Eric Boehlert takes on the Bush AWOL story: Bush's Missing Year Salon.com 02/05/04. Part of the story that's important to remember is that Bush's absences seem to have been treated very lightly at the time, as well as in comparison to what would happen to the average Guardsman today:
In 1972, George W. Bush simply walked away from his pilot duties in the Texas Air National Guard. He skipped required weekend drill sessions for many months, probably for more than a year, and did not take a mandatory annual physical exam, which resulted in his being grounded. Nonetheless, Bush, the son of a well-connected Texas congressman, received an honorable discharge.
If an Air National guardsman today vanished for a year, military attorneys say that guardsman would be transferred to active duty or, more likely, kicked out of the service, probably with a less-than-honorable discharge. They suggest the penalty would be especially swift if the absent-without-leave guardsman were a fully trained pilot, as Bush was.
Bush's National Guard record, long ignored by the media, has surfaced with a vengeance. If the topic continues to rage, and if the media presses him, Bush may finally be forced to release his full military records, which could reveal the truth. By refusing to make all those records public, Bush has until now broken with a long-standing tradition of U.S. presidential candidates.
Boehlert also points out that the flight training Bush received cost the taxpayers something like $1 million, which he then flushed away by absenting himself from Guard service and missing that physical in 1972. He also gives a run-down on the ways in which the press corps was largely AWOL on this whole story prior to Michael Moore's provocative "deserter" comment. Including how the New York Times sloppily handled the "torn document" piece of the puzzle.
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