Letters to the Editor – The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED COL. WILLIAM CAMPENNI (retired), U.S. Air Force/Air National Guard

George Bush and I were lieutenants and pilots in the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron (FIS), Texas Air National Guard (ANG) from 1970 to 1971. We had the same flight and squadron commanders (Maj. William Harris and Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, both now deceased). While we were not part of the same social circle outside the base, we were in the same fraternity of fighter pilots, and proudly wore the same squadron patch. …

Finally, someone who served with Bush comes forward. Mind you, they served together in Texas, not in Alabama. This is a very interesting letter to the editor, in part because it speaks so authoritatively and covers ever single aspect of the controversy (including the Radical Rights scurrilous claim that this whole issue is a slap at the current National Guard).

Well, as for abandoning his assignment, this is untrue. Lt. Bush was excused for a period to take employment in Florida for a congressman and later in Alabama for a Senate campaign.

This is the first mention of Florida I’ve seen (who was the congressman?). This also claims Bush was ”excused” from duty? Then why are they trying so hard to prove he was on duty?

GOP chief says press aids Democrats’ dirty campaign – The Washington Times: Nation/Politics

Democrats are mounting the “dirtiest” presidential campaign in history, and the press is playing along, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie charged yesterday. …

Mr. Gillespie contrasted Republican tactics with those of Democrats.

“We highlight policies, and note Senator Kerry’s long Senate record,” he said. “They accuse the president of desertion, a military crime punishable by death — as the [Wesley] Clark campaign did — or accuse the president of being AWOL, which is a felony punishable by imprisonment, as [Democratic National Committee Chairman] Terry McAuliffe has done.”

Bush’s drills with the Alabama Guard confirmed – The Washington Times: Nation/Politics

In 1972, Mr. Bush left Texas to work on the Senate campaign and transferred to a squadron in the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing in Montgomery. He apparently missed drills during the election campaign, and that is why he returned later in November.

It is interesting how what appears as a Letter to the Editor in one part of the paper ends up as a journalist source in another part. How often do you hear interviews with people who write letters to the editor? mjh

You’ll probably need a higher speed connect to get the full effect of this Bush ad attacking Kerry; the ‘chapter 1’ suggests many more to come (got $200million to spend).

Notice this ad is on the official Bush site AND does not include the identity of the sponsor — which is REQUIRED BY LAW. Bush ignores the rules again. mjh

GeorgeWBush.com : February 12, 2004 : Unprincipled, Chapter 1 (video)

Op-Ed Columnist: Bush’s Duty, and Privilege By BOB HERBERT, NYTimes

James Moore, an author and former Texas television reporter who has spent many years following the fortunes of George W. Bush … explores the murky circumstances surrounding President Bush’s service in the National Guard in the late 60’s and early 70’s in a book that is soon to be published called “Bush’s War for Re-election.” This issue remains pertinent because it foreshadowed Mr. Bush’s behavior as a politician and officeholder: the lack of engagement, the irresponsibility, and the casual and blatantly unfair exploitation of rank and privilege.

Mr. Bush favored the war in Vietnam, but he had the necessary clout to ensure that he wouldn’t have to serve there. He entered the Texas Air National Guard at the height of the war in 1968 by leaping ahead of 500 other applicants who were on a waiting list.

Mr. Bush was eventually assigned to the 147th Fighter Group (later to become part of the 111th Fighter Interceptor Group), which Mr. Moore described in his book as a “champagne” outfit. “The ranks,” he said, “were filled with the progeny of the wealthy and politically influential.”

So here’s the thing: After strolling to the head of the line, and putting the Guard to the considerable expense of training him as a pilot, Lieutenant Bush didn’t even bother to take his duties seriously. He breezed off to Alabama to work on a political campaign. He never showed up as required to take his annual flight physical in 1972, and because of that was suspended from flying.

This cavalier treatment of his duties as a Guardsman occurred as thousands of others were being killed and wounded in Vietnam…. Having escaped the horror of the war himself, one might have expected Lieutenant Bush to at least take his duties in the National Guard seriously. …

Mr. Bush has been nothing if not consistent. He has always been about the privileged few. And that’s an attitude that flies in the face of the basic precepts of an egalitarian society. It’s an attitude that fosters, that celebrates, unfairness and injustice. …

Mr. Bush’s experience in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam years is especially relevant today because it throws a brighter spotlight on who he really is. He has walked a charmed road, with others paying the price of his journey, every step of the way.

[photo from Salon.com News | Bush’s missing year By Eric Boehlert]

Op-Ed Columnist: The Real Man By PAUL KRUGMAN, NYTimes

By my count, this year’s budget contains 27 glossy photos of Mr. Bush. We see the president in front of a giant American flag, in front of the Washington Monument, comforting an elderly woman in a wheelchair, helping a small child with his reading assignment, building a trail through the wilderness and, of course, eating turkey with the troops in Iraq. Somehow the art director neglected to include a photo of the president swimming across the Yangtze River. [mjh: alá Chairman Mao]

It was not ever thus. Bill Clinton’s budgets were illustrated with tables and charts, not with worshipful photos of the president being presidential.

The issue here goes beyond using the Government Printing Office to publish campaign brochures. In this budget, as in almost everything it does, the Bush administration tries to blur the line between reverence for the office of president and reverence for the person who currently holds that office. …

The sad truth is that people who have been taken in by a cult of personality — a group that in this case includes a good fraction of the American people, and a considerably higher fraction of the punditocracy — are very reluctant to give up their illusions. If nothing else, that would mean admitting that they had been played for fools.

Still, we may be on our way to an election in which Mr. Bush is judged on his record, not his legend. And that, of course, is what the White House fears.

An Enemy of the Environment (NYTimes Editorial)

The Bush administration has a troubling record of putting lobbyists in influential positions in the executive branch. Now it is taking the practice a step further by nominating a longtime lawyer and lobbyist for the mining and cattle industries, William Myers III, to an important judgeship. His extreme views on the environment, his hard-edged ideological approach to the law and his close ties to industries whose cases he would be deciding make Mr. Myers unqualified to be an appeals court judge. …

At Interior, he had an obligation to represent the public more broadly, but continued to carry water for special interests. His hometown newspaper, The Idaho Statesman, editorialized that although he had stated in applying for the job that he had ”no particular ax to grind,” he had ended up acting ”less like an attorney, and more like an apologist for his old friends in the cattle industry.”

Mr. Myers has been nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco, which plays a critical role in overseeing the Western states, where environmental disputes have been most heated. The Senate should insist that the president nominate someone with a proven record of defending broader public interests, rather than those of a powerful few.

Bush continues to stack the government with zealots. A new president will be able to sweep the executive branch clean, but judges are appointed for life — they are the lasting legacy of Bush. mjh

”Free-Speech Zone”
The Bush administration doesn’t want dissenters to be seen or heard.
By James Bovard, The American Conservative magazine

When President Bush travels around the United States, the Secret Service visits the location ahead of time and orders local police to set up ”free speech zones” or ”protest zones” where people opposed to Bush policies (and sometimes sign-carrying supporters) are quarantined. These zones routinely succeed in keeping protesters out of presidential sight and outside the view of media covering the event.

You probably thought the whole country is a free-speech zone. As Bush talks about how freedom in the Middle East will end ”terror”, he has done more than anyone since Nixon, even Joe McCarthy, to curtail freedom in our own country. mjh

Though you didn’t see it on the news and read almost nothing about it in print, there were protesters in Roswell confronting George Bush. We were there. [read more…]