So he got paid... did he show up?

[khaosworks]

Bush 1972 payroll records 'found'

The US defence department has released payroll records relating to President George W Bush's service in the Air National Guard in 1972.

Earlier this month the Pentagon said it had inadvertently destroyed the documents, but a spokesman said they have been found in the city of Denver.

Correspondents say they do not shed light on Mr Bush's movements that year.

Democrats have accused the president of ducking the draft call to Vietnam in favour of less dangerous duties.

The White House has released some records in a bid to refute the charges.

'Clerical error'

In 1972 Mr Bush moved to Alabama to work on a political campaign, and opponents say he failed to turn up for guard duties during this time.

The records do not show whether he attended training with the Alabama unit that July, August and September because attendance records are kept separately from payroll records.

A defence spokesman blamed a clerical error for the Pentagon's previous failure to find the microfilm payroll records.

"We're talking about a manual process for records that are over 30 years old," Bryan Hubbard said.

Previously, the Pentagon said the microfilm containing the records had apparently disintegrated as staff were trying to preserve it from decay.

You know, I'm going to sound like a whiner who's not satisfied, but... I'm not satisfied. Whine.

Yeah, they've released the payroll records after people put up a stink about how convenient it was that these records relating to Bush's 1972 training period were "destroyed" while being preserved, but as it turns out, these just say he was paid, not that he was actually there. So what is that claim - that the Pentagon said a few weeks ago when they said that the documents "could have" settled the dispute - really worth? Turns out they couldn't have. Not in the slightest. Sooooo.... worth bupkis. I'm just saying.

Was. He. There? That's what we really want to know, guys. You know that. We know that. So stop pussyfooting around.

Comments

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

I'm a lifelong liberal (or worse), and I'm just not understanding why this individual item is important in a campaign (or outside it). It says a great deal about who and what Bush was at the time—a sociable guy who didn't mind the rules' bending in his favor—but we know and he's acknowledged a larger troubling pattern of his early adulthood, including alcoholism. The statute of limitations has long expired on any aspect of his National Guard service.

The operative question, except to biographers, is whether he is currently a president who doesn't mind the rules' bending in his and his friends' favor. On that issue, there is much substantive evidence. You don't need to go back to 1972 for that.

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

For Bush personally it's not that important - he's a child of privilege, and his behavior... and that of his family... is not surprising. However, it became fair game when he started to challenge Kerry's patriotism.

Like I said, I know it sounds like whining, but confirmation of this is just another bit of evidence that Bush isn't to be trusted. I know there's plenty of other evidence for that, but maybe it's just my legal training... every small piece of circumstantial evidence helps in establishing that final irresistible conclusion.

Besides, it's just fun to watch him squirm.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Two aspects of it catch my attention: First, it's part of Dubya's modus operandi, i.e., trying to do something -- anything -- messing it up and getting bailed out by family friends. The National Guard, Harken, the Texas Rangers, the Texas government, the Iraq war.... He is not merely a child of privilege, and it's not merely a troubling pattern of his early adulthood. As you say, the Statute of Limitations has expired regarding any criminal prosecution of his AWOL status; but the question to me is Has this man ever learned a single lesson about responsibility, given that he has never had to take any?

Second, he and his henchmen have made many attempts to impugn Senator Kerry's military record, going as far as to say he wounded himself superficially to receive at least two of his Purple Hearts. All of the evidence points to Kerry being a brave soldier and an excellent field leader, but those rebuttals come at the wrong point in the news cycle, and the Repubs' seed of doubt is planted in the public consciousness. With the exception of Colin Powell, the entire administration avoided military service, either through simply not being there or through one deferment or another. Cheney took five. And most of these people, the neocons, are the ones who've been telling the experienced military people that they don't know how to run a war, here's how you run a war, except it turned out that the military people were right and the neocons were wrong in pretty much every respect. But guess which ones Dubya listens to?

There's also the fact that the media is still behind Bush, even when they have to make up shit. Check out this story at Atrios, quoting from Judy WOodruff's Inside Politics on CNN, where Judy just pulls one out of her ass and claims it as the summation of an argument, when it is no such thing.

[billroper]

Is it fair to say that Kerry is somehow a better person that Cheney because Cheney got a deferment and Kerry didn't, even though Kerry applied for one?

Here's a report on it

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

Who's been saying that?

[billroper]

Maybe "better person" is the wrong way to phrase it, but see Tom complaining about Cheney's five deferments in the response I replied to.

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

Oh, okay. Just wanted to clarify. :)

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't really have a problem with Bush or Cheney not going to Vietnam, per se. Hell, if I was in their position, I'd probably have tried something similar.

What bothers me, as I've tried to point out in my reply to Sherman above, is the hypocrisy in bringing patriotism up as an issue when the military service records are so disparate. It's the whole glass houses, pot-kettle thing, I suppose.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

What he said. These are the people who impugned Max Cleland as unpatriotic. That, coupled with their gloriously thorough incompetence at pretty much everything they do, but especially in matters military, makes their rhetoric against Kerry (and Wesley Clark and pretty much everyone else in their path) pretty galling.

And I do think Kerry's a better person than Cheney, but that mostly has to do with the scummery of Cheney. It's hard to go lower than the bottom of the barrel.

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

Let me take them one at a time, to explain my different perspective on this.

"First, it's part of Dubya's modus operandi,..."

That's an issue for biographers. I don't think it's a winnable campaign argument.

"Second, he and his henchmen have made many attempts to impugn Senator Kerry's military record, ..."

That's stuck about as well as ping-pong balls on a wall. (The only purpose, I'm fairly well convinced is as red meat for Republican activists and fundraisers.) The more troublesome claim (and the one that's sticking thus far) is that Kerry is a liberal who's afraid of being seen as one (the GOP spin on the flip-flop argument). Attacking Bush on the '72 stuff, or even on the weaseling this year about it, won't address that issue.

Moreover, I've been convinced that the more successful political response to any negative, personal attack in a campaign is the two-pronged response developed by Clinton in '92: deny and pivot. It's helpful if the denial is based on solid, documented fact, but one of the real contributions of Clinton to political style was his use of rhetorical pivots. He did that cleverly when invited back to the White House for the unveiling of his portrait. I don't recall the exact words, but it was something like, "It would be nice if we could have debates over who is right and wrong, not who is good and evil."

"There's also the fact that the media is still behind Bush, ..."

Media bias is a tough thing to pin down and classify. (Any media lepidopterists out there?) The media is drawn to big stories and try to frame them in terms of the big stories. And, in fact, print reporters are trained to look for "an angle" with a story. The verbage there is "newsworthiness," but it's still put in a larger frame. With politics, the big story generally revolves around the establishment. Sometimes it's a grand narrative of the establishment's triumph. Sometimes it's the storming of the castle. Something that doesn't fit into that grand narrative will be quickly dismissed as less newsworthy. And the really sloppy journalists will be caught in the act, as you've noted. But other, better journalists could still say it's not a newsworthy story—not because they're personally biased in favor of Bush (many dismissing the value of the story will vote for Kerry) but because they're biased in favor of stories that fit their most mentally-available grand narratives.

Then there's the issue of clear bias (OutFOXed) and what one guest on Democracy Now called "rough the refs." But if this particular story is downplayed, it's less likely a matter of Rupert Murdochism than the professional blinders of even really good journalists.

I'm convinced that Kerry has a darned good shot at this point. Likely voters are highly dissatisfied with Bush and the small group of undecided voters are going to look closely at their comfort level with Kerry as an alternative to Bush. Kerry's primary task is convincing voters that he's a decent person they can trust with the job. He'll never convince me that he's a chum, but a decent person? Yeah. That's doable.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

We could argue (in the good, classical, Grecian meaning) this all day, but there's no real need. You've got good points, I think I've got some, we both more-or-less agree with slightly different flavors, and we both want Bush the hell out. One small observation: I don't want a chum as President. I'd like a competent, intelligent, caring person who wants to do right by all the people, who sees problems and tries to fix them, and who isn't blinded by ideology one way or the other. The President is in charge of protecting the people and laws of this country. For all their many faults, in some cases for all their violations of ethics and laws, Clinton, and even Reagan (who you know I didn't like) and even Nixon cared about this country in a way that, on a basic level, I think most Americans would agree with.

Dubya and his father, however, seem to regard the office as their due, for being born rich, and their job in it as making things better for their friends and business partners. Screw that noise.

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

We could argue (in the good, classical, Grecian meaning) this all day, but there's no real need. You've got good points, I think I've got some, we both more-or-less agree with slightly different flavors, and we both want Bush the hell out.

Yep. Grecian meaning of "argue?" Nice urn of phrase.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Ode-ee pain.

[cheshyre]

Have you seen http://www.democrats.org/wherewasbush/ ?

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Since I spent some years dinking around with the Reserve pay system, I'll toss in a comment. Members of the Guard and Reserve get paid for attending drills. That means their name has to show up on a muster report. In a typical drill weekend there are four drills, two each day. (Morning and afternoon, Saturday and Sunday) If he got paid, it means he either made muster or whoever filled out the muster report submitted a false report. But in either case, we can take the fact he was paid as proof that his name was on the muster report.

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

The question then, if the fact that he was paid means his name was on the muster report, does the payroll indicate which days he appeared on the muster? I'd like to compare that with the days he is known to have been attending the Republican National Convention with his father in '72, among other dates, to see if we can track his training schedule. Or lack thereof.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I don't think a 1972 vintage Leave and Earnings Statement would have shown the drill dates, though a modern LES would. The muster reports would show the specific drill dates, but I don't think those have been found. From what I've gathered, the records that have been made available are microfiche copies of his LES's.

It's also worth noting that Reserve pilots often perform "alternative drills" where they come in sometime during the month when the unit as a whole isn't drilling, and fly continental air defense patrols. If he was at the convention, he probably got his drill time in via this method. Lots of pilots do it, and the Air Force loves it because it means they have Reserve support for more than just one weekend a month.