Sunday Morning Talk Show Thread 8 Feb 2004 (Pres Bush on MTP)

Various big media television networks ^ | 8 Feb 2004 | Various Self-Serving Politicians and Big Media Screaming Faces

[Alas Babylon!]

The Talk Shows

Sunday, February 8th, 2004

Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows:

FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Sens. John Edwards (D-NC) and Pat Roberts (R-KS); and Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-FL).

MEET THE PRESS (NBC): President George W. Bush.

Transcript of Russert/Bush interview

FACE THE NATION (CBS): Former Vermont governor Howard Dean (D).

THIS WEEK (ABC): Senator John Edwards (D-NC), former Clinton chief of staff John D. Podesta and Republican pollster Bill McInturff.

LATE EDITION (CNN) : Sens. John W. Warner (R-VA) and Carl M. Levin (D-MI); retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark; Former Vermont governor Howard Dean; former Carter national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski; and former Reagan deputy chief of staff Michael K. Deaver.

Transcript of Russert/Bush interview

[arasina]

May I suggest you visit the thread started by the FReeper who goes by the screen name Hon for answers to your questions about President Bush's service in the ANG?

Debunking The Bush AWOL Story: From The Horse's Mouth

[Howlin]

"Bush's stint in Guard scrutinized": REBUTTAL TO TODAY'S WASHINGTON POST HIT PIECE
Dallas Morning News | July 4, 1999 | Pete Slover, George Kuempel


Posted on 02/03/2004 5:24:49 PM EST by MikeA


With the Vietnam War raging, 21-year-old George W. Bush wanted to join the Texas Air National Guard in 1968. He offered no aviation experience but cited his work as a ranch hand, oil field "roustabout" and sporting goods salesman.

He passed the written test required for pilot trainees. Among the results: He showed below-average potential as a would-be flier but scored high as a future leader.

Although Mr. Bush's unit in Texas had a waiting list for many spots, he was accepted because he was one of a handful of applicants willing and qualified to spend more than a year in active training, and extra shifts after training, flying single-seat F-102 fighter jets.

Once he was in, Guard officials sought to capitalize on his standing as the son of a congressman.

A 1970 Guard news release featured Mr. Bush as "one member of our younger generation who doesn't get his kicks from pot or hashish or speed.

"On, he gets high, all right, but not from narcotics," it said.

"Fighters are it," Mr. Bush is quoted as saying. "I've always wanted to be a fighter pilot, and I wouldn't want to fly anything else."

Such are the details that emerge from a review of Mr. Bush's service record by The Dallas Morning News, along with interviews with Guard leaders, former colleagues and state officials familiar with that unit.

Mr. Bush, 52, now the Republican front-runner for president, has repeatedly denied suggestions by political rivals that he received preferential treatment to get into the Guard - widely seen as a haven from which enlistees were unlikely to be shipped to Vietnam.

As evidence he wasn't dodging combat, Mr. Bush has pointed to his efforts to try to volunteer for a program that rotated Guard pilots to Vietnam, although he wasn't called.

"There was no special treatment," he said.

Mr. Bush said he took flying seriously. "You will die in your airplane if you didn't practice, and I wasn't interested in dying," he said.

Records provided to The News by Tom Hail, a historian for the Texas Air National Guard, show that the unit Mr. Bush signed up for was not filled. In mid-1968, the 147th Fighter Interceptor Group, based in Houston, had 156 openings among its authorized staff of 925 military personnel.

Of those, 26 openings were for officer slots, such as that filled by Mr. Bush, and 130 were for enlisted men and women. Also, several former Air Force pilots who served in the unit said that they were recruited from elsewhere to fly for the Texas Guard.

Officers who supervised Mr. Bush and approved his admission to the Guard said they were never contacted by anyone on Mr. Bush's behalf.

"He didn't have any strings pulled, because there weren't any strings to pull," said Leroy Thompson of Brownwood, who commanded the squadron that kept the waiting list for the guard at Ellington Air Force Base. "Our practices were under incredible scrutiny then. It was a very ticklish time."

Fellow members of the Bush unit said they knew of his background.

U.S. Rep. George Bush was at his son's side when he was made an officer in the Guard. The elder Mr. Bush, a former World War II pilot, later spoke at his son's graduation from flight school.

David Hanifl of La Crescent, Minn., an Air Force regular who went through pilot training in Georgia with George W. Bush, said the flight instructors were eager to fly with the Texan.

"He didn't get any preferential treatment, but some of the instructors liked the idea of scheduling him to fly with them because of his connections," he said.

Mr. Hanifl said it was somewhat unusual for a Guardsman to be included in the flight class with Air Force regulars.

"You had to have clout to get that type of assignment," he said. He added that Mr. Bush was a good pilot and did not seek any favors.

Also getting into the Bush unit in 1968 was Lloyd Bentsen III, a recent graduate of Stanford University business school whose father was a former congressman later elected Democratic U.S. senator from Texas.

The waiting list

According to several former officers, the openings in the unit were filled from a waiting list kept in the base safe of Rufus G. Martin, then an Air National Guard personnel officer.

In a recent interview, Mr. Martin of San Antonio said the list was kept on computer and in a bound volume, which was periodically inspected by outside agencies to make sure the list was kept properly.

Mr. Bush said he sought the Guard position on his own, before graduating from Yale University in 1968. He personally met with Col. Walter B. Staudt, commander of the 147th group.

In an interview, Mr. Bush said he walked into Col. Staudt's Houston office and told him he wanted to be a fighter pilot.

"He told me they were looking for pilots," Mr. Bush said. He said he was told that there were five or six flying slots available, and he got one of them.

While Guard slots generally were coveted, pilot positions required superior education, physical fitness and the willingness to spend more than a year in full-time training.

"If somebody like that came along, you'd snatch them up," said the former commander, who retired as a general. "He took no advantage. It wouldn't have made any difference whether his daddy was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

Bobby Hodges, the group's operations officer, and others familiar with Guard rules said Mr. Bush made it to the top of the short list of candidates who could pass both the written officer test and a rigorous flight physical to qualify for the three to four annual pilot training "quotas" allotted to the unit.

Mr. Hodges and Gen. Staudt are the two surviving members of the military panel that reviewed and approved Mr. Bush's officer commission.

Most of those wanting to get into the Guard at that time, they said, didn't want to put in the full year of active service that was required to become a pilot.

Pilot aptitude test

Records from his military file show that in January 1968, after inquiring about Guard admission, Mr. Bush went to an Air Force recruiting office near Yale, where he took and passed the test required by the Air Force for pilot trainees. His score on the pilot aptitude section, one of five on the test, was in the 25th percentile, the lowest allowed for would-be fliers.

Ralph J. Ianuzzi, a newly minted Air Force captain, supervised administration of the test and signed Mr. Bush's score sheet, an event of which he had no recollection.

The pilot portion of the exam included tasks such as identifying the angle of a plane in flight after being shown the view from the cockpit and figuring out which way a gear in a machine would turn in response to another gear's being turned.

"That score for pilot seems low. I made that, and I'm dyslexic," Mr. Ianuzzi, a retired FBI agent who never earned his wings but said it was significant that Mr. Bush did. "He passed the most important test. He flew the plane."

On the "officer quality section," designed to measure intangible traits such as leadership, Mr. Bush scored better than 95 percent of those taking the test.

It's impossible to compare Mr. Bush's score on the test to scores of other pilot candidates, because Air Force historians say no records survive of average scores for those accepted to pilot training.

Pilot training

After completing basic training in San Antonio in August 1968, he helped out aircraft mechanics at Ellington until that November, when a pilot-training slot came open.

He was promoted to second lieutenant and began a 13-month pilot training program at Moody Air Force Base, in Georgia.

He was the only Guardsman among the 70 or so officers from other branches of the military who began the training.

Under the terms of his contract with the military, if Mr. Bush had failed to complete pilot school, he would have been required to serve the Guard in some other capacity, to enter the draft, or to enlist in another branch of the military.

After passing flight training, Mr. Bush was schooled for several more months at Ellington, and in March 1970 began flying "alerts," the name used to describe the 147th's mission of guarding gulf coast borders against foreign attack.

In those days, just five years after the Cuban missile crisis, the 147th kept at least two fighters ready to scramble, round-the-clock, guarding Texas oil fields and refineries against airstrikes.

"It's kind of a non-threatening way to do your military, get paid well for some long shifts, and feel good about your own involvement," said Douglas W. Solberg, now an airline pilot, offering his reasons for joining the 147th and serving with Mr. Bush after an Air Force flying stint. "It was a cushy way to be a patriot."

A former non-commissioned officer who worked on planes and supervised other ground crews at Ellington said Mr. Bush was not a silver-spoon snob or elitist, unlike some former Air Force fliers.

"I remember him coming down, kicking the tires, washing the windows, whatever," said Joe H. Briggs, now of Houston. "I'm probably one of the few people around who'll admit I voted for Clinton. But I'll pull for this guy for president."

No overseas duty

Mr. Bush's application for the Guard included a box to be checked specifying whether he did or did not volunteer for overseas duty. His includes a check mark in the box not wanting to volunteer for such an assignment.

But several personnel officers said that part of the application for domestic Guard units routinely would be filled out that way by a clerk typist, then given to the applicant to sign.

Mr. Bush has said that he signed up for but lacked the number of flying hours to participate in a program called the Palace Alert, which eventually rotated nine pilots from his unit into duty in Southeast Asia from 1969 to 1970.

His signup and willingness to participate was confirmed by several of his colleagues and superiors, who remembered the effort as brash but admirable.

"The more experienced pilots were shaking their heads, saying, "He doesn't even know where to park the planes,' " said Albert C. Lloyd, then head of personnel for the Texas Air National Guard.

Some attention has also focused on Mr. Bush's departure from the service. Under his original oath, he was obligated to serve in the Guard until May 1974. Instead, he was allowed to leave in October 1973 to attend Harvard Business School.

Former Guard officials and members of Mr. Bush's unit said that release, seven months early, was not unusual for the Guard. Mr. Bush's unit was changing airplanes at the time, from the single-seat F-102 to the dual-seat F-101. They said it made little sense to retrain him for just a few months' service, and letting him go freed spots for the Guard to recruit F-101 pilots from the Air Force and elsewhere.

[Zechariah11]

This National Guard buisness seems to be a concern with trolls, Democrats, and hypocrites Not saying you are one. But let me ask if you are also concerned about Kerry's defamation of American soldiers upon his return from Vietnam? Doesn't such defamation overshadow anything positive he did?

[Fledermaus]

Which OER? The one in Alabama? Have you read his entire comments when asked? He says, at best, he just doesn't remember and was too dang busy to bother. He also then commented later that he's not even sure his time as Commander of the Alabama Guard even coincided with Bush's transfer there.

Also, many, many others from back in those days have (links found mostly in blogs since the "mainstream" press isn't about facts) have written about their tours in the Guard and paperwork was a constant problem, especially with transfers.

Also, Bush, during flight training in Texas, front loaded a lot of his commitment that was used to cover his sporadic attendance in Alabama. Also, the "one weekend a month" rule is hardly written in stone and for a variety of simple reasons (family, job, school, etc.) can be skipped for later or waived. Happens all the time.

[demlosers]

Try Time magazine (they have articles) ...

A FR posted Time article about Bush's ANG record

[txradioguy]

It was from the George Magazine Article from October 200. The same one that youlifted the quote that you "claimed" was in Pres. Bush's OER. They got it from official records of the 147th TFW and from his 201 file.


I was referring to maintaining physical readiness while serving in the Guard. It's real easy to stay in shape when you PT 5 times a week or more like we do on active duty. MUCH harder when you have a regular job, kids and a wife and ALSO serving in the National Guard.

"If you do not, you are either derelict or injured. I have not seen any evidence that Lt Bush was injured."

You're honestly telling me you never say any soldiers who couldn't pass a height/weight test and were flagged becasue of that fact? You must not have gotten out of the barracks much. If at all.

[olliemb]

you make no sense, stu.

[Huck]

Try it this way:

If one lives only in the "now," devoid of the knowledge of the past which often provides a perspective on the meaning of how what is done now impacts what happens later, it is easy to see how the significance irony of Bush's your statement can get lost on some here.

I don't expect you to get it. Consider the long term implications of a national government unrestrained in its scope, spending trillions of dollars on whatever it thinks is reasonable. And consider the long term implications of that.

[Donna Lee Nardo]

Ha ha! But don't you also mean Lame Edition on cnn?

[Defender2]

Enough is Enough!!!! President Bush early in his young carrer served with the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, 147th Fighter Interceptor Group, Aerospace Defense Command(ADCOM) Gained/Air National Guard unit tasked as part of Our Air Defenses at the time with F-102A/TF-102A Interceptor aircraft pulling Air Defense Alert Duty as part of Our Nation's then Prevalent Air Defense. At the same time, the 147th Fighter Interceptor Group was also partly responsible for training F-101B/F A.N.G Interceptor Pilots initially assigned to other ADCOM/ANG assinged Air Defense Units. The President today, said His unit was assigned was assigned to Aerospace Defense Command. The Last "True To The Faith" Air Defense Commander, General Daniel "Chappie" James was appointed to NORAD/ADCOM C in C
status by then President Gerald R. Ford in 1973. The U.S. Conress(Democratically controlled at the time) and Then President James Carter fired general James in 1978 as General James was Adamantly fighting to keep Our Nation's Air Defense (ADCOM) intact as a Major Direct Reporting Unit in the U.S. Air Force. President Carter appointed "Yes Man", General James E. Hill as General James Replacement. Aerospace Defense Command was abolished, 1 september, 1979. Thus the seeds of September 11th, 2001 were planted!!!! Many lessons some of which were learned by the English during WWII, including Air Vice Marshall Kieth Park's, "Two Minute Scramble" lesson during the Battle of Britain where many of Our Air Defense were lessons subsequently thrown away!!!! Air Defense continued to Dwindle under President William Jefferson Clinton to the point where under 10 Air Defense Sites on duty at the time of September 11th, 2001. Also Under President Clinton, Strategic Air Command and Tactical Air Command were abolished and assets were then assigned to the new austere Air Combat Command. While Our Defenses were cut to the bone. The Pork Barrels rolled in Congress and we gave millions to rogue nations we face as possible adversaries today. President Bush Served Honorably in Our Nations Air Defense. As a 28 year Veteran of the U.S.A.F. recently returning from Afghanistan and who also Devotedly served in Our Nation's Air Defense Command, I am Very Proud To Call President George W. Bush as my "Commander in Chief"!!!! I thank the Lord Above for Him and so should
ALL of America. In these trying times We ALL have been Blessed with his Presidency!!!!

[ATCNavyRetiree]

The American people are gonna tire of this issue VERY quickly.
If Kerry continues his attacks on Bush's mil record, it is gonna hurt him.
Americans wanna talk jobs and economy. Period.

[olliemb]

you are shallow indeed!! and a bit paranoid about this amnesty thing. Sheesh, certainly someone who is full of himself would know that the president had to bring up the subject--if not then the can gets kicked down the road and no one has tried to tackle the problem. Would you rather a democrat president tackle the immigration problem by granting amnesty to everyone or better the Bush plan which at least tries to have some order to the whole process.

[txradioguy]

"Also, many, many others from back in those days have (links found mostly in blogs since the "mainstream" press isn't about facts) have written about their tours in the Guard and paperwork was a constant problem, especially with transfers."


I can attest to this first hand! I just last month recieved my NGB 22 and my Honorable Discharge from the Tx. Army national Guard and I've been discharged from their service for over a YEAR!

Try going from guard to active duty. That's no cakewalk either! I've spent the whole time I've been here when I had a spare minute trying to get them to credit my time in the guard towards active duty time. It's affect my pay to the tune of $150 a month for the last year. It's going to be a nice backpay check next month for sure!

[Donna Lee Nardo]

I though she was made of wax? I was going to say she can light herself and easily melt 10 lbs. off no sweat.

[Fledermaus]

You are ignorant of National Guard service.

Gaurd personnel aren't requried to be in the same shape as regular soldiers. My goodness, have you seen some of those guys? Beer Guts R Us!

The yearly physical being discussed concerns the one required to maintain flight status. Bush didn't take his last one and was removed from flight duty. I think he made that up but was soon out of the service to go to Harvard and got his honorable discharge.

More here:
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101040216/nservice.html

[olliemb]

"You allege that I am spreading lies about President Bush. I have stated that his 1973 OER says that he did not perform any service at his unit. What about that statement is a lie?"

His OER was interviewed and he said that he had been misquoted and that he did not say that or intend for it to be taken the way it was. So, yeah, you are spreading lies about the president.

[Jorge]

Take it from me -- President Bush, the plain spoken man from Texas hit it out of the park up against a rabid, nasty, Clinton Talking point interviewer, Tim Russert.

I'm glad to hear this and I'll be checking out Town Hall for more commentary. Thanks!

[cyncooper]

Every time I've seen Edwards over the last few weeks, his hair is smaller and darker. Have you noticed?

I've noticed. Rush, too, remarked a week ago or so that Edwards' hair looked flatter. Could be he got wind of the Breck Girl image and is trying to draw less attention to his head. hehehehe

[olliemb]

Many people do not consider President Bush the lesser of 2 evils. I personally consider him the better of 2 goods. Your man is not as good a man as President Bush and you can take that to the bank.

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]