Questions about Bush's Guard service
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Questions about Bush's Guard service first surfaced during the 2000 presidential race,
when he ran against Vice President Al Gore, a Vietnam veteran.

A review of Bush's military records shows that Bush enjoyed preferential treatment as the son
of a then-congressman, when he walked into a Texas Guard unit in Houston two weeks before
his 1968 graduation from Yale and was moved to the top of a long waiting list.

It was an era when service in the Guard was a coveted assignment, often associated with efforts
to avoid active duty in Vietnam.

Bush was accepted for pilot training after having scored only 25 percent on the pilot's aptitude test,
the lowest acceptable grade.

In 2000, the Boston Globe examined a period from May 1972 to May 1973 and found no record that
Bush performed any Guard duties, either in Alabama or Houston, although he was still enlisted.

According to military records obtained by The Washington Post, Bush first requested and received
permission in May 1972 to be transferred to the Alabama National Guard so he could work on a U.S.
Senate campaign.

After he was in Alabama, he received notice from the Guard personnel center that he was
"ineligible" for the Air Reserve Squadron he requested.

In August 1972, Bush was suspended from flying because he failed to complete an annual
medical exam.

A month later, Bush requested to be assigned to a different unit in Alabama and was approved.

Although he was required to attend periodic drills in Alabama, there is no official record in his
file that he did.

According to the records, Bush had been instructed to report to William Turnipseed,
an officer in the Montgomery unit.

"Had he reported in, I would have had some recall and I do not," Turnipseed,
a retired brigadier general, told the Globe in 2000.

"I had been in Texas, done my flight training there. If we had a first lieutenant from Texas,
I would have remembered."

Reached in Montgomery yesterday, Turnipseed stood by his contention that Bush never
reported to him.

Bush returned to Houston after the election, and again his service is vague in the records.

His officers at Ellington Air Force Base wrote in May 1973 that Bush could not be given his
annual evaluation, because he "has not been observed" in Houston between April 1972
and the following May.

Ultimately, another officer states in a subsequent document that a report for that one-year
period was unavailable for "administrative reasons."


From The Washington Post, 2/3/04:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7372-2004Feb2.html

Bush's Guard Service In Question

By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, February 3, 2004; Page A08


In recent days, a one-year gap in President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service during the
height of the Vietnam War has been raised by Democrats.

While none of the presidential candidates has directly criticized Bush's service, some Democrats,
including Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe, have accused the
president of shirking his military duties in 1972, when Bush transferred to an Alabama unit.

McAuliffe on Sunday called Bush "AWOL," or "absent without leave," during that period.

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