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I've read that, and this information at the end of this article about make-up days adds even more information.

The bottom line.

President Bush has an honorable discharge that says he fulfilled his commitment.

Besides that, any draftee at that time had to serve only 2 years to complete a full tour in the active duty military.

President Bush served TWO FULL YEARS of active duty by virtue of his training as a pilot. He served active as much as anyone else, except for those who signed up for more. Afterwards, he had more weekend drills to attend.

I was active duty from 1970-1974, as a young enlistee, so I remember the guard and reserve I went to basic with. I also remember many of the active duty did NOT go to Vietnam. I was one of them. I went to D.C., and then I was sent to Germany.

Vietnam was WINDING DOWN in that period. To ascribe anything to the President's record except Honorable completion is unprincipled and driven by political animus.

"I was active duty from 1970-1974, as a young enlistee, so I remember the guard and reserve I went to basic with. I also remember many of the active duty did NOT go to Vietnam. I was one of them. I went to D.C., and then I was sent to Germany."

I enlisted in the USAF late in 1973, and my Basic Military Training Squadron had only one flight of active-duty trainees, mine. The other two were both guard/reserve folks. There would have been more, but they were trying to shut us down so they could tear down the WWII barracks, and build one of the 1000-man dorm they were putting up all over the place at Lackland, then.

I also volunteered for anyplace in SE Asia, as I left basic for tech training, and kept volunteering for as long as we had people over there. I went to New Mexico, instead, and trained folks coming back from Thailand on the F-111D, until I wrecked my knees and retrained. Then I went to Florida.

The paperwork got messed up quite a bit back then, but no-one got out with an Honorable who hadn't earned it.

One of our guys got held in service while they processed his Meritorious Service Medal for saving a guy's life and an airplane (at the same time) before getting his bad-conduct discharge. It was a wild time, but the older guys mostly had their heads on fairly straight.