Questions remain about President Bush's long-ago service in the Texas Air National Guard. But the basic outline of his Guard service is not in dispute: After a year in flight school, Bush spent five months learning how to fly an F-102 fighter-interceptor and then 22 months as a part-time pilot. He stopped flying in April 1972 -- 30 months before his formal commitment would normally have ended.
Nonetheless, the biography of Bush on the US State Department's website credits him with almost six years in the F-102's cockpit -- two years on active duty flying the plane and nearly four more years of part-time service as an F-102 pilot. The websites of at least five American embassies -- those in Germany, Italy, Pakistan, Vietnam, and South Korea -- use the identical language, even though Bush spent barely two years flying the airplane.
After the 2000 election, when evidence of Bush's abbreviated flying career and his propensity to miss required drills became public, the presidential biography written for the White House website made no mention of the period of Bush's service, only that he served as an F-102 pilot.
But the State Department biography of Bush, which has been on its website since 2001, makes the president out to be more of a frequent flyer than the embellished account in Bush's 1999 autobiography, "A Charge To Keep." In that book, Bush said he flew with his unit for "the next several years" after his five months of training on the F-102 concluded in June 1970.
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2004/02/28/bush_bio_on_web_inflates_guard_service/