Bush's Guard Days Back in the News

While the smear boat guys fronting for the Bush campaign have managed to divert attention from Bush's spotty "military" service, they haven't been able to completely erase questions about what Bush did during that mysterious time. Fortunately for us, Mary Jacoby, over at Salon is doing some real reporting. We need to see more on this.

The widow of a Bush family confidant says her husband gave the future president an Alabama Senate campaign job as a favor to his worried father. Did they see him do any National Guard service? "Good lord, no."

The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing," Allison's widow, Linda, told me. "And Jimmy said, 'Sure.'

Linda Allison's story, never before published, contradicts the Bush campaign's assertion that George W. Bush transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama National Guard in 1972 because he received an irresistible offer to gain high-level experience on the campaign of Bush family friend Winton "Red" Blount. In fact, according to what Allison says her late husband told her, the younger Bush had become a political liability for his father, who was then the United States ambassador to the United Nations, and the family wanted him out of Texas. "I think they wanted someone they trusted to keep an eye on him," Linda Allison said.

As Linda Allison put it regarding Bush's failure to show up for duty with the Alabama Guard, "Can we all be lying?"