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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (17009)	4/21/2004 9:38:32 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

In contrast, Bush's service was unheroic and went unfinished: AWOL Update II: White House Whitewash by ftm Wed Apr 21st, 2004 at 20:30:04 EDT From the flood of the President's official military records released by the White House in February 2004, a lone unofficial memo stands out like a cactus in Alaska. This memo is signed by Albert Lloyd -- a retired National Guard Personnel Officer who examined Bush's Texas Air National Guard (TANG) military records for the Bush 2000 campaign (1). The Lloyd Memo is best described as a work of fiction. The memo claims Bush's performance was satisfactory in the final year of his Military Service Obligation (MSO). Bush's retirement records contradict this claim. The records show him on inactive status for the last 8 months of his MSO and therefore short the service points for a satisfactory final year. Even though Bush staff had the retirement records, they released the Lloyd memo to the press in both 2000 and 2004. The 2004 release tethers the White House to a deceptive account of the President's service. Diaries :: ftm's diary :: The Lloyd memo begins by listing documents reviewed in preparing the memo. The fourth document is described as follows: "AF Form 526 May `73 - May `74" This document has never been released. The correct description based on the now public retirement records would be: "AF Form 526 May 27, `73 - Sept. 15, `73" Bush was placed on inactive status effective September 15, 1973 (2). But the Lloyd memo incorrectly cites a Form 526 spanning 12 months -- not the correct 3 months and 19 days. This citation "error" makes it appear Bush received a standard annual Form 526 which is the type of form received by every Guard/Reserve member. Bush would only have received an annual Form 526 if he had completed the last year of his MSO on active status. No annual form for '73 - '74 has been released. Three considerations suggest the cited document -- AF Form 526 May `73 - May `74 -- never existed: 1. It hasn't been released and if it exists, the White House would have good reason to release it. The existence of a standard annual report would either show the inactive status report was incorrect or show that Bush regained active status sometime after 9/15/73. 2. A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request directed at Bush's military retirement records yielded no Form 526 showing Bush's on active status after 9/15/73 (3). This suggests Bush remained on inactive status for the remainder of his MSO after 9/15/73. 3. Lloyd may have made an honest mistake. If Lloyd saw only the second page of Form 526, he would not have known the report span ended on September 15, 1973. This date was only indicated on the first page and all the dates of service on the second page fell prior to 9/15/73. It would have been a natural but mistaken inference to assume the Form 526 report spanned 12 months. This simple citation "error" helped the Bush 2000 Campaign in two ways: 1. The "error" directed attention away from his unexplained inactive status. Even to this date, the question of why Bush was placed on inactive status has not been asked publicly of Bush or his staff. Inactive status before the completion of a MSO was abnormal. According to the regulations in effect at the time, this situation should only occur if a Reserve\Guard member was discharged before the completion of a MSO (4). The documents released to date leave unanswered many questions concerning Bush's early placement on inactive status (5). 2. Without the "error", a central claim of the Lloyd memo -- that Bush obtained sufficient points for a satisfactory '73-'74 retirement year -- would have been demonstrably false. Reserve members on inactive status are not awarded any points. Without the points Bush was assumed to have received for remaining on active status, he fell 12 points shy of the required minimum 50 points for a satisfactory retirement year (6). The remarkably favorable consequences of the citation "error" for Bush raise suspicions. Unfortunately the documents can't tell us whether the "error" arose from an honest mistake, Lloyd's partisan motives, or the manipulation of Lloyd by the Bush 2000 campaign. Whatever the circumstances that gave rise to the "error", nothing absolves the campaign of responsibility for propagating a false account of Bush's service. Documents released by the White House 2/13/04 show that the retirement record which discredits the Lloyd memo was available to the Bush 2000 campaign. The document appears in both the TANG and NRPC 2000 personnel files (7). A simple check of the retirement records should have stopped the 2000 campaign from offering the Lloyd Memo to the press. The White House -- by re-releasing the Lloyd Memo 2/10/04 -- has now embraced a deceptive document. The administration needs to correct the record and rescind its endorsement of the Lloyd Memo. Furthermore, there should be an account of how the White House came to distribute the memo. Who vetted the memo and authorized its release? Was it Craig Bartlett, Andrew Card, or Karl Rove? Did the President read the memo? These are straightforward questions to put to the White House and they deserve equally straightforward answers. When the White House peddles deceptive documents, it tarnishes not only Bush's credibility but the credibility of the office as well. Notes: dailykos.com