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Re: GW Bush and the TX ANG (for those interested)

On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 14:58:13 -0700, Jerry Bransford wrote:

> WTF are you posting political crap to this forum??? There are MANY more
> appropriate forums for political BS than this Jeep-orieinted forum.
>
> Jerry
> --
> Jerry Bransford
> PP-ASEL N6TAY
> See the Geezer Jeep at
> http://members.cox.net/jerrypb/
> "Steelgtr62" <steelgtr62@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:20040921174913.27979.00001162@mb-m02.aol.com...
>> http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.p...PER-357916.php
And then you went and reposted the entire thing again?

Re: GW Bush and the TX ANG (for those interested)

OT: GW Bush and the TX ANG (for those interested)

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.p...PER-357916.php

Issue Date: September 27, 2004

Bush’s Air Guard stint started well, then faded into mystery

By William H. McMichael
Times Staff Writer

John F. Kerry’s service in Vietnam and his postwar testimonials have been
targeted all summer by Republican-funded critics and veterans groups — so
much so that for several months they have obscured George W. Bush’s
much-criticized Vietnam-era service in the National Guard. A renewed interest
in Bush’s service raised by a critical CBS News report exploded in
controversy over whether some recently unearthed Bush documents were actually
forgeries.
From most accounts, Bush appears to have received preferential treatment to get
into the Air National Guard and avoid the draft after he graduated from Yale
University in 1968. He was initially regarded as a good pilot, but his
performance faded over his final two years in the Guard and he was suspended
from flight status. He did not fly for the remaining 18 months he served in the
Guard, though he was obligated to do so.

And for significant chunks of time, Bush did not report for duty at all. His
superiors took no action, and he was honorably discharged in 1973, six months
before he should have been.

In a 2002 interview with USA Today, Dean Roome, a former fighter pilot who
lived with Bush in the early 1970s, said Bush was a model officer during the
first part of his career. But overall, he said, Bush’s Air Guard career was
erratic — the first three years solid, the last two troubled.

“You wonder if you know who George Bush is,” Roome said. “I think he
digressed after a while. In the first half, he was gung-ho. Where George failed
was to fulfill his obligation as a pilot. It was an irrational time in his
life.”

Awaiting the draft

In June 1968, with his student deferment ready to expire when he graduated from
Yale, Bush faced the draft, just like hundreds of thousands of other young
Americans. The controversial Vietnam War was raging, and draftees often ended
up in Vietnam’s jungles. Thirty-eight percent of the 1.73 million men drafted
between 1965 and 1973 served in Vietnam, and draftees accounted for 30.4
percent of the war’s 58,245 combat deaths.

Bush did not get drafted. Instead, two weeks before graduation, he joined the
Texas Air National Guard — a so-called “champagne unit” that included
other sons of rich and influential Texans. He signed up for a six-year term.
There was a waiting list, as was the case at most Guard and Reserve units
throughout the country, because such service was generally considered a likely
way to avoid combat (5,977 reservists and 101 guardsmen died in Vietnam). But
according to one highly visible source, Bush didn’t have to wait.

Former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes told the CBS program “60 Minutes” on Sept.
8 that he’d used his political influence to jump the young Bush ahead of
“hundreds” of others to get the Guard slot. He’d first said this publicly
after testifying in a 1999 federal court deposition, saying he’d done the
favor at the request of a Bush family friend. At the time Bush joined the Air
Guard, his father, George H.W. Bush, was serving his first term as a
congressman from Texas.

“I would describe it as preferential treatment,” Barnes, a Democrat who is
supporting Kerry’s presidential bid, told CBS.

For its part, the Bush campaign stands behind the president’s service. “The
president’s proud of his service,” said Reed Dickins, a Bush campaign
spokesman. “The president served honorably, similarly to the thousands of
National Guard (members) that are serving our country today. The attacks on
this president’s service have been purely political.”

It may be difficult for younger readers to understand the volatility of this
issue during the Vietnam era, particularly given the extensive involvement of
today’s Guard and reserve in Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s 1995
book “My American Journey” put it eloquently:

“The policies — determining who would be drafted and who would be deferred,
who would serve and who would escape, who would die and who would live — were
an antidemocratic disgrace,” Powell wrote. “I am angry that so many of the
sons of the powerful and well placed … managed to wangle slots in reserve and
National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class
discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans
are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country.”

‘Combat ready’

Bush graduated from flight school in 1969, was certified July 9, 1970, as
“combat ready” in the F-102, and began winning praise for his flight and
leadership skills. On his April 30, 1971, fitness report, covering 166
active-duty days over a period of 17 months, he earned high marks.

“Lt. Bush is an exceptionally fine young officer and pilot,” wrote his
commanding officer in the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron in Houston, Lt.
Col. Jerry B. Killian. Bush “performed in an outstanding manner … a natural
leader.”

But from there, Bush’s performance slipped. The descent began when Bush
apparently did not follow an order to report for his annual flight physical in
May 1972, which got him grounded.

The grounding was noted in one of the four documents unveiled by CBS — which
were given to the White House, which released them to the rest of the media. It
appears to be an order signed by Killian suspending Bush from flight status
“due to failure to perform to USAF/TexANG standards and failure to meet
annual physical examination (flight) as ordered.”

Handwriting experts hired by many media organizations as well as other critics
contend the document, and possibly all four, are forgeries. However,
Killian’s order is confirmed by two documents that were not part of the CBS
papers. The first is a White House-released letter from the commander of the
147th Fighter Group, Col. Bobby W. Hodges, to its Texas higher command dated
Sept. 5, 1972, with a subject line of “Suspension From Flying Status.”

The letter documents the missed flight physical and the suspension,
“effective 1 Aug 1972.” A Sept. 29 order from the National Guard Bureau
further confirms the missed physical and the suspension.

On May 26, 1972, Bush asked in writing for reassignment to an Air Reserve
squadron in Alabama so he could work on the U.S. Senate campaign of Republican
Winton “Red” Blount, a close friend of his influential father. That was
rejected because Bush was obligated to serve as a Ready Reservist until May 26,
1974, and was ineligible for assignment to the Air Reserve. About three months
later, on Sept. 5, Bush asked to perform “equivalent duty” with the Alabama
unit from September to November. Killian approved the request a day later. The
orders went through on Sept. 15, and while Bush had missed the Sept. 9-10 unit
training assembly, the document noted he could make the next two. Bush’s
Officer Military Record shows an Oct. 1, 1973, discharge from the Texas Air
National Guard and transfer to the Alabama unit.

Another White House-released document shows a total of 56 points Bush
apparently earned during this 12-month period, but it’s awarded in one lump
sum rather than credited for each training period. But this document also
contains an error, listing Bush’s status as “PLT On-Fly” — meaning he
was on flight status — when he had not been for a year. This, said retired
Army Lt. Col. Gerald A. Lechliter, who has done an in-depth analysis of
Bush’s pay records (http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/.../lechliter.pdf),
makes the form’s authenticity suspect.

There’s also the record of a Jan. 6, 1973, dental exam performed on Bush at
Dannelly Air National Guard Base, Ala. There’s nothing that documents why
Bush, who reportedly returned to Texas after the election, didn’t get this
work done closer to home.

Bush’s attendance and participation in weekend drills had been meticulously
recorded up through May 1972. But other than the points record and the dental
exam record, the year following Bush’s request for reassignment to Alabama is
a blank.

In a fitness report supplement released by the White House this year, an
administrative officer wrote, “Not rated for the period 1 May 72 through 30
Apr 73. Report for this period not available for administrative reasons.”

In the remarks section, Killian wrote that Bush “has not been observed at
this unit during the period of report. … He cleared this base on 15 May 1972
and has been performing equivalent training in a non flying status” with the
Alabama unit. Bush, however, was only authorized to be gone from September to
November.

‘Don’t remember seeing you’

The same day Barnes spoke with CBS, a new pro-Kerry group, Texans for Truth,
announced it was launching a TV ad campaign that would attack Bush for failing
to perform his duties while temporarily assigned to the Alabama unit. While it
wasn’t a new accusation, the ad featured a member of that unit who said
he’d never met the future president.

“I heard George Bush get up and say, ‘I served in the 187th Air National
Guard in Montgomery, Alabama,’” retired Lt. Col. Robert Mintz said on
camera. “Really? That was my unit. And I don’t remember seeing you there.
…”

On Sept. 5, Bush formally asked Killian for a discharge from the Texas unit so
he could attend Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Mass. Two weeks later,
Hodges approved the request and honorably discharged Bush, administratively
transferring him to Headquarters, Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver.

Two months earlier, on June 30, Bush signed a statement promising that if he
left his Texas Ready Reserve unit, “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.”

There is no record of Bush ever having signed on with a Massachusetts Reserve
unit. In 1999, Dan Bartlett, working for the Bush campaign, told The Washington
Post that Bush had completed his six-year commitment with a Boston unit. That
didn’t happen, Bartlett recently told The Boston Globe. “I must have
misspoke,” he said. The following March, Bush was redesignated as an
“executive support officer.” In May, he was placed on inactive status. On
Nov. 21 — apparently at Bush’s written request, according to an undated
letter sent from Massachusetts and released by the White House in which he
requests “to discharge from the standby reserve” — he received an
honorable discharge “from all appointments in the United States Air Force.”

Documents in question

The renewed examination of the Bush record, however, has been somewhat obscured
by the explosion of media interest in the documents CBS displayed on the same
program featuring Barnes.

In a matter of minutes, Internet “bloggers” were raising questions about
the authenticity of the documents, claiming that that era’s typewriters could
not have produced some of the typographical elements in the memos and that they
were computer-generated forgeries. They also said that Killian’s signature
was either forged or copied from actual documents.

Killian’s former secretary, Marian Carr Knox, 86, of Houston, has said she
believed the memos were fake but their content accurately reflected Killian’s
opinions.

“I know that I didn’t type them,” she said in an interview with CBS.
“However, the information in those is correct.”

As of Sept. 16, CBS continued to stand by its reporting.

William H. McMichael covers the Navy from Hampton Roads, Va. Reach him at (757)
223-0096 or by e-mail at bmcmichael@atpco.com

Re: GW Bush and the TX ANG (for those interested)

WTF are you posting political crap to this forum??? There are MANY more
appropriate forums for political BS than this Jeep-orieinted forum.

Jerry
--
Jerry Bransford
PP-ASEL N6TAY
See the Geezer Jeep at
http://members.cox.net/jerrypb/
"Steelgtr62" <steelgtr62@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040921174913.27979.00001162@mb-m02.aol.com...
> http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.p...PER-357916.php
>
> Issue Date: September 27, 2004
>
> Bush's Air Guard stint started well, then faded into mystery
>
> By William H. McMichael
> Times Staff Writer
>
>
> John F. Kerry's service in Vietnam and his postwar testimonials have been
> targeted all summer by Republican-funded critics and veterans groups - so
> much so that for several months they have obscured George W. Bush's
> much-criticized Vietnam-era service in the National Guard. A renewed
> interest
> in Bush's service raised by a critical CBS News report exploded in
> controversy over whether some recently unearthed Bush documents were
> actually
> forgeries.
> From most accounts, Bush appears to have received preferential treatment
> to get
> into the Air National Guard and avoid the draft after he graduated from
> Yale
> University in 1968. He was initially regarded as a good pilot, but his
> performance faded over his final two years in the Guard and he was
> suspended
> from flight status. He did not fly for the remaining 18 months he served
> in the
> Guard, though he was obligated to do so.
>
> And for significant chunks of time, Bush did not report for duty at all.
> His
> superiors took no action, and he was honorably discharged in 1973, six
> months
> before he should have been.
>
> In a 2002 interview with USA Today, Dean Roome, a former fighter pilot who
> lived with Bush in the early 1970s, said Bush was a model officer during
> the
> first part of his career. But overall, he said, Bush's Air Guard career
> was
> erratic - the first three years solid, the last two troubled.
>
> "You wonder if you know who George Bush is," Roome said. "I think he
> digressed after a while. In the first half, he was gung-ho. Where George
> failed
> was to fulfill his obligation as a pilot. It was an irrational time in his
> life."
>
> Awaiting the draft
>
> In June 1968, with his student deferment ready to expire when he graduated
> from
> Yale, Bush faced the draft, just like hundreds of thousands of other young
> Americans. The controversial Vietnam War was raging, and draftees often
> ended
> up in Vietnam's jungles. Thirty-eight percent of the 1.73 million men
> drafted
> between 1965 and 1973 served in Vietnam, and draftees accounted for 30.4
> percent of the war's 58,245 combat deaths.
>
> Bush did not get drafted. Instead, two weeks before graduation, he joined
> the
> Texas Air National Guard - a so-called "champagne unit" that included
> other sons of rich and influential Texans. He signed up for a six-year
> term.
> There was a waiting list, as was the case at most Guard and Reserve units
> throughout the country, because such service was generally considered a
> likely
> way to avoid combat (5,977 reservists and 101 guardsmen died in Vietnam).
> But
> according to one highly visible source, Bush didn't have to wait.
>
> Former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes told the CBS program "60 Minutes" on
> Sept.
> 8 that he'd used his political influence to jump the young Bush ahead of
> "hundreds" of others to get the Guard slot. He'd first said this publicly
> after testifying in a 1999 federal court deposition, saying he'd done the
> favor at the request of a Bush family friend. At the time Bush joined the
> Air
> Guard, his father, George H.W. Bush, was serving his first term as a
> congressman from Texas.
>
> "I would describe it as preferential treatment," Barnes, a Democrat who is
> supporting Kerry's presidential bid, told CBS.
>
> For its part, the Bush campaign stands behind the president's service.
> "The
> president's proud of his service," said Reed Dickins, a Bush campaign
> spokesman. "The president served honorably, similarly to the thousands of
> National Guard (members) that are serving our country today. The attacks
> on
> this president's service have been purely political."
>
> It may be difficult for younger readers to understand the volatility of
> this
> issue during the Vietnam era, particularly given the extensive involvement
> of
> today's Guard and reserve in Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell's 1995
> book "My American Journey" put it eloquently:
>
> "The policies - determining who would be drafted and who would be
> deferred,
> who would serve and who would escape, who would die and who would live -
> were
> an antidemocratic disgrace," Powell wrote. "I am angry that so many of the
> sons of the powerful and well placed . managed to wangle slots in reserve
> and
> National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class
> discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all
> Americans
> are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country."
>
> 'Combat ready'
>
> Bush graduated from flight school in 1969, was certified July 9, 1970, as
> "combat ready" in the F-102, and began winning praise for his flight and
> leadership skills. On his April 30, 1971, fitness report, covering 166
> active-duty days over a period of 17 months, he earned high marks.
>
> "Lt. Bush is an exceptionally fine young officer and pilot," wrote his
> commanding officer in the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron in Houston,
> Lt.
> Col. Jerry B. Killian. Bush "performed in an outstanding manner . a
> natural
> leader."
>
> But from there, Bush's performance slipped. The descent began when Bush
> apparently did not follow an order to report for his annual flight
> physical in
> May 1972, which got him grounded.
>
> The grounding was noted in one of the four documents unveiled by CBS -
> which
> were given to the White House, which released them to the rest of the
> media. It
> appears to be an order signed by Killian suspending Bush from flight
> status
> "due to failure to perform to USAF/TexANG standards and failure to meet
> annual physical examination (flight) as ordered."
>
> Handwriting experts hired by many media organizations as well as other
> critics
> contend the document, and possibly all four, are forgeries. However,
> Killian's order is confirmed by two documents that were not part of the
> CBS
> papers. The first is a White House-released letter from the commander of
> the
> 147th Fighter Group, Col. Bobby W. Hodges, to its Texas higher command
> dated
> Sept. 5, 1972, with a subject line of "Suspension From Flying Status."
>
> The letter documents the missed flight physical and the suspension,
> "effective 1 Aug 1972." A Sept. 29 order from the National Guard Bureau
> further confirms the missed physical and the suspension.
>
> On May 26, 1972, Bush asked in writing for reassignment to an Air Reserve
> squadron in Alabama so he could work on the U.S. Senate campaign of
> Republican
> Winton "Red" Blount, a close friend of his influential father. That was
> rejected because Bush was obligated to serve as a Ready Reservist until
> May 26,
> 1974, and was ineligible for assignment to the Air Reserve. About three
> months
> later, on Sept. 5, Bush asked to perform "equivalent duty" with the
> Alabama
> unit from September to November. Killian approved the request a day later.
> The
> orders went through on Sept. 15, and while Bush had missed the Sept. 9-10
> unit
> training assembly, the document noted he could make the next two. Bush's
> Officer Military Record shows an Oct. 1, 1973, discharge from the Texas
> Air
> National Guard and transfer to the Alabama unit.
>
> Another White House-released document shows a total of 56 points Bush
> apparently earned during this 12-month period, but it's awarded in one
> lump
> sum rather than credited for each training period. But this document also
> contains an error, listing Bush's status as "PLT On-Fly" - meaning he
> was on flight status - when he had not been for a year. This, said retired
> Army Lt. Col. Gerald A. Lechliter, who has done an in-depth analysis of
> Bush's pay records (http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/.../lechliter.pdf),
> makes the form's authenticity suspect.
>
> There's also the record of a Jan. 6, 1973, dental exam performed on Bush
> at
> Dannelly Air National Guard Base, Ala. There's nothing that documents why
> Bush, who reportedly returned to Texas after the election, didn't get this
> work done closer to home.
>
> Bush's attendance and participation in weekend drills had been
> meticulously
> recorded up through May 1972. But other than the points record and the
> dental
> exam record, the year following Bush's request for reassignment to Alabama
> is
> a blank.
>
> In a fitness report supplement released by the White House this year, an
> administrative officer wrote, "Not rated for the period 1 May 72 through
> 30
> Apr 73. Report for this period not available for administrative reasons."
>
> In the remarks section, Killian wrote that Bush "has not been observed at
> this unit during the period of report. . He cleared this base on 15 May
> 1972
> and has been performing equivalent training in a non flying status" with
> the
> Alabama unit. Bush, however, was only authorized to be gone from September
> to
> November.
>
> 'Don't remember seeing you'
>
> The same day Barnes spoke with CBS, a new pro-Kerry group, Texans for
> Truth,
> announced it was launching a TV ad campaign that would attack Bush for
> failing
> to perform his duties while temporarily assigned to the Alabama unit.
> While it
> wasn't a new accusation, the ad featured a member of that unit who said
> he'd never met the future president.
>
> "I heard George Bush get up and say, 'I served in the 187th Air National
> Guard in Montgomery, Alabama,'" retired Lt. Col. Robert Mintz said on
> camera. "Really? That was my unit. And I don't remember seeing you there.
> ."
>
> On Sept. 5, Bush formally asked Killian for a discharge from the Texas
> unit so
> he could attend Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Mass. Two weeks
> later,
> Hodges approved the request and honorably discharged Bush,
> administratively
> transferring him to Headquarters, Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver.
>
> Two months earlier, on June 30, Bush signed a statement promising that if
> he
> left his Texas Ready Reserve unit, "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."
>
> There is no record of Bush ever having signed on with a Massachusetts
> Reserve
> unit. In 1999, Dan Bartlett, working for the Bush campaign, told The
> Washington
> Post that Bush had completed his six-year commitment with a Boston unit.
> That
> didn't happen, Bartlett recently told The Boston Globe. "I must have
> misspoke," he said. The following March, Bush was redesignated as an
> "executive support officer." In May, he was placed on inactive status. On
> Nov. 21 - apparently at Bush's written request, according to an undated
> letter sent from Massachusetts and released by the White House in which he
> requests "to discharge from the standby reserve" - he received an
> honorable discharge "from all appointments in the United States Air
> Force."
>
>
> Documents in question
>
> The renewed examination of the Bush record, however, has been somewhat
> obscured
> by the explosion of media interest in the documents CBS displayed on the
> same
> program featuring Barnes.
>
> In a matter of minutes, Internet "bloggers" were raising questions about
> the authenticity of the documents, claiming that that era's typewriters
> could
> not have produced some of the typographical elements in the memos and that
> they
> were computer-generated forgeries. They also said that Killian's signature
> was either forged or copied from actual documents.
>
> Killian's former secretary, Marian Carr Knox, 86, of Houston, has said she
> believed the memos were fake but their content accurately reflected
> Killian's
> opinions.
>
> "I know that I didn't type them," she said in an interview with CBS.
> "However, the information in those is correct."
>
> As of Sept. 16, CBS continued to stand by its reporting.
>
> William H. McMichael covers the Navy from Hampton Roads, Va. Reach him at
> (757)
> 223-0096 or by e-mail at bmcmichael@atpco.com
>
>

Re: GW Bush and the TX ANG (for those interested)

OT: GW Bush and the TX ANG (for those interested)

On 21 Sep 2004 21:49:13 GMT, steelgtr62@aol.com (Steelgtr62) wrote:

<snipped political post>

Are you a TROLL? First you post the question about converting a jeep to diesel
(an on topic but well worn thread) and then this political stuff.

You are new here, so perhaps you should lurk for a while before posting to the
group.

There are places for US presidential discussions. This is NOT one of them.

Dean
and now for some jeep content.
http://www.monogramsinc.com/jeep

OT: GW Bush and the TX ANG (for those interested)