.
Some documents did provide a partial explanation of why Bush did not begin performing duties in Alabama until months after he left a Texas Air National Guard unit in Houston to work on a U.S. Senate campaign. The papers show officials overruled an initial Alabama assignment for Bush, potentially pushing back the date he began service in the state.
The documents provided no obvious explanation for why Bush neglected to take a physical examination in 1972, resulting in loss of his status as a pilot.
Democrats said Friday the issue of Bush's Guard service had not been laid to rest.
"Each revelation of material from the Bush White House has raised more questions than it has answered. It remains to be seen if these newest documents will provide any answers," said Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Debra DeShong.
After sputtering as a political issue in 2000, the questions about Bush's Guard duty were resurrected recently by harsh charges from political opponents like Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe. He accused Bush of being absent without leave from the Guard during the period when he transferred from Texas to Alabama.
The Vietnam War combat hero record of Bush's likely Democratic election rival, U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, adds to the political mix.
The president's opponents focus on 1972, when Bush took a job with the campaign of Winton "Red" Blount.
Until this week the White House had said nothing about the period, and journalists had failed to produce any witnesses who could place Bush on Guard duty in Alabama. But witnesses began to come forward late this week.
John B. Calhoun, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Alabama National Guard, said Friday he remembered seeing Bush throughout the summer and fall of 1972 at Dannelly Field. Calhoun was a flight safety officer there.
He said Bush was assigned to him to perform nonflight status duties as a temporary transfer from the Texas Guard.
"He came in his uniform and sat in my office reading training manuals and safety reports," said Calhoun, 69, an Atlanta contractor.
"We didn't have F-102s (the aircraft Bush trained on in Texas), so he couldn't fly. He just made his drills in my office," he added.
But the documents released Friday indicated Bush's transfer to the Alabama squadron wasn't approved until September 1972, months after Bush's presence as recalled by Calhoun.
Emily Marks Curtis, who said she dated Bush in 1972 when both worked on the Blount campaign, said she had a clear recollection of Bush returning to Alabama in the weeks after the fall election so he could attend Guard meetings.
"He had left Montgomery and had gone back to Texas," she said. "Then he called and told me he was coming back to Montgomery to do his Guard duty and asked if we could see each other."
She said she didn't see Bush at the Alabama squadron's base, but "I can say categorically he left Montgomery, then came back for what he said were Guard meetings."
Dental records and pay records released by the White House this week put Bush in Alabama in late 1972 and early 1973. Those records however, give no direct insight into what Bush was doing with or for the Guard.
Records that documented points earned toward honorable discharge did show Bush getting credit for unspecified service performed in Alabama.
The documents released Friday night showed Bush attempting to get into an Alabama reserve unit, the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron, in May 1972. Bush was accepted by the unit's commander just a couple days later.
But in July 1972, the decision was overruled by an Air Force official who said Bush was ineligible for a reserve unit, which is for those who already served active duty.
Bush then was accepted to the 187th tactical squadron of the Alabama National Guard. He was told to report for that unit's fall training cycle starting in October. Records show Bush performed duties in Alabama after that.
Other questions were only partially addressed by the records. Included was the Sept. 5, 1972, document suspending Bush's flight status because he failed to complete an annual physical.
White House communications director Dan Bartlett said one of the reasons for releasing the records was to counter "innuendo" that Bush was hiding a medical problem. Bartlett said Bush skipped the examination simply because he'd decided to go to Alabama as part of the political campaign and wouldn't be serving as a pilot there.
They're not going to be satisfied until they get a couric-cam up his butt to look for calcified Alabama soy products in his digestive track.
We'll want to see Kerry's service records too. When will he release them? What is he hiding?
"I have no doubt he is telling the truth," Adams said. "Bill is one of my heroes. He was trying to take on certain rotten SOBs inside the Guard."
Burkett and some friends from his Guard days have been involved in an ugly dispute with the Texas National Guard and officers appointed by then-Gov. Bush for several years.
One of those friends, Harvey Gough, said this week that he became so incensed at what he saw as malfeasance by the Guard's senior officers that he hired a private detective to delve into James' personal life. James is the son of former Gen. Chappy James, the first black four-star general.
Through a spokesman, James denied all of Burkett's charges.
Burkett, Gough, Adams and others have waged an ugly feud with the Guard over what they said was fraud, waste and corruption.
Burkett sued three officers in the Texas Guard in the late 1990s, claiming that they blocked him from receiving medical support after he went to Panama on a Guard-related mission and contracted a debilitating disease. Gough alleged in a lawsuit that he was subjected to anti-Semitic remarks from one of James' staffers, and when he complained, James retaliated by court-martialing him. Both lawsuits failed.***
Asked about the report by Internet Web site operator Matt Drudge, Kerry told reporters on his campaign: "I just deny it categorically. It's rumor. It's untrue. Period."
After denying the report, Kerry added: "And that's the last time I intend to."
Drudge, who broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal involving President Clinton, on Thursday said Kerry had had a two-year relationship, beginning in early 2001, with an unidentified young woman who had since left the country.
Meanwhile, the Democratic presidential front-runner gained more ground Friday with the promise of an endorsement by the AFL-CIO, the support of a former rival and fresh polls pointing toward victory in next week's Wisconsin primary.***
No they'll just say his teeth were there to chew it...or the products were shipped to him as he sunned himself on a beach somewhere.
"He was very aggressive about doing his duty there. He never complained about it. ... He was very dedicated to what he was doing in the Guard. He showed up on time and he left at the end of the day."
Calhoun, whose name was supplied to the AP by a Republican close to Bush, is the first member of the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group to recall Bush distinctly at the Alabama base in the period of 1972-1973. He was the unit's flight safety officer.
The 69-year-old president of an Atlanta insulation company said Bush showed up for work at Dannelly Air National Guard Base for drills on at least six occasions. Bush and Calhoun had both been trained as fighter pilots, and Calhoun said the two would swap "war stories" and even eat lunch together on base.
Calhoun is named in 187th unit rosters obtained by the AP as serving under the deputy commander of operations plans. Bush was in Alabama on non-flying status.
"He sat in my office most of the time - he would read," Calhoun said. "He had your training manuals from your aircraft he was flying. He'd study those some. He'd read safety magazines, which is a common thing for pilots."
Democrats have asked for proof that Bush, then a 1st lieutenant with the Texas Air National Guard, turned up for duty in Alabama, where Bush had asked to be assigned while he worked on the U.S. Senate campaign of family friend Winton "Red" Blount.***
Interesting!
If anyone wishes to know what regular Air Force folks really thought about Air National Guard guys without prior active duty service, here it is ~ they had their very own Reserve unit, at least in 'Bama, where they would not be sullied by contact with Guardsmen.
That's pretty much the way I remember it. In fact, since the Army was not able to find me a "non contact" Reserve unit in the WarshDC metro area I was given a waiver from all reserve training after my active duty. Not that any of us regulars would be violent or anything, but gee whiz, having to stand in formation with a bunch of draft evaders? Never happen!
Folks who didn't live through the Viet Nam War decades really can't understand these caste distinctions, although the American harijans really ought to be proud of having put forward both Bush and Clinton as Presidents. India doesn't hold a candle to us in improving the lot of those who really should be shunned.
This so-called Medicare “reform” marked the greatest expansion of a federal program in almost 40 years. The $400 billion measure will add trillions to the un-funded liability of the Medicare program, provides only the illusion of patient choice, and will cause millions of seniors to lose their current insurance coverage. The bill did contain a “health savings account” provision favored by ACU, but on balance this did not justify the bill’s overall lack of fiscal responsibility. ACU opposed this bill so strongly that the vote is double-weighted in this rating. It passed 54-44 on 25 November 2003. ACU opposed this bill.
This bill was: passed
The vote was: 54-44
This Senator voted: Absent (Kerry) Wouldn't want a no vote to come back and bite him in the ass.
No, I don't think any questions remain at all. Perhaps we can lay this asinine topic to rest, along with the Botox questions and the bimbo eruptions, and actually discuss some issues.
Absolutely, Bush should have never gone down this road, because no information that does not prove him unfit for office will ever be enough. But now that we've started this, I want to see the justification for each of Kerry's lollipop purple hearts, each and every fitness for duty report, every piece of correspondence ever written about his service in Vietnam, etc. etc. also want to know why he left theater months early, who was involved in that decision, what phone calls were made, etc. etc. The swamp is going to get awfully deep before we are done here.
1. Americans are glad Saddam is gone and his rotten kids are dead.
We're glad GWB had the balls Clinton didn't have, and we're glad that GWB gave us the reason, or even just the cover, to go kick his ass out of power...3000 Americans were killed by these bastards and Saddam was happy about it and WOULD have helped if he didn't.
This bastard was paying suicide bombers...Americans don't give a damn whether we ever find those WMD, we wanted his head and we got it.
That's why Libya came across and the others will too....they know that GWB means what he says and if they don't we're coming after them, next. You betcha.
The UN and the rest of the world knows GWB and America means what it says, this ain't the clinton's any more....
2. Kerry will never be elected President.
Americans have a deep sense of fairness, and even those of us who didn't go to Viet Nam, knew that our friends that did, didn't want to go, and those of us MEN, who were subjected to the draft, (and you women can just stay out of this...it's like having a baby....that's yours, the draft is ours) felt deep inside for the friends we lost, and that POS Kerry joining Hanoi Jane, (a woman not subjected to the draft, and a traitor) was a betrayal, and we are never going to forgive him for his testmony against the soldiers who were fighting....we protesetd the war, not those who were FORCED, OFTEN against their will, to go fight it.......
So you liberals in the press and the PC democrats can whistle any tune or tell any lie you want.....We're with GWB and that's the way it is.
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