A-list message, [A-List] The Punk in Chief:Oh what a tangled web we weave...

-----Original Message-----

From: Craven, Jim

Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2001 2:41 PM

To: Campus Master List; 'warriornet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx';

Subject: The "Punk in Chief"

From: "Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President", by J.H. Hatfield, Soft Skull Press, N.Y. 2001

"Junior lost his deferment from induction into compulsory military service. Four years at Yale had helped him avoid the draft, but now he was suddenly faced with the possibility that he would join the ranks of the other half-million American youth in Vietnam, who were dying at the rate of 350 a week..."

During the 1960s, however, many of George W's generation who joined considered it an option to outright evasion of the draft. Overall, National guard members had only a remote chance of ending up in Vietnam. Throughout the war, only 15,000 of the more than 1,000,000 of the Guard and reserves were sent to fight in the Southeast Asian country...

Speaking of himself in the third person, Bush later said, ' Yeah, I mean one could argue that he was trying to avoid being the infantryman but my attitude was I'm taking the first opportunity to become a pilot and jumped on that and did my time.'..

Junior told Roland Betts, one of his classmates from Yale, that while he wasn't particularly enthusiatic about enlisting in the Guard, he 'felt that in order not to derail his father's political career he had to be in military service of some kind.'..

In 1968, the national waiting list for Guard slots contained approximately 100,000 names. Although there are no records of how long the Texas waiting lists were at the time, Retired Major General Thomas Bishop, who was the state's adjutant general in the late 60s, stated there were lengthy waiting lists in Texas. ' We were full', he flatly stated. In addition, Dale Pyeatt, associate director of the National Guard Association of Texas, was quoted in the press as stating: 'There were definately waiting lists. There wasn't any question about that.'..

Although pilots were in demand in Vietnam, Tom Hail, a historian for the Texas Air National guard noted that records from the era did not show a pilot shortage in the Guard squadron. Hail, who reviewed the unit's personnel files for a special Guard museum display on Bush's service, stated that his unit had 27 pilots at the time he initiated his application for enlistment. While that number was two short of its authorized strength, the unit had two other pilots who were in training and another waiting a transfer. Hail asserted that there was no need to fast-track applicants...

Four months before enlisting, Bush reported to Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts, a recruiting office near the Yale campus, to take the Air Force Officers Qualification Test. While scoring 25 percent for pilot aptitude on the screening test--'about as low as you could get and still be accepted', according to Retired Colonel Rufus G. Martin, a former Guard personnel officer--and 50 percent for navigator aptitude in his initial enlistment test, Bush scored 95 persent in the 'officer quality' section, compared with the current-day average of 88 percent...

His Guard application form asked for 'background qualifications of value to the Air force.' Bush wrote 'None". Another question he had to answer was whether he was interested in an overseas assigment. Bush checked the box that said: 'do not volunteer...'

However Staudt [former Guard commander, Retired Brigadier General General Walter "Buck" Staudt] did admit to the "Houston Chronicle" in 1988 that George W's wealthy background 'indirectly' helped him qualify for one of the hard-to-fill officer slots, noting that most young men didn't have the financial 'flexibility that would allow them to take off for the training the positions required.' which was typically more than a year.

Evidently Staudt was so pleased to have a Texas congressman's eldest son in his Guard that he later staged a special ceremony so he could be photographed administering the oath, instead of the captain who actually had sworn Bush in. Later, when Junior was commissioned a second lieutenant by another subordinate officer, Colonel Staudt once again staged a special ceremony in his office for the cameras, this particular time with Bush's VIP father flying in from Washington to pin the bars on his son...

After the senior Bush refused to take questions and his campaign chairman, James A Baker III admitted to CNN that Quayle ' was assisted by his family ' in joining the [Indiana] Guard, George W, in an attempt at damage control, met with the press and suggested it was enough that Quayle had not fled to Canada as was the case with multitudes of American draft evaders. ' The thing that's important, I want you all to remember,' Junior told reporters, 'he didn't go to Canada. Let's keep it in generational perspective.' ...[NOTE: Both Bush and Quayle were both members of organizations actively promoting the widening of the Vietnam War and were active in those organizations]

Since the National guard is run by the state, with its adjudant general chosen by the governor, there are any number of ways that someone could have intervened on behalf of privileged young men like Bush or Bentsen. 'Obviously the governor, lieutenant governor, and the speaker of the house had a lot of influence on the National Guard ', said a former personnel officer in charge of a Texas squadron. ' And if you look at that list, you'll see besides George W. Bush, many sons of politically prominent Texas families who just happened to get into the Guard--regardless of the waiting lists.'...

...When asked how he got into the military reserves unit, Junior jokingly but evasively replied, ' They could sense I was going to be one of the great pilots of all time.' ...One Vietnam veteran and delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1988, did not see the humor in George W's response. ' While the Bush boy defending the Texas-Mexico border from bandits in his F-102 fighter jet, I was watching my buddies get their brains blown out by the VC (Viet Cong),' said James Johnson, a wheelchair-bound double amputee who lost both ofh his legs in the Tet Offensive in 1968. ' As Terry Kent Reed, a former Nam vet and author once said, 'As a nation, you should never test your very best, while at home you leave the rest.' [Footnote: One of Bush's rivals for the Republican nomination in 2000, Senator John McCain, also said he slept better at night as a POW in Vietnam for five-and-a-half years knowing that George W. was protecting the coast of Texas from invasion.]

Veterans have also noted that Bush, who enlisted in May 1968 as an airman basic, received his second lieutenant's commission only a few months later, one of the most rapid rank ascensions in military history...An Adjudant General's Department manual from the time listed numerous qualifications required for commissioned officers, which for the most part, Bush lacked: a high school education, 18 months of military service, including six months of active duty, and completion of officer training. A separate Guard pamphlet titled "Take Command, Apply for OCS", detailed three ways for Guardsmen to become second lieutenants: a 23 week officer training program, a nine-week training 'reserve component special officer candidate course, or completion of eight weekend drill periods and two summer camps...

In addition to his special commission, the Guard gave Bush immediate and considerable flexibility. After Basic training at Lackland Air force Base and his commissioning as a second lieutenant, Junior received what amounted to a two-month-plus vacation to florida before heading to Georgia for yearlong flight school. During this time, Bush worked in the political campaign of Edward J. Gurney, a Republican candidate for the Senate and a close friend of the elder Bush. He occassionally returned to houston for weekend Guard duty...

' He basically continued the partying tradition post-college ', said one former Yale classmate. ' He graduated one day, enlisted in the National Guard the next, went to basic training in San Antonio for a few weeks, and then never let his foot off the accelerator of life. He flew jets, drove fast cars, screwed more women than Hugh Hefner and partied hardy'...

George W addresses his 'reckless' years head on, but not in detail. In response to direct questions from the media, he refuses to answer questions about possible illegal drug use, offering instead an all-encompassing mea culpa. ' I have made mistakes', he repeatedly stated during the presidential race. ' I choose not to inventory my sins because I don't want anybody to be able to say, ' Well, the governor of Texas did it, why shouldn't I?' That's why I have been somewhat mysterious about my past...I'm not going to talk about what I did as a child [flying F-102s]. It is irrelevant what I did 20 to 30 years ago.'

Former Yale classmates and friends who partied with George W in houston during his stint in the National guard, filled in the blanks beyond his vague, Clintonesque admission, saying that he occasionally smoked marijuana and snorted cocaine.

'We all experimented back then', explained one of his many girlfriends during that period. ' but you have to remember that George was just living for the moment. He never dreamed or schemed of running for governor, let alone president, so he didn't worry in the 60s and 70s about protecting his future political viability. Poor George, it'll probably come back to haunt him when he runs for national office.' [footnote: Ironically, a 1970 National guard news release at the time read: 'George Walker Bush is one member of the younger generation who doesn't get his kicks from pot or hashish or speed. As far as kicks are concerned, Lieutenant Bush gets his from the roaring afterburner of the F-102.' ]

For three months in 1972, he lived in Montgomery, Alabama, after receiving a transfer to the Alabama National Guard so that he could work as a paid political director of the ill-fated U.S. Senate campaign of another friend of his father, construction magnate and former Postmaster General Winton 'Red' Blount...[ pp. 37-50 Hatfield]

"Lt. Colonel William Harris Jr. was one of two commanding officers who could not perform George W. Bush's annual evaluation covering the year from May 1, 1972 to April 30, 1973. They stated in their filing that ' Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of this report.' Fortunately for George W. Bush, Lt. Col. Harris is not here to verify his 1973 statement. He is dead. Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian was another of George W. Bush's commanding officers. He cannot testify in a court of law as to George W. Bush's dereliction of his sworn duty. Lt. Col. Killian is dead."

["Bush Body Count http://www.blk2k.com/bushbodycount/bodies.html ]

In June 1977 he formed his own drilling company, Arbusto Energy ('arbusto' means 'Bush' in Spanish). Like his father who made his fortune in the oil business with the money of others, George W. founded Arbusto with the financial backing of investors, including James R. Bath, a Houston businessman whom bush apparently first met when they were in the same Texas Air National Guard unit...In one of the most bizarre footnotes to history, "Time" magazine described Bath in 1991 as 'a deal broker whose alleged associations run from the CIA to a major shareholder and director of the Bank of Credit and Commerce.' BCCI, as it was more commonly known, was closed down in July 1991 amid charges of multibillion-dollar fraud and worldwide news reports that the institution had been involved in covert intelligence work, drug money laundering, arms brokering, bribery of government officials and aid to terrorists. An accounting commissioned by the Bank of england finally exposed the extent of BCCI's deficits and criminal offenses, forcing the bank's eventual collapse...according to "The Outlaw Bank", an award-winning 1993 book by "Time" correspondents Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, Bath originally ' ' made his fortune by investing money for (Sheikh Kalid bin) Mahfouz and another BCCI-connected Saudi, Sheikh bin Laden', allegedly the father of none other than Osama bin Laden, the man accused by the U.S. government of masterminding the August 1998 terrorist bombings of the american embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which killed more than 250 people...[Hatfield, pp 54-55]

In 1990, in an attempt to distance himself and his presidential father from the growing BCCI scandal, George W stated in an interview that neither he nor elder Bush had ever conducted business with James R. Bath. Junior went on record at the time as saying that he met the Houston businessman in 1970, when both were fighter pilots at the Air National guard base at Ellington. (Interestingly Bush and Bath were suspended from flying in September 1972 for 'failure to accomplish annual medical examinations'.)...A few months later, however, the release of tax documents and personal financial records forced George W to admit that Bath had indeed been one of Arbusto Energy's original investors. Bush said that to his knowledge, Bath's investment was from personal funds, and no available evidence existed to determine that the money came from Saudi interests. [Ibid. p. 56-57]

Bush stopped flying in April 1972, and this is the first unexplained question. In his autobiography, "A Charge to Keep", Bush wrote that he ' was no longer flying because the F-102 jet I had trained in was being replaced by a different fighter.'

While it is true that the F-101B would eventually replace the F-102, in 1972 the F-101B was an addition to the 11th FIS inventory not a replacement. Phase-out of Bush's F-102 by the 111th FIS would not be accomplished until September 1974, more than two years after Bush stopped flying, and four months after his Air National guard commitment was scheduled to end, meaning Bush could have flown 'his plane' right up until the end of his six-year hitch.

The government spent a great deal of time (a full year), effort and money (fully $1 million in current dollars) to train Lt. Bush to fly, but he stopped flying two full years before he was scheduled to leave the Guard. First lieutenants do not get to decide for themselves that they are going to stop flying. Therefore, someone had to decide that Bush would stop flying, and for a specific reason...As a pilot, Bush was required to take a yearly medical exam. His military records show the date of his last physical as May 1971; therefore he was due to take another in May 1972. Before leaving Texas for alabama he should have taken his physical, but didn't. Bush never took another flight physical, prompting a written order suspending him from flight status. Why did he apparently never again take the flight physical required of all pilots?

Bush aides/spokespersons attributed this failure variously to his being in Montgomery, Alabama, while his personal physician was in Houston; and because ' there were only a few special doctors who could do physicals' (Karen Hughes, cited in an LA Times article...In fact, Bush's personal physician couldn't perform a flight physical because only flight surgeons can do that. And there was no scarcity of flight surgeons in Montgomery, because the Alabama capital had two separate flying units... [Hatfield pp. 386-87]

In November 1972, after the Senate election in alabama, George Bush returned to Houston. This was the month after the 111th resumed alert--just when that unit would have needed all the pilots it could muster. But Lt. Bush had given up flying in April, and did not resume flying upon his return to Texas. In fact, in a situation analogous to his stay in Alabama, despite claims by Bush and his aides to the contrary, he apparently did not do any Guard drilling of any kind upon returning to Texas, a fact borne out by a lack of written records or witnesses... [Ibid. p. 389]

Almost 2.5 million American men and women served in the Vietnam War, of whom 153,300 were wounded and 58,209 killed...During the conflict--1964 to 1973--more than 26 million young men faced the possibility of being drafted and hard choices about whether to participate in the U.S. military. An estimated 90,000 refused induction into the service or fled the draft by moving to Canada and other countries. Thousands of others, like Bush, opted to continue their personal lives and reduce the risk of seeing combat by joining the armed forces reserves and the National guard. [Ibid. p. 43]

Jim Craven

James Craven

Professor and Consultant, Economics

Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd.

Vancouver, WA. 98663

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