Russert's Near Miss

[benfranklin1776]

"In 1994, I was the first person to publicly ask Bush about how he got into the National
Guard. I had tried to get in myself, desperately, knowing that it might protect me from
combat, if the war were still being prosecuted when I graduated from college. I was told,
as were thousands of other young men, that the waiting list for enlistment as a guard
soldier was about three years. Anyone wanting to be a pilot found themselves in a five
year queue. But not George W. Bush. He just walked in and signed up and went off to
flight training. As a panelist on the televised debate when Bush first ran for governor
against Ann Richards, I felt compelled to ask Mr. Bush how he did it. More than that, I was
obligated. My home town, Flint, Michigan, was filled with kids drafted out of the factories
and high schools, (and a disproportionate number were African-Americans,) who went to
Vietnam and died. Their fathers were not congressmen.

Ever since asking Bush that question almost a decade ago, I have been obsessed with
finding the truth. Inadvertently, I may have done him a favor. A source within the Texas
National Guard told me that the day after I had posed the question that Bush people were
calling the guard’s offices and contacting the future president’s roommates and
commanders to get the story straight. Clearly, the subject left them both angry and
exposed. After the debate broadcast had concluded, Bush advisor Karen Hughes came up
to me wanting to know why I asked such a question. “It just seemed so irrelevant, Jim.
What was the point? I think it was absurd. What does that have to do with governing
Texas?” She was energetic, animated, and angry.

The Bush file in Austin at Camp Mabry remained inactive from 1974 until 1999, and then,
suddenly, a document was discovered, which was supposed to prove Mr. Bush served in
Alabama, as he claimed. Unfortunately, the document is torn, has no months, only the
letter “W” for identification, and, at the bottom where “total points accrued” is listed,
there is no tally. This torn document, of scant worth, is supposed to confirm the
president’s claims. It does not. The evidence to show Mr. Bush’s behavior is shown in
what’s missing. There is still not one witness nor one incontrovertible military document to
verify the president ever served a day after April of 1972.

Presidential “positioners” are hard at work on this matter. They have an approach that is
arguing the president would not have been given an honorable discharge had he not
completed his service. This is hardly true. The National Guard is, and always has been, a
political operation. The “champagne unit” in Houston, where Bush served, was run by a
commander who filled the air wing with the sons of politicians like U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen,
U.S. John Tower, Gov. John Connally of Texas, and a number of Dallas Cowboy football
players. In fact, Col. Buck Staudt was not in the office the day Bush enlisted, so he
staged a swearing-in ceremony at a later time and invited Houston reporters. Staudt also
missed Bush’s promotion to 2nd Lt., and decided to stage another photo op with Bush’s
father, the congressman. It doesn’t take a great leap of faith to assume Staudt would
engineer an “honorable discharge” to help the Bush family avoid embarrassment over their
son’s disappearance from duty."


http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/02/con04058.html

Good article by the author of the book "Bush's Brain" who reminds why its a very important question of how Bush got into the Guard ahead of many others of greater abilities but lesser means, and he reminds of the long efforts of Bush's people to suppress inquiries into what is for them a matter of great discomfort.

[tabasco]

1. Great post.

The way Bush got into the Guard is just as corrupt as the way he left, IMO. Because Bush got his slot due to family connections, somebody else had to go active duty and probably went to Vietnam!

WHO WENT TO VIETNAM SO GEORGIE BOY COULD LEARN TO FLY AN OBSOLETE AIRCRAFT??

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. Very good point!

Even if Shrub had served all his time honorably, the mere fact that, as a Congressman's son, he got to jump to the head of a five-year waiting list is enough to make me puke.

[benfranklin1776]

5. Bingo.

Its not the fact that he served in the Guard which is an honorable way to serve the nation, but rather how strings were obviously pulled to allow someone who scored in the 25th percentile on his aptitude exams to vault over other more worthy people. As Mr. Moore said there were many people of his generation who were not the sons of wealthy, politically connected families who did not have such an opportunity and were drafted and died.

[indepat]

2. The angry Karen Hughes was right, far right, for what a far-right candidate

has done or has failed to do is irrelevant: past conduct is relevant only insofar as their opponents are concerned and only ideology is relevant to true-believers, those of their cloth.

[montanacowboy]

4. We must also play this as

another "affirmative action" gift to *

[togiak]

6. Bush's War for Re-election

I hear that the book "Bush's War for Re-election" by James Moore gets into his National Guard record.

I looks like it is going to be a good one.