Media AWOL in noting irony of Bush's flight (Bush's military Record BARF ALERT!)

Chicago Tribune ^ | 5/6/03 | Eric Zorn

[green team 1999]

gee,for eight years I did not hear the media talking about Al Gore missions behind enemy lines with his typewriter,much less bill clinton in england,avoiding the draft,where was this reporter for the last eight years?

[Political Junkie Too]

This story actually started in 2000 prior to the elections. If you do a Google search on BUSH AWOL, you'll see a copy of George Magazine story on the subject.

-PJ

[Conspiracy Guy]

Early outs were and still are common place. Anyone can get out early if mission requirements permit. Point is he served and being a pilot is a dangerous role especially in the older equipment that ANG used to have. I doubt that any of these journalists had the guts even to be in ROTC.

[Conspiracy Guy]

George Mag. Wasn't that Little Jon Jons fair and balanced fag rag?

[CyberAnt]

Everything ... everything ... coming out of liberal mouths is orchestrated by Hitlery and the DNC.

The reason I'm so sure of this is because it's one of the things Hitlery has accused the RNC of doing. This is the dems standard "projection" technique: complain about what someone else is doing - which shifts focus to someone else's supposed misdeeds, while ignorning what the dems are actually doing.

The only problem is this DOESN'T WORK ANYMORE!!

[dix]

In the immortal words of sainted Bubba Clinton. “ The hypocrisy is breathtaking”.

[gaspar]

You've heard of "Army brats", no? Well, Eric Zorn is a "College brat", viz., the red diaper baby of two university professors.

[thinking]

Where was Clinton during the same period?

[thetruckster]

This is a pretty fair account. Additionally, I heard a National Guardsman on the radio a few days ago saying he was the one who was directed to "clean up" Bush's military records before he was to run for Governor of Texas. The Guardsman clerk had 27 years of duty in the service and was major p*ssed about the tailhook landing.

Here's the story as generally agreed upon:

In January 1968, with the Vietnam war in full swing, Bush was due to graduate from Yale. Knowing he'd soon be eligible for the draft, he took an air force officers' test hoping to secure a billet with the Texas Air National Guard, which would allow him to do his military service at home. Bush didn't do particularly well on the test--on the pilot aptitude section, he scored in the 25th percentile, the lowest possible passing grade. But Bush's father, George H.W., was then a U.S. congressman from Houston, and strings were pulled. The younger Bush vaulted to the head of a long waiting list--a year and a half long, by some estimates--and in May of '68 he was inducted into the guard.

By all accounts Bush was an excellent pilot, but apparently his enthusiasm cooled. In 1972, four years into his six-year guard commitment, he was asked to work for the campaign of Bush family friend Winton Blount, who was running for the U.S. Senate in Alabama. In May Bush requested a transfer to an Alabama Air National Guard unit with no planes and minimal duties. Bush's immediate superiors approved the transfer, but higher-ups said no. The matter was delayed for months. In August Bush missed his annual flight physical and was grounded. (Some have speculated that he was worried about failing a drug test--the Pentagon had instituted random screening in April.) In September he was ordered to report to a different unit of the Alabama guard, the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group in Montgomery. Bush says he did so, but his nominal superiors say they never saw the guy, there's no documentation he ever showed up, and not one of the six or seven hundred soldiers then in the unit has stepped forward to corroborate Bush's story.

After the November election Bush returned to Texas, but apparently didn't notify his old Texas guard unit for quite a while, if ever. The Boston Globe initially reported that he started putting in some serious duty time in May, June, and July of 1973 to make up for what he'd missed. But according to a piece in the New Republic, there's no evidence Bush did even that. Whatever the case, even though his superiors knew he'd blown off his duties, they never disciplined him. (No one's ever been shot at dawn for missing a weekend guard drill, but policy at the time was to put shirkers on active duty.) Indeed, when Bush decided to go to business school at Harvard in the fall of 1973, he requested and got an honorable discharge--eight months before his service was scheduled to end.

Bush's enemies say all this proves he was a cowardly deserter. Nonsense. He was a pampered rich kid who took advantage.

[Political Junkie Too]

Well, it was John John's magazine. I can't characterize its contents.

-PJ

[deedgirl]

Whatever Bush's record is ,it's a hell of alot better than the Draft dodger Bill!

[Fury]

What the &^$*, over?

This stuff again? I wondered what was going on, when the office eco-liberal came up to me and mentioned that GW was a deserter. I told him, nicely, that I really hoped that he and the Dems would use this as an issue in 2004. I begged him to do so.

The Dems are desperate, pure and simple.

[OESY]

Did I hear someone say, "Ski Bum" when referring to Howie Dean, the draft-dodging, tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show?

Oh, never mind. Looks like he's flaming out in Iowa anyway -- but Republicans need him as their secret weapon!