| Topic: |
Science > Abortion |
| User: |
"james g. keegan jr." |
| Date: |
11 Feb 2004 07:13:08 AM |
| Object: |
bush's "military" service |
.... from an email i received today ...
Highlights of what follows:
"When you serve, you are paid for that service," White House
press secretary Scott McClellan said. "These documents outline
the days on which he was paid. That means he served. And these
documents also show he met his requirements. And it's just
really a shame that people are continuing to bring this
up. . . . These documents clearly show that the president
fulfilled his duties."
Apparently Scott hadn't read Richard Cohen's article about how he
cheated the Guard. :)
White House officials said they thought that the documents would
calm the controversy. They added that they were stunned at the
intensity of the questioning at McClellan's briefings about what
the records proved and did not prove. "We were taken aback," one
official said.
They had gotten used to a press that they could dazzle with lies and
obfuscation. Ari Fleischer could say that the sun rises in the West
and get away with it.
Albert C. Lloyd, a retired personnel officer in the Texas Air
National Guard -- who helped the White House review Bush's file
both in 2000 and recently -- said "original documentation" would
have been filed when Bush performed his duties stating exactly
where they were performed and what he did. "The document goes to
the payroll office and shows he performed at X place for X hours
on X dates," Lloyd said from his home in Austin.
Lloyd said he voted for Bush in 2000 but that he has not decided
whether he will vote for the president again. "I'm not happy
with him," he said. He declined to elaborate.
To quote Calpundit.com, "Ouch."
----- Forwarded message from censored -----
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 00:59:07 -0500 (EST)
From: censored
To: censored
Subject: A washingtonpost.com article from:
You have been sent this message from censored as a courtesy of
washingtonpost.com
Guard Records On President Are Released
By Lois Romano and Mike Allen
The White House released yesterday summaries of President Bush's
Texas Air National Guard service records and pay documents, which
the president's spokesman said demonstrate that Bush fulfilled his
Vietnam War-era military obligations in the early '70s.
The documents indicate that Bush performed Guard service in the fall
of 1972 and in early 1973, and show that he was paid for work during
the period that Democrats have alleged Bush shirked his service.
"When you serve, you are paid for that service," White House press
secretary Scott McClellan said. "These documents outline the days on
which he was paid. That means he served. And these documents also
show he met his requirements. And it's just really a shame that
people are continuing to bring this up. . . . These documents clearly
show that the president fulfilled his duties."
The documents include payroll sheets never before made public.
Summaries prepared by the Defense Financing Accounting Service
indicate that Bush was paid for service in October and November 1972
and in January and April 1973. That spans a period -- from May 1972
to May 1973 -- when Bush was assigned to Guard units in Alabama and
Houston and that has been the focus of Democratic critics.
But the records -- which McClellan said are all the documents that
the White House has -- do not show the exact nature or whereabouts of
Bush's service during that period. Military experts -- including one
cited by the White House -- said such records should exist.
In addition, according to the new documents, Bush was performing
service or unit drills at a time when his commanding officers in
Houston said they could not evaluate him because "he has not been
observed" at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston -- as they had
written in previously released National Guard records. That report
was signed by two officers on May 2, 1973, a day that the new
documents show Bush was supposed to have been performing service in
Houston.
Bush's military record during the Vietnam War was an issue during the
2000 campaign and was revived recently when Democratic National
Committee Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe called Bush "AWOL" -- absent
without leave -- and contrasted his service with that of
Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry (D), a decorated veteran.
The controversy has been growing steadily in recent days. Bush said
on Sunday that he would authorize the release of all his National
Guard records, as his administration began to mount an aggressive
defense of the president's military service. But the documents
released yesterday still leave unanswered questions.
National Guard members receive points for the times they appear for
drills and other duty. The documents released yesterday were annual
summaries of the points Bush earned. The typed documents are in
contrast to the other documents in Bush's personnel file, which offer
handwritten, detailed pages of dates of service in the earlier
years. No handwritten documents of Bush's annual points have ever
surfaced for May 1972 through May 1973.
Bush enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard in 1968, two weeks
before graduating from Yale and at the height of the Vietnam War. He
trained as a pilot and flew out of Ellington until April 1972.
At issue is a 12-month period, commencing in May 1972, when Bush
moved to Alabama to work on a senatorial campaign. He received
permission to transfer to an Alabama unit and was instructed to
report for duty there. Until now, there has been no definitive
evidence in his file that he ever reported to the Alabama unit to
perform drills -- and the officer to whom Bush was told to report has
said in interviews with reporters that he has no recollection Bush
reported.
In a contentious White House briefing yesterday, McClellan repeatedly
said that the documents show the president "fulfilled his duties," as
reporters asked for specifics not indicated in the documents.
Asked whether the records shown should end the controversy about
Bush's service, McClellan said: "You have to ask those who made these
outrageous accusations if they stand by them in the face of this
documentation that demonstrates he served and fulfilled his duties.''
White House officials said they thought that the documents would calm
the controversy. They added that they were stunned at the intensity
of the questioning at McClellan's briefings about what the records
proved and did not prove. "We were taken aback," one official said.
McAuliffe again questioned Bush's service yesterday, declaring in a
statement: "The handful of documents released . . . by the White
House creates more questions than answers. The fact remains that
there is still no evidence that George W. Bush showed up for duty as
ordered while in Alabama. We also still do not know why the
President's superiors filed a report saying they were unable to
evaluate his performance for that year because he had not been
present to be evaluated."
Kerry lowered his stance on the issue yesterday, telling reporters at
Dulles International Airport, after arriving from Tennessee, that he
did not want to comment. "It's not an issue that I chose to create,"
he said. "It's not my record that's at issue, and I don't have any
questions about it."
White House communications director Dan Bartlett said yesterday that
the reason Bush's supervisors could not evaluate him in May 1973 was
because he was no longer flying, and was, therefore, performing
various odd jobs and not reporting to any one commander. Bartlett
also confirmed that Bush's complete personnel file is being
forwarded to Washington from an archive in Denver for review.
Albert C. Lloyd, a retired personnel officer in the Texas Air
National Guard -- who helped the White House review Bush's file both
in 2000 and recently -- said "original documentation" would have
been filed when Bush performed his duties stating exactly where they
were performed and what he did. "The document goes to the payroll
office and shows he performed at X place for X hours on X dates,"
Lloyd said from his home in Austin.
Lloyd said he voted for Bush in 2000 but that he has not decided
whether he will vote for the president again. "I'm not happy with
him," he said. He declined to elaborate.
McClellan was pressed yesterday on why no one who served with Bush
in Alabama has come forward despite years of publicity on the
subject. The spokesman conceded that the White House has not located
anyone who served with Bush in Alabama. "Obviously, we would have
made people available," he said.
The gap in Bush's records coincides with a period in his life that
he has referred to as his "nomadic" years. As Bush's father was
considering a job offer in late 1972 from Richard M. Nixon to become
chairman of the Republican National Committee, the younger Bush
stayed with his parents in Washington for the holidays. In a now
famous incident, he took his then 16-year-old brother Marvin out
drinking and ran over a neighbor's garbage cans on the way home; and
when confronted by his father, he challenged him to go "mano a mano"
outside. In early 1973, Bush worked for an inner-city youth program
in Houston.
Bush received permission to leave the Guard six months early to
attend Harvard Business School.
Staff researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
----- End forwarded message -----
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