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My understanding (I do not have a url to back this up) is that Bush did miss some scheduled drill weekend when he was in the Guard. However, the rules at the time allowed a Guardsman to make up the time, as long as they did it in the same quarter, which Bush did.

To my way of thinking, if that account is correct, that is not an unblemished record, but it is a far cry from AWOL.

I believe President Bush's honorable discharge was posted at one point to refute this claim. The point being that anyone who was actually officially AWOL would not have received an honorable discharge.

IIRC, a scan of the actual official discharge was posted here on FR. Perhaps some knowledgable FReeper could post a link.

IF this was actually true, does anyone think it wouldn't be all over the media 24/7/365? But it isn't. It is only found on the hate-filled anti-Bush sites and in rumors IRL.

Also, I seem to recall that the reason given for why he was absent was to work on a political campaign. I can't recall if he actually had or asked permission to be absent.

Also, with the recordkeeping practices from that time period, its almost impossible to prove one way or another. The Air Force transferred thousands of personnel-related records to the National Archives about ten years ago, but the problem is, there are only three machines in existence that can read them, so they're kept I believe in Texas where one of the machines is located. During Vietnam huge amounts of records were lost when they were simply tossed off the ends of piers, like so many helicopters, jeeps, etc. were.

The attendance records for President Bush's unit may or may not be in existence. The laws governing these kinds of things are more strictly enforced now (especially since the Bureau of Indian Affairs fiasco under Babblin' Bruce Babbit's regime at Dept. of Interior), so records from a Guard unit back in the '60s could be sitting in some former CO's or company clerk's attic, or could have been lost, or they could have been burned in a fire like the one at the military's Personnel Records Center in St. Louis years ago.