Earlier in the day, Democratic military veterans in the U.S. Senate assailed Bush for failing to explain part of his tenure in the Texas Air National Guard.
"The question is, where were you, Governor Bush?" said Sen. Daniel Inouye,
D-Hawaii, a World War II veteran.
"What would you do as commander in chief if someone in the National Guard
did the same thing?" Inouye asked during a telephone address to Gore
supporters in Nashville on Thursday.
Inouye joined his colleagues, Sens. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska and Max
Cleland of Georgia, in raising harsh questions about Bush's role during the
Vietnam War.
The remarks were in response to a Boston Globe article this week showing
that Bush stopped flying after 22 months within his unit of the Texas Air
National Guard. Further, the Globe reported, Bush failed to show up for
required Guard drills during a six-month stay in Alabama in 1972 and 1973.
Five months after the Globe first reported those discrepancies, Bush's
biography on his presidential campaign Web site remains unchanged, stating
that he served as a pilot in the Texas Guard from 1968 to 1973.
In fact, Bush flew with the 111th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Ellington
Field in Houston from June 1970 until April 1972. That month he ceased
flying altogether, two years before his military commitment ended, an unusual
step that has left some veteran fighter pilots puzzled.
There is strong evidence that Bush performed no military service, as was
required, when he moved from Houston to Alabama to work on a U.S.
Senate campaign from May to November 1972. There are no records of any
service, and the commanding officer of the unit Bush was assigned to said he
never saw him.
What's more, a Bush campaign spokesman acknowledged last week that he
knows of no witnesses who can attest to Bush's attendance at drills after he
returned to Houston in late 1972 and before his early release from the Guard
in September 1973.
"At the least, I would have been court-martialed. At the least, I would have
been placed in prison," Inouye said Thursday.
Bush is "making truth-telling and character a big issue in this campaign,"
Kerrey said. "If he's going to do what's right, he ought to release his military
records, as (Republican Sen.) John McCain did."
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