Eleanor Clift: Bush's Military Service

Katie

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Sat Jan-31-04 01:31 AM
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Eleanor Clift: Bush's Military Service

Patriot Games
Bush strategists may feel tempted to attack John Kerry’s opposition to Vietnam. Why it’s a battle they can’t win
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Updated: 5:46 p.m. ET Jan. 30, 2004

The voters don't want to refight the Vietnam war, but with John Kerry looking like the likely nominee, Vietnam returns to the front pages. Kerry is accompanied on the campaign trail by the men he served with in the Mekong Delta. "I know a little something about aircraft carriers for real," he says, in an allusion to President George W. Bush's premature "Mission Accomplished" landing last spring on the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Highlighting Kerry's antiwar activism is a risky strategy for the Republicans. To quote Kerry, who quotes the president: "Bring it on." If the election turns into a debate over war records, Bush can't win.

Retired general Wesley Clark was widely criticized for not objecting when left-wing activist Michael Moore called Bush a "deserter" in his presence. Once the pundits finished critiquing the impact on Clark of the presumed gaffe, the next logical question is to ask where Bush was during that year, how he got away with his absenteeism.

Boston Globe reporter Walter Robinson did an exhaustive study of Bush's military service, which was published in May 2000. Robinson concluded that during Bush's final 18 months in the Texas Air National Guard in 1972 and 1973, he did not fly at all and was "all but unaccounted for," with no records to indicate that he attended any of the required drills. Bush was working for a Senate campaign in Alabama for part of the time, and was supposed to appear for duty there, but never did. After the November '72 election, Bush returned to Houston, but he was a no-show there, as well.

He has not been candid about his absences from the Guard. After the Boston Globe story broke in 2000, Bush said through a spokesman that he has "some recollection" of attending drills during the time period in question, but conceded that he was not consistent. Records unearthed by the Globe showed that Bush was removed from flight status in August 1972 for failing to take his annual flight physical. Bush aides said he didn't take the physical because his personal physician was in Houston, and he was in Alabama working on a political campaign. But that explanation didn't hold up because flight physicals must be administered by certified Air Force flight surgeons, and Bush easily could have found one at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala., where he was living.

Kerry's candidacy was elevated when a former Green Beret whose life he saved showed up on the campaign trail in Iowa to attest to Kerry's courage. In addition, former Georgia senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in Vietnam and was defeated in 2002 after GOP attacks on his patriotism, appears regularly with Kerry. Bush can't match that. If he's smart, he won't try.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4114162/