Bush's Missing Year Part Two:
Most informed observers agree that Moore's choice of words was sloppy and inaccurate. "Deserter" is a criminal term: It refers to a military personnel who abandons his post with no intention of ever returning. But Democrats have taken hold of the broader issue of whether Bush was AWOL. Their willingness to bring up a previously off-limits subject reflects their sense that Bush's aura of invincibility has worn off and the confidence imparted by Kerry's resurgent campaign. Democrats feel Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, has the personal history to question Bush's service.
But the issue is also ripe because of Bush's own reelection strategy. By donning a fighter flight suit and landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln for a photo-op in May 2003, he has tried to paint himself as a seasoned military leader in the United States' war on terrorism. With newfound aggressiveness, Democrats are trying to puncture that aura by hammering away on the fact that Bush's own military record fails to back it up.
That's what Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe did this Sunday on ABC News' "This Week," when he referred to Bush as "a man who was AWOL in the Alabama National Guard." That brought a quick rebuttal from South Carolina's Republican Gov. Mark Sanford, who told CNN it was wrong for Democrats to be "taking shots at [Bush] for being a guardsman."
In similar fashion, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., claimed Tuesday night that by bringing up Bush's National Guard service, the Democrats are impugning the patriotism of guardsmen, implying that their contributions are less worthy than those who serve in the military. As those disingenuous comments suggest, Republicans are trying to change the subject, falsely framing the debate as a repeat of the National Guard controversy that dogged Vice President Dan Quayle during the 1988 presidential campaign.
It's easy to see why they're pursuing this strategy. If the story were simply about how Bush used his family connections to land a slot in the Texas Air National Guard (and all indications are he did just that ), it wouldn't matter much. But the real story is not how Bush got into the Guard. It's how he got out.
Until the last two days the mainstream media has routinely ignored or downplayed the issue. Slate columnist Michael Kinsley took euphemism to new heights when he wrote in a Dec. 5 column that Bush was "lackadaisical" about fulfilling his Guard requirement. On Jan. 17, the Associated Press, recapping the "deserter" controversy, did Bush a favor, erroneously reporting that his absent-without-leave time lasted just three months in 1972, instead of the 12-18 months actually in question. And on Feb. 1, ABC News, suggesting Democrats might turn off voters by attacking Bush's military service, reported Bush simply "missed some weekends of training." None of those descriptions come anywhere near describing the established facts at the center of the controversy.
Perhaps that's not surprising. The press, apparently deeming the National Guard story unworthy, paid more attention to the debate over Moore's "deserter" comment than they did to the actual story of Bush's unexplained absence when it came out during the 2000 campaign.
While co-moderating the Democratic debate, ABC News' Jennings was sure he knew the facts about Bush's military record. But as the Daily Howler noted, a search of the LexisNexis electronic database indicates that ABC's "World News Tonight," hosted by Jennings, never once during the 2000 campaign ran a report about the questions surrounding Bush's military record. Asked if ignoring the story was a mistake, and whether ABC News planned to pursue it in 2004, a network spokeswoman told Salon, "We continue to examine the records of all the candidates running for president, including President Bush. If and when we have a story about one of the candidates, we'll report it to our audience."
ABC was not alone in turning away from the story in 2000. CBS News did the same thing, and so did NBC News. But it was the New York Times, and the way the paper of record avoided the issue of Bush's no-show military service, that stands out as the most unusual. To this day, the Times has never reported that in 1972 the Texas Air National Guard grounded Bush for failing to take a required physical exam. Nor has the paper ever reported that neither Bush nor his aides can point to a single person who saw Bush, the hard-to-miss son of a congressman and U.S. ambassador, perform any active duty requirements during the final 18 months of his service. Instead, the Times served up stories that failed to delve deep into the issue.
The Boston Globe story broke on May 23, 2000. The next day Bush answered reporters' questions on the campaign trial, defending his military record. His comments were covered by the Times Union (of Albany, N.Y.), the Columbus Dispatch, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Houston Chronicle, among others, which all considered the story newsworthy. Not the Times: The paper ignored the fact Bush was forced to respond to allegations that he'd been AWOL during his Guard service.
Throughout the 2000 campaign, the Times' Nicholas Kristof wrote a series of biographical dispatches about Bush's personal history. On July 11, he wrote about Bush's post-college years, including his National Guard service, but no mention was made of the controversy surrounding Bush's missing year.
The Times finally addressed the issue on July 22, two months after the Globe exposé was published. The Times article, written by Jo Thomas, focused on Bush's post-Yale years in the late '60s and early '70s. In a section on the National Guard controversy, the Times reported that Bush's commanding officer had told the Boston Globe that Bush had never showed up, quoted Bush as insisting that he had, and noted that "Emily Marks, who worked in the Blount campaign and dated Mr. Bush, said she recalls that he returned to Montgomery after the election to serve with the Air National Guard." But then the Times went on to write, "National Guard records provided by the Guard and by the Bush campaign indicate he did serve on Nov. 29, 1972, after the election. These records also show a gap in service from that time to the previous May. Mr. Bush says he made up for the lost time in subsequent months, and guard records show he received credit for having performed all the required service."
On Oct. 31, the Boston Globe published another damning story, suggesting Bush failed to serve -- in fact, did not even show up for duty-- during the final 18 months of his commitment. The Times' Thomas quickly wrote, "A review of records by The New York Times indicated that some of those concerns [about Bush's absence] may be unfounded." Contradicting the Globe's account of Bush war service, the paper reported that Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett "pointed to a document in Mr. Bush's military records that showed credit for four days of duty ending Nov. 29 and for eight days ending Dec. 14, 1972, and, after he moved back to Houston, on dates in January, April and May."
The document cited by the Times is apparently the mysterious torn paper that appeared in Bush's records in 2000. That document, a "Statement of Points Earned," tracks when guardsmen have served, and whether they have fulfilled their annual duty. It contains references to "29" and "14" and other numbers whose meaning is not clear. The Times did not inform its readers that the document is badly torn, undated, and unsigned; does not have Bush's name on it (just a wayward "W"); and has a redacted Social Security number.
"The Times got spun by Dan Bartlett," Robinson at the Globe told Salon. He and others note that if the documents provided by the Bush campaign proved he did Guard duty upon returning to Houston in January and April of 1973, then why, on Bush's annual effectiveness report signed by two superiors, did it say, "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of the report," which covered the dates between May 1, 1972, and April 30, 1973?
"I had a lot of arguments with Dan Bartlett and never got spun by him," says Thomas, now an assistant chancellor for public affairs at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. "But if he gave me some documents that proved his point, I'm not going to ignore them." She added, "The Times carried no brief for or against Bush."
Nonetheless, the author James Moore says it was those two Times stories, which seemed to back up Bush's sketchy account of his Guard service, that effectively stopped other reporters from pursuing the story.
Here are the known facts of that story: Following his graduation from Yale University in 1968, with the Vietnam War raging, Bush vaulted to the top of a 500-person waiting list to land a coveted spot in the Texas Air National Guard. Then, despite having no aviation or ROTC experience, he was approved for an automatic commission as a second lieutenant and assignment to flight school.
By every indication, Bush's service between 1970 and 1972 as a fully trained pilot in the 111th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron near Houston was commendable. But then came the spring of 1972 -- and Bush simply vanished. |
