by Thomas Lipscomb

   President George W. Bush has had a ten days beginning with the Tim 
Russert “Meet the Press” interview of Democratic National Committee 
Chairman Terry McCauliffe on Feb 1 who charged that Bush was “AWOL” and “never served in the military.” Only a week later President Bush asked to appear on the Russert show in a clear attempt to stem the damage from these charges. For over a week they were endlessly repeated and never analyzed 
by the news media.
   But the only basis for these charges was summarized by the London 
Sunday Telegraph on February 8 “If the Vietnam veteran John Kerry 
becomes the next President, there will be one man to thank above all others:
retired Brigadier General William Turnipseed.” 

   It all started with a report questioning Bush’s National Guard service during the Presidential election in 2000 by The Boston Globe. Walter Robinson, the
only Pulitzer Prize winning reporter to ever be successfully sued for libel,  cited retired Brigadier General William Turnipseed of the Alabama Air  National Guard as his source. 
   But in an interview General Turnipseed stated that Robinson’s reporting of  their conversation was either distorted or based upon his misunderstanding of how the military functioned at the time of Bush’s Guard service. For Bush to 
be “AWOL” or “Away Without Leave” he had to have been assigned to a 
unit and under its command. If Bush was not under Turnipseed’s command 
whatever he might have said to Robinson has no more authority than the  
opinions of any other Alabama National Guardsman that might have served  
with Bush at the time.

   Turnipseed states that Bush was never ordered to report to the Alabama 
Air National Guard.  Turnipseed points out that Bush never transferred from
the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama Air National Guard. He 
remained in the Texas Air National Guard during his stay in Alabama. This 
was confirmed by the Texas National Guard. And Turnipseed added that 
Bush was never under his command or any other officer in the Alabama Air
National Guard.
   Turnipseed added that Bush was simply informed of the drill schedule of 
the Alabama Air National Guard as a courtesy so that he could get credit for drills while in Alabama for his service record in the Texas Guard. There was
no compulsory attendance and it was customary for visiting members of other state Air National Guard units to attend drills at his unit to accumulate drill 
credit towards the completion of their six year service requirement in effect at the time. That would reduce the number of makeup drills they would have to
attend when they returned to their home unit. This was also confirmed by the
Texas National Guard.

   Senator John Kerry got in on the act asking on Sunday “was he [Bush] 
present and active on duty in Alabama at the times he was supposed to be? I don't have the answer to that question… .” But as Turnipseed points out 
Bush was never “supposed to be” anything in Alabama. His attendance at 
drills there was as a courtesy, not an order. He could just as easily have 
attended drills in any of the other 48 states besides Texas and Alabama. And Kerry doesn’t have ”the answer to that question” because he is taking 
advantage of a partisan political fantasy that has stayed aloft this long because of the lousy job done by the press in reporting on it.

   Now that the damage has been done, Robinson is beginning to have  second thoughts. His latest column on the matter states: “President Bush  received credit for attending Air National Guard drills in the fall of 1972 and  spring of 1973 -- a period when his commanders have said he did not appear
for duty at bases in Montgomery, Ala., and Houston -- according to two new documents obtained by the Globe.”  How could Robinson have gotten it so wrong and how can it have taken the press so long to find these “new”  documents?
   The most charitable explanation for this distortion is the almost total  ignorance of members of the press of the realities of military service and its associated record keeping. Yet Turnipseed has been repeatedly called by  news organizations since the original Boston Globe reporting four years ago  and no one has chosen to correct the errors he has tried to point out or cover his denials.

   The most startling aspect of this story is that the press has continually  treated this affair as a political debate based upon conflicting opinions rather  than a matter of recorded fact. Any question of Bush’s service can be quickly answered by looking at the military record. 
   An Air National Guard officer like George Bush left an extensive paper trail of service. Some records are simply thrown out after a certain period of time But the vital summary sheet of that record is a simple form called the DD214 Some National Guard units use a similar form called the NGB 22. It covers  all the basic questions being asked about Bush today. Every veteran of  military service has one. It is required in applications for Veterans’  Administration housing loans, any VA health benefits, or even membership in organizations like the American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars. 

   Senator John Kerry has one. On it are listed his dates of service, the nature of his discharge, whether honorable or conditional because of infractions of  any kind, and the medals and service ribbons he has every reason to be  proud of. It was filed away at the time of discharge and is almost impossible to alter. 
   No one who “deserted” as film maker Michael Moore originally charged  would have that fact omitted from his DD214. And no one knows that more than General Wesley Clark who spent his life in the miltary and claimed  disingenuously not to have had a chance to look into the charge raised by his supporter Moore just as Senator Kerry professes not to “have the answer” either.

   For all their pretended confusion about the issue, both Kerry and Clark  know from their own experience that no officer who had not met the  requirements of his six year service obligation to the satisfaction of his unit  commander would have been granted an honorable discharge. 

   Using the Freedom of Information Act, the author of the prize-winning  book STOLEN VALOR, B.G. Burkett, looked up hundreds of DD214s. His research showed how fake “Vietnam veterans” claiming to be war heroes and war criminals had been duping members of the press for decades. They had filled hours of television time and hundreds of “news” stories with lies  exactly like the ones Vietnam Veterans Against the War spokesman John  Kerry recited in his testimony before the Senate back in April 1971. Did a  single member of the thousands in the press take the trouble to look up just  one DD214 or NGB22 --President Bush’s? 
   Apparently not. And that is the saddest part of the story. Jayson Blair was discharged from The New York Times for making up stories. What about  reporters who let their medium be used as a means of doing major damage to the reputation of any public figure without even a minimal attempt to check  the record first? Moore and McCauliffe can at least plead the temporary  
insanity defense offered the Democrats so infuriated by Bush by former  psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer. But what excuse does the press have for  one of the most embarrassing episodes in American journalism?

   After all, there was already an exhaustive look at Bush’s National Guard  records published and available on the Internet to any reporter who has  written on this in the last week from Katharine Seelye at The New York  Times to Richard Cohen at The Washington Post… neither of whom seem to have looked it up.. It’s title? “The Real Military Record of George W. Bush: 
Not Heroic, But Not AWOL, Either.” It was “the first full chronology…  . Its basic conclusions… he did accumulate the days of service required of him for his ultimate honorable discharge.”

   The article included the evidence of the pasteup pay records just released by the White House. It also included the material in the “two new documents obtained by the Globe”  by Robinson from left wing activist Bob Fertig.
    It was published four long years ago---just a few weeks before the 2000 Presidential election in George Magazine. Its publisher was that well-known  GOP supporter-- the late John F. Kennedy, Jr.
 

© 2004 Thomas Lipscomb