Here’s some great investigative reporting by Hobbs Online regarding Bush’s military service:
On Wednesday morning, I was checking out AndrewSullivan.com and noticed his post regarding a Paul Krugman column in the New York Times that revived the “Bush was AWOL from the National Guard” accusation in light of Bush’s carrier landing/speech. I thought it was worth repeating, so I created my own post linking to Sullivan’s. But I wasn’t done. I’m a journalist. I had three questions Sullivan hadn’t answered – questions, in fact, that it seems no one had yet answered in the coverage of Bush’s National Guard service:
1. Was the Texas Air National Guard really a good place to avoid combat?
2. Was the Bush family name really so big back in 1968-73 that it would have helped Bush get a cushy and safe spot in the Guard? And, related to that, did the Bush family name by 1972 make it likely the Alabama colonel would’ve remembered Bush being on his base?
3. Is the lack of a paper trail for some parts of Bush’s claimed service record all that extraordinary in the military?In other words, questions of context. So I started digging, using Google as my shovel, and I soon found out that Bush flew with the 111th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, which was attached to the 147th Fighter Wing, based in Houston, Texas. From 1968 through 1970, pilots from the 147th participated in operation “Palace Alert” and served in Southeast Asia during the height of the Vietnam War. Bush enlisted on May 28, 1968 – when the unit he enlisted with had pilots flying combat missions in the skies over Vietnam.
Read more. (Link via Glenn Renynolds.)