Report: Bush Fell Short of Military Obligation

Reuters, Wed Sep 8, 2004
By Greg Frost
http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6182194


BOSTON (Reuters) - President Bush fell short of meeting his military
obligations during the Vietnam War and was not disciplined despite
irregular attendance at required training drills, The Boston Globe said
on Wednesday.

In a reexamination of the president's service in the Texas Air National
Guard, the newspaper said Bush appeared to have broken his contract with
the U.S. government by not joining an Air Force Reserve unit when he
moved in mid-1973 to Massachusetts from Texas.

The military records of Bush and of his Democratic opponent,
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who was decorated for his service in
Vietnam, have featured prominently in the campaign for the presidential
election on Nov. 2.

Republicans have made Bush's leadership of what he calls a global "war
on terror" central to his campaign and aides have responded aggressively
to criticism of his military service.

In February, the White House released hundreds of pages of Bush's
military records that showed he was absent for long periods of his final
two years of National Guard duty but said nonetheless he met service
requirements.

However, the Globe focused on documents Bush signed in 1968 and again in
1973 in which he pledged to meet training commitments or face a punitive
call-up to active duty.

The Globe said in July 1973, before Bush moved from Houston to
Cambridge, Massachusetts, to attend Harvard Business School, he signed a
document saying: "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... "

Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett told the Washington Post in 1999 that the
future president had served at a Boston-area Air Force Reserve unit
after leaving Houston. But Bush never joined a Boston-area unit, the
Globe said.

"I must have misspoke," Bartlett, now White House communications
director, was quoted as telling the Globe in a recent interview.

"HONORABLE DISCHARGE"

White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan, responding to the Globe report on
Wednesday, said, "The president was honored to serve his country. He met
his obligations, and was honorably discharged."

The Globe also looked at a 1968 pledge by Bush in which he committed to
"satisfactory participation" at Guard training, including 24 days of
weekend duty each year and 15 days of active duty each year.

But the newspaper said he performed no service over a six-month period
in 1972 and nearly a three-month stretch in 1973 -- erratic attendance
that could have prompted his superiors to discipline him or order him to
active duty in 1972, 1973 or 1974.

Instead, Bush's unit certified in late 1973 that his service had been
"satisfactory," the Globe said.

The National Guard and reserves, rarely called up during the Vietnam
War, came to be regarded as "draft havens for relatively affluent young
white men," the Air National Guard says in a history on its Internet
site. Bush's father was a U.S. congressman at the time.

The Pentagon on Tuesday released 17 pages of what it called newly found
records concerning Bush's service that showed he flew 336 hours in a
fighter jet, most recently in April 1972, and ranked 22nd out of 53
pilots when he finished flight training at Moody Air Force Base in
Georgia in 1969.

The pages did not resolve the dispute over whether Bush completed the
service as required.

A pro-Kerry group, Texans for Truth, plans to run television commercials
this week questioning Bush's Guard attendance. A group backing Bush,
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, has said in its own commercials that
Kerry lied about his Vietnam war record. (Additional reporting by
Charles Aldinger in Washington)