FINALLY, THE TRUTH ABOUT BUSH'S MILITARY SERVICE RECORD

On Wed, 4 Feb 2004 20:06:47 -0500 (EST), "Johnny Kudzu"
wrote:

> http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/3671
>
>FINALLY, THE TRUTH ABOUT BUSH'S MILITARY SERVICE RECORD
> George W.'s Missing Year
>
>Marty Heldt is a farmer. He told us, "I spent 17 years as a brakeman
>[for the railroad] before moving back to the farm. That job had some
>long layovers that gave me a lot of time to read and to educate
>myself." He lives in Clinton, Iowa.

Boo fucking Hoo


>
>Nearly two hundred manila-wrapped pages of George Walker Bush's service
>records came to me like some sort of giant banana stuffed into my
>mailbox.
>
> I had been seeking more information about his military record to find
>out what he did during what I think of as his "missing year," when he
>failed to show up for duty as a member of the Air National Guard, as
>the Boston Globe first reported.
>
> The initial page I examined is a chronological listing of Bush's
>service record. This document charts active duty days served from the
>time of his enlistment. His first year, a period of extensive training,
>young Bush is credited with serving 226 days. In his second year in the
>Guard, Bush is shown to have logged a total of 313 days. After Bush got
>his wings in June 1970 until May 1971, he is credited with a total of
>46 days of active duty. From May 1971 to May 1972, he logged 22 days of
>active duty.
>
> Then something happened. From May 1, 1972 until April 30, 1973 -- a
>period of twelve months -- there are no days shown, though Bush should
>have logged at least thirty-six days service (a weekend per month in
>addition to two weeks at camp).
>
> I found out that for the first four months of this time period, when
>Bush was working on the U.S. Senate campaign of Winton Blount in
>Alabama, that he did not have orders to be at any unit anywhere.
>
> On May 24, 1972, Bush had applied for a transfer from the Texas Air
>National Guard to Montgomery, Alabama. On his transfer request Bush
>noted that he was seeking a "no pay" position with the 9921st Air
>Reserve Squadron. The commanding officer of the Montgomery unit,
>Lieutenant Colonel Reese R. Bricken, promptly accepted Bush's request
>to do temporary duty under his command.
>
> But Bush never received orders for the 9921st in Alabama. Such
>decisions were under the jurisdiction of the Air Reserve Personnel
>Center in Denver, Colorado, and the Center disallowed the transfer. The
>Director of Personnel Resources at the Denver headquarters noted in his
>rejection that Bush had a "Military Service Obligation until 26 May
>1974." As an "obligated reservist," Bush was ineligible to serve his
>time in what amounted to a paper unit with few responsibilities. As the
>unit's leader, Lieutenant Colonel Bricken recently explained to the
>Boston Globe, ''We met just one weeknight a month. We were only a
>postal unit. We had no airplanes. We had no pilots. We had no
>nothing.''
>
> The headquarters document rejecting Bush's requested Alabama transfer
>was dated May 31, 1972. This transfer refusal left Bush still obligated
>to attend drills with his regular unit, the 111th Fighter Interceptor
>Squadron stationed at Ellington Air Force Base near Houston. However,
>Bush had already left Texas two weeks earlier and was now working on
>Winton Blount's campaign staff in Alabama.
>
> In his annual evaluation report, Bush's two supervising officers,
>Lieutenant Colonel William D. Harris Jr. and Lieutenant Colonel Jerry
>B. Killian, made it clear that Bush had "not been observed at" his
>Texas unit "during the period of report" -- the twelve month period
>from May 1972 through the end of April 1973.
>
> In the comments section of this evaluation report Lieutenant Colonel
>Harris notes that Bush had "cleared this base on 15 May 1972, and has
>been performing equivalent training in a non flying role with the 187th
>Tac Recon Gp at Dannelly ANG Base, Alabama" (the Air National Guard
>Tactical Reconnaissance Group at Dannelly Air Force Base near
>Montgomery, Alabama).
>
> This was incorrect. Bush didn't apply for duty at Dannelly Air Force
>Base until September 1972. From May until September he was in limbo,
>his temporary orders having been rejected. And when his orders to
>appear at Dannelly came through he still didn't appear. Although his
>instructions clearly directed Bush to report to Lieutenant Colonel
>William Turnipseed on the dates of "7-8 October 0730-1600, and 4-5
>November 0730-1600," he never did. In interviews conducted with the
>Boston Globe earlier this year, both General Turnipseed and his former
>administration officer, Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Lott, said that Bush
>never put in an appearance.
> The lack of regular attendance goes against the basic concept of a
>National Guard kept strong by citizen soldiers who maintain their
>skills through regular training.
> Bush campaign aides claim, according to a report in the New York
>Times, that Bush in fact served a single day -- November 29,1972 --
>with the Alabama unit. If this is so it means that for a period of six
>weeks Lieutenant George W. Bush ignored direct instructions from
>headquarters to report for duty. But it looks even worse for Lieutenant
>Bush if the memory of Turnipseed and Lott are correct and Bush never
>reported at all.
>
> After the election was over (candidate Blount lost), Bush was to have
>returned to Texas and the 111th at Ellington Air Force Base. Bush did
>return to Houston, where he worked for an inner-city youth
>organization, Project P.U.L.L. But, as I mentioned already, his annual
>evaluation report states that he had not been observed at his unit
>during the twelve months ending May 1973. This means that there were
>another five months, after he left Alabama, during which Bush did not
>fulfill any of his obligations as a Guardsman.
>
> In fact, during the final four months of this period, December 1972
>through May 29, 1973, neither Bush nor his aides have ever tried to
>claim attendance at any guard activities. So, incredibly, for a period
>of one year beginning May 1, 1972, there is just one day, November
>29th, on which Bush claims to have performed duty for the Air National
>Guard. There are no dates of service for 1973 mentioned in Bush's
>"Chronological Service Listing."
>
> Bush's long absence from the records comes to an end one week after he
>failed to comply with an order to attend "Annual Active Duty Training"
>starting at the end of May 1973. He then began serving irregularly with
>his unit. Nothing indicates in the records that he ever made up the
>time he missed.
>
> Early in September 1973, Bush submitted a request seeking to be
>discharged from the Texas Air National Guard and to be transferred to
>the Air Reserve Personnel Center. This transfer to the inactive
>reserves would effectively end any requirements to attend monthly
>drills. The request -- despite Bush's record -- was approved. That fall
>Bush enrolled in Harvard Business School.
>
> Both Bush and his aides have made numerous statements to the effect
>that Bush fulfilled all of his guard obligations. They point to Bush's
>honorable discharge as proof of this. But the records indicate that
>George W Bush missed a year of service. This lack of regular attendance
>goes against the basic concept of a National Guard kept strong by
>citizen soldiers who maintain their skills and preparedness through
>regular training.
>
> And we know that Bush understood that regular attendance was essential
>to the proficiency of the National Guard. In the Winter 1998 issue of
>the National Guard Review Bush is quoted as saying "I can remember
>walking up to my F-102 fighter and seeing the mechanics there. I was on
>the same team as them, and I relied on them to make sure that I wasn't
>jumping out of an airplane. There was a sense of shared responsibility
>in that case. The responsibility to get the airplane down. The
>responsibility to show up and do your job."
> Bush has found military readiness to be a handy campaign issue.
> Bush's unsatisfactory attendance could have resulted in being ordered
>to active duty for a period up to two years -- including a tour in
>Vietnam. Lieutenant Bush would have been aware of this as he had signed
>a statement which listed the penalties for poor attendance and
>unsatisfactory participation. Bush could also have faced a general
>court martial. But this was unlikely as it would have also meant
>dragging in the two officers who had signed off on his annual
>evaluation.
>
> Going after officers in this way would have been outside the norm.
>Most often an officer would be subject to career damaging letters of
>reprimand and poor Officers Effectiveness Ratings. These types of
>punishment would often result in the resignation of the officer. In
>Bush's case, as someone who still had a commitment for time not served,
>he could have been brought back and made to do drills. But this would
>have been a further embarrassment to the service as it would have made
>it semi-public that a Lieutenant Colonel and squadron commander had let
>one of his subordinates go missing for a year.
>
> For the Guard, for the ranking officers involved and for Lieutenant
>Bush the easiest and quietest thing to do was adding time onto his
>commitment and placing that time in the inactive reserves.
>
> Among these old documents there is a single clue as to how Bush
>finally fulfilled his obligations and made up for those missed drill
>days. In my first request for information I received a small three-page
>document containing the "Military Biography Of George Walker Bush."
>This was sent from the Headquarters Air Reserve Personnel Center (ARPC)
>in Denver Colorado.
>
> In this official summary of Bush's military service, I found something
>that was not mentioned in Bush's records from the National Guard Bureau
>in Arlington, Virginia. When Bush enlisted his commitment ran until May
>26, 1974. This was the separation date shown on all documents as late
>as October 1973, when Bush was transferred to the inactive reserves at
>Denver, Colorado. But the date of final separation shown on the
>official summary from Denver, is November 21, 1974. The ARPC had tacked
>an extra six months on to Bush's commitment.
>
> Bush may have finally "made-up" his missed days. But he did so not by
>attending drills -- in fact he never attended drills again after he
>enrolled at Harvard. Instead, he had his name added to the roster of a
>paper unit in Denver, Colorado, a paper unit where he had no
>responsibility to show up and do a job.
>
> Bush has found military readiness to be a handy campaign issue. Yet
>even though more than two decades have passed since Bush left the Air
>National Guard, some military sources still bristle at his service
>record -- and what effect it had on readiness. "In short, for the
>several hundred thousand dollars we tax payers spent on getting [Bush]
>trained as a fighter jock, he repaid us with sixty-eight days of active
>duty. And God only knows if and when he ever flew on those days,"
>concludes a military source. "I've spent more time cleaning up latrines
>than he did flying.">



--

"Conan, what is best in life?''

''To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.''