I saw most of the press conference on C-SPAN last night. I haven’t seen this much one-legged tap dancing since Nixon regularly pulled the rug out from under Ron Ziegler. (“This is the operative statement. All previous statements are inoperative.”) McClellan did such a piss-poor job that he might have well have hung a “Kick Me” sign on Karl Rove’s butt.
Or course, “snobby rich kid gets pampered” is hardly news. We knew that already. But the way the White House is handling it is bound to keep the pack baying.
Sorry Sam, but it’s not exactly smart to take at face value the claim that, thanks to Bush we now have released to us all the relevant records that settle the matter. If you’d read anything about the issue, you’d know that this just isn’t the case, and it’s highly misleading to present it that way in the OP. The President himself says that they can’t find any records for the period at issue. The ONLY evidence they’ve offered to contradict the existing testimony from his commanding officers and paper evidence of a missed physical (something for which the Bush camp was caught in a lie about, saying that the family physician was not available to give it, when these physicals are always done by guard physicians, not private ones) that he was AWOL are an ex-girlfriend and a Republican staffer who said that Bush told them he was going to go do guard duty.
Going with your conspiracy theory motif: what Bush just did is akin to Oswald releasing a movie ticket paystub that shows he was at the movies after Kennedy was shot. This might well work to get the press to lead with a headline “Oswald releases records that show his whereabouts,” but it doesn’t actually clarify the main issue at all: where was Oswald during the major events at question?
So either you got taken in by this sort of “mislead via incomplete headline” ploy, or you’re hoping others will.
And the real issue here is not so much his guard duty, but that he’s never been forthcoming about it, and indeed that much of what he’s traded on for his public image has been misleading. It’s hard to top the line in his biography when he or his ghost writer declare that his proudest day was having his father pin a military award on his chest that doesn’t even exist, but he’s trying.
It’s also hard to find sympathy for people for want to play down this issue, but who made a big fuss over Clinton’s draft dodging or Gore’s assignment.
And Sam, there is another reason you should be suspicious. If there were nothing to this story, can’t you agree that it would be VERY EASY for the President to simply say “I was there on those dates in Alabama, and I remember doing so and so with so and so.” Has Bush forgotten the names of everyone he would have trained with so that the can’t find a single barrack mate to back him up? And yet, he’s careful avoided saying anything specific.
Instead, he says: “I was — I served in the National Guard. I flew F-102 aircraft. I got an honorable discharge.” NONE of these things are what is in dispute.
He goes on to say " There may be no evidence, but I did report; otherwise, I wouldn’t have been honorably discharged. In other words, you don’t just say “I did something” without there being verification. Military doesn’t work that way. I got an honorable discharge, and I did show up in Alabama." Notice that, again, this statement is relying on the military’s say so, not his own. It’s almost as if he’s saying “I don’t remember serving, but the military wouldn’t have given me an honorable discharge if I didn’t (which is not true), so I must have.”
Can’t you agree that that’s awful suspicious? Why not even a single clear anecdote? A name? A description of what he did? Give that, and the entire case would fall apart. So why hold back?
And note this:
How can that possibly be true if the next day (in 2004, note) they released a document that the public had never seen? If THEY didn’t know where it was in 2000 when THEY and the press had done an exhaustive search in 1994,1997, and 2000, where had it been hiding in all that time? How come it turns up almost immediately when the issue gets raised again if it was so hard to find back in 2000 that it couldn’t have been released when they supposededly “released everything?”
Indeed, this Clintonian parsing of language fits a pattern: all throughout the interview he avoided direct questions about specific answers. When asked why his administration had opposed the 9/11 commision on so many fronts, he answered, inexpicably, that terrorists are people who hide in caves. When asked about why they didn’t find WMD notice that EVERY SINGLE scenario he presented assumes that WMD were there before the war. He keeps changing the subject from whether there was no doubt about WMD to whether there was no doubt that Saddam was a bad guy (two quite different subjects) without answering the former question. He crudely fumbled past the question of whether he had reversed his stance on “nation-building.” This is not a man trying to defend his position. It is a man trying to avoid having to defend his positions.
I seem to remember in previous administrations the opposition made a big deal out of it when documents seemed to advantageously appear or disappear at opportune times…
I’m not a huge fan of Mr. Bush, but this is such a non-issue for me. Lets stay grounded on the important issues. If he did or didn’t X years ago just will NOT change the quality of my life today.
I share your sentiment to a point. I always thought Vietnam War service status was a horrible issue to make a litmus test for presidential candidates. I can deeply appreciate any young man’s desire to fulfill one’s duties in a less-risky manner than being drafted and sent to Vietnam. It doesn’t, in my mind, show lack of character.
What others have said, however, and that I agree with, is that it has become an issue because of Bush’s own actions and claims. His party has attacked political opponents on their lack of service, and Bush has made claims about his duty that may not be true. It’s an integrity issue.
It strikes me that, yes, this is a minor issue in this campaign. Certainly, we have plenty of other, larger issues with which to go after the incumbent.
But I’m thinking that it’s pretty shrewd to bring the small stuff into play at this point. At the moment, this issue has the White House on the defensive, as evidenced by Scott McClelland’s briefing transcripts. As long as they’re on the defensive, they’re limited in their potential attacks on the Democratic candidates. It’d look silly to bring this up in August or September; that’s when the big issues come into play. But right now, it’s keeping them distracted and on the ropes, when they expected to be rallying for an attack.
We’ve got enough ammunition to keep hammering them until November. This is just an opening salvo. And if it happens to score a critical hit, then hey, bonus!
I hope the moderators won’t mind if I crosspost someting I typed in the Pit, since it’s relevant here as well, considering your quote. It’s actually in support of your position, believe it or not, although I’m just telling it like it is.
There you go, Reeder. Don’t say I never did anything for you.
Is it possible that Lt. Bush had with the permission of the relevant officers been allowed to lapse into non-mission capable status? I ask because our friend Sam has suggested in the past that the missed physical exam was simply the result of Bush not bothering to keep up his status after being moved to some sort of non-flying position. I have not the knowledge to assess the likelihood of such a possibility.
Want to see something weird? Look at the strangely prescient discussionelucidator and I had in these two threads from seven months ago.
I said the Republicans wanted to make gay marriage the central issue in this campaign. 'luce said Karl Rove would rather wipe his ass with a scorpion than put Bush’s record up against Kerry’s, so they were focusing on Dean, the civil union advocate.
(Fortunately, Karl Rove has Scott McClellan to wear the Arachno-Depends for him.)
And that part about Howard Dean’s campaign being fed by the RNC? Unproven, yet somehow it led to two very correct predictions. And suddenly Dean is in the dirt, thanks in small part to a Massachusetts Supreme Court decision. It’s almost as if someone set off the Republican booby trap early…
Jane Fonda and gay marriage. So far, that’s about all they got to use on Kerry. Maybe all they’ll get. So if they have to, and they do have to, they’ll use 'em.
Sam: Interesting cite, although the gratuitous swipe at Kerry makes me question the guy’s impartiality. Did you read the NewsHour transcript I cited in the post to your thread? I think the two retired Generals’ analysis has some considerable weight.
And how, precisely, does that have anything whatsoever to do with whether the Honorable Right Leftenant Bush reported for duty in Alabama? Can you ever please just address that bloody point? Or are you just going to keep playing the misdirection game?
"…One of those on-guard outfits was the Pennsylvania Air National Guard’s 146th Fighter Squadron, an air defense unit based at Pittsburgh International Airport.
Just out of graduate school, Campenni was a 32-year-old captain in the 146th, flying the F-102 Delta Dagger, the world’s first supersonic all-weather jet interceptor, and “sitting alert” on Nov. 11, 1972."
Comment by Hesiod -
“Now, did he attend graduate school in 1971-1972? And if so, how the hell would he know what George W. Bush was doing in the TANG? Or in Alabama, for that matter? Especially since he was stationed in freaking PITTSBURGH!”
Pointing out facts to Sam Stone is a waste of bytes. He’s so desperate to prove his “War president” (Duhbyas own words) is truly a military man rather than a military slacker, any story goes.
I didn’t say that he wasn’t a ‘military slacker’. My opinion on that matter is close to John Mace’s. But you guys go farther, claiming he’s a deserter or was AWOL. You need to provide evidence for that, and “Gee, no one remembers seeing him” doesn’t stack up against the word of the guard’s personnel officer and Bush’s honorable discharge.
And the personal slams are not appreciated. You don’t need to pop into threads to tell other people about me. They can figure it out for themselves. So cut it out.