Posted on 02/07/2004 9:59:34 PM PST by gdyniawitawa
Julian Coman reports from Washington on how the campaign for the US presidency is already being hijacked by the spectre of the Vietnam War.
If the Vietnam veteran John Kerry becomes the next president of the United States, there will one man to thank above all others: retired Brigadier General William Turnipseed.
Turnipseed's testimony has helped us open up President Bush's flank on national security and patriotism," said a member of the Kerry team. "If Kerry does become our candidate after the primaries, everything's there to play for."
Gen Turnipseed is the former commander of the 187th Air Squadron in Montgomery, Alabama. In the autumn of 1972, he expected to welcome a new National Guard recruit from Texas. But 26-year-old Lieutenant George W Bush failed to report to him for duty.
After an extraordinary week in the American presidential race, in which the talk has been of desertion, slander and hypocrisy, the general's account of that strange episode could yet help propel Sen Kerry into the White House.
A short memo had instructed Lt Bush to report to Gen Turnipseed in Montgomery for training, following his own request for transfer from the National Guard at Houston. The General maintains that Lt Bush never turned up. Mr Bush says that he did. But no records of his presence have ever been found.
"I just don't think he came to the base," Gen Turnipseed told The Telegraph last week. "I would have remembered him. If he did turn up at all, it must have been when I was off-base. But actually, I don't think he made an appearance."
Eight months away from November's presidential contest, America has entered in earnest the first "wartime" election campaign since the days of Vietnam. It was not a good week for the Commander-in-Chief.
On Wednesday, not for the first time, Mr Bush invoked the memory of Winston Churchill to stiffen sinews for the war on terror. At the opening of a Churchill exhibition at the Library of Congress, the president suggested that "in some ways, our current struggles or challenges are similar to those Churchill knew. We're at a point of testing, when people and nations show what they're made of."
In past months, as the anti-war liberal Howard Dean inspired grassroots Democrats and frightened the life out of mainstream voters, Democratic strategists would have grudgingly acknowledged another publicity coup for the White House incumbent. But since Mr Kerry became the favourite to win the party's nomination, Democrats now have a war hero to challenge the wartime president. They are also determined to expose the true nature of Mr Bush's own military credentials.
The existence of mysterious gaps in Mr Bush's military record during 1972 is not in itself news. Rumours that the young lieutenant "disappeared" from time to time during his service with the National Guard first surfaced in 2000, during Mr Bush's first presidential campaign. What is unprecedented is the furore surrounding the latest round of allegations.
Gen Turnipseed is scarcely off the phone. "The calls are constant," he said. "Democrats are ringing for information, national television presenters to request interviews, as well as the cable talk shows. Some of the callers are simply Bush-haters, digging for anything they can find."
According to one senior Democratic adviser, the sudden revival of interest in Mr Bush's military record is simply explained: "It's the Kerry factor. Or you could call it the tale of two lieutenants. In one corner, you have the man who is now the likely Democrat candidate for the White House, former Lt John Kerry. He has three purple hearts, a bronze star and a silver star from Vietnam.
"In the other corner, you have former Lt George W Bush. In the same period of history, President Bush flew planes at weekends in Texas and then went missing in Alabama. Who do you trust with America's future in difficult times?"
In the pre-September 11 world, few people took much notice of the possibility that the young George Bush went Awol. And few concerned themselves that President Bush's service in the National Guard was specifically arranged to avoid the possibility of going to Vietnam. A place in the guard in early 1968 meant that tours of duty would be confined to the United States. But the queue to join was long. A friend of President Bush's father, then a Texas congressman, spoke to the state's lieutenant governor. It was arranged that George W Bush would jump several waiting lists to train as a pilot in F-102 fighters - ageing planes that would not be sent to war. Others, such as former vice-president Dan Quayle, took a similar route to stay out of the fighting.
The military career of Mr Kerry, however, was quite different and undoubtedly distinguished. Belatedly, as he surges in the Democratic primary polls, the party's establishment has realised that it also constitutes the perfect CV for a wartime presidency. As a young naval officer, Lt Kerry captained a fast-attack boat on tours of duty through the treacherous waters of the Mekong Delta. He was wounded three times and risked his life to save an injured comrade who would otherwise have drowned. In 1969, he returned home a hero.
As Lt Bush, who supported the war in Vietnam, put in occasional appearances at his Houston airbase, flying the tired old fighters that would never leave Texas, Lt Kerry, three years older, began to make a passionate case against the war he fought in. After telling Congressmen in 1971 that there was "nothing in South Vietnam that realistically threatens the United States of America", or "justified the loss of one American life", he threw his medal ribbons away. Ever the politician, however, he kept hold of the medals themselves.
The Kerry campaign's argument is crude. But judging by the outraged response of Mr Bush's campaign team, it is also effective. Mr Kerry, as his stump slogan suggests, is the "Real Deal" when it comes to military expertise and experience. Mr Bush, notwithstanding his bellicose rhetoric, is not.
In stump speeches, surrounded by Vietnam veterans, Mr Kerry routinely mocks the notorious Top Gun appearance by Mr Bush on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in May.
Last week, as Mr Kerry surged ahead in Democratic polls, the party's National Committee Chairman, Terry McAuliffe felt able to take the provocation still further.
"President Bush failed to show up when he was supposed to show up," said Mr McAuliffe on national television, referring to the Alabama incident. "George Bush has a lot of explaining to do."
Max Cleland, a former senator and veteran who lost three limbs in Vietnam, added his own thoughts on Mr Bush's murky past in the National Guard.
The United States, said Mr Cleland, who accompanies Mr Kerry to almost every campaign rally, needed a president who had "felt the sting of battle", rather than a National Guardsman who "did his tour stateside". Mr Kerry himself said loftily that it was "up to the president himself and the military to answer the questions" about his time in Alabama.
Mr Bush has refused to comment on the attacks. But his allies have responded furiously. The White House spokesman, Scott McLellan, described charges that Mr Bush went Awol as "outrageous and baseless".
The Republican National Committee described Mr McAuliffe's comments as "reprehensible". Marc Raciot, the chairman of the Bush re-election campaign, accused Mr Kerry of "supporting a slanderous attack on the president by refusing to repudiate it". "President Bush served honourably in the National Guard," said Mr Raciot. "He was honourably discharged."
In the Wall Street Journal, the Second World War veteran and former presidential candidate Bob Dole wrote: "Senator Kerry is a war hero, but if campaigns were about war records, I would have won easily in 1996.
"In 1992 John Kerry said, 'We do not need to divide America over who served and how.' He should acknowledge the honourable service of President Bush, who piloted an F-102 in the National Guard and received an honourable discharge when his requirements were met."
In the Kerry camp, however, there is quiet satisfaction at a good week's work. In latest polls Mr Bush has dropped to a 47 per cent approval rating. The first President Bush lost to Bill Clinton after recording the same figure at the same stage of election year.
Five polls showed Mr Bush losing a general election match-up with Mr Kerry by margins ranging from 1 to 8 percentage points.
Even more significant for the proponents of the "tale of two lieutenants" strategy was a recent Gallup poll. Voters were asked, in the event of a future foreign crisis, such as the Iraq war, if they would prefer to be led by a candidate who has served as president during wartime or by a candidate who has served as a soldier in combat. The combat veteran beat the wartime president by a margin of 41 to 33.
As for President Bush's missing year in Alabama, there may be still more embarrassment to come. James Moore, a well-known Bush commentator, is about to publish a book entitled Bush's War for Re-election. In it, the author will claim that from 1994 onwards, friends of President Bush worked stealthily to "clean up" his military records.
According to Mr Moore, political aides of the then Governor of Texas "began contacting commanders and former roommates who would spin and cover up his guard record. When the book comes out, people will be on the record testifying to that fact". The retired Gen Turnipseed will be reading with interest.
This article is out of date.
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