Best thing the US did was drop the 'draft'. Especially if 'rich boys' could
pull strings to avoid dangerous duty.
Bet a few of the 50k who died would have liked that option.

Harry Krause wrote in message
...
washingtonpost.com

Bush's Guard Service In Question
Democrats Say President Shirked His Duty in 1972

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.

Terry Holt, spokesman for the Bush campaign, accused McAuliffe of trying
to "perpetuate a completely false and bogus assertion." Holt said, "The
president was never AWOL."

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."*****

White House communications director Dan Bartlett said yesterday that
although no official record has been found, "obviously, you don't get an
honorable discharge unless you receive the required points for annual
service." He said Bush "specifically remembers" performing some of his
duties in Alabama. Bartlett also provided a news clipping from 2000
quoting friends of Bush's from the Alabama Senate campaign saying they
recalled Bush leaving for Guard duty on occasion.

Bush said in 2000 that he did "show up for drills. I made most monthly
meetings, and when I missed them I made them up."

Reached in Montgomery yesterday, Turnipseed stood by his contention that
Bush never reported to him. But Turnipseed added that he could not
recall if he, himself, was on the base much at that time.

*****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."*****

The records indicate that Bush surfaced at the end of May 1973 and
fulfilled point requirements 10 times between May 31 and July 30. In
September 1973, Bush requested an early discharge to attend Harvard
business school; in October he received an honorable discharge.

The issue of military service has been out front this year, with two
decorated veterans -- Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and retired Army Gen.
Wesley K. Clark -- in the race and with Republicans questioning the
Democrats' commitment to national security.

During the New Hampshire campaign last month, documentary filmmaker
Michael Moore -- a Clark supporter -- referred to Bush as a "deserter"
at a rally of 1,000 people outside Concord. Two days later in Iowa,
former senator Max Cleland (Ga.), who lost three limbs during the
Vietnam War, told voters that Kerry is "the one guy who can call his
hand on the hypocrisy of a bunch of people that never went to war."

Kerry said yesterday that he had not decided whether to make Bush's
service an issue in the general election. Asked whether he has suggested
that surrogates pursue this line of attack, he said: "I have not
suggested to any of them that they do so, and I spoke out against the
use of the word deserter, which I thought was inappropriate, wrong and
over the top."
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