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New questions raised on Bush military record
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-09-09 10:24
U.S. President Bush fell short of meeting his military obligations
during the Vietnam War and was not disciplined despite irregular attendance at
required training drills, The Boston Globe said on Wednesday.
U.S. President
George W. Bush fell short of meeting his military obligations during the
Vietnam War and was not disciplined despite irregular attendance at
required training drills, The Boston Globe said on September 8, 2004. Bush
is seen during his service with Texas Air National Guard in this undated
file photo. [Reuters] | In a probe of the president's
service in the Texas Air National Guard, the newspaper said Bush appeared to
have broken his contract with the U.S. government by not joining an Air Force
Reserve unit when he moved to Massachusetts from Texas in mid-1973.
The White House pointed to five previously released documents to show Bush
was assigned to an Obligated Ready Reserve unit in Denver, Colorado, and was not
required to report to duty in Massachusetts.
"These documents show the president fulfilled his obligations," said White
House spokeswoman Claire Buchan.
The military records of Bush and of his Democratic opponent John Kerry, who
was decorated for service in Vietnam, have featured prominently in the campaign
for the presidential election on Nov. 2.
Republicans have made Bush's leadership of what he calls a global war on
terrorism central to his campaign.
In February, the White House released hundreds of pages of Bush's military
records that showed he was absent for long periods of his final two years of
National Guard duty but said nonetheless he met service requirements.
However, the Globe focused on documents Bush signed in 1968 and 1973 in which
he pledged to meet training commitments or face a punitive call-up to active
duty.
The Globe said in July 1973, before Bush left Houston to attend Harvard
Business School, he signed a document saying: "It is my responsibility to locate
and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation
position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty
for up to 24 months... "
Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett told the Washington Post in 1999 that the future
president had served at a Boston-area Air Force Reserve unit after leaving
Houston. But Bush never joined a Boston-area unit, the Globe said.
"I must have misspoke," Bartlett, now White House communications director,
was quoted as telling the Globe in a recent interview.
White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan, responding to the Globe report on
Wednesday, said, "The president was honored to serve his country. He met his
obligations, and was honorably discharged."
The Globe also looked at a 1968 pledge by Bush in which he committed to
"satisfactory participation" in Guard training.
But the newspaper said he performed no service over a six-month period in
1972 and nearly a three-month stretch in 1973 -- erratic attendance that could
have prompted his superiors to discipline him or order him to active duty in
1972, 1973 or 1974.
Instead, Bush's unit certified in late 1973 that his service had been
"satisfactory," the Globe said.
The National Guard and reserves, rarely called up during the Vietnam War,
came to be regarded as "draft havens for relatively affluent young white men,"
the Air National Guard says in a history on its Internet site.
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