Is the media finally willing to go after Bush?

[feistydem]

Maybe Dubbya isn't going to get the whitewash treatment by the press he's been getting. More stories in mainstream media outlets have raised questions about him and his 'presidency.'

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This is not the whole piece. Excerpts from TIME Magazine's Upcoming story in the next issue:

How Well Did He Serve?

Bush said he reported for duty in Alabama, but even with the new documents, the evidence is thin. TIME looks at four key questions

By MICHAEL DUFFY/WASHINGTON

Monday, Feb. 23, 2004

"George W. Bush has long had a habit of giving people nicknames—and perhaps that's because he picked up a few along the way himself. Like the one he earned in 1972, when he left his home in Houston to work on the long-shot Senate campaign of Winton M. (Red) Blount in Alabama. Bush, then 26, would often turn up at campaign headquarters in Montgomery around lunchtime, recount his late-night exploits and brag about his political connections, according to a Blount campaign worker. All that made him slow to win over the Alabama crowd, who began to complain that Bush was letting things slide. C. Murphy Archibald, a nephew of Blount's who worked on the campaign that fall, told TIME that Bush "was good at schmoozing the county chairs, but there wasn't a lot of follow-up." Archibald, now a trial attorney in North Carolina, remembers that a group of older Alabama socialites, who were volunteering their time, gave Bush a nickname because they thought he "looked good on the outside but was full of hot air." They called him the Texas Soufflé."

"It may be that Bush's military service has already passed into the custody of amateur oral historians—those who say he never turned up, and the lone veteran and the ex-girlfriend who say Bush reported for duty in Alabama. But if the stack of papers may someday intrigue his biographers—we learn that Bush had an appendectomy at age 10, that he took a semester of Japanese during his senior year at Yale, that his Air Force minders rated him "a natural leader whom his contemporaries look to"—they also leave many of the central mysteries of his service unsolved. Here are four:"

How Did Bush Get In the Guard, And What Were His Duties?
It was Bush's name that helped land him the coveted Guard-duty spot in the first place. Maurice Udell, the flight instructor who trained Bush, told TIME last week that "there was all kinds of people trying to get in, lot of 'em flying Cessnas. But Bush's stock went way up when I found out his dad was the youngest pilot in World War II and got shot down. As far as I was concerned, who were they? When your dad flies in the war in combat, that gives you a leg up." It also probably didn't hurt that Bush's father was a Congressman from Houston.

What Did Bush Have to Do to Fulfill His Guard Commitment?
Requirements for service have tightened in the past 20 years, but in those days, the Air Guard made it hard to fail. In Bush's era, a Guardsman was supposed to earn 50 points each year to meet his commitment and avoid, at least in theory, the risk of facing induction into the active-duty force. Getting to 50 was relatively easy if you just showed up. And if you missed your drills, you were allowed to make up points in other ways.

So Did Bush Report for Duty in Alabama or Not?
Depends on whom you believe. During his Meet the Press appearance, Bush twice told Russert that he reported for duty in Alabama. But for most of last week (and for much of the past four years), it has been difficult to find anyone who recalls seeing Bush at Dannelly Field. (At one point in 2000, 10 Vietnam veterans offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who could prove he saw Bush on duty during 1972.) Even Bush had trouble explaining his job at Dannelly, saying he did "administrative work." John B. Calhoun, an Atlanta resident who served for 28 years in the Air Force and the Alabama Guard, told TIME he clearly remembers Bush reporting for duty on weekends starting in the summer of 1972, apparently before Bush officially requested reassignment there. Calhoun explained that Bush signed into his office and mainly read training manuals and safety magazines, signing out at the end of each drilling day. Bush kept a low profile, Calhoun said, and sometimes ate lunch with Calhoun in the snack bar.

But there are some discrepancies in Calhoun's account: he claimed Bush turned up more often than was indicated in Bush's official pay records for the period. And many other veterans of the 187th do not recall seeing Bush on base. Paul Bishop, a retired Air Force colonel who says he never missed a weekend drill in 27 years with the 187th, told TIME the physical layout of the unit's hangar made it "virtually impossible" for Bush to have met with Calhoun and for none of the unit's 800 other reservists to have seen him. "Fighter pilots, and that's what we are," says Bishop, "have situational awareness. They know everything about their environment, whether it's an enemy plane creeping up or a stranger in their hangar."

Why Did He Miss The Physical?
No question so unsettles some former Guardsmen as much as this: If Bush did report, as he contends, why did he let his medical certification lapse around the same time—a full two years before his Guard commitment was up? Four years ago, the Bush campaign said Bush didn't undergo the physical because his family doctor was back in Texas. That explanation doesn't wash; only flight surgeons can perform Air Force exams, and there were plenty of those in Alabama.

The official explanation has changed: the White House now says Bush didn't need to take the medical exam because he was no longer flying. But even if Bush wasn't planning a career in aviation, that explanation is difficult for other pilots to accept. Pilots routinely sacrifice everything to keep their "medical cert" current; the military is rife with stories of cheating by pilots to pass their physicals. And the government, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to train and keep its pilots flying, has never looked kindly on highly trained personnel, particularly pilots, standing down on their own.

But the White House has been off its game for weeks, and the hardballs just keep coming. Last week, as Wesley Clark endorsed John Kerry for the Democratic nomination, the retired four-star general said that "questioning our leaders, especially in time of war, is one of the highest forms of patriotism." That suggests a brutal campaign to come about the war that is still going on—especially since the two sides haven't stopped arguing about the one that ended more than three decades ago.


— Reported by Frank Sikora/Birmingham, Cathy Booth Thomas/Dallas, Jackson Baker/Memphis, Mike Billips/Montgomery and John F. Dickerson and Mark Thompson/Washington