I don’t think you understood my question. I was responding to this:
You are implying that anyone has argued that his current evil is evidence that he must have been evil in the past. No one has tried to make that admittedly lame extropolation.
We’re dealing with two candidates running who happen to be veterans.
I could just as easily say:
"John Kerry’s Honorable Discharge in proper perspective."
It would be equally despicable.
You have a very kind definition of “veteran,” Mr. Moto, and we have much more than John Kerry’s discharge papers to show how honorable his service was.
Not to mention the fact that Mr. Kerry hasn’t been holding up his honorable discharge as proof that he didn’t miss duty while a member of the armed forces.
The President has been accused of failing to fulfill his responsibilities as a member of the National Guard during 1972 and 1973. He has attempted to answer this speculation by noting he received an honorable discharge. The inference to be drawn from this fact is that he fulfilled all duties he needed to fulfill, or he wouldn’t have been given such a classification. This “defense” is not very convincing for the reason made by the OP, which I do not think attempted to equate the President to a mass murderer, but simply showed just exactly how flimsy the “honorable discharge” defense could get.
I personally am not bothered by the potential that Mr. Bush got interested in other things in 1972 and 1973. From what I have read, the National Guard in those years was fairly lax about such things; the dynamics were different in an era when the Guard rarely was involved in actual military endeavors (read, while we had a draft). If there is anything about the situation that is troubling, it is the relatively common response from a politician in which there is first refusal to address the issue, then denial, then grudging release of data regarding the issue, followed eventually by full disclosure of the relevant information. As far as I can tell, one of two responses should be forthcoming:
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“I fulfilled all my responsibilities, and here is the evidence which supports my assertion, including the statements of people who remember my presence.”
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“I got involved in other things in 1972 and 1973, and as a result, didn’t put as much time into the Guard in those years as perhaps I should have, but I still did the minimum required and was honorably discharged.”
I just hate it when the press and the pundits (not to mention political opponents) end up having to pull teeth to get to the bottom of something so relatively unimportant in the larger scheme of things (do you really think the people of Iraq are worried about whether the man who decided to militarily assault their country showed up for a medical exam in 1972?).
And lest anyone think that this makes me anti-Bush, I’d like to point out that there are plenty of Democrats who have fallen prey to the same sort of duck and hide approach to easily discoverable, but relatively unimportant before the effort to duck and hide, issues. Including an impeached president.
If you want to be that strict, then no, nobody said exactly what I said. It was my own exaggeration, taking the rhetoric to the next level of absurdity. Also, I can’t quote anyone suggesting that there must be a link between Bush and Satan; that was my own slander, too.
Would you say that people who are expressing suspicions that scarcity of documents for Bush NG service might indicate that some serious offences were covered-up, are doing that not because they hate Bush and his actions now, but for the simple love of truth and fair play? Would you say that people are digging 30 years back into Bush past not because they hate Bush and his actions now, but out of impartial urge to perform a public service? No, nobody said “that his current evil is evidence that he must have been evil in the past”, verbatim. It went without saying.
I think Bush’s string pulling and deriliction of duty during Vietnam is relevant now for the following reasons:
1.) It showed a sense of entitlement and a lack of accountability during his youth. He clearly thought the the rules should be different for him than for everybody else.
2.) He supported the practice of conscripting and sending other young men off to die in an immoral war, especially poor and unconnected young men, but he was unwilling to join them and saw no conpunction in using privelege and status to keep himself safely in Texas.
3.) Rather than acknowledging anything now, he has chosen to weasel and lie and prevaricate.
4.) He is currently sending other young men off to die in another immoral war. He lied to them about what they were dying for. He has invited the enemy to kill them, and he struts around in a fake flight suit as if he were one of them.
You should be ashamed of yourself for that slur, Diogenes…
That flight suit was real.
I’m afraid you are barking up a wrong tree. I already posted what I think about the issue in related Scylla’s thread; to re-cap: this issue is real, not some hysterics about sacred international law and missing WMD; this one is a clear negative for Bush so far; his opponents are right to play it for all it’s worth against him. My advice: play it well, don’t overdo things and kill it. For example, calling Bush “rich kid who took advantage” makes people think and re-consider, calling Bush a “deserter” may be good self-promotion, but kills the issue.