"WalterM140" wrote in message
...

"Yeah, the mainstream media have really kept a lid on this one. We
wouldn't know anything about Bush going AWOL if it hadn't been for
that obscure underground newspaper the Boston Globe, which broke
the story nationally in May 2000. But you're right that coverage has
been pretty thin. A few months after the 2000 election, former Bill
Clinton
adviser Paul Begala said he'd done a Nexis search and found 13,641
stories about Clinton's alleged draft dodging versus 49 about George
W. Bush's military record.


Alleged? Something is alleged when it is represented as existing or as
being as described but not so proved. There's nothing alleged about
Clinton's draft-dodging.



Why the disparity?


Probably because there had been eight more years to file stories on Clinton
at that time.



We'll get to that.

First the basics: Yes, it's true, Bush didn't report to his guard unit for
an extended period--17 months, by one account. It wasn't considered
that serious an offense at the time, and if circumstances were different
now I'd be inclined to write it off as youthful irresponsibility. However,
given the none-too-subtle suggestion by the Bush administration that
opponents of our Iraqi excursion lack martial valor, I have to say: You
guys should talk.

Here's the story as generally agreed upon: In January 1968, with the
Vietnam war in full swing, Bush was due to graduate from Yale.
Knowing he'd soon be eligible for the draft, he took an air force
officers'
test hoping to secure a billet with the Texas Air National Guard, which
would allow him to do his military service at home. Bush didn't do
particularly well on the test--on the pilot aptitude section, he scored in
the 25th percentile, the lowest possible passing grade. But Bush's
father, George H.W., was then a U.S. congressman from Houston, and
strings were pulled. The younger Bush vaulted to the head of a long
waiting list--a year and a half long, by some estimates--and in May
of '68 he was inducted into the guard.

By all accounts Bush was an excellent pilot, but apparently his enthusiasm
cooled. In 1972, four years into his six-year guard commitment, he was
asked to work for the campaign of Bush family friend Winton Blount, who
was running for the U.S. Senate in Alabama. In May Bush requested a
transfer to an Alabama Air National Guard unit with no planes and
minimal duties. Bush's immediate superiors approved the transfer, but
higher-ups said no. The matter was delayed for months. In August
Bush missed his annual flight physical and was grounded.
(Some have speculated that he was worried about failing a drug test--the
Pentagon had instituted random screening in April.) In September he was
ordered to report to a different unit of the Alabama guard, the 187th
Tactical Reconnaissance Group in Montgomery. Bush says he did so, but
his nominal superiors say they never saw the guy, there's no documentation
he ever showed up, and not one of the six or seven hundred soldiers then
in the unit has stepped forward to corroborate Bush's story.

After the November election Bush returned to Texas, but apparently
didn't notify his old Texas guard unit for quite a while, if ever. The
Boston Globe initially reported that he started putting in some serious
duty time in May, June, and July of 1973 to make up for what he'd
missed. But according to a piece in the New Republic, there's no
evidence Bush did even that. Whatever the case, even though his
superiors knew he'd blown off his duties, they never disciplined him.
(No one's ever been shot at dawn for missing a weekend guard
drill, but policy at the time was to put shirkers on active duty.) Indeed,
when Bush decided to go to business school at Harvard in the fall of
1973, he requested and got an honorable discharge--eight months
before his service was scheduled to end.

Bush's enemies say all this proves he was a cowardly deserter. Nonsense.
He was a pampered rich kid who took advantage. Why wasn't he called
on it in a serious way during the 2000 election? Probably because
Democrats figured they'd get Clinton's draft-dodging thing thrown back
at them. Not that it matters. If history judges Bush harshly--and it
probably
will--it won't be for screwing up as a young smart aleck, but for getting
us
into this damn fool war.

--CECIL ADAMS


So where's the proof?