Flying to the Comfort Zone

[khaosworks]

Bush's "Top Gun" get-up wasn't just tacky, it was a reminder of one of the most stunning lies ever committed to print by a presidential candidate.
May 2, 2003 | Top gun's photo op

Watching the President emerge onto the flight deck of the U.S.S. Lincoln yesterday afternoon, it occurred to me that memory is the strongest antidote to propaganda. With the cooperation of the Pentagon (and at the expense of the taxpayers), Karl Rove had arranged one of the tackiest, most expensive campaign photo ops in history, but my recollections kept me from becoming absorbed in the macho atmospherics, let alone the President's anticlimactic speech about Iraq.

Rather than determination and grit, what the occasion evoked was Bush's strange Vietnam-era stint as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard. And although Rove no doubt intended that we should all recall Bush's military service, he must have assumed that almost nobody would remember the actual details -- only the "Top Gun" style.

But the details are difficult to forget, even at such inspirational moments. The vague official account presented in Bush's campaign autobiography -- wherein he suggests that he "kept flying" with his Texas Guard unit until he completed his service -- is one of the more egregious prevarications ever committed to print by a presidential candidate. Closer to the true story, in which Bush mysteriously disappears from duty after failing to take his annual physical in 1972, is this account that appeared in the Boston Globe.

For more on Dubya's stint in the Air National Guard and how he got in during the height of the Vietnam War despite scoring 25 percent for pilot aptitude on his Air Force Officers Qualification Test - as low a score as you could get and still be accepted - and 50 percent for navigator aptitude (but 95 percent in 'officer quality'), I direct you to the most excellent book "Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President" by James Hatfield. The book, by the way, the subject of a lawsuit and suppressed by the Bush camp when it was first published just prior to the election, but now available, and updated, in a small press version.

I don't know - it's too easy sometimes. It's almost as if Bush is thinking that since he managed to ram an illegal war down the throats of the American public, he can flaunt his past indiscretions and hypocrisy and nobody will either notice or care, like he's daring us. What scares me is not just this way of thinking - it's also the possibility that he may be right in the end, come the election.