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http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_crime&Number=254684&t
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George W. Bush Military Record — and Recent Behavior (1980, 1990, and 2000)
Pertaining to Military Records
In these days of guys who never fought in Vietnam advocating a tricky
engagement in Iraq, it is interesting to see what George W. Bush did in the
military, how he misrepresented it, and what's been done recently to make
sure no one notices. Mr. Bush, whose permission to fly was revoked by the
military (he was suspended, assigned to a disciplinary unit and not allowed
to fly military assignments again) liked to portray himself to voters as a
“fighter pilot.” But his embellishments didn’t stop there:
Date: 08/19/88 Houston Chronicle article by R. G. Ratliffe
"Asked how he got into the Air National Guard, Bush said, ‘They could sense I
was going to be one of the great pilots of all time.’”
Date: 1999 autobiography A Charge to Keep by George W. Bush
Among the questionable claims in Mr. Bush's autobiography is that he tried to
volunteer for service in Vietnam "to relieve active-duty pilots." He did not
volunteer for service in Vietnam; in fact, he failed to report for duty in
his Air National Guard Unit and skipped off to Alabama to work on a political
campaign.
In his book, Mr. Bush offers a lovely-sounding (but bald-faced) lie to
describe his F-102 fighter pilot experience: "I continued flying with my unit
for the next several years," he writes, but in fact he was suspended from
flight duty in August 1972 and didn't fly at all for the last two years of
his service. (He also didn't show up for duty.)
Further along in his autobiography, Mr. Bush says his military service "gave
me respect for the chain of command." Well, that is an odd way to describe
ignoring two direct orders to appear for duty. He was then assigned to a
disciplinary unit in Denver, and he didn't show up for that either.
During September 2002, CNN aired a prepared set of videotapes glorifying the
elder George Bush's military career. Well, they certainly couldn't glorify
anything about the younger Bush's aborted military career. But were these
tapes also embellishments? In one of the tapes, the elder George Bush
describes being shot down, companions killed, floating in the ocean until a
submarine luckily popped up next to him, and in a remarkable coincidence, it
"just happened" to have a film crew on board. That's why, the commentator
explains without flinching, CNN is able to show the actual footage of George
H.W. Bush's rescue.
No one is claiming that the elder George Bush was not shot down, nor that he
was not a hero. But...rescued in the middle of the ocean by a submarine that
just coincidentally happened to be carrying a film crew? Like the military
record for the younger George Bush, described below, (last name torn off,
with only the "W" proclaiming that it is the record belonging to George W.
Bush...or is that Mortimer W. Snerd?) one could wonder about the authenticity
of the lucky film captured by the lucky submarine, which shows only a pilot
in a helmet.
CNN (whose parent company, AOL Time Warner, had just learned that it was the
target of a new SEC investigation) also spent an entire week running a series
of "just discovered" Osama bin Laden tapes murkily explained to be from a
trove of over 70 bin Laden tapes that a CNN reporter "found." Both the Bush
Senior military tapes and the hand-picked bin Laden tapes provided a
Texas-sized helping of White-House-friendly sound bytes, repeated dozens of
times a day. Happily for CNN, news of the SEC report quieted down, not just
on CNN but everywhere. And, except for the Bush military and bin Laden tapes
and the fanfare surrounding them, CNN's news was balanced.
"What distinguishes the New Right from
other American reactionary movements
and what it shares with the early phase
of German fascism, is its incorporation of
conservative impulses into a system of representation
consisting largely of media techniques and media images.
— Philip Bishop: "The New Right and the Media"
But we digress: Below, you will find photocopies of documents (obtained
through the Freedom of Information Act, which the Bush Administration is now
busy gutting) showing that George W. Bush failed to report for Air National
Guard duty, was disciplined, and was booted out as a pilot for refusing to
take a drug test.
In fact, George W. Bush evaded military duties while thousands of Americans —
more patriotic and less privileged than George W. Bush — were dying in
Vietnam.
Senator Daniel Inouye: "'During my service, if I missed training for two
years, at the least, I would have been court-martialed.' Senator Inouye
(Hawaii) has demanded that George W. Bush account for missing two years of
National Guard Service. (see transcript).
Senator Bob Kerrey: Governor Bush made a six-year commitment...Well, if he's
going to do what's right, he ought to release his military records, as John
McCain did and let us know where he was during that six year period of
time..." (see transcript)
Where's Waldo George?
News Release: Help George W. Bush find 1972, 1973
George Bush has lost a year of his youth and needs your help to find it.
Between May 1972 and October 1974 George W. Bush seems to have lost:
1) A year of his service in the Air National Guard (ANG)
2) His eligibility to fly F-102 jet fighters (See photocopy, footnote 1)
3) The directions to his military doctor's office
4) The means to travel to his punishment detail (2) to which he apparently
never reported, although he claims to have served the final months of his
enlistment there.
Lots of people didn't see George Bush, including retired General William
Turnipseed (3) to whom young 1st Lt. Bush was ordered to report, and the
commanders of the Texas Air National Guard Unit (4) in which he was
supposedly serving. You can imagine how disturbing this must be to our
unelected Commander-in-Chief — to have so thoroughly lost a year of his own
military service (5) when he plans to ask young Americans to stick to the
terms of their military enlistments so he can send them to Iraq.
In October, 2000 two different Vietnam veterans groups put up a total of
$2000 in rewards for anyone who could find George W. Bush's missing year of
National Guard service. (6) So far no one has claimed the reward.
But this was a long time ago. Any recent misbehavior?
— In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mr. Bush leaned on his self-described
experience as a fighter pilot to get himself elected governor of Texas. See
archives for Austin Statesman and Houston Chronicle to read his
embellishments about his service as a fighter pilot.
— In 1999, just prior to Mr. Bush's announcement that he planned to run for
president, a record-scrubbing detail was dispatched to Camp Mabry to make
sure records in the archives matched those in the autobiography published in
1999. ([synopsis: record scrubbing]
— In 1999, during his presidential campaign, Mr. Bush produced an
autobiography (7) containing several untruths about his military service. He
bragged about volunteering to go to Vietnam (not true), tried to impress
voters saying he was a fighter pilot and "continued to fly for several years"
after training (not true), and asserted that his military training taught him
to respect the chain of command (if so, he had a peculiar way of showing it).
— In 2000, reporters unearthed the facts and published them in the Washington
Post, Boston Globe, AP wire service and other print media outlets — to howls
from Bush's people that it was unfair and "unethical" to reveal facts just
before the election. No television news programs covered the story until
nearly a year after the election.
— In October 2000, when the document photocopies were posted on this web
site, the site was hacked out and all of the documents were made inaccessible
to the public until after the election news cycle ended, the weekend before
Election Day.
— In November 2000, during the vote counting (or more accurately, vote
not-counting), an unauthorized monitoring system started gathering data on
Bush military document photocopies posted at this web site. Using an
automated program, a "visitor" cycled from military document to document on a
prescribed schedule, every few minutes for two weeks. The "visitor" never
disengaged until a technician from our web hosting company manually dislodged
it, at our request. The technician said he'd never seen anything like it
before.
— In December 2000, after dislodging the first "visitor," another
unauthorized monitor appeared. This lurker cycled from Bush document to
document at regular intervals, then broke the connection. After 60 seconds it
would reconnect and repeat the process. This continued for a week, when
Talion.com dislodged it by changing all the page addresses for Bush photocopy
documents.
It's frustrating: At least when you're looking for Waldo, you know he'll be
somewhere in the picture. George Bush didn't seem to have been anywhere
during his military years, but he seemed to be everywhere when photocopies of
his military record appeared around election time. We must ask:
Is his a stealth military program? Does he fly below the radar?
Of course, this could be all wrong. Although there's no proof that President
Bush showed up for military duties between May 1972 and May 1973 (8), there's
a simple way for him to clear this up before he asks young Americans to step
into the line of fire in Iraq. Simply release the records, as John McCain
did.
Private military records can only be released with permission, but they
contain the most essential information about how he served — the records of
commendations, comments by superiors about the quality of service and the
records of any disciplinary actions or boards of inquiry. Public military
records, which have been released under a FOIA request (9) indicate that
George W. Bush did not satisfactorily complete his duties, was suspended and
assigned to disciplinary duty, which he also did not show up for.
= = = = = =
"As the State Plans Officer for the Texas National Guard, I was on full-time
duty at Camp Mabry when Dan Bartlett was cleansing the George W Bush file
prior to GW's Presidential announcement. For most soldiers at Camp Mabry,
this was a generally known event.
The archives were closely scrutinized to make sure that the Bush
autobiography plans and the record did not directly contradict each other. In
essence it was the script of the autobiography which Dan Bartlett and his
small team used to scrub a file to be released. This effort was further
involved by General Daniel James and Chief of Staff William W. Goodwin at
Camp Mabry.
— Bill Burkett — contact: (915-673-0429)
[Transcript of Bill Burkett interview]
= = = = = =
The facts about George W. Bush military record:
1) On September 29, 1972 Air National Guard orders "suspending 1st Lt. George
W. Bush from flying status are confirmed...Reason for Suspension: Failure to
accomplish annual medical exam." (10)
2) Bush's initial temporary transfer to Alabama was denied because "An
obligated Reservist can be assigned to a specific Ready Reserve position
only. (11) Therefore, he is ineligible for assignment to an Air Reserve
Squadron". Nonetheless, Bush reapplied, was accepted by the commander of the
mail unit in Alabama, and moved to Alabama to work on a Senate campaign,
instead of completing his military duties. He claims no one exerted any
influence.
3) According to a Boston Globe Story on May 23, 2000. "In his final 18 months
of military service in 1972 and 1973, Bush did not fly at all. And for much
of that time, Bush was all but unaccounted for (12) For a full year, there is
no record that he showed up for the periodic drills required of part-time
guardsmen...From May to November 1972, Bush was in Alabama working in a US
Senate campaign, and was required to attend drills at an Air National Guard
unit in Montgomery. But there is no evidence in his record that he did so.
And William Turnipseed, the retired general who commanded the Alabama unit
back then, said in an interview last week that Bush never appeared for duty
there."
4) The tattered piece of attendance record (which lists no months, years, or
last name) which the Bush campaign presented as evidence of attending Air
National Guard training is not even from the Air National Guard. This
incomplete scrap of paper is from the Air Force Reserve punishment unit, not
the Air National Guard. (13) Note the ARF (Air Reserve Force) listing at the
top, rather than the ANG designator, which would indicate it was from the Air
National Guard.
5) In the fall of 1973, as an automatic disciplinary action, Bush was
reassigned to the Obligated Reserve Section in Denver, because he disobeyed
orders to show up for a mandatory flight physical and therefore was unable to
fulfill the last two years of his six-year obligation as an Air National
Guard jet fighter pilot.
Boston Globe 11/5/2000 — "APPARENTLY, BUSH BELIEVES THE RULES DON'T APPLY TO
HIM" By Thomas Oliphant:
"WASHINGTON — IMAGINE YOU WANTED to be George W. Bush's running mate back in
July — One of the very first questions on the disclosure form presidential
campaigns supply is always a simple, "Have you ever been arrested?" And
another demands from those with military records the places and dates of
every chunk of that service. In fact, an accounting for every month of your
life (as with any job carrying a Top Secret clearance) would be required.
"— you tell Bush that you and your advisers had made a conscious decision to
withhold the fact of a drunken-driving conviction when you were 30 from the
public. You say you had only acknowledged a heavy drinking problem in the
past, and that while continuing to booze for a decade after the arrest you
had quit completely 14 years ago. You add that you had decided to dodge all
details because you didn't want your twins to do what you did.
"Now imagine further...the relentless Bush lawyers had picked apart your
military record (in the National Guard) like crows on road kill, exposing
white lies and big gaps like whether you did a lick of anything for the last
year-and-a-half of your obligation. As for the untruths and gaps in your
National Guard record and even your resume and autobiography, you tell Bush
that you've said all you're going to say before the election on this subject,
that the records and your memory are hazy, but that you're certain your
obligation had been fulfilled properly."
Sunday Times London (11/05/2000): "The Bush camp was equally dismissive of a
claim by Bill Burkett, a former lieutenant colonel in the Texas National
Guard, that the governor's aides had doctored his military record.
"Burkett said Bush aides had visited the National Guard headquarters at Camp
Mabry 'on numerous occasions' to make sure that records available to the
public about his military service would tally with his autobiography's
version of his time as a reserve pilot during the Vietnam war."
George W. Bush Military Record — and Recent Behavior (1980, 1990, and 2000)
Pertaining to Military Records
Post Extras: bluegrass
(agent provocateur)
10/01/02 02:47 AM
Re: George W. Bush Military Record — and Recent Behavior ('80-'00)
Pertaining to Military Records [ To: bluegrass | Post 254687, reply to
254684 ] (Score: 2)
Flag to: RidinShotgun, texoma, gjenkins, Kosciusko, nimblebunny, BlackJade,
RDavis84, steve50, laconas, Kudzu, boston_liberty, toddbrendanfahey,
JRadcliffe, plummz, ratcat, windrivershoshoni, hoplophile, juststopit
This is a great site. The footprint of the biggest chickenhawk of them all is
all over it.
http://www.talion.com/admin.html
George W. Bush, redacted for "administrative reasons"
http://www.talion.com/suspension.html
Order to suspend George Bush from flying for failing to obey an order
http://www.talion.com/missing.htm
Evidence that George W. Bush was allowed to substitute civilian duties for
flying
duties (Viet Nam era) following his refusal to take physical and drug test.
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
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