[Mb-civic] MICHAEL KINSLEY George Bush's Secret War

[Michael Butler]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kinsley29aug29.story

MICHAEL KINSLEY

George Bush's Secret War

The Stiff Drink Vets break their silence.
 Michael Kinsley

 August 29, 2004

 LOS ANGELES ‹ Veterans of George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard unit
charged today that the president had misrepresented his military service
during the Vietnam War. The veterans allege that during a period when the
future president was supposed to be serving in the National Guard, he was
actually fighting in Vietnam.

 "For more than 30 years we have remained silent," said the head of the
group, which calls itself Stiff Drink Veterans for Vermouth. But, he added,
"we want to be on Larry King just as much as those Swift boat guys."

 Two members of the group claim to be eyewitnesses. "It was a typical night
at the guard offices," one of them recalled at a press conference yesterday.
"OK, I'd had a few. But I personally saw George parachute down from a B-52,
kill a dozen Cong with his bare hands, leap into one of those Swift boat
thingies and stick his tongue out at John Kerry."

 The White House yesterday strongly denied the Stiff Drink version of
events. "As has been his policy throughout his entire life," a spokesman
said, "the president never left the continental United States during the
Vietnam era ‹ except for a few weekends in Tijuana. These Stiff Drink
fellows are nothing more than a front for the Kerry campaign, which would
like to convince the American people that George W. Bush is responsible for
the Vietnam War." 

 The Stiff Drink story is not easy to confirm or refute. On one side,
claiming that Bush has been lying, are two obscure drunks with close ties to
the Democratic Party and long-standing grudges against the Bush family,
which they claim cooperated with space aliens who carried them off to
Crawford, Texas, or possibly Mars ("who can tell?") and examined their
genital areas. On the other side, confirming Bush's version of events are
143 fellow reservists who have signed affidavits attesting that they saw the
future president popping a Bud in the guard offices at the time when the
Stiff Drink group alleges he was on a secret mission to Hanoi, where he
personally arm-wrestled Ho Chi Minh.

 There is no documentary evidence supporting the view that Bush was in
Vietnam. However, there is an extensive collection of speeding tickets from
several Southern states issued throughout the period in question to someone
whose description resembles that of George W. Bush. This person called
himself George W. Bush. He was driving a car registered to Bush and was
carrying Bush's driver's license. In addition, there are photographs of Bush
from the period in Texas papers accompanying stories such as "Bush Son Seeks
Own Way" (Houston Chronicle, March 28, 1969) and "Bush Son Still Seeking Own
Way" (Dallas Morning News, Dec. 12, 1972).

 Bush also kept a diary. Supplied to reporters yesterday by the Bush-Cheney
campaign, the diary contains multiple entries along the lines of "Woke up.
Terrible hangover. But at least I'm not in Vietnam. Thanks, Dad!" Bush
signed up for the Texas Air National Guard in 1968 in order to defend the
state of Texas from the Viet Cong. In 1972 ‹ having decided, sources say,
that Texas was now secure from communist infiltration ‹ he transferred his
allegiance to a guard unit in Alabama.

 There have long been mystery and controversy about what exactly Bush did in
Alabama, and whether he fulfilled his reservist's obligation to show up and
sharpen pencils for 45 minutes every other weekend. This is different from
today's National Guard and Army Reserve practices, in which a recruiting
officer leads young people to believe they are volunteering for
pencil-sharpening duty and then, as soon as they've signed up, shouts "Aha!
Gotcha!" and ships them off to a distant war.

 "Look, Larry," the president told Barbara Walters in a recent interview,
"just because I got away with it is no reason they should get away with it."

 Although Bush has never said what he was doing when he was supposed to be
sharpening pencils for his country, he has not denied published hypotheses
that he spent the period drinking, sleeping and watching sports on TV. "It
sounds easy," said one Bush friend from that era, "but keep in mind that in
those days there might be only one game on the tube at any given time."

 The Stiff Drink group, however, insists that Bush was actually flying
sorties over Hanoi. And doing it without a plane. In the end, it is their
word against his. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. And the full
story of George Bush's secret war in Vietnam will never be known.


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