NYTIMES: Portrait of George Bush in '72

[annxburns]

Sorry if a dupe. This must be the article Josh Marshall was talking about ...


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/politics/campaign/20bama.html?pagewanted=1

MONTGOMERY, Ala., Sept. 17 - Nineteen seventy-two was the year George W. Bush dropped off the radar screen.

He abandoned his once-prized status as a National Guard pilot by failing to appear for a required physical. He sought temporary reassignment from the Texas Air National Guard to an Alabama unit but for six months did not show up for training. He signed on as an official in the losing campaign of a Republican Senate candidate in Alabama, and even there he left few impressions other than as an amiable bachelor with a good tennis game and a famous father.

[NYC Liberal]

1. Thanks for the link.

I'm going to save it for reading tomorrow.

BTW, for those who don't want to register, use www.bugmenot.com

[buycitgo]

9. THANK YOU for that!

I love that site, but lost it....bookmarked it this time

I started getting SPAM after signing up to one of those online newspaper sites

this site should be up at the TOP of every DU forum

it's invaluable

EAT it, Washington Post!

BITE me, New York Times

Sit on this, Dallas Morning News

[AmerDem]

2. This part says it all and it's new info!

Mr. Bush, while missing months of the Guard duty that allowed him to avoid Vietnam, was the political director of the Blount campaign, which accused Mr. Sparkman - a hawk on the war - and the national Democrats of supporting "amnesty for all draft dodgers" and of showing "more concern for coddling deserters than for patriotic American young men who have lost their lives in Vietnam.

shrub is such a coward!

[annxburns]

3. Whoa, Bush may have de-frauded the NG!

Money quote ....

"Mr. Lechliter, who describes himself as a political independent, also said that Mr. Bush was not entitled to 20 credits he received from Nov. 13, 1972, until July 19, 1973, because the service was being made up improperly.

Mr. Lechliter also said that Mr. Bush should not have been paid for these sessions. "That would appear to be a fraud," he said in an interview last week."

[RevCheesehead]

12. good point - follow the money

Didn't some of the documents seen in the "circular file" include pay records? And isn't the "destroyed microfiche" from pentagon also related to pay records?

There may be more to come.

[kentuck]

4. He went to the dentist on January 6th, 1973...

But he had a job at the same time in the inner city of Houston??
===================================================================
<snip>
By January 1973, Mr. Bush had a new job, with an inner-city youth program organized by John L. White, a former professional football player who knew his father. And he continued his erratic relationship with the National Guard, where he had 18 months left of his six-year commitment

[buycitgo]

10. is that in the article, Kentuck.....haven't read it yet

HAS there been any determination of exactly what time frame he spent 'helping' those poor unfortunates in the inner city, some of whom he apparently almost killed while trying to fly a planeload of them

[AirAmFan]

5. Thorough article. *'s infamous 'No Vietnam for me!' TANG application

checkoff even gets a mention! This is the first time I've seen it mentioned in the mainstream press:

From http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/politics/campaign/20bama.html?pagewanted=print&position=

"His entree to the Guard had come through Ben Barnes, then the lieutenant governor of Texas, who has said that he helped get Mr. Bush, among other well-connected young men, a slot at the request of a Bush family friend. When Mr. Bush applied, in 1968, one of the forms he filled out asked if he would volunteer for overseas duty; he checked "I 'do not' volunteer for overseas."

[AmerDem]

6. Kick

:kick:

[cheshire]

7. That tennis photo makes him look a bit swishy.

[DeepModem Mom]

8. kick

[buycitgo]

11. WHOAAAA!!!!!!! Ray Bonner!!!??!!

do you know anything about him?

I'm amazed he's working for the NYTimes.....you should check out what happened to his career, as a result of trying to be a real journalist some twenty plus years ago

do a little research on that; you'll be amazed, if you don't know his story

[bklyncowgirl]

13. Very solid article--this is the way it should be done.

Interesting how the candidate he worked for in Alabama used the same sort of smear tactics that the Shrub has continued today. If the article hadn't said that Shrubbie's devotion to the campeign was only slightly greater than his devotion to the National Guard, I might have thought he came up with the idea himself.