tomndebb, I can see your point regarding the non-story of a child of privilege getting into the guard by pulling some strings, but is it not relevant that Bush has in only the past few years, claimed that he got in ahead of hundreds of others on the waiting list because they needed a pilot and he just showed up at the right time, or his argument that no preferential treatment was extended to him?
In this regard, Barnes’ statement is key. Perhaps you knew before, but for many, the absence of contrary evidence rendered the allegations contrary to Bush’s statements essentially moot.
We’ll just see. I’ve personally never attacked Kerry for any of his decorations. I believe he won them honorably.
I think the various uses he’s put to those medals over the years has been dishonorable. But that’s a different concern altogether.
As to the question of Bush’s service, I certainly think there may be things here that need clarification. However, legitimate subjects aren’t always appropriate subjects to discuss in the course of a political campaign, for practical reasons. The object of a political campaign is to win.
Kerry may score points with his own people on this, but he might also lose ground with former reservists and Guard members, people he’s already alienated with some breathtakingly stupid statements. He might also insult other folks who got deferments, by implying that their citizenship is now of a second-class status.
My position on these boards has been pretty clear. I’m against a veteran’s status litmus test in American politics, and I say that as a veteran myself. I’m against it for many reasons, but a really good one is that it leads to all of this poisonous rhetoric, on both sides.
Barnes is nothing: just a tiny piece of the story. The real story is that Bush’s people have been caught spinning wildly about this issue by the recent memos. Let’s count the oopsies here:
“We released absolutely every document.”
“No wait, we’ve been sitting on these, now that you’ve already uncovered them.”
Bush didn’t have to take his physical because he wasn’t going to fly anymore… oh wait, Bush was ORDERED to take his physical, and so on. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6693-2004Sep8.html
Anyone who made hay about Kerry changing his story and flip-flopping around on Iraq or Cambodia is in a pretty sticky position now.
To re-iterate, the story here is not anymore what Bush did back then, it’s that his administration has been caught in a web of ridiculous lies and evasions about this issue. Worse, there is now some actual evidence that Bush’s records were cleansed, because the recently released docs should have been in his record, but weren’t. Worse, the White House had them: they’ve known about them for some time and have been holding back. Lots and lots of people got special treatment in the national guard because of influence. It’s too bad, but it’s not a particularly outstanding thing. Cover-ups, however, are singular red meat.
Doesn’t matter. Don’t matter. Ain’t gonna matter. Not mattering in any way. Nich bein ein matter. Pas important. Jabba no badda.
Fact of the matter is that Bush is surrounded by True Believers. He could be on live TV sodomizing the Pope and handing Saddam Hussein a big bag with $ on its side, and they’d argue about how it was all part of the War on Terror, and it doesn’t matter as long as Bush cuts taxes, does a good job on the War on Terror, cuts taxes again, and besides, that Kerry is a Flip-Flopper who may or may not have gotten 3 purple hearts in the Approved Republican Draft Dodger Method and that Kerry is a French-Looking Wuss (who is probably gay) and Clinton dodged the draft too and that used to be important but because he’s not in office anymore and because Our Guy is a draft dodger it isn’t important any longer and besides the Democrats really want Kerry to lose anyways so that Hillary will be able to run in 2008 even though nobody other then Rebpublicans ever talks about her in the first place it’s obviously part of the plan to give us our first Lesbian Democrat Black Wheelchair-bound president in the form of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sure, she doesn’t look Black or Wheelchair-bound but that just shows the levels that Balor in a dress will sink to just to become President and we all know that if we Gawd-Fearing Christians don’t stand up and fight her with every fiber of our beings she’ll make our sons marry boys and our daughters marry girls and by the time she’s done she’ll have our grandkids marrying pigs and sheep and maybe even Catholics and Frenchmen.
Do you want them to do that to our country? If you do, obviously you hate America and will vote for John Kerry.
The fact that Bush disobeyed a direct order by not showing up for his 1972 physical is going to cost him some cred with those still on the fence. (And might change the minds of some military folks who had decided to vote for Bush. Doesn’t disobeying a direct order normally tend to put one’s ass in the stockade?)
And if word gets out that Bush’s sudden decision to cease being a fighter pilot came on the heels of the institution of random drug testing for ANG pilots, that might get people thinking about Bush’s alleged coke use (and accompanying incomplete denials):
Mea culpa: it appears that the copies of the memos that the White House released were what CBS faxed to them, not their own copies. Confusing of them, but not suggestive that they actually had them and were keeping quiet about them as I alleged when I thought they had released their OWN copies.
But that’s besides the point. My point is that others have made fun of Kerry’s Purple Hearts. Where is the outrage from other people that have earned Purple Hearts?
If thousands win a medal in war and someone makes fun of that medal, no one is outraged.
But, if thousands manage to escape going to Vietnam by enlisting in the National Guard, and someone makes fun of avoiding Vietnam by enlisting in the National guard, there will be a lot of outrage.
These two things don’t make sense. If one of those two groups deserves to be outraged it is the medal-winning group, not the string-pulling draft avoiding group.
I don’t have the facts on this one handy, but it was my understanding that the timing on this had been debunked: that it didn’t make sense timewise for this to have been a reason for skipping his tests.
Except that I’ve not noticed Reservists and/or Guardsmen being portrayed as dishonorable. Bush, on the other hand, used a lot of familial pull to avoid service and disobeyed an order to take a physical. Oh, and perhaps he just disappeared rather than doing what the ANG required. So I’d say that he acted in a less than honorable fashion. I’m guessing that you might just disagree.
Likewise, I’ve not encountered anyone claiming that those who received deferments are now or ever were less than patriotic. I heard a lot of that sort of nonsense from veterans 15+ years ago, but nothing recently. So, what is it that you’ve encountered that calls patriotism and honorability into question? Or that the citizenship of those who received deferments is somehow second-class?
I’ve been extremely disappointed that the Kerry camp hasn’t used this to maul Bush’s number one campaign issue: Wartime Leadership.
Kerry should be hurling questions from the podium directly at Bush, like these:
"President Bush, how can you, a man who pulled strings to avoid active duty and then pulled strings to avoid even that, claim to be an effective Wartime President?
"President Bush, how can you, a Congressman’s son who used his father’s privilege to avoid combat and let others do the fighting for him, stand there and say “Bring It On?”
"President Bush, how can you, with a history of being too busy partying and politicking to soldier, make accusations of cowardice and complacency against a former Naval Officer who defended his crew against aggression by turning and attacking his aggressors?
“The answer is, you can’t. In '72, you would rather get drunk and rub elbows with the elite than fight. And now you’re drunk on power and are in bed with the elite. Mr. President, you’re not a War President, you’re a coward and a liar, and I’m calling your bluff.”
Until Kerry can grow some cojones and use the ammunition when he’s got it – e.g., to make speeches like that – until then, he hasn’t earned my vote.
“When I hear this coming from Dick Cheney, who was a coward, who would not serve during the Vietnam War, it makes my blood boil,” Tom Harkin (D) Senator, Iowa.
Kerry is, I hope, smarter than that. It would be silly to say “President Bush, if you did ‘X’ thrity-five years ago, how can you do ‘Y’ now”. Kerry is better off going after what Bush has done AS president, not what he did when he was in his 20s. But the problem Kerry is having is that he won’t divorce himself from his support of the war 2 years ago. He’s still straddling the issue (he would’ve still voted to aurthorize the use of force even if he knew then everything he knows now). He needs to come out and say he made a mistake voting for the resolution, and force Bush to defend his decision. His hammering at Bush in the last few days rings a bit hollow to me.
We’ve been over that ground so much that I don’t think either of us has anything new to say about it. I would like to know, though, where in that post I said he voted for the war.
