- As Campaign 2004 continues to heat up, George W. Bush
finds himself under scrutiny for what he did or did not do while avoiding
military service in Vietnam.
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- Bush graduated from Yale in 1968 and faced an immediate
draft into active military service. But, as the son of a congressman from
Texas, he was able to walk into the offices of the Texas Air National Guard
two weeks before graduation and bypass a long waiting list.
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- After jumping over others on the list, Bush also won
a spot in pilot's training, even though he scored only 25 percent on the
pilot's aptitude test. In May, 1972, he requested a transfer to an Alabama
guard unit so, he claimed, he could work on a Senate campaign in that state.
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- Alabama is where serious questions arise over whether
or not Bush fulfilled his obligations to the Guard. According to military
records, his request for transfer was never approved. In June, 1972, the
Guard's personnel records center notified him by mail that he was "ineligible"
for the Air Reserve Squadron he requested and he remained assigned to the
reserve unit in Texas.
-
- Bush, however, says he went to Alabama anyway and claims
he attended guard meetings there.
-
- No so, says William Turnipseed, the commanding officer
of the Alabama reserve unit.
-
- "Hell, I would have remembered a guy from Texas
reporting for duty in my unit," Turnipseed says. "I had been
in Texas. Did my flight training in Texas. Somebody from Texas would have
been something worth remembering."
-
- When the issue was raised in the 2000 campaign, Bush
said he "specifically remembered" performing some duties in Texas.
The problem is, the commanding officer doesn't remember any such thing
and the records back him up.
-
- I requested copies of Bush's military records as well
as the records of the guard units in Houston and Alabama from May 1972
through May 1973 and went through them page by page. I could not find any
record of Bush attending any guard meetings during that period nor were
there records of him performing any service for either unit.
-
- In addition, he did not report for his two-weeks of duty
during the summer and the records show his flight status revoked in August
1972 for missing his annual flight exam.
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- He was, Turnipseed remembers, "nowhere to be found."
-
- Bush finally surfaced again in Houston in May 1973 and
attended meetings through July of that year. In September he requested
an early discharge to attend Harvard Business School and was granted a
discharge the following month.
-
- With such a record of absences, Bush could have been
declared AWOL (absent without leave) or - in extreme cases - desertion.
Normally, when a guard member or reservist misses a certain number of meetings,
they are sent to active duty military.
-
- But George W. Bush was the son of George H.W. Bush, Congressman
from Texas, and officers who want to stay in the military do not risk their
careers going after recruits with juice, even irresponsible ones.
-
- Dubya got into the guard by using his daddy's influence
to move to the front of a long line. Getting into the guard kept him out
of harm's way in Vietnam but it did not instill him with any sense of responsibility.
-
- So the man who kissed off his military obligations 32
years ago and let others fight and die in his place later became President
of the United States and ordered still others to fight and die.
-
- Which is a disgrace for those young men and women who
have died in Iraq.
-
- It's one thing to fight and die for your country. It's
something else to do it for a deserter.
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- - Bill McTavish is the editor of Capitol Hill Blue
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- © Copyright 2004 by Capitol Hill Blue
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- http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_4013.shtml
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