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Sep 8, 2004 Miscellaneous rants about the attacks on Kerry's voting record, and Dubya's alleged military service in the Texas Air National Guard... The Washington Post says this about Kerry's vote on the 87 billion in additional funds for Iraq: "In a floor statement explaining his vote, Kerry said he favored the $67 billion for the troops on the ground -- 'I support our troops in Iraq and their mission' -- but faulted the administration's $20 billion request for reconstruction. He complained that administration 'has only given us a set of goals and vague timetables, not a detailed plan.' "Yesterday, the State Department said that only $1 billion of that money has been spent in the 11 months since the bill was passed." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57627-2004Sep2.html CBS News and 60 Minutes are beating up on Dubya for his lies about serving with honor in the Texas Air National Guard. Col. Jerry Killian, Mr. Bush's squadron commander at Ellington Air Force Base in Texas wrote that he gave Bush "a direct order to take an annual physical examination" and that Bush failed to show up. This was a continual problem, according to other documents from Jerry Killian's files). On August 1, 1972, Col. Killian grounded Lt. Bush for "failure to perform to U.S. Air Force/Texas Air National Guard standards" and for failure to take his annual physical as ordered. Larry Korb, former assistant Secretary of Defense for Ronald Reagan says, "Essentially, Bush gamed the system to avoid serving his country the way that most of his contemporaries had to." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/06/politics/main641481.shtml I decided to donate some money to Texans for Truth, a group running ads questioning Dubya's claims to have honorably served in the National Guard.
Factcheck.Org has this to say about the ads... "Mintz actually adds little to what had previously been known about a six-month gap in Bush's service. The New York Times reported last February that it had interviewed 16 retired officers, pilots and senior enlisted men who served at the unit and found none who recalled Bush attending drills." They quote The Boston Globe as saying: "The reexamination of Bush's records by the Globe, along with interviews with military specialists who have reviewed regulations from that era, show that Bush's attendance at required training drills was so irregular that his superiors could have disciplined him or ordered him to active duty in 1972, 1973, or 1974. But they did neither." So there you have it! The way I interpret all of this is that George W. Bush needs to fulfill his military obligations to the Texas Air National Guard. I guess the only real decision left is, should Dubya be sent to Iraq or to Afghanistan? |