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To: LindyBill who wrote (73049)	9/24/2004 7:22:01 AM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793896

Suppose there was coordination between CBS and the Kerry campaign. Wouldn't that violate McCain/Feingold? Or are media organizations above the law?

To: LindyBill who wrote (73049)	9/24/2004 2:14:47 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793896

Re: It seems unusual that two media giants separated by hundreds of miles would seek out the same ‘expert’ on the same day to validate their stories. Who is Lechliter? Is he an aparatchnik of the Kerry Campaign? WHO is Lt. Col. Gerald A. Lechliter, and where does he live. When you look in Google, there are ALL sorts of Dem and Left Wing listings for him...Seems whoever this person is has dedicated his life to the minutia of trying to find a diary of 6 months of Bush's life. Odd too....usually there are Bio's of people who are 'anybody'.....can anyone find one for this man???

To: LindyBill who wrote (73049)	9/24/2004 2:20:17 PM
From: KLP	Respond to of 793896

Here again, is the Boston Globe article of Sept 8, 2004, BEFORE the CBS 60Minutes II mess came forward....Does anyone doubt that there was a coordinated effort???? Wednesday, September 8, 2004 Bush missed Guard duty, records say President also avoided disciplinary action for absences THE BOSTON GLOBE In February, when the White House made public hundreds of pages of President Bush's military records, White House officials repeatedly insisted that the records prove that Bush fulfilled his military commitment in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. But Bush fell well short of meeting his military obligation, a Boston Globe re-examination of the records shows: Twice during his Guard service -- when he joined in May 1968 and before he transferred out of his unit in mid-1973 to attend Harvard Business School -- Bush signed documents pledging to meet training commitments or face a punitive call-up to active duty. He didn't meet the commitments or face the punishment, the records show. The 1973 document has been overlooked in news media accounts. The 1968 document has received scant notice. On July 30, 1973, shortly before he moved from Houston to Cambridge, Bush signed a document that declared, "It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months. ..." Under Guard regulations, Bush had 60 days to locate a new unit. But Bush never signed up with a Boston-area unit. In 1999, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett told The Washington Post that Bush finished his six-year commitment at a Boston area Air Force Reserve unit after he left Houston. Not so, Bartlett now concedes. "I must have misspoke," Bartlett, who is now the White House communications director, said in a recent interview. And early in his Guard service, on May 27, 1968, Bush signed a "statement of understanding" pledging to achieve "satisfactory participation" that included attendance at 24 days of annual weekend duty -- usually involving two weekend days each month -- and 15 days of annual active duty. "I understand that I may be ordered to active duty for a period not to exceed 24 months for unsatisfactory participation," the statement reads. Yet Bush, a fighter-interceptor pilot, performed no service at all for one six-month period in 1972 and for another period of almost three months in 1973, the records show. The re-examination of Bush's records by the Globe, along with interviews with military specialists who have reviewed regulations from that era, show Bush's attendance at required training drills was so irregular his superiors could have disciplined him or ordered him to active duty in 1972, 1973 or 1974. But they did neither. In fact, Bush's unit certified in late 1973 that his service had been "satisfactory" -- just four months after Bush's commanding officer wrote that Bush had not been seen at his unit for the previous 12 months. Bartlett, in a statement to the Globe last night, sidestepped questions about Bush's record. He asserted again that Bush would not have been honorably discharged if he had not "met all his requirements." That assertion by the White House spokesman infuriates retired Army Col. Gerald Lechliter, one of a number of retired military officers who have studied Bush's records and old National Guard regulations, and reached different conclusions. "He broke his contract with the United States government -- without any adverse consequences. And the Texas Air National Guard was complicit in allowing this to happen," Lechliter said yesterday. "He was a pilot. It cost the government a million dollars to train him to fly. So he should have been held to an even higher standard." Even retired Lt. Col. Albert Lloyd Jr., a former Texas Air National Guard personnel chief who vouched for Bush at the White House's request in February, agreed that Bush walked away from his obligation to join a Reserve unit in the Boston area when he moved to Cambridge in September 1973. By not joining a unit in Massachusetts, Lloyd said last month, Bush "took a chance that he could be called up for active duty. But the war was winding down, and he probably knew that the Air Force was not enforcing the penalty." But Lloyd said that singling out Bush for criticism is unfair. "There were hundreds of guys like him who did the same thing," he said. 888888888888888

To: LindyBill who wrote (73049)	9/24/2004 2:21:24 PM
From: KLP	Respond to of 793896

One more thing about this guy: More: Lt. Col. Gerald A. Lechliter forums.santacruzsentinel.com posted September 08, 2004 05:16 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gerald Lechliter, a retired army colonel has examined Bush's NG record and posted a 32 page analysis. You can find it here nytimes.com Here's the summary: 32 102 until at least mid-1974.184 He also was not even close to fulfilling his commitment to the ANG. Even if he applied for HBS in December 1972, he still had almost 23 months of obligated service: His commitment, therefore, was not “almost finished.” Most important, he was not flying because he had not taken his flight physical, not because the unit was transitioning to a new fighter. Bush clearly and convincingly did not meet the standards he himself set and agreed to, and his unit, as well as ARPC, failed to take the proper regulatory corrective and punitive actions. Both, therefore, connived at his shirking his duties. X. Conclusion. My research confirms the conclusions about Bush’s military service by Martin Heldt that were published in several articles in 2000, available at the above-mentioned “Online Journal” website, and by the Boston Globe reporters in their numerous articles. As Robinson and Latour noted in the above-mentioned article, Bush’s commander, who according to Bush’s biography was a friend, probably thought Bush lost interest in flying, wanted out of the ANG prior to fulfilling his commitment, and did not press the issue. It is likely that he knew pursuing any corrective action would have brought him much aggravation and been damaging to his own career because Bush was politically well connected in Texas. His commander probably chose the easy way out, but his choice has nothing to do with the morality of Bush’s behavior or whether Bush met his obligation to the TXANG. His commander’s connivance at ensuring Bush paid no penalty for his flagrant violation of regulatory requirements for attendance at training and taking a flight physical in no way excuse Bush’s disgraceful, selfish behavior. In the final analysis, the record clearly and convincingly proves he did not fulfill the obligation he incurred when he enlisted in the Air National Guard and completed his pilot training, despite his honorable discharge. He clearly shirked the duty he undertook in 1968 upon enlistment and in 1969 upon completion of his flight training at Moody AF Base. Less than two years after Bush won his solo wings, he walked away from his duty to serve as a fighter pilot while troops were still dying in Vietnam. Moreover, he received fraudulent payments for INACDUTRA. We have not yet heard a satisfactory explanation by the President for his abandoning a profession he purportedly loved passionately. He, therefore, must four-square his past public statements about his performance with the official record and must explain why he prematurely abandoned a commitment to serve his Nation in the TXANG during another war to pursue personal goals. As a self-proclaimed “wartime president,” this President owes the U.S. public, especially the military and veterans, no less. He certainly cannot rely on his military record to answer these questions. 184 See home.att.net for the history of the F-102. 888888888888888888888888888