Bush was AWOL

I’ve tried to make this point elsewhere, and I’ll try to make it again here.

I don’t care about anyone’s service 30 years ago. I could just as easily vote for a candidate who burned an American flag in Hanoi in 1969 as I could a guy who single-handedly strangled an entire Viet Cong village with his bare hands back then. It was a fucked up time, a fucked up war, and people did fucked up things in relation to it. They’re the ones who have to live with it, not me, a potential constituent.

But.

George Bush has made one of the central themes of his campaign one of trust. We can trust The President, he won’t lead us astray. He won’t lie to us. He is trustworthy and loyal to a fault.

And that’s the story here.

First off, the Boston Globe weighs in:

[i]On July 30, 1973, shortly before he moved from Houston to Cambridge, Bush signed a document that declared, ''It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months. . . " Under Guard regulations, Bush had 60 days to locate a new unit.

But Bush never signed up with a Boston-area unit. In 1999, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett told the Washington Post that Bush finished his six-year commitment at a Boston area Air Force Reserve unit after he left Houston. Not so, Bartlett now concedes. ''I must have misspoke," Bartlett, who is now the White House communications director, said in a recent interview.[/i]

“Misspoke” in this context meaning “we lied about it.” In fact, all those times when The President or Bartlett or McClellan or Fleischer pounded the meme that the president had fulfilled his requirement? Yeah, that was a lie. Period.

Now I’ve also seen it expressed that hey, the guy got an honorable discharge, so whatever. Maybe he did shirk his full commitment, but so did lots of other guard members back then.

Again, that’s all true. But here’s the thing. The President hasn’t just said “I served in the guard for many years, and I was honorably discharged.” What he’s said was that he “fulfilled his requirement” to the guard and “served his country honorably” in the guard and “served his full commitment to the guard”. Those things are false, and the US News & World Report article and the Boston Globe article (none of which are based in any way, shape, or form on questionable documentation) make it clear that Bush has lied about this repeatedly during the past 4 years.

This wasn’t 30 years ago that I’m talking about. I’m talking about lies repeated as recently as the Republican Convention 2 weeks ago. I’m talking about a pattern of telling half-truths and outright falsehoods. Period.

Can’t you point to thinks like the aborted hunt for Osama Bin Laden and the awful post-handling of the war in Iraq for a pattern of half-truths and outright falsehoods? It’s pretty pointless to go back 30 years when you have them right there from this year.

Unless I’m in a time warp, The President’s vigorous, yet untruthful defense of his military service has taken place fairly recently. Again, like within the past two weeks.