Campaign chairman claims Bush "volunteered to go to Vietnam"

[khaosworks]

Yesterday morning, on NPR, Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot claimed that Bush "signed up for dangerous duty. He volunteered to go to Vietnam. He wasn’t selected to go, but nonetheless served his country very well …"

Josh Marshall talks about this very well, and I have very little to add to it, so rather than rant about it, I'll direct you to his blog, talkingpointsmemo.com and ask that you read starting from here and work your way backwards.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Y'know... if someone wants to volunteer to go in harm's way, we have a number of excellent avenues for that in this country. The US Marine Corps was recruiting pilot officer candidates pretty heavily then, and he could have been trained to fly F-4 Phantoms and gotten some air combat action over Vietnam. Or he could have joined the Navy like his daddy did, and flown off carriers in much the same way that John McCain did. He could have joined the regular Air Force, and pulled a tour of duty flying air defense or ground support out of Da Nang. Joining the Texas Air National Guard, at that time, was not the way to get into where the action was.

In fairness, it was the way to keep his lilly white ass out of the Hanoi Hilton, and I do understand why he'd want to stay away from there. But be honest about it, fer cryin out loud! Don't piss on our hands and tell us it's raining.