What, the AWOL story again?

[wombat_socho]

I noticed the revived "Bush was AWOL from the National Guard" story in today's FishWrapper of the Twin Cities, which I found on the bus this morning. (I'll read it occasionally, I just won't buy it.) Apparently the local newshounds couldn't be bothered to do their own research on the story, instead running a New York Times piece on the "controversy", since, after all, we know what an objective, unbiased and solid bunch of reporters they have at the former newspaper of record. *cough*Jayson Blair*cough*Paul Krugman*cough*Nick Kristof*cough...Jesus, hand me a cough drop, somebody.

As a sometime member of the National Guard and Reserve (which runs on a similar system) I was tempted to comment on this asinine story, which five minutes on the phone with an actual Vietnam-era ANG pilot would have spiked, but I see Mitch Berg and the Blogfather are already on the case.

You have to get up awful early in the morning to beat those guys to the punch.

Comments

[windelina.livejournal.com]

I hate to point this out, but maybe you know something I don't:
Bush was required to show up and serve in Massachussetts when he went to Harvard - it was a transfer not a discharge. And there is no documentation to verify that he ever did. (And one of his spokespeople who said previously that he HAD has now said "I must have misspoke myself.") At that point, he should have been called up for involuntary active duty and was not.

Am I missing something?

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

I think you are missing something. He was discharged, not transferred, and already had his 50 points in for the year. See the article Ed Morrissey excerpts - W was an F-102 pilot with not enough time left in his six years to be retrained on the F-4, and there was a glut of F-102 pilots. The AF was glad to let him go early since there weren't enough planes to give flying time to all the pilots.