[opendtv] Re: SINCLAIR TO AIR "A POW STORY: POLITICS, PRESSUREANDTHE MEDIA"

  • From: Bob Miller <bob@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 13:25:32 -0400

Craig Birkmaier wrote:

>At 1:07 AM -0400 10/21/04, Bob Miller wrote:
>  
>
>>There were no slots. There was only long list of guys who had signed up=20
>>long before Bush and who he simply cut in front of because of his=20
>>connections.
>>    
>>
>
>I too would like to see this thread end, however I cannot let this 
>misrepresentation stand.
>
>In order to get into the Air National Guard you had to pass a test to 
>qualify for training as a pilot. Bush took and passed this test while 
>he was still in Yale. There was not then, or ever that I am aware of 
>during the VietNam war a waiting list for entry into the Air National 
>Guard as a pilot trainee. Just the opposite was true, as they were 
>having a hard time finding enough pilot candidates during the peak of 
>the war when Bush enlisted. There are MANY places where this can be 
>verified.
>
>It was the regular Nnation Guard (essentially infantry training) that 
>had a waiting list.
>
>Regards
>Craig
>  
>
Well Craig I would like to see one where the lack of a waiting list can 
be verified.

Bush's grades on his AFOQT test taken at Yale were

Pilot Aptitude 25
Navigator Aptitude 50
Officer Quality 95
Verbal Aptitude 85
Quantitative 65

http://www.usatoday.com/news/bushdocs/3-Grade_Determination.pdf

And these articles and my VIVID memory is that there were waiting lines 
for ANG. I was too tall to be a pilot they told me, plus the six year bit.
I was told the line in Michigan was more like over a thousand, ANG not NG.
There were a lot of us looking at all the options over a long period of 
time. Minds were focused memories still keen.

This article is from AirForce Times....

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.php?f=1-AIRPAPER-357916.php

"Bush did not get drafted. Instead, two weeks before graduation, he 
joined the Texas Air National Guard — a so-called “champagne unit” that 
included other sons of rich and influential Texans. He signed up for a 
six-year term. There was a waiting list, as was the case at most Guard 
and Reserve units throughout the country, because such service was 
generally considered a likely way to avoid combat (5,977 reservists and 
101 guardsmen died in Vietnam). But according to one highly visible 
source, Bush didn’t have to wait.

Former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes told the CBS program “60 Minutes” on 
Sept. 8 that he’d used his political influence to jump the young Bush 
ahead of “hundreds” of others to get the Guard slot. He’d first said 
this publicly after testifying in a 1999 federal court deposition, 
saying he’d done the favor at the request of a Bush family friend. At 
the time Bush joined the Air Guard, his father, George H.W. Bush, was 
serving his first term as a congressman from Texas.

AND...

Secretary of State Colin Powell’s 1995 book “My American Journey” put it 
eloquently:

“The policies — determining who would be drafted and who would be 
deferred, who would serve and who would escape, who would die and who 
would live — were an antidemocratic disgrace,” Powell wrote. “I am angry 
that so many of the sons of the powerful and well placed … managed to 
wangle slots in reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies 
of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most 
damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal 
allegiance to their country.”

And

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/13/bush.professor/

"He admitted to me that to avoid the Vietnam draft, he had his dad -- he 
said 'Dad's friends' -- skip him through the long waiting list to get 
him into the Texas National Guard," Tsurumi said. "He thought that was a 
smart thing to do."

Tsurumi said Vietnam was a top topic among the 85 students in his class, 
when he was a visiting associate professor at Harvard from 1972 to 1976. 
He now teaches at Baruch College in New York.

"What I couldn't stand -- and I told him -- he was all for the U.S. to 
continue with the Vietnam War. That means he was all for other people, 
Americans, to keep on fighting and dying."

Tsurumi said he remembers Bush because every teacher remembers their 
best and worst students, and Bush was in the latter group.

"Lazy. He didn't come to my class prepared," Tsurumi said. "He did very 
badly."

And

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/12/news-dubose.php

"The Bush campaign claimed their hands were clean because there was no 
direct appeal from the Bushes. Again, the story was advanced through the 
queer syntax of George W. Bush. “All I know is that anybody named George 
Bush did not ask him for help,” Governor Bush said at the time. His 
father wasn’t so cocksure, saying he was “almost positive” he hadn’t 
discussed his son’s draft status with Adger. Then both Bushes began to 
argue that Adger’s appeal to Barnes was done without their “knowledge or 
consent.”

So this is what we’re supposed to swallow:
A close friend of the Bush family took it upon himself to get G.W. Bush 
a billet in the Air National Guard. A Democratic House Speaker who had 
nothing to gain from helping a two-term Republican from Houston did so 
because it was the right thing to do — while he was, in the Wild West of 
campaign finance, raising money to run for statewide office. And the 
younger Bush, after scoring the absolute minimum on his flight test, was 
moved to the top of the recruiter’s list by Guard officers who 
recognized his potential as a flyer.

If you buy that, then you’ll buy my Enron stock."


Bob Miller writes...
So Craig the Bushes seem agree that Adger helped get Bush junior in the 
Guard. They just deny that they talked about it to Adger about it even 
though he was a main contributer. They also therefore agree that help 
was obviously needed to get in the Guard.

He scored a low PILOT APTITUDE 25 on the flight test you mention. I 
guess it was the 95 he scored on OFFICER quality that got him in.

And from the proud history of the ANG...
http://www.ang.af.mil/history/Forging.asp

"Vietnam revealed a negative aspect of relying on reservists. For 
largely domestic political reasons, President Johnson chose not to 
mobilize most of the nation's reserve forces. The 1968 callups were only 
token affairs. Johnson's decision to avoid a major reserve mobilization 
was opposed by the senior leadership of both the active duty military 
establishment and the reserve forces, but to no avail. The Reserves and 
the Guard acquired reputations as draft havens for relatively affluent 
young white men. Military leaders questioned the wisdom of depending on 
reserve forces that might not be available except in dire emergencies"

Bob Miller writes...
They searched and they searched but they couldn't find one black or 
white US citizen in the state of Texas for that last slot in the ANG. 
But there was this one white guy, hero type, who stepped up and 
volunteered. The only man in line for a job no one wanted, fighter pilot.

I won't even comment just send me a dozen or so credible sources that 
say there were no lines for the ANG. That was the PRIMO line in 1968 as 
I remember it. Everyone wanted to be a fighter pilot not an infrantryman 
even in the Guard.

Absolute last post on the subject.
 
 
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