The WP continues to pound the National Guard story. Milbank REPORTS on Bush's stop with the troops, and SPECULATES that it is because of his service. Milbank sneers his way though it.
Bush Honors Soldiers, Prepares Them for More
President Tells Members of National Guard He Won't Relent Until Threat Is Removed
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 18, 2004; Page A07
FORT POLK, La., Feb. 17 -- This time, there can be no dispute: President Bush fulfilled his duties to the National Guard on Tuesday.
Bush, embattled over gaps in his service to the Guard during the Vietnam War, flew to the Joint Readiness Training Center here in central Louisiana to address and to lunch with members of the National Guard who are about to be deployed to Iraq.
The purpose of the trip was to honor the sacrifice of Americans fighting, and dying, in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and to gird the military for more. "My resolve is the same today as it was on the morning of September the 12th, 2001," Bush told thousands of cheering soldiers, many of them from a Guard unit heading for Baghdad. "My resolve is the same as it was on the day when I walked in the rubble of the twin towers. I will not relent until this threat to America is removed. And neither will you."
But Bush, sharing a lunch of beef enchilada MREs with the National Guard soldiers bound for Iraq, delivered another important, if unspoken, message: Service in the National Guard, which Bush did from 1968 to 1973, is honorable.
As Democrats raise questions about whether Bush shirked his National Guard duties from May 1972 to May 1973, he has charged that his opponents are disparaging the National Guard itself. "It's fine to go after me, which I expect the other side will do," Bush said earlier this month. "I wouldn't denigrate service to the Guard, though, and the reason I wouldn't is because there are a lot of really fine people who served in the National Guard and who are serving in the National Guard today in Iraq."
Bush was referring to remarks such as those made by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), his likely presidential challenger, equating Guard service with avoiding the draft during the Vietnam era. But Kerry said, "I've never made any judgments about any choice somebody made about avoiding the draft, about going to Canada, going to jail, being a conscientious objector, going into the National Guard."
At issue in the dispute is whether the modern Guard, which is fighting in large numbers in Afghanistan and Iraq, is the same as the Vietnam-era Guard, which remained mostly at home. Bush, in remarks quoted in the Houston Chronicle in 1994, appeared to describe the Guard in terms similar to Kerry's. "I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment," he said. "Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."
The soldiers Bush met Tuesday, the 39th Enhanced Separate Brigade of the Arkansas National Guard, are emblematic of the modern Guard. Some of them served in the Sinai after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, thousands of them will go to Baghdad after completing training here, and all volunteered to serve without the threat of being drafted.
By contrast, the history of the same unit describes its mission during the Vietnam era as "training" and "readiness" -- not combat. As in Bush's home unit, with the Texas Air National Guard, there was little prospect of being sent to Vietnam.
Soldiers in today's 39th, wearing their desert camouflage fatigues to Bush's speech, sounded anxious but resigned when discussing their looming assignment in Iraq. "I see it as my obligation," said Thomas Herster, a computer networker who has volunteered with the 39th since 1988. Herster said Bush's relatively risk-free Guard service was as honorable as his own. "Anybody who served their country is doing his duty, whether it's Vietnam or the war on terrorism," he said.
Bush's press secretary, Scott McClellan, said the trip to Fort Polk was planned before the controversy over Bush's Guard service was revived this month by Democrats. But, he added, "both those in the armed forces and those in our reserve units and Guard are playing an important role in helping us confront the dangerous threats that we face."
The White House last week released records from Bush's Guard files that provided numerous details about his service but did not resolve the central controversy over whether he served with the Alabama Guard while working on a Senate campaign in the state in 1972.
Bush's appearance Tuesday in Fort Polk was recorded by banks of cameras and cheered by thousands of National Guard and other soldiers. Under clearing skies, Bush, in a Fort Polk insignia jacket, spoke of the sacrifice of those trained at the facility, which prepares light infantry and Special Forces for the Army. Fort Polk has sent about 10,000 soldiers to fight in recent conflicts, and a dozen of those trained here are among the more than 500 dead in Iraq.
"You have said farewell to some of your best," Bush said in his speech here, remembering Pvt. Rey D. Cuervo, a Mexican citizen killed in Baghdad while fighting for the United States. Bush said all such noncitizens have been granted posthumous citizenship. "Last month," Bush said, "Pfc. Cuervo was laid to rest under a marker with these words: 'All gave some, and some gave all.' " Bush met privately with relatives of some of the fallen soldiers after his speech.
It was Bush's first visit to a military base since former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said it is unlikely that stocks of prohibited weapons will be found in Iraq -- undermining the administration's main justification for war. The president grouped the conflicts since Sept. 11 as a single effort to "fight the terrorist enemy."
Bush reminded the soldiers that many others shared his belief that the weapons existed. "My administration looked at the intelligence information, and we saw a danger," he said. "Members of Congress looked at the same intelligence, and they saw a danger. The United Nations Security Council looked at the intelligence, and it saw a danger. We reached a reasonable conclusion that Saddam Hussein was a danger."
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