"What distinguishes the New Right from other American reactionary movements and what it shares with the early phase of German fascism, is its incorporation of conservative impulses into a system of representation consisting largely of media techniques and media images — Philip Bishop: "The New Right and the Media"
George W. Bush Military Record — and Recent Behavior (1980, 1990, and 2000) Pertaining to Military Records In these days of guys who never fought in Vietnam advocating a tricky engagement in Iraq, it is interesting to see what George W. Bush did in the military, how he misrepresented it, and what's been done recently to make sure no one notices. Mr. Bush, whose permission to fly was revoked by the military (he was suspended, assigned to a disciplinary unit and not allowed to fly military assignments again) liked to portray himself to voters as a “fighter pilot.” But his embellishments didn’t stop there:
Date: 08/19/88 Houston Chronicle article by R. G. Ratliffe "Asked how he got into the Air National Guard, Bush said, ‘They could sense I was going to be one of the great pilots of all time.’”
Date: 1999 autobiography A Charge to Keep by George W. Bush Among the questionable claims in Mr. Bush's autobiography is that he tried to volunteer for service in Vietnam "to relieve active-duty pilots." He did not volunteer for service in Vietnam; in fact, he failed to report for duty in his Air National Guard Unit and skipped off to Alabama to work on a political campaign.
In his book, Mr. Bush offers a lovely-sounding (but bald-faced) lie to describe his F-102 fighter pilot experience: "I continued flying with my unit for the next several years," he writes, but in fact he was suspended from flight duty in August 1972 and didn't fly at all for the last two years of his service. (He also didn't show up for duty.)
Further along in his autobiography, Mr. Bush says his military service "gave me respect for the chain of command." Well, that is an odd way to describe ignoring two direct orders to appear for duty. He was then assigned to a disciplinary unit in Denver, and he didn't show up for that either.
During September 2002, CNN aired a prepared set of videotapes glorifying the elder George Bush's military career. Well, they certainly couldn't glorify anything about the younger Bush's aborted military career. But were these tapes also embellishments? In one of the tapes, the elder George Bush describes being shot down, companions killed, floating in the ocean until a submarine luckily popped up next to him, and in a remarkable coincidence, it "just happened" to have a film crew on board. That's why, the commentator explains without flinching, CNN is able to show the actual footage of George H.W. Bush's rescue.
No one is claiming that the elder George Bush was not shot down, nor that he was not a hero. But...rescued in the middle of the ocean by a submarine that just coincidentally happened to be carrying a film crew? Like the military record for the younger George Bush, described below, one could wonder about the authenticity of the lucky film captured by the lucky submarine, which shows only a pilot in a helmet.
But we digress: Below, you will find photocopies of documents (obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, which the Bush Administration is now busy gutting) showing that George W. Bush failed to report for Air National Guard duty, was disciplined, and was booted out as a pilot for refusing to take a drug test.
In fact, George W. Bush evaded military duties while thousands of Americans — more patriotic and less privileged than George W. Bush — were dying in Vietnam.
Senator Daniel Inouye: "'During my service, if I missed training for two years, at the least, I would have been court-martialed.' Senator Inouye (Hawaii) has demanded that George W. Bush account for missing two years of National Guard Service.
Senator Bob Kerrey: Governor Bush made a six-year commitment...Well, if he's going to do what's right, he ought to release his military records, as John McCain did and let us know where he was during that six year period of time..." (see transcript)
Where's Waldo George? News Release: Help George W. Bush find 1972, 1973 George Bush has lost a year of his youth and needs your help to find it. Between May 1972 and October 1974 George W. Bush seems to have lost:
1) A year of his service in the Air National Guard (ANG) 2) His eligibility to fly F-102 jet fighters (See photocopy, footnote 1) 3) The directions to his military doctor's office 4) The means to travel to his punishment detail (2) to which he apparently never reported, although he claims to have served the final months of his enlistment there.
Lots of people didn't see George Bush, including retired General William Turnipseed (3) to whom young 1st Lt. Bush was ordered to report, and the commanders of the Texas Air National Guard Unit (4) in which he was supposedly serving. You can imagine how disturbing this must be to our unelected Commander-in-Chief — to have so thoroughly lost a year of his own military service (5) when he plans to ask young Americans to stick to the terms of their military enlistments so he can send them to Iraq.
In October, 2000 two different Vietnam veterans groups put up a total of $2000 in rewards for anyone who could find George W. Bush's missing year of National Guard service. (6) So far no one has claimed the reward.
But this was a long time ago. Any recent misbehavior? — In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mr. Bush leaned on his self-described experience as a fighter pilot to get himself elected governor of Texas. See archives for Austin Statesman and Houston Chronicle to read his embellishments about his service as a fighter pilot.
— In 1999, just prior to Mr. Bush's announcement that he planned to run for president, a record-scrubbing detail was dispatched to Camp Mabry to make sure records in the archives matched those in the autobiography published in 1999. ([synopsis: record scrubbing]
— In 1999, during his presidential campaign, Mr. Bush produced an autobiography (7) containing several untruths about his military service. He bragged about volunteering to go to Vietnam (not true), tried to impress voters saying he was a fighter pilot and "continued to fly for several years" after training (not true), and asserted that his military training taught him to respect the chain of command (if so, he had a peculiar way of showing it).
— In 2000, reporters unearthed the facts and published them in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, AP wire service and other print media outlets — to howls from Bush's people that it was unfair and "unethical" to reveal facts just before the election. No television news programs covered the story until nearly a year after the election.
— In October 2000, when the document photocopies were posted on this web site, the site was hacked out and the documents were made inaccessible to the public (and the press) until after the election news cycle ended, the weekend before Election Day.
("How dare you bring these documents up in a time of war?") Hmmm. If this web site hadn't been hacked out to block media access to documents before the election, voters would have known about this; if George W. Bush had then been elected it would have been with full disclosure and there would be no point in bringing it up now. But then, that would be protecting free speech.
— In November 2000, during the vote counting (or more accurately, vote not-counting), an unauthorized monitoring system started gathering data on Bush military document photocopies posted at this web site. Using an automated program, a "visitor" cycled from military document to document on a prescribed schedule, every few minutes for two weeks. The "visitor" never disengaged until a technician from our web hosting company manually dislodged it, at our request. The technician said he'd never seen anything like it before.
