“His teeth were there, where was he?” Droll, very droll.
I don’t think he should have wimped out with the “donation to USO” thingee. Makes a better case if sheer greed won’t even do the job. And I also like how he unashamedly echoe’s James Carville with “hey, I’m stinkin’ rich, I don’t need a damn tax cut!”
Thanks for the tip, Hentor
Objection overruled. Read the statement. I said “accusations.” Not “Questions.”
Uh, yes. If you make an undefined accusation, for which you can demonstrate no evidence, than at the very least your are muckraker, and perhaps stronger language is in order for such irresponsibility. There is no fallacy of the excluded middle being committed. Unsupported accusations are irresponsible. Period.
Blah. blah blah. This is what I mean by whining. You’d think I’m violating your civil rights by starting a thread where I ask you to support your arguments. You’d think that after five pages, and endless repetitions on my part, that you would actually get it.
This is a thread about supporting accusations. Accusations belong here, and I will ask they be supported. If, on the other hand, you have questions but no accusations, then perhaps you should ask those questions in another thread. You are free to have all the questions you want. I don’t care. I don’t think the worse of you.
It just so happens though that in this thread I am dealing with accusations. That’s why I say “accusations” and not “questions.”
Your confusion on this issue is truly and completely your own doing.
Not too be redundant or anything. I’ve said this maybe fifty times in this thread.
I’m happy to consider guilt as a possibility. It just needs positive support before it can be rationally asserted.
No particularly. I’m saying it because I think you’re being a little whiny. You don’t like my Op which is dealing with accusations and the support thereof, and so your bitching about it and misconstruing accusations to mean any questions or criticism. Now, I suspect you know the difference, so it seems a little whiny. If all you have is questions, but no accusations than you are really not at issue here, are you?
Sure. My complaint is that your confabulating my use of the word “accusation” to mean any form of criticism or question, and complaining about my OP in a fashion that seems whiny.
He is indeed a fine fellow. However not having served with Bush, nor served during the time period, nor being a Historian of either, nor particularly informed in either, I don’t necessarily accept his words as gospel. I’ll give you a hint; Airman doesn’t really know if Bush was a crappy officer. He’s guessing.
Yeah, Airman’s swell. I like the word of LTC. Lloyd better. That’s all.
I had a strong opinion. That opinion was formed based on observation, and noting that there didn’t appear to be any serious evidence to back up the accusations.
I think five pages of patiently asking for the case over and over again, demonstrates a certain openness towards hearing one, and I was certainly prepared to have my beleifs contradicted and to adjust them.
That hasn’t happened… yet. I am right… so far. However I can truly come to one conclusion: Those who have made such accusations in the absence of a case or reasonable evidence have behaved irresponsibly and their assertions are irrational.
But there’s no “gotcha” here. I have an opinion based on evidence concerning the accusations others have made. I’ve opened this thread to see if I was wrong. I was in the specific of the accusation of nepotism in getting the guard post, and I modified my stance readily.
Oh shame on you. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. I state no such thing. My statement concerns accusations. Not questions. Accusations.
I’d hate to think you were misstating my OP on purpose here, so I hope this is a genuing mistake.
This was covered in of your earlier cites, and rather excellently I thought.
Bush did indeed check the box indicating he did not volunteer for overseas service. The reason explained for this is that he was not supposed to when signing up for duty since he was specifically applying for a Guard post in Texas.
Later when he had the Guard post he supposedly (and I beleive there’s an eyewitness, but I’m not gonna go back and check) he verbally volunteered for a specific combat post in Vietnam, and was verbally turned down as not posessing enough experience.
There really is no contradiction. At one point Bush specifically and inarguably did not volunteer. At another point, he supposedly did. The time when he did not volunteer was when he applied for his guard. The time he did was supposedly when he already had it.
My personal opinion is that I have no reason to doubt the eyewitness. Maybe it happened. Why not? I just don’t give Bush very much credit for such a half-assed inquiry. Sure. He technically volunteered. Just not in a very serious context. I don’t consider it a lie. I just don’t grant any credit.
Sorry, Scylla, I was wary of overquoting, which is a big problem with Talking Points stuff because he’s so succinct, there’s no fat to cut. Pity you didn’t check the link…
"Now, here’s what the president himself said just two weeks ago …
RUSSERT: Were you favor of the war in Vietnam?
BUSH: I supported my government. I did. And would have gone had my unit been called up, by the way.
RUSSERT: But you didn’t volunteer or enlist to go.
BUSH: No, I didn’t. You’re right. "
Meet The Press
February 8th, 2004
And…
“I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes.”
George W. Bush, 1990
as quoted in The Houston Chronicle
May 8th, 1994.
Note also that the first assertion that GeeDubya volunteered for Viet Nam comes not from GeeDubya himself, but from Racooncoat, apparently unawares that such an assertion had been pre-emptively rendered inoperative by GeeDubya himself.
Now, GeeDubya being, as he is, the very paragon of candor, I’ll take him at his word: he never volunteered for Viet Nam.
Well no. I didn’t check. I guess I should have. The excellent citing and quoting you’ve done in this thread has made me lazy. So, it’s really your fault.
So accepted and noted.
Well, this whole “volunteering for Viet Nam” stuff just got a bit thicker.
You will recall this minor scheissturm began when Marc Racooncoat, Pubbie honcho, tried to claim on an NPR interview the GeeDubya had volunteered to go to Viet Nam as a fighter pilot. Later, in a conference call to reporters, he said he had read this in a “national publication” but couldn’t recall which one.
Back to Talking Points Memo
"At a few points over the last decade President Bush has claimed that he tried to sign up for something called the Palace Alert program, which would have taken him to Southeast Asia.
Now, it seems odd on the face of it that the president’s family would pull all these strings to help him jump the queue for a safe spot in the Texas Air National Guard only to have him take the first chance to go to Vietnam. But, as this 1999 interview in The Washington Post makes clear, even the dates don’t add up …
WP: Were you avoiding the draft?
GWB: No, I was becoming a pilot.
WP: You wanted to serve?
GWB: Yes I did.
WP: But when you were asked do you want to go overseas, you said no.
GWB: I didn’t know that. But I actually tried to go on a Palace Alert program.
WP: That was later.
GWB: It was. After I became a pilot.
WP: Palace Alert program was being phased out.
GWB: Not really, a couple of my buddies got to go. …
WP: … But they’d already graduated.
GWB: That’s true. I couldn’t go until actually I’d gotten my –
WP: I was curious about the sequence. You got out of combat school on June 23, 1970. Palace Alert programs were all closed down overseas as of June 30. So could you have gone even if you signed up for it?
GWB: I guess not if that’s the case, but I remember going to see [the supervisor] to try to get signed up for it. You just ask the commander to put you in. He said you can’t go because you’re too low on the totem pole. I’m not trying to make this thing any grander than it is. … "
From the Washington Post
“…asking a commander to put his name on the list for a “Palace Alert” program, which dispatched qualified F-102 pilots in the Guard to the Europe and the Far East, occasionally to Vietnam, on three- to six-month assignments.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush072899.htm
Europe, the Far East and occasionally to Viet Nam. Meaning, I assume, at least once.
Now, pursuing “Palace Alert” through the wilds of Google, this:
http://www.danford.net/bushf102.htm\
“…Bush recalls that toward the end of his training, he volunteered for the “Palace Alert” program which sent F-102 pilots to Europe and Asia for six-month tours. He was turned down, no doubt because he didn’t have the flying time to qualify for the program. In any event, he couldn’t have been sent to Southeast Asia to take part in the Vietnam War, at least not to fly a Delta Dagger: the F-102 detachments in Vietnam and Thailand were shut down in December 1969, before Bush got his wings…”
Now, if the first cites are accurate, there was a small but real chance that a volunteer for “Palace Alert” might have been posted to Viet Nam, even though the program was due to shut down a week after Georgie got Jungle Fever. However, if the last cite is accurate, there was no such chance, as the plane that GeeDubya flew had no detachments operational in Viet Nam or Thailand.
(Disclaimer: your correspondent knows diddly squat about the Danford.net cite, save that it is dripping with military references and seems to be a warplane afficianados cite. My suspicion is, as an airwarfare “buff” board, they probably know some shit, but I sure wouldn’t be the one to say whether they do or not.
Frankly, I get the feeling from sites like this that they are for men who are actually sorry that they didn’t get into a war. A frame of reference I cannot relate to.)
On a previous page in this thread I posted a quote from a squadron mate of Bush’s who corroborates his volunteering for Palace Alert. He says that four of them volunteered, and the two most senior were accepted.
By golly, you’re right, Sam. Just as you say, you did in fact post that. No getting around that, try as I will. Yeppers, you posted that.
I see that Garry Trudeau is offering a $10,000 reward for any witness who can come forward to confirm Bush showed up in Alabama. I’m sure this matter will be cleared up soon, once and for all. 
I just have a few things to add to this:
1- I have been in the Guard and it is rare the person who goes to every drill, who even shows up when his unit is activated. The states usually don’t hold you accountable, and any way it isn’t like going AWOL on Active Duty. It is not a UCMJ offense as far as I know. Sometimes the Guard will work on putting you out of the Guard- but that is rare since that will hurt their numbers.
2- If you show up, many times the NCO in charge doesn’t mark you as being present. Sometimes you get paid, sometimes you don’t. You can make up your drill in other places and just call it in. It is a very broke system. I was in the Guard a few years ago and wouldn’t be able to tell you what drills I went to/ missed/ made up/ or the places I attended the ones I went to.
3- If Bush did not attend the last few drills of his “contract” then all I am saying is that he is not a rarity. If he even remembers doing so and is lying, then he is no worse than Clinton… unless you are a liberal, right? (just as Kerry is bad for coming back after only a few months in VN if you are a conservative…)
4- If Bush did attend the drills, but was not supposed to transfer from TX to AL then he is guilty of a technicality. I know plenty of Guardsmen who transferred for family or work related reasons and the paperwork took years to catch up with them. I went Active Duty and did so through the Guard’s office. Yet I was kept on the Guard’s books for 2 1/2 years!
5- If Bush can’t remember, attended a few but not all, or lost the pay slips and others cannot remember him (back then I don’t think he was a household name)- as is probably what most likely happened, then he is like most of the rest of America- focused on what we want to do, and not the little things that might one day bite us in the rear one day. How many people don’t have something in their past that they wish they could take back or just didn’t do perfectly?
6- I think it all boils down to politics. If you are liberal- Bush is a terrible “AWOL” soldier who shouldn’t expect others to go to Iraq and needs to step down and let VN vet Kerry take over. If you are conservative- Bush may be guilty of not keeping all of his records, but Kerry is worse because he came back and threw his medals on the ground with Jane Fonda. If you an independent then you see the similarities between all of the politicians and you hope that one day you don’t run for president and they find all of your mistakes from when you were a kid…
The problem is that (1) it looks like Bush didn’t show up for Guard Duty at all, and (2) people were watching for his arrival. He might not have been world-famous at the time, but he already had a bit of celebrity status about him, if only for being the son of a Congressman:
Link here.
Jesus, look what the poor bastard has to work with.
Speaking of which, how unusual is it for a White House Press Secretary to pick up and leave, like Fleischer did?
I really don’t know where to look on that one…
-Joe
Is this where we are at now?
Scylla: If you cannot prove your case, then you are muckraking.
Svin: I know I cannot individually prove the case, but raising questions is not muckraking.
Scylla: Asking questions is OK, but accusing someone without proof isn’t
Svin: But, the proof or the absence thereof is exactly what raises these questions and Bush may control the ability to prove the case.
Scylla: If you cannot prove your case, then you are muckraking…
I think both of you are right. As much as we all are innocent until proven guilty, I think it behooves on Bush (as the president of this country) to take some effort to prove his innocence. Given that the press corps find the white house involvement unsatisfactory, I would side on their side. At the same time, one shouldn’t be throwing accusations as well.
Good Lord! It’s the story that WILL NOT DIE:
AP Sues for Access to Bush Guard Records
Oops, there’s no records to sue for:
Odd we hadn’t heard this story before now:
I’ll bet Scotty’s gonna have a tough time in this morning’s press gaggle, when they start asking him when the White House found out about the missing microfilms - and if it was just yesterday, then why hadn’t they checked the microfilms back in the winter, to make sure their paper records were complete?
They were apparently destroyed quite a while ago, however, which makes any conspiracy look a bit silly. Unless they were destroyed not for his presidential run but for past controversies.
But it indeed is MAJOR egg on their face that they claimed to have released all the records (they haven’t, even with the microfilms excluded from consideration) and failed to mention that parts of the record had been destroyed.
[Church Lady]
The records were destroyed? Well, isn’t that CONVEEEEEEEEEEEEEENIENT.
[/Church Lady]
No. They were allegedly destroyed quite a while ago.
From NYT article:
96/97 isn’t all that long ago. When did Bush start thinking about maybe runnin for president?
If you want an exhaustive, and I do mean exhaustive examination of the records that do exist, I refer you to
http://www.glcq.com/bush_at_arpc1.htm
I have read through it, more or less. Its a mind-boggling effort, comparing records with relevent Air Force and National Guard regulations, leaving no stone unturned, as best I can tell.
Barring information that isn’t included, this is a very strong prima faciae case. And exculpatory evidence would almost have to be of the “evil twin” variety.
Read for yourself, take your eye-glaze drops with you. I cannot point to a particular single “smoking gun”, the effect is cumulative, the research relentless.
Check it out (not Simon or Big Svin…you will end up sobbing and gnashing your teeth in jealous dismay…)