Bush's National Guard File Missing Records

September 5, 2004 2:07 PM

Bush's National Guard File Missing Records Documents that should have been written to explain gaps in President Bush (news - web sites)'s Texas Air National Guard service are missing from the military records released about his service in 1972 and 1973, according to regulations and outside experts. For example, Air National Guard regulations at the time required commanders to write an investigative report for the Air Force when Bush missed his annual medical exam in 1972. The regulations also required commanders to confirm in writing that Bush received counseling after missing five months of drills. No such records have been made public...
posted by Postroad (17 comments total)

It has to be connected to this: George Jr sent out of Texas by father as a 'drunken liability' :
The US president, George Bush, was transferred to the Alabama National Guard during the Vietnam war because his drunken behaviour was a political liability to his father in Texas, the wife of one of his father's former confidants revealed yesterday.
Linda Allison told the political website Salon.com that throughout the time Mr Bush was in Alabama she never saw him in uniform and had no idea he was supposed to be in the National Guard.
"Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston." Asked if she had ever seen him in uniform Mrs Allison said: "Good Lord, no. I had no idea the National Guard was involved in his life."

If he was a drunken liability, then they'd have to dump the papers.
posted by amberglow at 2:27 PM on September 5, 2004

What do conservatives care about the military other than an aparatus to bring about their economic and global goals? I mean its no secret this is a party and leadership consisting of draft dodgers. And the dead and wounded from its wars are to ignored or when need be mocked:



This photo will go down in history as the begining of how the American right fell from all things conservative or pro-democratic or pro-military.
posted by skallas at 2:28 PM on September 5, 2004

comparing those bandages to this news is especially telling: U.S. Troops in Iraq See Highest Injury Toll Yet
posted by amberglow at 2:31 PM on September 5, 2004

skallas: what does that picture mean? I've sen it posted twice now and I don't get what it supposed to mean.
posted by dash_slot- at 3:07 PM on September 5, 2004

dash_slot - it's a purple heart band-aid. Supposed to signify Kerry's Vietnam wound. I prefer the elephant cock-hats myself.
posted by longbaugh at 3:12 PM on September 5, 2004

what does that picture mean?

the repugs passed out "purple heart" band-aids to delegates at the RNC, to support the "Kerry didn't even bleed" meme. i would note also that the cornfed fat bitch wearing it likely never served in the military, and likely had every freedom and possession she enjoys in life given to her by her daddy or husband.
posted by quonsar at 3:25 PM on September 5, 2004

how can Kerry's pseudo-glorious past even be an issue when you compare it to dubyas

KERRY = EXAGGERATED WAR STORES (like every old fart)
DUBYA = AWOL/SNORTING COKE.
posted by Satapher at 3:37 PM on September 5, 2004

Ok, thanks guys. It's getting real dirty over there now, right?
posted by dash_slot- at 3:39 PM on September 5, 2004

I'll tell you all about it when i see you, dash.
posted by amberglow at 4:00 PM on September 5, 2004

Ta! (",)
posted by dash_slot- at 4:05 PM on September 5, 2004

It really does come down to a choice between a man who saw and did some wrong and wanted it corrected, and another man who saw and did some wrong and refuses to acknowledge that it was wrong at all.

I'm on the side of the former because the latter is deluding himself and everyone around him.
posted by clevershark at 6:01 PM on September 5, 2004

"I can't be expected to remember what every drug-addled yuppie hanger-oner who wanted to get close to me during a football game twenty-five years ago digested. There were so many dope fiends milling about, I don't remember what some Yalie named Bush, whose father was a factotum in the Nixon Administration, was doing....I don't want to become the Deep Drug Throat....I won't do it." - Hunter S. Thompson - New Yorker magazine, May 15 2000

I also recommend reading George W. Bush's Lost Year... or, if it's fanfiction (self link) you're looking for...
posted by wfrgms at 6:05 PM on September 5, 2004

Re: the pic of the cornfed bandage-wearer: I would love to see some reporter track her down and interview her as to the particulars quonsar and others have speculated about. If she's a war hero, I will gladly eat my words. If not, I'd love to see her answers to how she feels being the new standard-bearer of the most craven, unpatriotic and duplicitous campaign the GOP has come up with yet (or rather, had come up with yet by the end of August).
posted by soyjoy at 8:48 PM on September 5, 2004

It hasn't even started yet. Wait until the stories start about how Kerry went AWOL on the second three years of his duty.

He had signed an officers commission of 6 years to avoid scary duty. After leaving active service he didn't report for drills and he committed acts that legitimately could have landed him in prison. He was far worse than anything alleged about Bush.

"Reporting for duty"... hahahahahah! How's that tarbaby taste Kerry? Nice vision for America you got going there.
posted by paleocon at 9:25 PM on September 5, 2004

Paleocon, which part of honorable discharge do you have trouble understanding?
posted by drezdn at 10:02 PM on September 5, 2004

In the see also category (and a tribute to y2karl)

Back in 1969, Navy regulations specified that any soldier wounded in combat three times be automatically reassigned away from a combat zone to an assignment of his choosing (unless the thrice-wounded soldier specifically requested to stay). Four days after Kerry took his third hit of shrapnel, Commodore Charles F. Horne, an administrative official and commander of the coastal squadron in which Kerry served, forwarded a request on Kerry's behalf to the Navy Bureau of Personnel asking that Kerry be reassigned to "duty as a personal aide in Boston, New York, or Washington, D.C." Soon afterwards Kerry was transferred to Cam Ranh Bay to await further orders, and within a month he had been reassigned as a personal aide and flag lieutenant to Rear Admiral Walter F. Schlech, Jr. with the Military Sea Transportation Service based in Brooklyn, New York.

Kerry served with Admiral Schlech until the end of 1969, when he requested an early discharge from the Navy in order to run for a Massachusetts congressional seat. Admiral Schlech approved the request, and on 3 January 1970 Kerry received an honorable discharge, six months early.
posted by drezdn at 10:10 PM on September 5, 2004

Like most of his ilk, Paleocon does not have the slightest idea what any who actually served (in WWII, in Korea, in Vietnam, etc) feels about this issue. I don't feel particularly qualified to judge either Kerry or Bush on this issue myself (I was 2 years old in 1969), but all of the 10 veterans I know personally, and others I have talked to about it, are not at all ambiguous on the issue of which of these two served more honorably. Hint: it's not the drunken buffoon that chose to serve in the Guard. The games that people like Paleocon are playing on this issue betray an ignorance of what it means to serve in uniform, and worse, it shows utter disrespect for those that have made that sacrifice.
posted by psmealey at 7:01 AM on September 6, 2004