Category Archives: Politics: US: GW Bush Scandals

In today's must-read, Calpundit: An Interview With Bill Burkett elevates the “cleansed” Bush service files story from the tinfoil hat level to the ohmyg*dthiscantbetruecanit level. I still hope it's not true, for all our sakes, and because I'd like Bush to lose the election on principle, not lack of character. Also, I worry about smear accusations; if the press decides they are false, they rebound badly (actually, the rule doesn't seem to apply to wingnuts, but it sure applies to Democrats).

But true or false, it's in play now.

Talking Points memo links to an AP story with this amazing graph about the White House's release of a GW Bush dental record, vintage 1973, which it says places him at Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Alabama at least on the day he went in for free treatment:

“The White House obtained the dental record, along with other medical records it did not release, from the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, Colo., McClellan said. The record was accompanied by a statement from Dr. Richard J. Tubb, the president's current physician, who stated that he read Bush's records, which covered a period from 1968 to 1973, and concurred with the doctors' assertion that Bush was “fit” for service. “The records reflect no disqualifying medical information,” Tubb said.

OK. Let's take this slowly.

1. Bush promises on TV to release everything.
2. They try to take it back.
3. They release a clean and whole version of the “torn document”.
4. The press gets feral.
5. Which brings us up to today: the modified limited hangout stage of ineffective damage control.
6. Next we will get vicious speculation and more vicious jokes about what medical condition Bush is hiding which is both embarrassing enough to be worth the flack yet not so serious that a physician would say it didn't “disqualify” him from…what exactly? Not flying?
7. The final step in these dramas is either the White House caves, or they manage to deflect attention to an opponent's “gaffe,” or — Look! An international crisis!

The mind boggles at what could be on these medical records which is worth the grief that is going to flow to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in the next few days. Low IQ scores? Plastic surgery? Detox? Syphilis? Gonorrhea? (I'm not alleging any of this—just trying to imagine what would be worth the effort to cover up.)

Meanwhile, this looks like a job for Jay Leno.

The bigtime bloggers are out in force on GW Bush's attempt to weasel out of his promise to release all the records that might substantiate or disprove his claims about his military service so I won't bother piling on.

• Kevin Drum (Calpundit), Releasing the Bush Records
• Mark A. R. Kleiman, More evidence that the President's word isn't worth the spit behind it who kindly cites to
  • Bush's press secretary's sidestepping it all
  • An LA Times story on what records must exist and how one would get them

Irrelevant bonus feature: The madeup poll everyone believed.

Calpudit has new theories on the “Torn Document” at the heart of the did-GW-show-up mystery. Some of the commentators in that thread are sceptical, and I'm just confused.

Meanwhile, one has to wonder, if he did show up somewhere during the missing months, why isn't there a single witness to the event willing to come forward?

Bush with Russert. First it's an unequivocal promise to release everything. Then he seemingly takes it back by saying “We did so in 2000”.

MSNBC – Transcript for Feb. 8th. Russert: When allegations were made about John McCain or Wesley Clark on their military records, they opened up their entire files. Would you agree to do that?

President Bush: Yeah. Listen, these files I mean, people have been looking for these files for a long period of time, trust me, and starting in the 1994 campaign for governor. And I can assure you in the year 2000 people were looking for those files as well. Probably you were. And absolutely. I mean, I

Russert: But would you allow pay stubs, tax records, anything to show that you were serving during that period?

President Bush: Yeah. If we still have them, but I you know, the records are kept in Colorado, as I understand, and they scoured the records.

And I'm just telling you, I did my duty, and it's politics, you know, to kind of ascribe all kinds of motives to me. But I have been through it before. I'm used to it. What I don't like is when people say serving in the Guard is is may not be a true service.

Russert: Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?

President Bush: Yes, absolutely.

We did so in 2000, by the way.

Does this mean the missing stuff gets released, or that we're in for a week more of Press Secretary stonewalling (“As the President said, we realeased all that in 2000”)? Or are the files well and truly 'sanitized'?

One of the more mysterious aspects of the GW Bush National Guard dust up is that presumably the ex-1st Lieutenant could clear it up any time by releasing his service records. And as Bush supporters are fond of saying, he did get an 'honorable discharge' didn't he? So how bad could it be? By not releasing the information, Mr. Bush makes the speculation all but inevitable—might there be something ugly tucked in there somewhere?

The problem, of course, is given what has been released (and leaving aside the known scandal to which we are all desensitized of how Bush got into the Guard), the only visible problem is gaps, and the issue of how they got papered over. The public portions of the military record show no signs of anything discreditable except Not Showing Up when obligated to do so. (Various inferences about why are of course possible — lack of caring, fear of drug tests, inebriation, etc., but again these are old news and long ago and not likely to be that damaging politically.) So what could it possibly be?

I got to thinking of an old footnote in an old article of mine on the Clipper Chip:

In the 1970s the Pentagon admitted that the Army was stamping discharge papers with 530 different “SPN” code numbers that gave savvy employers derogatory information about servicemen, including some with honorable discharges. The codes did not appear on discharge papers issued to servicemen but were available to employers who asked for more detailed records. Classifications included “drug abuse,” “disloyal or subversive security program,” “homosexual tendency,” “unsuitability—apathy, defective attitudes and inability to expend effort constructively,” and “unsuitability—enuresis [bed wetting].” See Dana A. Schmidt, Pentagon Using Drug-Abuse Code, N.Y. Times, Mar. 1, 1972, at 11. Receipt of antiwar literature sufficed to be classified as disloyal or subversive. See Peter Kihss, Use of Personal- Characterization Coding on Military Discharges Is Assailed, N.Y. Times, Sept. 30, 1973, at 46. In response to public pressure, the Pentagon abandoned the program and reissued discharge papers without the codes. See Pentagon Abolishes Code on Discharges of Military Misfits, N.Y. Times, Mar. 23, 1974, at 64; Uncoded Discharge Papers Are Offered to Veterans, N.Y. Times, April 28, 1974, at 33.

From this, it looks like the Pentagon stopped using these codes in early 1974, at least for the Army. Phil Carter reports that the National Guard used an equivalent, but slightly different, set of discharge forms from the Army's. I wonder if, like the Army, the National Guard also had derogatory codes attached even to “honorable” discharges, and if so, what they were, and when they stopped using them?

GW Bush's discharge date on his NGB 22 (the Guard's equivalent of the Army's DD 214) is Oct '73 — even before the Army stopped using its codes. Could this be what all the secrecy is about?