I listened to the President of the United States dissemble about his military record. Following his laughable use of an honorable discharge to refute the questions about his service in the Air National Guard (when Guards personnel are dying in Iraq), Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves provides the chronological record in table form of George W. Bush's military service. If this is (fair & balanced) disdain, so be it.
MEET THE PRESS
Transcript for Feb. 8th
Guest: President George W. Bush
NBC News
Updated: 9:15 a.m. ET Feb. 08, 2004
Copyright© 2004, National Broadcasting Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
“MEET THE PRESS WITH TIM RUSSERT”
INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
THE OVAL OFFICE, FEBRUARY 7, 2004
BROADCAST ON NBC’S “MEET THE PRESS”
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2004
PLEASE CREDIT ANY EXCERPTS TO NBC’S “MEET THE PRESS”
Tim Russert: And we are in the Oval Office this morning with the President of the United States. Mr. President, welcome back to Meet The Press.
[snip snip following commercial]
Russert: And we are back in the Oval Office talking to the President of the United States.
Mr. President, this campaign is fully engaged. The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terence McAuliffe, said this last week: "I look forward to that debate when John Kerry, a war hero with a chest full of medals, is standing next to George Bush, a man who was AWOL in the Alabama National Guard. He didn't show up when he should have showed up."
President Bush: Yeah.
Russert: How do you respond?
President Bush: Political season is here. I was I served in the National Guard. I flew F 102 aircraft. I got an honorable discharge. I've heard this I've heard this ever since I started running for office. I I put in my time, proudly so. I would be careful to not denigrate the Guard. It's fine to go after me, which I expect the other side will do. 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.
Russert: The Boston Globe and the Associated Press have gone through some of their records and said there’s no evidence that you reported to duty in Alabama during the summer and fall of 1972.
President Bush: Yeah, they re they're just wrong. There may be no evidence, but I did report; otherwise, I wouldn't have been honorably discharged. In other words, you don't just say "I did something" without there being verification. Military doesn't work that way. I got an honorable discharge, and I did show up in Alabama.
Russert: You did were allowed to leave eight months before your term expired. Was there a reason?
President Bush: Right. Well, I was going to Harvard Business School and worked it out with the military.
Russert: When allegations were made about John McCain or Wesley Clark on their military records, they opened up their entire files. Would you agree to do that?
President Bush: Yeah. Listen, these files I mean, people have been looking for these files for a long period of time, trust me, and starting in the 1994 campaign for governor. And I can assure you in the year 2000 people were looking for those files as well. Probably you were. And absolutely. I mean, I
Russert: But would you allow pay stubs, tax records, anything to show that you were serving during that period?
President Bush: Yeah. If we still have them, but I you know, the records are kept in Colorado, as I understand, and they scoured the records. And I'm just telling you, I did my duty, and it's politics, you know, to kind of ascribe all kinds of motives to me. But I have been through it before. I'm used to it. What I don't like is when people say serving in the Guard is is may not be a true service.
Russert: Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?
President Bush: Yes, absolutely.
We did so in 2000, by the way.
[snip snip]
-30-
George W. Bush's Military Record
| when | Bush | other | situation |
| | Did not choose to join the full time active duty military | | |
| | Chose to enlist for duty in the (Texas) Air National Guard
On application: - checked "do not volunteer" for overseas assignment
- listed his "background qualifications" as "none."
| | Waiting list of 100,000 nationally at the time |
| 17 Jan '68 | Took the Air Force officer and pilot qualification tests - Scored 25%, the lowest possible passing grade on the pilot aptitude portion
| - Speaker of the House in Texas at the time, Ben Barnes, admitted he had received a request from a longtime Bush family friend, Sidney Adger of Houston, to help Bush get into the Air National Guard.
- Barnes further testified that he contacted the head of the Texas Air National Guard, Brig. Gen. James Rose
| |
| May '68 | Graduated from Yale | | 1/2 million men fighting; dying @ 350/wk |
| Years 1 & 2 |
| 27 May '68 | Sworn in | | |
| after 6 weeks of basic airman training | Received a commission as a second lieutenant | - By means of a 'special appointment' by the commanding officer of his squadron, with the approval of a panel of three senior officers.
- Normally required eight full semesters of college ROTC courses or eighteen months of military service or completion of Air Force officer training school.
- Texas National Guard historian said that he "never heard of that" except for flight surgeons
| |
| | Assigned to flight school | - Normally reserved to pilots graduating from ROTC training or Air Force officer training
| |
| | 'fast tracked' into the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, a standby runway alert component of the 143rd Group | | Over those on the existing pilot applicant waiting list |
| | Trained to fly the missile-equipped supersonic F-102 Delta Dart jet interceptor fighter | | |
| | Racked up approximately 300 hours of training flight time in the F-102 | - Qualified him to fly the F-102 without an instructor
- Short of the 500 hours of experience required for volunteer active duty combat operations in Vietnam
| |
| Year 3 |
| Jul '70 | Earned his wings | | |
| | Applied for a voluntary three month Vietnam tour | Was turned down for this volunteer active duty option | Air Force needed additional F-102 pilots to fly reconnaissance missions. |
| | Left to fly as a "weekend warrior" in the Texas Air National Guard out of Ellington AFB near Houston | | |
| 3 Nov '70 | Promoted to 1st Lieutenant | by Brig. General Rose | |
Jun '70
-
May '71 | Credited with 46 days of flight duty | | |
| Year 4 |
Jun '71
-
May '72 | Credited with only 22 flight duty days | 14 days short of the minimum 36 days owed the Guard for that year | |
| Apr '72 | Flew for the last time in the cockpit of an F-102 | All the overseas and stateside military services began subjecting a small random sample in their ranks to substance abuse testing for alcohol and drugs. Pentagon had announced its intention to do so back on December 31, 1969 | |
| Year 5 |
| 15 May '72 | "cleared this base" according to a written report by one of his two Squadron supervising officers, Lt. Col. William D. Harris Jr. | | |
| 24 May '72 | Requested in writing a six-month transfer to an inactive postal Reserve unit in Alabama | If Bush had been temporarily transferred there, he would not have continued flying until he returned to Texas, because the Alabama unit had no airplanes | |
| 31 May '72 | Transfer request was denied by National Guard Bureau headquarters | - Bush should have returned to his base in Houston and continued with his flying duties.
- Instead, he remained in Alabama until late in the fall.
| |
| Aug '72 | Scheduled physical | Could have been subject to selection for a random substance abuse test | |
| | either: - 1st Lt. Bush took his mandatory annual flight physical for pilots and failed it for some as-yet undisclosed reason,
- or he refused to present himself in the first place to an Air Force Flight Surgeon, who were readily available in almost every state
| Release of Bush's military service record would resolve issue. | |
| 1 Aug '72 | Suspended and grounded from flying duty on verbal order of the TX 147th Group's Commanding Officer for "his failure to accomplish annual medical examination." Two years left of remaining National Guard service. | - Expensively trained pilots are not casually suspended
- There is normally a Flight Inquiry Board
- If one had been convened, its three senior officer members would have documented why such a severe action was justified in relation to the country's military objectives at the time, as opposed to the simple desire of a trained pilot to just "give up flying".
- There is no evidence now in the public domain that a Flight Inquiry Board was convened to deal with Bush's official reclassification to a non-flying, grounded status
- This absence of a Flight Inquiry Board is of particular interest to veteran pilots. The implication is that Bush's misconduct was handled like everything else in his military service: aided and abetted by powerful family connections
| Country at the height of the Vietnam (air) War |
| 5 Sep '72 | Ordered to start serving three months in an active but non-flying administrative Guard unit, the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group in Montgomery, Alabama, for four certain duty days in October and November | | |
| 29 Sep '72 | | In memo to the Secretaries of the Army and Air Force, Major General Francis Greenleaf, then Chief of the National Guard Bureau in Washington DC, confirmed the suspension of 1st Lt. George W. Bush from flying status. | |
| Oct/Nov '72 | No official notation in his service record that Bush ever showed up for this assigned duty in Montgomery, Alabama. Bush: "I was there on temporary assignment and fulfilled my weekends at one period of time. I made up some missed weekends. I can't remember what I did, but I wasn't flying because they didn't have the same airplanes. I fulfilled my obligations." The Bush campaign conducted its own search of Bush's military records, and could not find evidence that Bush performed any duty in Alabama. | General William Turnipseed and Lt. Col. Kenneth Lott, who commanded the Montgomery, Alabama, base at the time said that Bush never appeared. "To my knowledge, he never showed up," Turnipseed said. | |
Nov '72
-
fall '73 | - Returned home to Houston Texas.
- Did not report in person for non-flying duty to his parent Texas 111th Squadron during this whole time.
| | |
| Year 6 |
| May '73 | - Ordered to attend nine certain duty days in person during Summer Camp at Ellington AFB between May 22 and June 7.
- 1st Lt. Bush did not do so.
| | |
22 May '73
-
30 Jul '73 | Bush was credited with 35 "gratuitous" inactive Air Force Reserve points -- in other words, non-attendance inactive Reserve credit time | No one in the Texas Air Guard at the time, has stepped forward to say they saw Bush in person on a single day between May 22 and July 30, 1973 | |
| 1 Oct'73 | Prematurely discharged with honors from the Texas Air Guard. | This leaves Bush without a single legitimate Texas Air National Guard service day for his fifth and sixth years of service to his Texas Air National Guard discharge. | |
| 26 May '74 | Scheduled discharge. | | |
| Nov '74 | Final inactive Reserve discharge with honors. | Bush was attending Harvard Business School as a full-time student by that time | |
NOTE: We are not familiar with military procedures or Bush's record and cannot vouch for the accuracy of this table. All we did was take the elements in the piece, and organize it so that the timeline may be better understood. (A critical review of some elements is available
here.) This presentation is intended as a starting point for discussion.
UPDATE: We came upon
this BuzzFlash Reader Commentary on Bush's military service (written on 25 Oct 2002), and
this Washington Post story which fills in a few details (dated 28 Jul 1999). The Post story has a revealing picture of Bush while he was at Harvard Business School.
And while we're at it, this site:
awolbush.com is devoted to the issue.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Mother Jones has a
timeline as well (with a few additional details).
STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: For those who trust Cecil Adams at the Straight Dope (instead of uggabugga), he has
written about Bush's service record.
posted by Quiddity at 1/17/2003 06:40:27 AM
