Bush's Military Past

[Guest guest]

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0806-12.htm

 

Published in the August 16, 2004 issue of The Nation

 

Bush's Military Past

by Ian Williams

 

 

Even allowing for the usual military-bureaucratic

incompetence, records relating to George W. Bush's

National Guard Service have a suspiciously low

survival rate, so there has been understandable

incredulity about the recent revelation that a crucial

quarter's pay records from 1972 did not survive the

Pentagon's alleged attempt to transfer the microfilm

to a more durable medium. That incredulity was

enhanced rather than allayed when they eventually were

discovered behind whichever filing cabinet they had

been dropped.

 

At issue is whether Bush was, technically at least, a

deserter in his fourth year of National Guard service,

when he requested a transfer to Guard duties in

Alabama so he could assist a Republican senatorial

campaign there.

 

Bush asserts that he turned up and did his duty.

However, no one on the base remembers seeing him,

including the commanding officer and several other

officers who say they were actively looking to network

with the hot-shot Texan with the influential

father--but waited in vain.

 

The paper record does show that he was ordered to

report for a flight medical exam in July 1972, but

that Bush " failed to accomplish " it, and that in

September he was ordered to report for an inquiry into

why he had not passed. His memories of these momentous

events which grounded him and made him unfit for

flight duties seem very hazy.

 

The White House says that since the plane he flew was

about to be phased out of service, he felt he did not

need to maintain his pilot rating. Normally, the Armed

Forces do not take kindly to such executive decisions

being made by junior officers--and in reality, the

Texas Air National Guard was still flying the Delta

Dagger that Bush was trained on even after he had gone

to Harvard Business School.

 

The difficulty is the classic one: how to prove a

negative. But there is clearly a dog that is not

barking here. For example, the " failure to accomplish "

his medical examination could mean either that he did

not turn up, or that he did and failed it--in which

case the answer may lie in medical records that the

Bush Administration has refused to disclose.

 

It may or may not be significant that mandatory drug

testing was introduced in 1972, and that Bush

spokespeople have maintained that he had not used

narcotics since 1974--while maintaining a discreet

silence about what happened before then.

 

Bush could, if minded, produce W2 forms from the IRS

that would show his Guard earnings while in Alabama.

He has not. The White House has occasionally released

a flood of documents seemingly intended to confuse the

issue. The one tangible record that has emerged is

that in January of 1973, Bush turned up for a

dentist's visit in Alabama--which is intriguing in

itself since he was supposed to be back in Texas by

then. The dentist is the only military person in

Alabama with a credible memory of Bush attendance. Or

rather, he affirmed that it was his signature on the

examination card although he had no specific memory of

peering into the mouth that later launched the Iraq

War.

 

In fact, even when the allegedly destroyed microfilm

could not be found, the information on it was not

really missing at all. Joseph Nobles, who blogs as

Bolo Boffin, discovered each quarter's record also

replicated the three previous quarters. By comparing

adjacent records, Noble deduced that while 1st Lt.

Bush claimed a few non-active duty days in Alabama, on

one of which we know he was at the dentist, he

returned to Texas with zero active duty days in the

previous year. The rediscovered data confirmed what

Nobles had deduced, and Bush's failure to show up for

active duty. He was then booked for almost full-time

duty for three months, presumably in an attempt to

clear the books before giving him early discharge for

Harvard Business School (his second choice, since the

University of Texas Law School turned him down).

 

The disappearance of Bush's federal payroll records

mirror the evidence of Texas records going down the

memory hole. According to Lt. Col. Bill Burkett Rtd,

of the Texas Air National Guard, in 1997 he heard his

superior officer, Major General Daniel James, on the

speakerphone with George Bush's chief of staff, Joe

Allbaugh, and communications director, Dan Bartlett,

arranging the sifting of Bush's military records.

 

Burkett also claimed that soon after he overheard

Assistant Adjutant General Wayne Marty, in discussing

the then Governor Bush's records, caution " make sure

there's nothing in there that'll embarrass the

governor. " Burkett said he later saw files and

photocopies of pay and performance records--and the

name on at least one of them was " Bush, George W.,

1LT. "

 

Another officer, George Conn, originally verified much

of Burkett's story. He has since retracted his

memories of the specific conversations and events, a

retraction that unkind souls have suggested may be due

to his current position as a civilian defense

contractor in Germany. Although he strongly qualified

his retraction by affirming that " Lt. Col. Burkett is

an honorable man and does not lie, " the White House

seized upon the quasi retraction to back up its case.

 

In some ways this is almost irrelevant. The core issue

is that George W. Bush, who campaigned eagerly for

Republican pro-war candidates, joined the National

Guard, ticking the box to refuse overseas service, at

the height of the Tet Offensive, in what Senator

Robert Byrd has called the " War of His Generation. "

 

He did so with the aid of nepotistic influence,

jumping a long line, despite a 25 percent score on his

pilot aptitude test--and despite a series of driving

convictions that should have required a special

waiver. He was commissioned an officer despite having

no pilot experience, no time in the ROTC, and without

attending Officer Training School.

 

And then he went missing for a year, and as a reward

was allowed to terminate his service early so he could

go to Harvard Business School.

 

His use of the National Guard to escape Vietnam should

have inhibited him and his party from successively

attacking the patriotism and martial virtues of triple

amputee Senator Max Cleland and John Kerry--having

earlier pointed fingers at Bill Clinton. But going

AWOL, to the extent of deserting for a year even from

this surrogate service, makes him doubly vulnerable.

Which may of course account for the seeming

fungibility of his paperwork, even though, in truth,

these people have no shame.

 

This article was adapted from Williams's new book,

Deserter: George W. Bush's War on Military Families,

Veterans, and His Past .

 

2004 The Nation