Bush's Guard Record Raises Credibility Questions (Update1)
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Sept. 9 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush is facing questions regarding his Texas Air National Guard service record after the Boston Globe reported he failed twice to fulfill training commitments in 1972 and 1973, an issue that may hinder Bush's campaign for re-election.
A review of Bush's National Guard records by the Boston Globe found no documentation of service by Bush for six months in 1972 and almost three months in 1973. Bush also didn't join a Boston-area guard unit when he moved to attend Harvard Business School in 1973, the Globe said. He made a six-year commitment to the National Guard in 1968 during the Vietnam War.
``The suggestion that Bush shirked his duty, in the Globe, could hurt Bush,'' said Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, who co-wrote a book on U.S. elections called ``After the People Vote.'' The institute promotes limited government, private enterprise and strong foreign policy and national defense.
Bush's campaign speeches focus on a president's need for credibility, often saying he must ``mean what he says.'' At a stop in Missouri yesterday, Bush said his decision to invade Iraq is proof ``I meant what I said,'' that a nation harboring terrorists will be treated `just as guilty'' as a terrorist. About 140,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq, including 40,000 guardsmen, according to the Pentagon.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One yesterday that if Bush ``had not fulfilled his commitment, he would not have been honorably discharged'' from the guard in 1973. Bush was questioned about his National Guard service during the 2000 presidential campaign. The issue resurfaced yesterday with stories by the Globe, Associated Press and CBS News.
`Preferential Treatment'
Ben Barnes, a former Texas Lieutenant Governor who has raised at least $100,000 for Kerry, said on CBS News's 60 Minutes program that he helped Bush get a spot in the Texas Air National Guard in 1968. Barnes, who was speaker of the Texas House of Representatives at the time, described his help as ``preferential treatment.''
``I was a young ambitious politician doing what I thought was acceptable,'' Barnes told CBS. ``It was important to make friends and I recommended a lot of people for the National Guard during the Vietnam era. As speaker of the house and as lieutenant governor.''
Ray LaHood, a Republican Congressman from Illinois, said the National Guard issue may provide Democrats ``fodder.''
`Percolate'
``These things need to percolate a few days,'' LaHood said in an interview. ``It's hard to know how these things turn out.''
Kerry campaign advisers declined to comment directly on Bush's National Guard service. ``These are questions for Scott McClellan and Dan Bartlett to answer, not the Kerry campaign,'' said Kerry campaign spokesman David Wade. Bartlett is communications director for the White House.
Some political experts said the news reports on Bush's service may undermine his credibility. The focus on Bush ``will eventually be all about his reliability to govern,'' said Terry Sullivan, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
``Bush took the easy way out of Vietnam,'' Sullivan said. ``He took the easy way out when he used faulty and vague information to bolster the case for war.''
In a March 19, 2003, speech at the start of the Iraq war, Bush cited ``weapons of mass murder'' and said the fight needs to be taken to Iraq so the U.S. won't have to meet the threat ``on the streets of our cities.'' Subsequently, a federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks found no evidence that Iraq had a ``collaborative operation relationship'' with al-Qaeda, the group behind the attacks, and coalition forces have not found weapons of mass destruction.
Killian's Records
CBS News also cited documents obtained from the files of Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian, Bush's squadron commander in the Texas Air National Guard.
In the files, Killian, who died in 1984, said he was pressured by General Buck Staudt, the head of the Texas Air National Guard, to ``sugar coat'' an evaluation of then Lieutenant George W. Bush. Bush was suspended from flying status on Aug. 1, 1972, for failure to take a physical.
In his personal file, Killian said ``I ordered 1st Lieutenant Bush be suspended not just for failing to take a physical, but for failing to perform to U.S. Air Force/Texas Air National Guard standards.'' The White House released copies of the same files after the CBS broadcast.
Texans for Truth, a political organization backed by a group seeking to defeat Bush, said it would begin airing television advertisements in five states next week, featuring a veteran of Bush's Alabama Air National Guard unit who says he never saw the future president on the base.
MoveOn.org
Part of the funding for Texans for Truth came from MoveOn.org, an independent political group backed by billionaire investor George Soros and Progressive Corp. Chairman Peter Lewis that ran advertisements this year criticizing Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and economic issues at home.
The Texans for Truth ad features Bob Mintz, now 63, who served in the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Unit of the Alabama Air National Guard in Montgomery, Alabama, from 1967 to 1984, a time encompassing Bush's attachment to the unit. Mintz on a conference call with reporters claimed that while serving as a captain in Montgomery in 1972, he never saw Bush on the base.
``It looks like the president is once again trying to run away from his record,'' Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee said in a separate conference call with reporters. ``How about you for once owning up to your own record and tell the American people exactly what you were doing when you were supposed to be serving.''
`Ready and Willing'
At the end of Bush's six-year commitment to the National Guard, he was removed from ``Obligated Ready Reserve'' and placed on an ``idle list,'' said Claire Buchan, a White House spokeswoman.
The president ``was required to inform them of his address and how he could be reached so in the event they wanted to call him up,'' Buchan said. ``He was ready and willing to serve if he had been called up.''
Kerry faced unsubstantiated claims that he didn't deserve three Purple Hearts for being wounded and the bronze and Silver Stars for valor awarded to him by the U.S. Navy. The group, called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, received its initial funding from Republican friends and financial backers of Bush's election campaign.
A Los Angeles Times poll released Aug. 26 found that the Swift boat group's advertisements may have changed the minds of some voters. The survey of 1,597 adults found 46 percent said Bush ``has the honesty and integrity to serve as president,'' compared with 39 percent who said the same of Kerry. In July, before the Swift Boat ad campaign, the two candidates were tied at 42 percent.
Polls
A Sept 2-3 poll by Newsweek magazine found 62 percent of 1,008 registered voters said Bush is honest and ethical, while 47 percent said the same of Kerry. Sixty-six percent said Bush says what he believes, not just what people want to hear, compared with 42 percent for Kerry. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
``It's my belief President Bush served honorably and John Kerry served honorably,'' said Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican who was held for five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. ``I wish we would end all this conversation about a war that was over 30 years ago.''
Many of the 20 scholars and Republican lawmakers interviewed by Bloomberg News for this story said that the attacks on Bush's military service wouldn't have as great an effect on Bush's campaign as the Swift Boat attacks had on Kerry.
Swift Boat Comparison
``It's kind of like a panic on the part of Kerry: Just because he got clobbered with his record he thinks something like this would hurt Bush,'' said Pete Domenici, a Republican Senator from New Mexico. ``But they're not in the same ballpark.''
Bartlett called into question the timing of the Barnes interview in a televised rebuttal aired on 60 Minutes.
``The fact that it's coming up now at a time when President Bush has taken a lead in the polls,'' Bartlett said in a White House transcript of the interview. ``The fact of the matter is that the files that have been provided by this President to the public demonstrate that he served his country, he logged hundreds and hundreds of hours as a fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard.''
Bush received an honorable discharge effective Oct. 1, 1973, two days after the deadline for him to report to a new unit near Boston, according to a letter from the State of Texas Adjutant General's Department dated Oct. 16, 1973. He was recommended for a discharge on Sept. 18, 1973, by Colonel Bobby Hodges of the Texas Air National Guard. That date was within the 60-day deadline.
Documents
Some two dozen documents relating to Bush's Air National Guard service weren't released in February. Those records, released by the Department of Defense to the AP under a Freedom of Information Act request, show Bush's flight records, detailing the dates of his flights and his scores on airmanship tests.
Bush performed most of his National Guard Service in Texas, and transferred to an Alabama National Guard unit in 1972 to work for a Senate campaign of Winton Blount, who was postmaster general of the U.S. under former President Richard M. Nixon.
Bartlett said Bush didn't take his next medical exam because he was in ``a non-flying capacity because, in Alabama, they weren't flying the same plane that President Bush was trained on.''
The reports on Bush's service ``at a minimum would give Kerry some time to regroup and get off his heels'' after defending his Vietnam record from attacks in August, said Ornstein at the American Enterprise Institute.
Last Updated: September 9, 2004 09:05 EDT
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