<<Can anyone explain to me how a person can become a qualified fighter pilot in the National Guard and be considered dumb?>>
nybooks.com
<<Bush was a mediocre freshman in high school and yet won admission to Phillips
Academy, Andover, one of the country's most exclusive preparatory schools,
because his father had gone there before him. He was a mediocre student at
Andover, and yet won admission to his father's alma mater, Yale, again as a
"legacy." He was a mediocre student at Yale and yet won admission to the
Harvard Business School. When he decided to fulfill his military obligation during
the Vietnam War by entering the Texas Air National Guard, he was promptly
accepted and granted a lieutenant's commission after a mere five weeks of basic
training. >>
<<Elizabeth Mitchell, whose book seems the most illuminating of the four under
review, gives the fullest account of Bush's acceptance into the National Guard, at
a time when, according to some of its veterans, there was a long waiting list. By
the time Bush graduated from Yale in 1968, his father was a congressman from
Texas. A longtime family friend, Sidney Adger, called Ben Barnes, then the
Democratic lieutenant governor of Texas. In a 1999 deposition Barnes testified
that Adger asked him to intercede for young Bush. Barnes duly called the head
of the guard, Brigadier General James M. Rose.
Bush and his father have seized upon this testimony as evidence that the elder
Bush himself never interceded to get his son a coveted slot in the Guard. But in
his interview with Lieutenant Colonel Walter B. Staudt, the young Bush said he
wanted to fly "just like his daddy," which surely would have invited the question,
if Staudt had not already known the answer, "Just who is your daddy?" The story
does not end there. Bush was commissioned as a second lieutenant in September
1968 after just five weeks of basic training, without even going through officer
candidate school, and immediately embarked on pilot training. Curiously, in his
autobiography, Bush fudges this extraordinarily swift promotion. "I spent 55
weeks on active duty, learning to fly, and graduated in December 1969. My dad
pinned on my second lieutenant wings, a proud moment for both of us."
However, there is no such thing as "second lieutenant wings" in the US military.
Second lieutenants receive gold bars; pilots get wings. Bush has somehow
conflated the two. We know he did not actually write this book; it also appears
he may not have read it. >> |
