Saturday, January 31, 2004

Is Bush a "Deserter"? (6)

The able Joe Conason in Big Lies (2003) describes the history of Bush's military service. In 1968, he signed up for a six-year stint in the Texas Air Guard. Like the rest of his life, he apparently enjoyed special advantages in doing so:

Ushered into the Texas Air National Guard ahead of hundreds of other young men on the waiting list for a few coveted places, George W. Bush later insisted that he had never received any "special favoritism." Perhaps he only benefited from the ordinary favoritism that the Texas elite enjoyed during the Vietnam War, when the Air National Guard became one of the primary means of escaping the draft. His father was a mere congressman at the time, but that was good enough to get Dubya in despite his low score on the pilot aptitude test. Pushed to the top of the wiating list, he was also awarded ahighly unusual promotion to second lieutentant on completing his basic training, despite his lack of qualifications.

In 1972, Bush requested a transfer to Guard unit in Alabama, which Conason describes as a "postal unit" which "didn't require weekend drills or active duty." Bush was going to work on a Republican Senate campaign in Alabama. The request was declined on the grounds that Bush was "ineligible for assignment to an Air Reserve squadron." Bush renewed his request in September.

Bush went to Alabama to work, and just didn't show up for Guard duty from May 1972 to May 1973. As Conason says, "The commander in chief's official National Guard record shows no evidence of service between May 1972 and May 1973." He was back in Houston during that time, but not for an Air Force physical in July 1972 required to keep his authorization to fly. "An investigation of Bush's miliary career published in June 2000 by the Times of London [06/18/00] noted that the Air Force had instituted rigorous drug testing a few months before he failed to show up for the medical exam."

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