Saturday, February 14, 2004

Still AWOL

The White House's document dump on Friday of papers relating to Bush's National Guard service doesn't seem to address the central questions. Whether the press corps will continue to push on this story and do the job they should have been doing four years ago remains to be seen.

There are three main questions about Bush's Guard service. One is whether he served at all from May 1972 to September 1973. The May 1972-May 1973 period is particularly in question, because his May 1973 personnel evaulation in Texas said they were unable to give him an annual efficiency rating because "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of report."

A second question is why he missed his scheduled medical exam in July 1972, an omission which caused him to lose his authorization to fly. There are related questions growing out of this, such as whether the Guard took normal disciplinary measures in this case. The training of a Guard pilot at that time was estimated to cost $1 million.

And a third question is why he was released from Guard service completely eight months early. In his Meet the Press interview in early February, he told Tim Russert, "Well, I was going to Harvard Business School and worked it out with the military." I'm not the first to observe that many Guard soldiers who are having their service extended beyond their original commitments because they are doing full-time active duty in Iraq would also like to "work something out" like Lt. Bush did in 1973.

So far as I can tell from the early reports, the latest document dump does nothing to answer these questions. If anything, they add more confusion about the Alabama service in 1972.

Dana Milbank and Mike Allen report on the latest stack of documents: Many Gaps in Bush's Guard Records Washington Post 02/14/04. Billmon recaps the latest and expresses skepticism as to whether the mainstream press is willing to pursue this further: Document Dump.

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