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Saw This on one of the threads

Bush Did His Service: It's the Press that is A.W.O.L.
by Thomas Lipscomb

President George W. Bush has had a ten days beginning with the Tim
Russert “Meet the Press” interview of Democratic National Committee
Chairman Terry McCauliffe on Feb 1 who charged that Bush was “AWOL”
and “never served in the military.” Only a week later President Bush asked to appear on the Russert show in a clear attempt to stem the damage from these
charges. For over a week they were endlessly repeated and never analyzed
by the news media.
But the only basis for these charges was summarized by the London
Sunday Telegraph on February 8 “If the Vietnam veteran John Kerry
becomes the next President, there will be one man to thank above all others:
retired Brigadier General William Turnipseed.”

It all started with a report questioning Bush’s National Guard service during
the Presidential election in 2000 by The Boston Globe. Walter Robinson, the
only Pulitzer Prize winning reporter to ever be successfully sued for libel,
cited retired Brigadier General William Turnipseed of the Alabama Air
National Guard as his source.
But in an interview General Turnipseed stated that Robinson’s reporting of
their conversation was either distorted or based upon his misunderstanding of
how the military functioned at the time of Bush’s Guard service. For Bush to
be “AWOL” or “Away Without Leave” he had to have been assigned to a
unit and under its command. If Bush was not under Turnipseed’s command
whatever he might have said to Robinson has no more authority than the
opinions of any other Alabama National Guardsman that might have served
with Bush at the time.

Turnipseed states that Bush was never ordered to report to the Alabama
Air National Guard. Turnipseed points out that Bush never transferred from
the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama Air National Guard. He
remained in the Texas Air National Guard during his stay in Alabama. This
was confirmed by the Texas National Guard. And Turnipseed added that
Bush was never under his command or any other officer in the Alabama Air
National Guard.
Turnipseed added that Bush was simply informed of the drill schedule of
the Alabama Air National Guard as a courtesy so that he could get credit for
drills while in Alabama for his service record in the Texas Guard. There was
no compulsory attendance and it was customary for visiting members of other
state Air National Guard units to attend drills at his unit to accumulate drill
credit towards the completion of their six year service requirement in effect at the time. That would reduce the number of makeup drills they would have to
attend when they returned to their home unit. This was also confirmed by the
Texas National Guard.

Senator John Kerry got in on the act asking on Sunday “was he [Bush]
present and active on duty in Alabama at the times he was supposed to be? I
don't have the answer to that question… .” But as Turnipseed points out
Bush was never “supposed to be” anything in Alabama. His attendance at
drills there was as a courtesy, not an order. He could just as easily have
attended drills in any of the other 48 states besides Texas and Alabama. And
Kerry doesn’t have ”the answer to that question” because he is taking
advantage of a partisan political fantasy that has stayed aloft this long because
of the lousy job done by the press in reporting on it.

Now that the damage has been done, Robinson is beginning to have
second thoughts. His latest column on the matter states: “President Bush
received credit for attending Air National Guard drills in the fall of 1972 and
spring of 1973 -- a period when his commanders have said he did not appear for duty at bases in Montgomery, Ala., and Houston -- according to two new
documents obtained by the Globe.” How could Robinson have gotten it so
wrong and how can it have taken the press so long to find these “new”
documents?
The most charitable explanation for this distortion is the almost total
ignorance of members of the press of the realities of military service and its
associated record keeping. Yet Turnipseed has been repeatedly called by
news organizations since the original Boston Globe reporting four years ago
and no one has chosen to correct the errors he has tried to point out or cover
his denials.

The most startling aspect of this story is that the press has continually
treated this affair as a political debate based upon conflicting opinions rather
than a matter of recorded fact. Any question of Bush’s service can be quickly
answered by looking at the military record.
An Air National Guard officer like George Bush left an extensive paper trail
of service. Some records are simply thrown out after a certain period of time.
But the vital summary sheet of that record is a simple form called the DD214 Some National Guard units use a similar form called the NGB 22. It covers
all the basic questions being asked about Bush today. Every veteran of
military service has one. It is required in applications for Veterans’
Administration housing loans, any VA health benefits, or even membership in
organizations like the American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Senator John Kerry has one. On it are listed his dates of service, the nature
of his discharge, whether honorable or conditional because of infractions of
any kind, and the medals and service ribbons he has every reason to be
proud of. It was filed away at the time of discharge and is almost impossible
to alter.
No one who “deserted” as film maker Michael Moore originally charged
would have that fact omitted from his DD214. And no one knows that more
than General Wesley Clark who spent his life in the miltary and claimed
disingenuously not to have had a chance to look into the charge raised by his
supporter Moore just as Senator Kerry professes not to “have the answer”
either.

For all their pretended confusion about the issue, both Kerry and Clark
know from their own experience that no officer who had not met the
requirements of his six year service obligation to the satisfaction of his unit
commander would have been granted an honorable discharge.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, the author of the prize-winning
book STOLEN VALOR, B.G. Burkett, looked up hundreds of DD214s.
His research showed how fake “Vietnam veterans” claiming to be war heroes
and war criminals had been duping members of the press for decades. They
had filled hours of television time and hundreds of “news” stories with lies
exactly like the ones Vietnam Veterans Against the War spokesman John
Kerry recited in his testimony before the Senate back in April 1971. Did a
single member of the thousands in the press take the trouble to look up just
one DD214 or NGB22 --President Bush’s?
Apparently not. And that is the saddest part of the story. Jayson Blair was
discharged from The New York Times for making up stories. What about
reporters who let their medium be used as a means of doing major damage to
the reputation of any public figure without even a minimal attempt to check
the record first? Moore and McCauliffe can at least plead the temporary insanity defense offered the Democrats so infuriated by Bush by former
psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer. But what excuse does the press have for
one of the most embarrassing episodes in American journalism?

After all, there was already an exhaustive look at Bush’s National Guard
records published and available on the Internet to any reporter who has
written on this in the last week from Katharine Seelye at The New York
Times to Richard Cohen at The Washington Post… neither of whom seem to have looked it up.. It’s title? “The Real Military Record of George W. Bush:
Not Heroic, But Not AWOL, Either.” It was “the first full chronology… . Its
basic conclusions… he did accumulate the days of service required of him for
his ultimate honorable discharge.”

The article included the evidence of the pasteup pay records just released
by the White House. It also included the material in the “two new documents
obtained by the Globe” by Robinson from left wing activist Bob Fertig.
It was published four long years ago---just a few weeks before the 2000
Presidential election in George Magazine. Its publisher was that well-known
GOP supporter-- the late John F. Kennedy, Jr.

Thomas H. Lipscomb, who grew up in Oregon, is the chairman of the Center for the Digital Future, a New York-based public policy institute, former president of (New York) Times Books and Oregon Magazine's Berlin bureau chief.

© 2004 Thomas Lipscomb

I am currently reading STOLEN VALOR. It is an eye-opener.

Good evening Daily Dosers!

Great pics today, although I was totally unaware that Mr. Aznar visited our country.

I am very proud of Secretary Powell for standing down the rude D congressman.
However, I am very puzzled by this whole issue. This can't be all that great of an issue for Kerry and Ds, why are they obsessing over it? I honestly don't see any advantages for them, am I missing something?

OK........here it is......

Tell me what you think. I won't send it until I get my FRiends approval. 350 words on the DOT.....yeah, baby! :o)

To the editor:

There has been much in the news recently about the military records of President Bush, and his likely opponent, John Kerry. Michael Moore and Terry McAuliffe have leveled baseless accusations that Bush was AWOL while serving in the Texas Air National Guard during the Viet Nam war. While attacking Bush, McAuliffe stated that being in the Guard was not being in the military, which will come as a surprise to Guard members currently serving in harm’s way in Iraq.

Documents readily available; military pay stubs, documentation of duties fulfilled, an honorable discharge, not to mention learning to fly a plane, all vindicate Bush’s honorable service, but Democrats continue the accusations, obviously believing that a lie, repeated often enough, becomes truth.

Kerry, while boasting about his record, condescendingly compared Guard service to draft dodging. Ironically, though he served with distinction, Kerry became an avid anti-war activist, accusing the U.S. military of atrocities while American soldiers were still dying in Viet Nam. General Vo Nguyen Giap in 1985 wrote that peace activists (like Kerry) prolonged the war, keeping the Viet Cong from surrendering, and prolonging the captivity of our POW’s.

In 1992, Kerry stated to the Senate that one’s decision about Viet Nam was irrelevant to a presidential campaign, in defense of Clinton, a draft dodger and felon, pardoned by Carter. Now it seems he has changed his tune.

The bottom line is not what happened 30 years ago, but the War we are engaged in at this time. Kerry’s voting record shows he has consistently voted against every military advancement, every weapon, every effort to increase or even maintain our intelligence. He voted to go to war with Iraq, then claimed he only voted for the ‘threat’ of war. He then opposed money our military needed to continue to fight terror following the military victory. In addition, he consistently supported ceding American sovereignty to the UN.

Kerry’s record doesn’t support his claims that he will be a Commander in Chief who will fight to protect America. President Bush has already proven that he can, and will do so.

That is an excellent summary by Thomas Lipscomb.

For all their pretended confusion about the issue, both Kerry and Clark know from their own experience that no officer who had not met the requirements of his six year service obligation to the satisfaction of his unit commander would have been granted an honorable discharge.

My take is that the dems got wind of a non-scandal that at first seemed like it might be a scandal and hoped that by hurling the accusation, it would make it seem as if Bush pulled strings using the family influence to cover any misdeeds on W's part. All flash, and dash.

Now they are caught in their slander, in which the media is extremely complicit for their lack of investigative reporting.

Who's wearing the brown smelly stuff now?