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The President’s Guard Service

If President Bush thought that his release of selected payroll and service records would quell the growing controversy over whether he ducked some of his required service in the Air National Guard three decades ago, he is clearly mistaken. The payroll records released yesterday document that he performed no guard duties at all for more than half a year in 1972 and raise questions about how he could be credited with at least 14 days of duty during subsequent periods when his superior officers in two units said they had not seen him.

[Bush] dropped off the Guard’s radar screen when he went to Alabama to work on a senatorial campaign. The payroll records show that he … went more than six months without being paid, virtually the entire time he was working on the Senate campaign in Alabama. That presumably means he never reported for duty during that period. [mjh: what did Bush contribute to that campaign; is it legal for the military to campaign?]

Mr. Bush was credited with 14 days of service at unspecified locations between Oct. 28, 1972, and the end of April 1973 [mjh: 2 days a month — what a hardship!]. The commanding officer of the Alabama unit to which Mr. Bush was supposed to report long ago said that he had never seen him appear for duty, and Mr. Bush’s superiors at the Texas unit to which he returned wrote in May 1973 that they could not write an annual evaluation of him because he had not been seen there during that year. Those statements are so jarringly at odds with the payroll data that they demand further elaboration. A Guard memo prepared for the White House by a former Guard official says Mr. Bush earned enough points to fulfill his duty but leaves it unclear whether he got special treatment.

The issue is not whether Mr. Bush, like many sons of the elite in his generation, sought refuge in the Guard to avoid combat in Vietnam. The public knew about that during the 2000 campaign. Whether Mr. Bush actually performed his Guard service to the full is a different matter. It bears on presidential character because the president has continually rejected claims that there was anything amiss about his Guard performance during the Alabama period. Mr. Bush himself also made the issue of military service fair game by posturing as a swashbuckling pilot when welcoming a carrier home from Iraq. Now, the president needs to make a fuller explanation of how he spent his last two years in the Guard.

Bush and others are responding to these questions in classic Radical Right rhetoric — they claim such questions are actually attacks on anyone who has served in the National Guard. That cowardly twist speaks volumes.

Al Franken has the right idea: ask the President who his best friends were in Alabama, what the commander was like and which bars did he go to with his Guard buddies. mjh

FactCheck.org New Evidence Supports Bush Military Service (Mostly)

During those six months Bush got permission from his National Guard superiors to attend non-flying drills in Montgomery. Also during that time he was officially grounded after he failed to take an annual physical examination required to maintain flying status. …

The newly released records show only sporadic service by Bush during the months immediately following his return to Houston after the 1972 election. They show pay and credits for six days in January 1973 and two in April.

It was the following month that his two superior officers at Ellington Air Force Base wrote that they could not complete Bush’s annual evaluation covering the 12 months ending April 30, 1973 because “Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of this report.” How could Bush be paid and credited for drills and still not be “observed” by his superiors? Both of them are now dead and can’t answer that. White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett says Bush was doing “odd jobs” for the Guard at the time in a non-flying capacity and his superiors might not have been aware of that. …

He was released from service with an honorable discharge eight months before the end of the six-year term of service for which he had originally signed up.

Why did Bush refuse an annual physical? Why didn’t he fly for so much of his time in the AIR National Guard? Veterans of combat should see right through this guy. mjh

FactCheck.org Bush A Military ‘Deserter?’ Calm Down, Michael

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