More Lying from the Right

9739   PM:   Prapius   [Quote]     -- 9:45am -- Tue, Aug 13, 19 pst
I WAS NEVER AWOL . . .

348 PM: Prapius -- Mon, Dec 30 5:28pm PST -----
Liberals all suck.............
. . . I was AWOL at least a dozen times .

Did Bush Volunteer to Go to Vietnam?

Amazingly, Bush defenders STILL insist he volunteered for Nam but he just wasn't needed there. But when asked on Meet the Press if he volunteered for Nam, he admits he didnt'.

Russert: Were you favor of the war in Vietnam?

President Bush: I supported my government. I did. And would have gone had my unit been called up, by the way.

Russert: But you didn't volunteer or enlist to go.

President Bush: No, I didn't. You're right.

(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4179618/)

And since the wingers brought up Bush's alleged service in the Guard, do you still wonder why he was canned from flight duty? This piece in The Nation might shed some light on that.

"Linke says that Bush's now-deceased commanding officer in the Texas Air National Guard's 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, Lieut. Col. Jerry Killian, confided in her and her husband during an encounter at a social gathering as to the reasons Mr. Linke had been brought in to replace Bush. "He said Bush was mucking up his flying very badly and he couldn't fly the plane," Linke said. "Killan told us that he was having trouble landing, and that possibly there was a drinking problem involved in that"--which Linke took to mean a particularly debilitating one, since carousing was almost the norm in such units."

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More on typewriters.

This is from Bush's "Chronological Listing of Service" which was released by the Bush White House. Notice the raised "th" in the second line. (Click on the image to see the full size.)

When Did Bush Quit Flying?

The Washington Post notes that Bush's story now doesn't match his story from 1999. Bush told us then that he continued flying for years with his unit. But the records show differently, and the White House has admitted as much.

The White House now says that Bush left Texas, where he was first assigned when he joined the Air National Guard, for Alabama in the spring of 1972 because his priorities changed and he wanted to work in the political campaign of a family friend, Winton "Red" Blount, who was running for the U.S. Senate.

But in his 1999 autobiography, Bush omits mention of his suspension from flight status and says only that "I continued flying with my unit for the next several years" after being turned down in 1970 for a program known as "Palace Alert" that might have taken him to Vietnam.

Bush should explain the evolving explanations regarding his alleged service.

Bush's Military Record

At the risk of belaboring a point, we come back to the matter of Bush's National Guard record. Retired Army Colonel Gerald A. Lechliter has compiled what might be the most comprehensive look so far at the details that can be mined from the February document dump by the Bush White House along with other public records. Here are the summary points from Lechliter's work entitled President George W. Bush’s Military Service: A Critical Analysis © 2004

The pay records released by the White House this past winter prove Bush received unauthorized, i.e., fraudulent, payments for inactive duty training, even if he did show up for duty.

The memorandum from Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Albert C. Lloyd, who affirmed for the White House that Bush met his retention/retirement year point requirement, is an obfuscation, or outright deception, that disregarded Bush’s failure to meet the statutory and regulatory fiscal year satisfactory participation requirement.

Bush’s superiors in the Texas Air National Guard failed to take required regulatory actions when Bushed missed required training and failed to take his flight physical.

Despite seemingly laudatory comments, Bush’s May 1972 officer performance report was a clear and unmistakable indication that his performance had declined from the annual 1971 report. The report was the kiss of death before he left for
Alabama that year.

Bush did not meet the requirements for satisfactory participation from 1972 to 1973.

This is important not so much because of what it tells us about Bush's character 30 plus years ago, but for what it tells us about his character now.

Verdict Is In: BUSH AWOL

The conservative leaning US News and World Report Has weighed in on the matter

"The U.S. News analysis also showed that during the final two years of his obligation, Bush did not comply with Air Force regulations that impose a time limit on making up missed drills. What's more, he apparently never made up five months of drills he missed in 1972, contrary to assertions by the administration."

More on Typewriters

This is a section of the CYA memo released by CBS. Look at the word "interference" in the second line. Look closely, and you will see that the second "e" rests above the baseline. Those of us who actually worked with typewriters know this sort of imperfection was a common occurence.



I don't know how we could duplicate this defect with MS Word. Do you?

Document Forgeries?

The Daily Kos has a quite interesting discussion of type faces, superscripts, fonts, proportional spacing, etc., here. Looks like indeed the documents CBS obtained could very well have been produced by typewriters existing at the time.

AWOL

The Annenberg Political Fact Check took a look at the available data back in February of 2004, and had this to say.

An additional witness came forward to say that he had seen Bush at the base. John W. “Bill” Calhoun was quoted by the Washington Post and others as saying he saw Bush sign in at the base eight to 10 times for about eight hours each from May to October 1972. However, as previously noted, there is record of Bush being paid for only two days of Guard service during that period, Oct. 28 and 29 1972. A White House spokesman could not offer an explanation for the discrepancy.

Furthermore, the Annenberg reports only that Bush was paid and credited for service - not that he actually did duty.

Broken Contract

The Glasgow Sunday Herald isn't afraid to tell the truth about Bush.

He broke his contract with the United States government – without any adverse consequences. And the Texas Air National Guard was complicit in allowing this to happen. He was a pilot. It cost the government a million dollars to train him to fly. So he should have been held to an even higher standard. - Col. Gerald A Lechliter, US Army (Ret)

If only the US media were more aggressive.

Honorable Discharge?

The rightwingers' defense of Bush's shirking his national guard duty boils down to the eternally repeated mantra, "But he was honorably discharged." Well, the fact of the matter is, an honorable discharge is pretty much the standard exit for just about everyone who enters military service whether it's active duty, the reserves, or a cushy champagne guard unit like Bush snuck his way into. As a matter of fact some pretty famous guard "vets" went AWOL and still got an honorable discharge.

"Current U.S. Representative Bobby Rush, a Democrat from Illinois, served in the army through the mid-1960s, becoming progressively more involved with radical antiwar groups. In 1968, after Martin Luther King's assassination, he went AWOL from his unit to help found the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers. Weeks later, he was honorably discharged."

"John Allen Muhammad, convicted last November for his participation in the D.C. sniper shootings, served in the Louisiana National Guard from 1978-1985, where he faced two summary courts-martial. In 1983, he was charged with striking an officer, stealing a tape measure, and going AWOL. Sentenced to seven days in the brig, he received an honorable discharge in 1985."

Thanks to the folks at The New Republic.

Supercripts?

Don't believe typewriters could produce supercripts in 1972? Well, the fact is, Bush's own WH released military records show such a supercript on his Chronological Listing of Service. You can see it here.

It's a PDF file. Scroll to page 3. Then look at the 4Sep68 entry on the second line. Zoom 200% and look at where it says "111th" Fighter Interceptor Squadron." There's your superscript in the "111th."

Or, I've clipped the relevant portion and blown it up for you here.

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?"