The curious mystery of George W Bush's Vietnam war: "in the spring of 1972 he requested permission to switch units to one in Alabama, so he could work, on his off days, on the senatorial campaign of a Bush family friend. The request was denied: the sleepy Alabama unit could hardly provide the young fighter pilot with 'equivalent training', as required. The Boston Globe's groundbreaking investigation on the topic, published during the 2000 campaign, quoted the unit's commander as saying: 'We met just one week night a month ... We had no airplanes. We had no pilots. We had no nothing.'
Despite being denied permission to switch, however, Bush seems to have gone to Alabama anyway: from May 1972, the records show, his attendance at the Texas base started to become sketchy, then non-existent. He missed a routine medical examination, and was banned from flying.
He surfaced again in the autumn, making another request to join a different Alabama unit. This time, he was given permission to serve in Alabama - and that's certainly what, back in Texas, they thought he was doing. His superiors, charged with writing an annual appraisal of Lt Bush in May 1973, explained that he 'has not been observed at this unit during the period of report' because he was doing equivalent service in Alabama.
Retired colonel Earl W Lively, the operations officer for the Texas air National Guard at the time, says Bush would have had an easy ride there. 'Alabama didn't care. He wasn't contributing anything to that unit. He just had to show up there, so that's that. He performed what his commander required of him, and his commander gave him, in effect, a leave from his duty to go do his civilian occupation elsewhere.'
But did he serve in Alabama at all? The state g"
- posted by geoff @ #