Dixie Chicks schtick gets quick pick

“Hey at least you don't need a stratdewd decoder ring to read him!”

“you have a masters and johnson, phb”

“LMAO! very true.

my dad would love that hat, Tilt! which is to say, i wouldn't be caught dead wearing it.
;-)

well...thanks for the umm "invitation" there, ynami!”

“So we decided who hot bear is?”

“Hey, Tree, so good to have the day off to be able to talk to my fellow commie. I don't remember that episode of Twilight Zone, but our family was big fans back then. BTW, I just finished reading your senator's (Hillary) book, "Living History". Makes a person wonder why some people are so vehemently opposed to her. She seems like a pragmatist more than a whacked-out lefty, but that's the opinion of a "lib".”

“any liberal with a strong personality is an immediate target for the rancorous right”

“Hey Dun. It was a great TZ episode. The guy was a McCarthyist type who had a commie hang-up. There is a twist on the ending, but I won't blow that for you.

Anyway, in observing Hillary C doing her job, she has basically fought for a lot of the things in this state that I support. A lot of folks can't stand her personality, so no matter what she does, ishe will always carry the stigma placed on her. I voted for her, and so far, not sorry I did...”

“How does Tom T. get away with calling the President a coke head.

There is no proof.

Liberals tell Lies, because they know if they tell a lie often enough people will believe them.

That does not make them truths.”

“Why am I not surprised you voted for Hillary?”

“if they tell a lie often enough people will believe them.
bacpac
01:06:17 PM”

“I think Hillary would make a fine President.”

“If Hillary is ever elected this country will collapse within 20 years of her taking office.”

“"bacpac" has it ass-backwards.

lyra, please come back!”

“I don’t mean to automatically shoot down a link as invalid but come people. Can this AWOLBush really be called valid? Like I said before, it’s like getting racism facts from the KKK or Holocaust facts from skinheads. Really is this the only source you can come up with in the vastness of the internet? This is a huge story and ya can’t tell me the networks wouldn’t pick it up. CNN would love this chit. Duna, thanks for the book title but I don’t have that book.

And what of the cokehead reference? No proof there either? The fact are quickly separating form the rhetoric here.”

“Nigal. Have you heard of the Boston Globe?

They actually broke the story on the Bush AWOL incident.”

“Really Nigal, the KKK and skinhead characterization is lame, but clever.

You are learning a lot from right-wing pundits......good puppy!”

“It's a matter of the source Tom. That's not lame.

Chili- Thanks for naming the source. I'll see what I can find. Any idea why no one else seems to have picked it up?”

“What's wrong with the source?

You can't expect the truth from the RNC.”

“I'm not sure, Nig. But, casting away the arguments about whether it's a right slated press or left slanted press out there, Bush has managed to keep a relatively squeaky clean image up to now. There have been opportunities to rip into him, but the status quo seems to protect his image. In other words, the press seems willing to go only so far in rattling cages when it comes to the White House. Yeah, you hear a little about this and that. But, for the most part, this guy has led a charmed life. This is a scandal ridden society. His dealings at Harken could have generated more scrutiny. Hell, Halliburton was let off the hook about that gas price thing today by the Army Corps of Engineers, and except for a little mention on the news this morning, nothing is being said about it. That investigation didn't involve much, it seems. So, I'm not surprised that I don't hear about some of these things. Just my 2 pennies...”

“"What's wrong with the source?

You can't expect the truth from the RNC."

Hell no and I wouldn't take the RNC as a viable source either.

Treebeard, thanks for the thoughts. I think the bottm line comes to this...the media sucks donkey balls.”

“Yeah, they do, buddy. That they do!”

“And Ditz-ney Spears gets two days of headlines from a mock marriage...”

“Whatever happened to reporting the facts weather it’s what we wanna hear or not?”

“Nigal: TT's RALPH PETERS”

“Doesn't seem to play that way much of the time anymore.”

“

1-year gap in Bush's Guard duty

No record of airman at drills from 1972-73

By Walter V. Robinson, Globe Staff,
5/23/2000

AUSTIN, Texas - After George W. Bush became governor in 1995,
the Houston Air National Guard unit he had served with during the
Vietnam War years honored him for his work, noting that he flew
an F-102 fighter-interceptor until his discharge in October 1973.

And Bush himself, in his 1999 autobiography, ''A Charge to
Keep,'' recounts the thrills of his pilot training, which he
completed in June 1970. ''I continued flying with my unit for the
next several years,'' the governor wrote.

But both accounts are contradicted by copies of Bush's
military records, obtained by the Globe. In his final 18 months
of military service in 1972 and 1973, Bush did not fly at all.
And for much of that time, Bush was all but unaccounted for: For
a full year, there is no record that he showed up for the
periodic drills required of part-time guardsmen.

Bush, who declined to be interviewed on the issue, said
through a spokesman that he has ''some recollection'' of
attending drills that year, but maybe not consistently.

From May to November 1972, Bush was in Alabama working in a US
Senate campaign, and was required to attend drills at an Air
National Guard unit in Montgomery. But there is no evidence in
his record that he did so. And William Turnipseed, the retired
general who commanded the Alabama unit back then, said in an
interview last week that Bush never appeared for duty there.

After the election, Bush returned to Houston. But seven months
later, in May 1973, his two superior officers at Ellington Air
Force Base could not perform his annual evaluation covering the
year from May 1, 1972 to April 30, 1973 because, they wrote,
''Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period
of this report.''

Bush, they mistakenly concluded, had been training with the
Alabama unit for the previous 12 months. Both men have since
died. But Ellington's top personnel officer at the time, retired
Colonel Rufus G. Martin, said he had believed that First
Lieutenant Bush completed his final year of service in Alabama.

A Bush spokesman, Dan Bartlett, said after talking with the
governor that Bush recalls performing some duty in Alabama and
''recalls coming back to Houston and doing [Guard] duty, though
he does not recall if it was on a consistent basis.''

Noting that Bush, by that point, was no longer flying,
Bartlett added, ''It's possible his presence and role became
secondary.''

Last night, Mindy Tucker, another Bush campaign aide, asserted
that the governor ''fulfilled all of his requirements in the
Guard.'' If he missed any drills, she said, he made them up later
on.

Under Air National Guard rules at the time, guardsmen who
missed duty could be reported to their Selective Service Board
and inducted into the Army as draftees.

If Bush's interest in Guard duty waned, as spokesman Bartlett
hinted, the records and former Guard officials suggest that
Bush's unit was lackadaisical in holding him to his commitment.
Many states, Texas among them, had a record during the Vietnam
War of providing a haven in the Guard for the sons of the
well-connected, and a tendency to excuse shirking by those with
political connections.

Those who trained and flew with Bush, until he gave up flying
in April 1972, said he was among the best pilots in the 111th
Fighter-Interceptor Squadron. In the 22-month period between the
end of his flight training and his move to Alabama, Bush logged
numerous hours of duty, well above the minimum requirements for
so-called ''weekend warriors.''

Indeed, in the first four years of his six-year commitment,
Bush spent the equivalent of 21 months on active duty, including
18 months in flight school. His Democratic opponent, Vice
President Al Gore, who enlisted in the Army for two years and
spent five months in Vietnam, logged only about a month more
active service, since he won an early release from service.

Still, the puzzling gap in Bush's military service is likely
to heighten speculation about the conspicuous underachievement
that marked the period between his 1968 graduation from Yale
University and his 1973 entry into Harvard Business School. It is
speculation that Bush has helped to fuel: For example, he refused
for months last year to say whether he had ever used illegal
drugs. Subsequently, however, Bush amended his stance, saying
that he had not done so since 1974.

The period in 1972 and 1973 when Bush sidestepped his military
obligation coincides with a well-publicized incident during the
1972 Christmas holidays: Bush had a confrontation with his
father after he took his younger brother, Marvin, out drinking
and returned to the family's Washington home after knocking over
some garbage cans on the ride home.

In his autobiography, Bush says that his decision to go to
business school the following September was ''a turning point for
me.''

Assessing Bush's military service three decades later is no
easy task: Some of his superiors are no longer alive. Others
declined to comment, or, understandably, cannot recall details
about Bush's comings and goings. And as Bush has risen in public
life over the last several years, Texas military officials have
put many of his records off-limits and heavily redacted many
other pages, ostensibly because of privacy rules.

But 160 pages of his records, assembled by the Globe from a
variety of sources and supplemented by interviews with former
Guard officials, paint a picture of an Air Guardsman who enjoyed
favored treatment on several occasions.

The ease of Bush's entry into the Air Guard was widely
reported last year. At a time when such billets were coveted and
his father was a Houston congressman, Bush vaulted to the top of
a waiting list of 500. Bush and his father have denied that he
received any preferential treatment. But last year, Ben Barnes,
who was speaker of the Texas House in 1968, said in a sworn
deposition in a civil lawsuit that he called Guard officials
seeking a Guard slot for Bush after a friend of Bush's father
asked him to do so.

Before he went to basic training, Bush was approved for an
automatic commission as a second lieutenant and assignment to
flight school despite a score of just 25 percent on a pilot
aptitude test. Such commissions were not uncommon, although most
often they went to prospective pilots who had college ROTC
courses or prior Air Force experience. Bush had neither.

In interviews last week, Guard officials from that era said
Bush leapfrogged over other applicants because few applicants
were willing to commit to the 18 months of flight training or the
inherent dangers of flying.

As a pilot, the future governor appeared to do well. After
eight weeks of basic training in the summer of 1968 - and a
two-month break to work on a Senate race in Florida - Bush
attended 55 weeks of flight school at Moody Air Force Base in
Georgia, from November 1968 to November 1969, followed by five
months of full-time training on the F-102 back at Ellington.

Retired Colonel Maurice H. Udell, Bush's instructor in the
F-102, said he was impressed with Bush's talent and his attitude.
''He had his boots shined, his uniform pressed, his hair cut and
he said, `Yes, sir' and `No, sir,''' the instructor recalled.

Said Udell, ''I would rank him in the top 5 percent of pilots
I knew. And in the thinking department, he was in the top 1
percent. He was very capable and tough as a boot.''

But 22 months after finishing his training, and with two years
left on his six-year commitment, Bush gave up flying - for good,
it would turn out. He sought permission to do ''equivalent
training'' at a Guard unit in Alabama, where he planned to work
for several months on the Republican Senate campaign of Winton
Blount, a friend of Bush's father. The proposed move took Bush
off flight status, since no Alabama Guard unit had the F-102 he
was trained to fly.

At that point, starting in May 1972, First Lieutenant Bush
began to disappear from the Guard's radar screen.

When the Globe first raised questions about this period
earlier this month, Bartlett, Bush's spokesman, referred a
reporter to Albert Lloyd Jr., a retired colonel who was the Texas
Air Guard's personnel director from 1969 to 1995.

Lloyd, who a year ago helped the Bush campaign make sense of
the governor's military records, said Bush's aides were concerned
about the gap in his records back then.

On May 24, 1972, after he moved to Alabama, Bush made a formal
request to do his equivalent training at the 9921st Air Reserve
Squadron at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Two days later,
that unit's commander, Lieutenant Colonel Reese H. Bricken,
agreed to have Bush join his unit temporarily.

In Houston, Bush's superiors approved. But a higher
headquarters disapproved, noting that Bricken's unit did not have
regular drills.

''We met just one weeknight a month. We were only a postal
unit. We had no airplanes. We had no pilots. We had no nothing,''
Bricken said in an interview.

Last week, Lloyd said he is mystified why Bush's superiors at
the time approved duty at such a unit.

Inexplicably, months went by with no resolution to Bush's
status - and no Guard duty. Bush's evident disconnection from his
Guard duties was underscored in August, when he was removed from
flight status for failing to take his annual flight physical.

Finally, on Sept. 5, 1972, Bush requested permission to do
duty for September, October, and November at the 187th Tactical
Recon Group in Montgomery. Permission was granted, and Bush was
directed to report to Turnipseed, the unit's commander.

In interviews last week, Turnipseed and his administrative
officer at the time, Kenneth K. Lott, said they had no memory of
Bush ever reporting.

''Had he reported in, I would have had some recall, and I do
not,'' Turnipseed said. ''I had been in Texas, done my flight
training there. If we had had a first lieutenant from Texas, I
would have remembered.''

Lloyd, the retired Texas Air Guard official, said he does not
know whether Bush performed duty in Alabama. ''If he did, his
drill attendance should have been certified and sent to
Ellington, and there would have been a record. We cannot find the
records to show he fulfilled the requirements in Alabama,'' he
said.

Indeed, Bush's discharge papers list his service and duty
station for each of his first four years in the Air Guard. But
there is no record of training listed after May 1972, and no
mention of any service in Alabama. On that discharge form, Lloyd
said, ''there should have been an entry for the period between
May 1972 and May 1973.''

Said Lloyd, ''It appeared he had a bad year. He might have
lost interest, since he knew he was getting out.''

In an effort last year to solve the puzzle, Lloyd said he
scoured Guard records, where he found two ''special orders''
commanding Bush to appear for active duty on nine days in May
1973. That is the same month that Lieutenant Colonel William D.
Harris Jr. and Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian effectively
declared Bush missing from duty.

In Bush's annual efficiency report, dated May 2, 1973, the two
supervising pilots did not rate Bush for the prior year, writing,
''Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period
of report. A civilian occupation made it necessary for him to
move to Montgomery, Alabama. He cleared this base on 15 May 1972
and has been performing equivalent training in a non-flying
status with the 187 Tac Recon Gp, Dannelly ANG Base, Alabama.''

Asked about that declaration, campaign spokesman Bartlett said
Bush told him that since he was no longer flying, he was doing
''odds and ends'' under different supervisors whose names he
could not recall.

But retired colonel Martin, the unit's former administrative
officer, said he too thought Bush had been in Alabama for that
entire year. Harris and Killian, he said, would have known if
Bush returned to duty at Ellington. And Bush, in his
autobiography, identifies the late colonel Killian as a friend,
making it even more likely that Killian knew where Bush was.

Lieutenant Bush, to be sure, had gone off flying status when
he went to Alabama. But had he returned to his unit in November
1972, there would have been no barrier to him flying again,
except passing a flight physical. Although the F-102 was being
phased out, his unit's records show that Guard pilots logged
thousands of hours in the F-102 in 1973.

During his search, Lloyd said, the only other paperwork he
discovered was a single torn page bearing Bush's social security
number and numbers awarding some points for Guard duty. But the
partial page is undated. If it represents the year in question,
it leaves unexplained why Bush's two superior officers would have
declared him absent for the full year.

There is no doubt that Bush was in Houston in late 1972 and
early 1973. During that period, according to Bush's
autobiography, he held a civilian job working for an inner-city,
antipoverty program in the city.

Lloyd, who has studied the records extensively, said he is an
admirer of the governor and believes ''the governor honestly
served his country and fulfilled his commitment.''

But Lloyd said it is possible that since Bush had his sights
set on discharge and the unit was beginning to replace the
F-102s, Bush's superiors told him he was not ''in the flow chart.
Maybe George Bush took that as a signal and said, `Hell, I'm not
going to bother going to drills.'

''Well, then it comes rating time, and someone says, `Oh...he
hasn't fulfilled his obligation.' I'll bet someone called him up
and said, `George, you're in a pickle. Get your ass down here and
perform some duty.' And he did,'' Lloyd said.

That would explain, Lloyd said, the records showing Bush
cramming so many drills into May, June, and July 1973. During
those three months, Bush spent 36 days on duty.

Bush's last day in uniform before he moved to Cambridge was
July 30, 1973. His official release from active duty was dated
Oct. 1, 1973, eight months before his six-year commitment was
scheduled to end.

Officially, the period between May 1972 and May 1973 remains
unaccounted for. In November 1973, responding to a request from
the headquarters of the Air National Guard for Bush's annual
evaluation for that year, Martin, the Ellington administrative
officer, wrote, ''Report for this period not available for
administrative reasons.''

This story ran on page 01A of the Boston Globe
on 5/23/2000.

© 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.

Bush defends Guard record, disputes report
on missing duty

By Walter V. Robinson, Globe Staff,
5/24/2000

Texas Governor George W. Bush insisted
yesterday that he fulfilled his military obligation and disputed
parts of a Boston Globe report that there is no evidence that he
appeared for duty for a year just before his 1973 discharge from
the Texas Air National Guard.

''I did the duty necessary ... That's why I was honorably
discharged,'' Bush told reporters traveling on his campaign plane
to Ohio, according to the Associated Press.

Bush, who was assigned to a Houston Air National Guard base
from 1968 to 1973, acknowledged, however, that he fulfilled his
Guard duties at irregular intervals.

The Globe report, based upon extensive records of his service
and interviews with former Guard officials, disclosed that Bush,
who was a fighter pilot, ceased flying in April 1972 - 18 months
before his discharge in October, 1973.

In May 1972, the Globe found, Bush moved to Alabama to work in
a political campaign. But there is no record that he ever
appeared for duty at the Alabama Guard unit where he was slated
for duty. The unit's commander at the time, retired General
William Turnipseed, said Bush did not appear for duty there.

''I read the comments from the guy who said he doesn't
remember me being there, but I remember being there,'' Bush said
of Turnipseed's remarks, the AP reported.

Bush's records contain no evidence that he did any Guard duty
in Alabama. In May 1973, seven months after he returned to
Houston, two of Bush's commanding officers, one of them a friend,
wrote that Bush had not ''been observed'' at his Houston unit
during the previous 12 months.

Just after that report, the records show numerous instances of
Bush pulling Guard duty. In May, June, and July 1973, Bush spent
36 days on Guard duty. He was discharged soon thereafter to
attend Harvard Business School.

The Texas Air Guard's former personnel officer, retired
Colonel Albert Lloyd Jr., told the Globe that the records
suggested to him that Bush was summoned to do the intensive duty
near the end of his service after his superiors discovered he had
not been attending drills.

This story ran on page A8 of the Boston Globe
on 5/24/2000.

© 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.

”

“Finally! Thank you. Consider this one point for your team.”

“Avoid the War by protesting and "avoiding" service...or avoid the war by supporting it and "avoiding" service.

In that instance, I will at least go with the honest guy
chili36
12:08:23 PM
01/06/04

I don't find any honor in either situation, and question the values of someone who does. It's a pretty weak argument when you say "At least Clinton was open in his manner of draft-dodging" Wow, there's something to latch onto! What a great country we have become.”

“Hey! If the service was good enough for Elvis it's good enough for everyone!”

“any liberal with a strong personality is an immediate target for the rancorous right"
StormBringer
01:00:03 PM
01/06/04

any conservative with a strong personality is an immediate target for the lowbrow left.”

“SMW, I don't find honor in either situation either. But if there is anything I don't like more than a liar, it is a hypocritical liar.

With Clinton you got, here is what I did, I didn't expect anyone to go to Vietnam, I was opposed to Vietnam.

With Bush you get, here is what I did, all on my own and above and beyond the call of duty and it had nothing to do with not wanting to go to Vietnam and I supported the war in Vietnam and people who dodged the draft were wrong.

Hell, if you supported the war in Vietnam, wtf was he doing hanging out in the Texas National Guard?

Hell no he didn't want to go. He found out how not to go, and didn't go. Of course with all the breaks he got in getting into the ANG, he decided he didn't need to complete that either.

No, no honor in either situation. But IMHO, there is a lot less hyporcisy in at least one of them.”

“My life has been a litany of failure, dashed expectations, and unfulfilled dreams, but at least it's almost over.”

“Let's put the shoe on the other foot. Given the years and millions of dollars spent on hounding Clinton with Whitewater, don't you think if he had had Harken in his past, (as does our current president), there would be a special counsel appointed? I mean, really, don't you think the neo-cons would hunt him like a dog until they found something, or at least cast aspersions for years?
GW is getting off easy, no matter if some think it's "Jihad Bush!".”