The war president's (corporate whore) military files still missing (not in action)
miami.com
The president says he can't find those WMDs, and who am I to question him? Some days, I need a U.N. weapons inspector to find my car keys.
''They could have been hidden,'' President Bush said on Meet the Press Sunday. Not my keys -- Iraq's still missing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
After the interview, most of the national media focused on Bush's revamped explanation of why we invaded Iraq, considerably downgraded from his rhetoric a year ago about big stockpiles of nasty weapons.
But Iraq is a confusing nation, cursed with inadequate house numbers and poor street markings. It could be that David Kay went to the wrong address.
Missing ANG records are more difficult to understand.
WITHOUT A TRACE
They've vanished. As if, in 1972, space aliens had plucked Lt. George Bush from the Air National Guard and didn't release him until the following year, in time to attend Harvard Business School. Four years after The Boston Globe raised serious questions about George Bush's military service, he and his staff still haven't turned up records to counter allegations that he failed to show up for those compulsory drills.
''Listen, these files, I mean, people have been looking for these files for a long period of time, trust me,'' Bush told Meet the Press' Tim Russert Sunday.
When Russert asked if he would release ''pay stubs, tax records, anything to show that you were serving during that period,'' Bush said, ``Yeah. If we still have them, but you know, the records are kept in Colorado, as I understand, and they scoured the records.''
Maybe I'd have trouble convincing a military-records depot to locate the records of Specialist Fourth Class Grimm of the 479th Ordinance. The president ought to have more clout. Even in faraway Colorado.
Bush, we do know, managed to get into the Texas Air National Guard in 1968, just nine days before his college draft deferment expired. The Globe reported that Bush leaped over 500 other would-be Guardsmen to the front of the line.
At that time, with the Vietnam War looming, a spot in a reserve or Guard unit was a coveted alternative to getting drafted. Highly coveted. That same year, I reported to the FBI that the cadre running my piddling Army Reserve unit was accepting bribes to push recruits to the head of the line.
THREAT OF WAR
Once in, banishment to the real Army was the threat that kept us in line and on time. Show up late, it was one unexcused absence. Show up without an acceptable haircut or with unshined boots -- another unexcused absence. Miss a day, two absences. Miss the whole weekend, four. Five unexcused absences, they drummed you out of the reserves or the Guard, into active duty and Vietnam.
Several of my buddies were shipped out, including one whose final, deciding absence was levied for shaggy hair.
Meanwhile, in 1972, Lt. Bush was transferring from the Texas Air National Guard to a unit in Alabama, an amazing feat in of itself in that era. Supposedly, he attended drills there for over a year, though no one in the unit, including the company commander, can remember the congressman's son showing up for any meetings. A few other questions mar his military record, including a note on his 1973 annual evaluation, after he transferred back to Texas, that Bush had ``not been observed at this unit.''
Bush, despite a spotty attendence record, managed to escape the military six months earlier than the rest of us, so he could go off to Harvard. He told Russert that he ''worked it out with the military.'' Us other draft dodgers, hopelessly stuck in the reserves or the National Guard for the full six years, would love to know how that deal was worked it out. Makes those long missing ANG records all the more interesting.
Maybe the president should dispatch David Kay to find them. I hear he's out of a job. |
