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Meet
Ian Williams @ Book Signing for Deserter:
Tuesday, 21 September, Reading and Talking
-- Agree/Argue with the Author and Buy a
Book. Borders Books, Kips Bay,
2nd Ave. and 32nd St., New York City, 7:00
pm
Skeptic Ian Williams questions an earlier president.
Bush - Still A Deserter Safire, still wrong...
by Ian Williams Ian Williams is a journalist and U.N. Correspondent for The Nation and a weekly columnist for www.MaximsNews.com Order his new book from Amazon.com, Deserter: George Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans, and His Past. See his Bio. See his columns listed below. IanWilliams@MaximsNews.com Order Now from Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1560256273/wwwmaximsnewc-20/103-2632401-6943852?creative=125577&camp=2321&link_code=as1
UNITED NATIONS -- 15 September 2004 / www.MaximsNews.com / When William Safire weighs in against Dan Rather ex cathedra from the safety of his New York Times column, we know that the conservative Republican pack is in full bay after their prey, in this case Dan Rather. It is a bit rich. Sources inside the paper have assured us what the textual evidence has often also indicated. Safire’s column is a fact-checker-free zone. And
once again, he is off assuming that something
must be true, just because he likes it: in this
case the attacks on the CBS story about
Bush’s National Guard record. Let us reiterate what is irrefutably proven. Bush, with an incredibly low pilot aptitude test, jumped to the head of a long line to join the Texas Air National Guard. He was given an immediate commission despite a complete lack of experience of qualifications. He missed his flight medical in 1972 and was grounded. He has never explained why. He was absent from active duty for twelve months from May 1972 to May 1973, and has never explained why. The
White House has never answered Helen
Thomas’s question about whether or not he was
sentenced serve mandatory community service in
this period. Faced with unpalatable facts, the Bush campaign has been consistent. Trash the source: or better yet, get someone else to do so. It is interesting that the White House itself has not denied the authenticity of the documents that CBS obtained from Lt. Col Jerry Killian's files, but has relied on other people to do so on its behalf. They almost certainly suspect that the documents are genuine and in the words of the Jerry Killian memo, are covering their ass. Indeed, there are likely to be more such documents out there. Watch
CBS and USA Today over the next
few weeks. We
have Ben Barnes’ daughter joining in a chorus
to say that Barnes is a partisan democrat –
despite a long record of bipartisan
contributions and back-scratching fairly typical
of But John Sununu, definitely no Democrat, accused Barnes of getting Lloyd Bentsen’s son a slot in the same unit. When
Barnes gave exactly the same testimony in an
affidavit in Indeed, if it were not for fear of a perjury rap, one suspects that he would have been even more forthcoming. And this week, Harvard Professor Yoshi Tsurumi told the New York Daily News that Bush boasted to him that "My dad had a good friend who put me at the head of the waiting list." When tasked with dodging a war that he supported, he “just smirked.” And well he might, since if much of the media had their way, he would get away with it still. In
a similar way, the White House has been
careful never to endorse the testimony of retired
Lt. Col. John "Bill" Calhoun, who is
the only person who claims he saw Bush
performing drills in There is a reason for that reticence. Calhoun
“remembers” seeing Bush in the summer,
before he was ordered to turn up at the Dannelly
Air National Guard Base in That did not stop three major networks citing his testimony! Calhoun
has not tried to claim the $3,500 reward put
forward by a group of local veterans for anyone
who can prove they saw Bush on an But even if the Killian documents were forgeries, which is far from proven, since the IBM Selectric's had been around for over ten years by then, the facts of the case are clear. George W. Bush failed to turn up for his flight medical in 1972, and there is no record of any explanation from him or discipline. Since then, the White House has claimed that he did not need to, because his plane, the F102 was obsolescent. In
fact his Texas Unit continued to fly it
for another two years, and the In fact, the Texas Air Guard was activated and the "forged" documents hint at that, the need to use the slot taken up by the young wastrel by pilots with more experience - who would be present as well, presumably. What this means is that the White House has been caught in an outright lie. And
the Blogosphere stays silent. In
any case, the notion that a junior officer like
Bush could decide which orders made sense, and
which he could disobey would be a refreshing
idea for people like Sergeant Camilo Meija who
refused to go back to He is in a military prison, and would doubtless welcome the Commander-in-Chief's testimony on the discretion to disobey orders that appear stupid. In fact, the Killian documents are consistent with what we know from other sources. For
some reason, Bush tried to use campaigning in It
appears that after conversations with Killian,
the latter arranged for him to take them
earlier, in May, instead of July, and in Bush did not turn up. Nor
did he turn up in July in Killian had to ground him. On the public record, we have Killian in documents released by the White House, dated, May 1973 refusing to appraise Bush's performance, because he had not seen him for a year. So why all these memos and notes to the file? As in any bureaucracy, it appears that Killian was getting pressure from above, as the memos said, to sugar coat the Bush record. But
he did not want to be the fall guy if anything
went wrong, so he left a paper trail that he
could refer to in case there was any comeback,
in case the Air Force nationally noticed
a missing pilot. The White House repeats continually, and is echoed by much of the media, that Bush got an honorable discharge. And so did the Washington Sniper, after court martials, hitting an officer, stealing a gun and letting off a grenade in a tent. This, as the White House knows, is a content free fact. It
takes a lot of work to get anything but an
honorable discharge, not least when you have so
many friends in high places! The way in which the Bush fans are trying to blog this story to death suggests that it is true, and that it will hurt him. The way in which the rest of the media is happily pounding at CBS may owe more to professional pique than partisan fever (although some elements of that cannot be discounted. But for whatever reason, they have succeeded in making the provenance of the Killian documents and Dan Rather’s integrity the story. In the end though, it is almost as sad that most of the media, including CBS, have let the real story -Bush’s lack of service in the Guard - lie dormant for so long. The basic information has been there all along, well researched by local magazines and newspapers. Even if it is likely that someone would use a modern word processor to elaborately forge thirty year old documents instead of using an old typewriter, the fact remains: George W. Bush used his family influence to dodge a war which he supported and was happy to send 58,000 poorer and less well connected contemporaries to their death. He then dodged the obligations that he had signed up for, and was again protected by his family connections. All the rest is commentary, and sadly most of that commentary seems specifically designed to obscure those irrefutable facts. It is not necessary to invent new details to add verisimilitude to what is an already clear and convincing narrative. Read it and find out - Deserter: George Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans, and His Past. "My
dad had a good friend who put me at the head of
the waiting list." Email Ian Williams: IanWilliams@MaximsNews.com
Deserter: George Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans, and His Past by Ian Williams Order Now from Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1560256273/wwwmaximsnewc-20/103-2632401-6943852?creative=125577&camp=2321&link_code=as1
Ian Williams' Weekly Columns in MaximsNews.com Bush - Still A Deserter Safire, still wrong... 15 September 2004 Bushowulf
– the Saga 10
September 2004 Why Ian Williams Welcomes Republicans to New York... 29 August 2004 What kind of Veteran? Calley-type or Kerry-type? 25 August 2004 Chavez Beating about the Bush... 18 August 2004 The War Records of Bush and Kerry... 12 August 2004 Where is Osama Bin Laden? 6 August 2004 Sudan, To Intervene – or not to Intervene? 27 July 2004 Mr. Sharon, Tear Down This Wall! 16 July 2004 William Safire – Warped, on Speed, or Just Running Mad Again? 13 July 2004 Bosnian U.N. Defender Locked Up 7 July 2004 The U.N., the U.S. & the I.C.C. 30 June 2004 The New York Times, William Safire and the United Nations 23 June 2004 Hastily Contrived, Verbose, and Fudged: Security Council Resolution 1546 16 June 2004 Is the U.S. Clever Enough to Rule the World? 9 June 2004 Humor the Beast: the U.S. and the ICC 2 June 2004 Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? 20 May 2004 The Solution to the Iraqi Knot 12 May 2004 For more information about MaximsNews.com/Books, please see, www.maximsnews.com/bookpromotions.htm or contact, DrMaxStamper@MaximsNews.com.
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