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

President George W. 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....(Snip)

Selected excerpts:

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.
...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.

Oh, yeah. This CRA* came up in 1994 and in 2000. It's an issue they bring
up again to discredit a good and decent human being that they oppose.
I have voted for George W. Bush every time he has run for office. I will do
so again November 2nd this year.
There is ONLY ONE 'GOOD' Democrat. That is one that has been voted
OUT OF POWER !!!!
[Note my new tagline]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.