From Deserter to Commander-in-Chief

From Deserter to Commander-in-Chief
By WILLIAM D. McTAVISH
Feb 4, 2004, 08:02

As Campaign 2004 continues to heat up, George W. Bush finds himself
under scrutiny for what he did or did not do while avoiding military
service in Vietnam.

Bush graduated from Yale in 1968 and faced an immediate draft into
active military service. But, as the son of a congressman from Texas, he
was able to walk into the offices of the Texas Air National Guard two
weeks before graduation and bypass a long waiting list.

After jumping over others on the list, Bush also won a spot in pilot’s
training, even though he scored only 25 percent on the pilot’s aptitude
test. In May, 1972, he requested a transfer to an Alabama guard unit so,
he claimed, he could work on a Senate campaign in that state.

Alabama is where serious questions arise over whether or not Bush
fulfilled his obligations to the Guard. According to military records,
his request for transfer was never approved. In June, 1972, the Guard’s
personnel records center notified him by mail that he was “ineligible”
for the Air Reserve Squadron he requested and he remained assigned to
the reserve unit in Texas.

Bush, however, says he went to Alabama anyway and claims he attended
guard meetings there.

No so, says William Turnipseed, the commanding officer of the Alabama
reserve unit.

“Hell, I would have remembered a guy from Texas reporting for duty in my
unit,” Turnipseed says. “I had been in Texas. Did my flight training in
Texas. Somebody from Texas would have been something worth remembering.”

When the issue was raised in the 2000 campaign, Bush said he
“specifically remembered” performing some duties in Texas. The problem
is, the commanding officer doesn’t remember any such thing and the
records back him up.

I requested copies of Bush’s military records as well as the records of
the guard units in Houston and Alabama from May 1972 through May 1973
and went through them page by page. I could not find any record of Bush
attending any guard meetings during that period nor were there records
of him performing any service for either unit.

In addition, he did not report for his two-weeks of duty during the
summer and the records show his flight status revoked in August 1972 for
missing his annual flight exam.

He was, Turnipseed remembers, “nowhere to be found.”

Bush finally surfaced again in Houston in May 1973 and attended meetings
through July of that year. In September he requested an early discharge
to attend Harvard Business School and was granted a discharge the
following month.

With such a record of absences, Bush could have been declared AWOL
(absent without leave) or – in extreme cases – desertion. Normally, when
a guard member or reservist misses a certain number of meetings, they
are sent to active duty military.

But George W. Bush was the son of George H.W. Bush, Congressman from
Texas, and officers who want to stay in the military do not risk their
careers going after recruits with juice, even irresponsible ones.

Dubya got into the guard by using his daddy’s influence to move to the
front of a long line. Getting into the guard kept him out of harm’s way
in Vietnam but it did not instill him with any sense of responsibility.

So the man who kissed off his military obligations 32 years ago and let
others fight and die in his place later became President of the United
States and ordered still others to fight and die.

Which is a disgrace for those young men and women who have died in Iraq.

It’s one thing to fight and die for your country. It’s something else to
do it for a deserter.