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Clark Praises 400 lb Unshaven, Unbathed Communist Michael Moore


Eight days after his most prominent supporter falsely accused
President Bush of being a military "deserter," Gen. Wesley Clark again
declined an opportunity to condemn the bogus charge, maintaining, as
he has since Thursday, that he hasn't examined the allegation.

Where was Bush in 1972?

Where is the evidence that he reported for duty in Alabama?

Put up or shut up

EDITOR'S NOTE: The still-escalating fight over the Swift Boat Veterans for
Truth and their criticisms of John Kerry's Vietnam War record has led to new
Democratic attacks on George W. Bush and his service in the Texas Air
National Guard. "George Bush used his father to get into the National Guard,
was grounded and then went missing," says an ad produced by MoveOn.org's
political action committee.
Democrats made similar attacks earlier this year. In April, Kerry referred
to Bush as a president who "can't even answer whether or not he showed up
for duty in the National Guard," and who "has yet to explain to America
whether or not, and tell the truth, about whether he showed up for duty." In
February, Kerry said he wanted answers about Bush's service in Alabama,
saying "Just because you get an honorable discharge does not, in fact,
answer that question."
Lost amid all the charges are the facts about Bush's time in the Guard. When
did he serve? What did he do? Did he fulfill his responsibilities? Was he in
Alabama? In the March 8, 2004, issue of National Review, Byron York
investigated and found the answers.
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________
Ask retired Brig. Gen. William Turnipseed whether the press has accurately
reported what he said about George W. Bush, and you'll get an earful. "No, I
don't think they have," he begins. Turnipseed, the former head of the 187th
Tactical Reconnaissance Group of the Alabama Air National Guard, was widely
quoted as saying he never saw Bush in Alabama in 1972, and if the future
president had been there, he would remember. In fact, Turnipseed says, he
doesn't recall whether Bush was there or not; the young flier, then a
complete unknown in Alabama, was never part of the 900-man 187th, so
Turnipseed wouldn't have had much reason to notice him. But most reporters
haven't been interested in Turnipseed's best recollection. "They don't
understand the Guard, they don't want to understand the Guard, and they hate
Bush," he says. "So when I say, 'There's a good possibility that Bush showed
up,' why would they put that in their articles?"
George W. Bush, and you'll get an earful. "No, I don't think they have," he
begins. Turnipseed, the former head of the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance
Group of the Alabama Air National Guard, was widely quoted as saying he
never saw Bush in Alabama in 1972, and if the future president had been
there, he would remember. In fact, Turnipseed says, he doesn't recall
whether Bush was there or not; the young flier, then a complete unknown in
Alabama, was never part of the 900-man 187th, so Turnipseed wouldn't have
had much reason to notice him. But most reporters haven't been interested in
Turnipseed's best recollection. "They don't understand the Guard, they don't
want to understand the Guard, and they hate Bush," he says. "So when I say,
'There's a good possibility that Bush showed up,' why would they put that in
their articles?"
In recent weeks, Turnipseed has found himself in the middle of a battle in
which Democrats have called the president a "deserter" who went "AWOL" for
an entire year during his time in the Air National Guard. When Democrats
made those accusations - amplified by extensive press coverage - the White
House was slow to fight back, insisting that the issue, which came up in the
2000 campaign, was closed and did not merit a response. It was only after
NBC's Tim Russert brought the story up during a one-hour interview with the
president on February 8 that the White House changed course and released
records of the president's Guard service.
Those records have not quieted the most determined of the president's
enemies - no one who watches the Democratic opposition really believed they
would - but they do make a strong case that Bush fulfilled his duties and
met the requirements for Air National Guard officers during his service from
1968 to 1973. A look at those records, along with interviews with people who
knew Bush at the time, suggests that after all the shouting is over, and
some of the basic facts become known, this latest line of attack on the
president will come to nothing.
FOUR YEARS OF FLYING The controversy over Bush's service centers on what his
critics call "the period in question," that is, the time from May 1972 until
May 1973. What is not mentioned as often is that that period was in fact
Bush's fifth year in the Guard, one that followed four years of often
intense service.
Bush joined in May 1968. He went through six weeks of basic training - a
full-time job - at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Tex. Then he
underwent 53 weeks of flight training - again, full time - at Moody Air
Force Base in Valdosta, Ga. Then he underwent 21 weeks of fighter
interceptor training - full time - at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston.
Counting other, shorter, postings in between, by the end of his training
period Bush had served two years on active duty.
Certified to fly the F-102 fighter plane, Bush then began a period of
frequent - usually weekly - flying. The F-102 was designed to shoot down
other fighter planes, and the missions Bush flew were training flights,
mostly over the Gulf of Mexico and often at night, in which pilots took
turns being the predator and the prey."If you're going to practice how to
shoot down another airplane, then you have to have another airplane up there
to work on," recalls retired Col. William Campenni, who flew with Bush in
1970 and 1971. "He'd be the target for the first half of the mission, and
then we'd switch."
During that period Bush's superiors gave him consistently high ratings as a
pilot. "Lt. Bush is an exceptional fighter interceptor pilot and officer,"
wrote one in a 1972 evaluation. Another evaluation, in 1971, called Bush "an
exceptionally fine young officer and pilot" who "continually flies intercept
missions with the unit to increase his proficiency even further." And a
third rating, in 1970, said Bush "clearly stands out as a top notch fighter
interceptor pilot" and was also "a natural leader whom his contemporaries
look to for leadership."
All that flying involved quite a bit of work. "Being a pilot is more than
just a monthly appearance," says Bob Harmon, a former Guard pilot who was a
member of Bush's group in 1971 and 1972. "You cannot maintain your currency
by doing just one drill a month. He was flying once or twice a week during
that time, from May of 1971 until May of 1972." While the work was certainly
not as dangerous as fighting in the jungles of Vietnam, it wasn't exactly
safe, either. Harmon remembers a half-dozen Texas Air National Guard fliers
who died in accidents over the years, in cluding one during the time Bush
was flying. "This was not an endeavor without risk," Harmon notes.
THE MOVE TO ALABAMA The records show that Bush kept up his rigorous schedule
of flying through the spring of 1972: He was credited for duty on ten days
in March of that year, and seven days in April. Then, as Bush began his
fifth year of service in the Guard, he appears to have stepped back
dramatically. The records indicate that he received no credit in May, June,
July, August, and September 1972. In October, he was credited with two days,
and in November he was credited with four. There were no days in December,
and then six in January 1973. Then there were no days in February and March.
The change was the result of Bush's decision to go to Alabama to work on the
Senate campaign of Republican Winton Blount. With an obligation to the
Guard, Bush asked to perform equivalent service in Alabama. That was not an
unusual request, given that members of the Guard, like everyone else, often
moved around the country. "It was a common thing," recalls Brigadier General
Turnipseed. "If we had had a guy in Houston, he could have made equivalent
training with Bush's unit. It was so common that the guy who wrote the
letter telling Bush to come didn't even tell me about it."
The president's critics have charged that he did not show up for service -
was "AWOL" - in Alabama. Bush says he did serve, and his case is supported
by records showing that he was paid and given retirement credit for days of
service while he was known to be in Alabama. The records also show that Bush
received a dental examination on January 6, 1973, at Dannelly Air National
Guard base, home of the 187th (January 6 was one of the days that pay
records show Bush receiving credit for service). And while a number of Guard
members at the base say they do not remember seeing Bush among the roughly
900 men who served there during that time, another member, a retired
lieutenant named John Calhoun, says he remembers seeing Bush at the base
several times.
What seems most likely is that Bush was indeed at Dannelly, but there was
not very much for a non-flying pilot to do. Flying fighter jets involves
constant practice and training; Bush had to know when he left Texas that he
would no longer be able to engage in either one very often, which meant that
he would essentially leave flying, at least for some substantial period of
time. In addition, the 187th could not accommodate another pilot, at least
regularly. "He was not going to fly," says Turnipseed. "We didn't have
enough airplanes or sorties to handle our own pilots, so we wouldn't have
done it for some guy passing through."
On the other hand, showing up for drills was still meeting one's
responsibility to the Guard. And, as 1973 went along, the evidence suggests
that Bush stepped up his work to make up for the time he had missed earlier.
In April of that year, he received credit for two days; in May, he received
credit for 14 days; in June, five days; and in July, 19 days. That was the
last service Bush performed in the Guard. Later that year, he asked for and
received permission to leave the Guard early so he could attend Harvard
Business School. He was given an honorable discharge after serving five
years, four months, and five days of his original six-year commitment.
The records indicate that, despite his move to Alabama, Bush met his
obligation to the Guard in the 1972-73 year. At that time, Guardsmen were
awarded points based on the days they reported for duty each year. They were
given 15 points just for being in the Guard, and were then required to
accumulate a total of 50 points to satisfy the annual requirement. In his
first four years of service, Bush piled up lots of points; he earned 253
points in his first year, 340 in his second, 137 in his third, and 112 in
his fourth. For the year from May 1972 to May 1973, records show Bush earned
56 points, a much smaller total, but more than the minimum requirement (his
service was measured on a May-to-May basis because he first joined the Guard
in that month in 1968).
Bush then racked up another 56 points in June and July of 1973, which met
the minimum requirement for the 1973-74 year, which was Bush's last year of
service. Together, the record "clearly shows that First Lieutenant George W.
Bush has satisfactory years for both '72-'73 and '73-'74, which proves that
he completed his military obligation in a satisfactory manner," says retired
Lt. Col. Albert Lloyd, a Guard personnel officer who reviewed the records at
the request of the White House.
All in all, the documents show that Bush served intensively for four years
and then let up in his fifth and sixth years, although he still did enough
to meet Guard requirements. The records also suggest that Bush's superiors
were not only happy with his performance from 1968 to 1972, but also happy
with his decision to go to Alabama. Indeed, Bush's evaluating officer wrote
in May 1972 that "Lt. Bush is very active in civic affairs in the community
and manifests a deep interest in the operation of our government. He has
recently accepted the position as campaign manager for a candidate for
United States Senate. He is a good representative of the military and Air
National Guard in the business world."
Beyond their apparent hope that Bush would be a good ambassador for the
Guard, Bush's superiors might have been happy with his decision to go into
politics for another reason: They simply had more people than they needed.
"In 1972, there was an enormous glut of pilots," says Campenni. "The Vietnam
War was winding down, and the Air Force was putting pilots in desk jobs. In
'72 or '73, if you were a pilot, active or Guard, and you had an obligation
and wanted to get out, no problem. In fact, you were helping them solve
their problem."
THE UNENDING ATTACK Despite the evidence, Democrats have continued to accuse
the president of shirking his duty during his Guard career. "He went to
Alabama for one year," Democratic National Committee chairman Terry
McAuliffe said on ABC on February 1. "He didn't show up. Call it whatever
you want, AWOL, it doesn't matter." After Bush made his Guard records
public, McAuliffe released a statement saying the documents "create more
questions than answers." Other Democrats, as well as an energetic team of
liberal columnists and bloggers, echoed McAuliffe's comments.
Perhaps the most impressive accomplishment of Bush's detractors is that they
managed to sell the idea - mostly unchallenged in the press - that Bush's
Air National Guard service consisted of one year during which he didn't show
up for duty. Far fewer people asked the question: Just how did Bush become a
fighter pilot in the first place? Didn't that involve, say, years of work?
Bush's four years of service prior to May 1972 were simply airbrushed out of
the picture because many reporters did not believe they were part of the
story.
It also seems likely that some of Bush's adversaries used the Guard issue as
a way to get at other questions about the president. The Guard record was
said to have a bearing on Bush's credibility, on the war in Iraq, on his
fitness to lead. In addition, some journalists were nearly obsessed with
forcing the president to release medical records from his time in the Guard
because they hoped those records might reveal some evidence of drug use. The
White House did not release the full set of medical records but did allow
reporters to view them; the documents were entirely unexcep tional and
contained nothing about drug use.
While all that was going on, both the White House and the Bush reelection
campaign seemed consistently to underestimate the ferocity and resolve of
the president's adversaries. For weeks, as the controversy grew, the
president did nothing to defend himself. Those who wanted to speak up in his
defense, like William Campenni and Bob Harmon, were not contacted by the
White House; instead, they decided to go public on their own. Even when John
Calhoun, the man who remembers Bush in Alabama, sent the White House an
e-mail saying he had useful information, he received a stock response,
without any indication the White House was interested in what he had to say.
Now the evidence is public; anyone who is interested in learning about
Bush's service can do so. In the end, the president had the facts on his
side. But he also had the good fortune to have the allegiance of men who
feel so intensely about the Guard and their service that they wanted to
speak out even if the White House didn't seem to care. Men like Campenni and
Harmon were deeply offended when Democratic presidential candidate John
Kerry equated Guard service during the Vietnam War with fleeing the country
or going to jail. That was simply too much. "I'm not a Bushie," says Harmon.
"The thing that got a few of us crawling out from under a rock, at no
instigation from the White House, was that Guard service was being portrayed
as being like a draft dodger."