Media Should Probe Bigger Questions About Bush's Record
September 14, 2004
In the past week, a handful of stories have cast doubt on whether George
W. Bush fulfilled his National Guard obligations 30 years ago. Reports by
the Associated Press (9/7/04), Boston Globe (9/8/04) and U.S. News & World
Report (9/20/04) have all raised new questions about Bush's military
service. Though each of these stories has been accompanied by significant
official documentation, developments in the investigations by AP, U.S.
News and the Boston Globe have been largely sidetracked by the fixation on
questions about the authenticity of documents aired on CBS on September 8.
Weighing the credibility of evidence is an essential function of
journalism. Experts have weighed in on both sides on the authenticity of
CBS's so-called Killian memos (New York Times, 9/14/04; Washington Post,
9/14/04); efforts to establish the origin of those documents should
continue. However, news outlets that focus on this tangent of the
National Guard story to the exclusion of the unchallenged new evidence
that has recently emerged are neglecting another essential journalistic
task: holding powerful people and politicians accountable.
In the wake of the stories scrutinizing Bush's stateside service during
the Vietnam era, it's hard to imagine a better situation for the White
House than to have the press corps ignore a range of evidence raising
questions about Bush's fulfillment of his obligations while obsessing
singularly on one set of documents from one story.
A review of some of the information uncovered in recent news reports:
--The September 7 Associated Press story, based on new records the White
House had long maintained didn't exist, debunked a Bush assertion that
he'd skipped his flight physical because the jet he was trained on was
becoming obsolete. According to AP, Bush's unit continued to fly the same
jets for two years after the missed physical.
--The September 8 Boston Globe expose concluded that Bush failed in his
military obligations by missing months of duty in Alabama and in Boston.
As the Globe revealed, Bush had signed contracts on two separate occasions
swearing to meet minimum Guard requirements on penalty of being called up
to active duty. According to the military experts consulted by the Globe,
Bush's Guard attendance was so bad "his superiors could have disciplined
him or ordered him to active duty in 1972, 1973 or 1974."
--U.S News & World Report (9/20/04) reviewed National Guard regulations
and reported that the White House has been using "an inappropriate-- and
less stringent-- Air Force standard in determining that he had fulfilled
his duty." The magazine noted that Bush committed to attend at least "44
inactive-duty training drills each fiscal year" when he signed up for the
Guard, but that Bush's own records "show that he fell short of that
requirement, attending only 36 drills in the 1972-73 period, and only 12
in the 1973-74 period." The magazine explains that even by using the
White House's preferred methodology for measuring Bush's service, he still
fell short of those minimum requirements.
--An NBC Nightly News segment (9/9/04) played a clip of Bush being
interviewed in 1988, acknowledging that favoritism sometimes played a part
in getting into the National Guard. While he had said that he didn't
think that happened in his case, he did voice his approval of the
practice: "If you want to go in the National Guard, I guess sometimes
people made calls. I don't see anything wrong with it." (He continued
with a remark that could be taken as an insult to the men and women who
did face combat during the war: "They probably should have called the
National Guard up in those days. Maybe we'd have done better in Vietnam.")
Even CBS's September 8 broadcasts, the subject of so much scrutiny,
included important information beyond what is contained in the disputed
memos. On the CBS Evening News and 60 Minutes II that night, CBS featured
Ben Barnes, the former speaker of the Texas legislature, describing how he
used his political influence to help a young George W. Bush bypass a
waiting list and secure a coveted position in the Guard. In addition, the
CBS stories also featured an interview with Robert Strong, a former
colleague of Bush's commander, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, the purported
author of the disputed documents. Strong described the pressure Bush's
commander was working under: "He was trying to deal with a volatile
political situation, dealing with the son of an ambassador and a former
congressman.... And I just saw him in an impossible situation. I felt
very, very sorry because he was between a rock and a hard place."
Instead of asking the White House tough questions about the
well-documented information contained in these reports, media have focused
almost exclusively on the claims and counter-claims made about the Killian
memos-- as if the discrepancies over Bush's service record stand or fall
based on this one set of disputed documents. It's the equivalent of
covering the sideshow and ignoring the center ring.
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