|
Bush Military Service Records Destroyed
|
View this Thread in Original format
| MisterOpus1 |
How conveeeenient.
Note the emphasis (mine):
| quote: | July 9, 2004
Pentagon Says Bush Records of Service Were Destroyed
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
OUSTON, July 8 - Military records that could help establish President Bush's whereabouts during his disputed service in the Texas Air National Guard more than 30 years ago have been inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon.
It said the payroll records of "numerous service members," including former First Lt. Bush, had been ruined in 1996 and 1997 by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm. No back-up paper copies could be found, it added in notices dated June 25.
The destroyed records cover three months of a period in 1972 and 1973 when Mr. Bush's claims of service in Alabama are in question.
The disclosure appeared to catch some experts, both pro-Bush and con, by surprise. Even the retired lieutenant colonel who studied Mr. Bush's records for the White House, Albert C. Lloyd of Austin, said it came as news to him.
The loss was announced by the Defense Department's Office of Freedom of Information and Security Review in letters to The New York Times and other news organizations that for nearly half a year have sought Mr. Bush's complete service file under the open-records law.
There was no mention of the loss, for example, when White House officials released hundreds of pages of the President's military records last February in an effort to stem Democratic accusations that he was "AWOL" for a time during his commitment to fly at home in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.
Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director who has said that the released records confirmed the president's fulfillment of his National Guard commitment, did not return two calls for a response.
The disclosure that the payroll records had been destroyed came in a letter signed by C. Y. Talbott, chief of the Pentagon's Freedom of Information Office, who forwarded a CD-Rom of hundreds of records that Mr. Bush has previously released, along with images of punch-card records. Sixty pages of Mr. Bush's medical file and some other records were excluded on privacy grounds, Mr. Talbott wrote.
He said in the letter that he could not provide complete payroll records, explaining, "The Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) has advised of the inadvertent destruction of microfilm containing certain National Guard payroll records."
He went on: "In 1996 and 1997, DFAS engaged with limited success in a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm. During this process the microfilm payroll records of numerous service members were damaged, including from the first quarter of 1969 (Jan. 1 to March 31) and the third quarter of 1972 (July 1 to Sept. 30). President Bush's payroll records for these two quarters were among the records destroyed. Searches for backup paper copies of the missing records were unsuccessful."
Mr. Talbott's office would not respond to questions, saying that further information could be provided only through another Freedom of Information application.
But Bryan Hubbard, a spokesman for Defense finance agency in Denver, said the destruction occurred as the office was trying to unspool 2,000-foot rolls of fragile microfilm. Mr. Hubbard said he did not know how many records were lost or why the loss had not been announced before.
For Mr. Bush, the 1969 period when he was training to be a pilot, is not in dispute. But in May 1972, he moved to Alabama to work on a political campaign and, he has said, to perform his Guard service there for a year. But other Guard officers have said they had no recollection of ever seeing him there. The most evidence the White House has been able to find are records showing Mr. Bush was paid for six days in October and November 1972, without saying where, and the record of a dental exam at a Montgomery, Ala., air base on Jan. 6, 1973.
On June 22, The Associated Press filed suit in federal court in New York against the Pentagon and the Air Force to gain access to all the president's military records.
The lost payroll records stored in Denver might have answered some questions about whether he fulfilled his legal commitment, critics who have written about the subject said in interviews.
"Those are records we've all been interested in," said James Moore, author of a recent book, "Bush's War for Re-election," which takes a critical view of Mr. Bush's service record. "I think it's curious that the microfiche could resolve what days Mr. Bush worked and what days he was paid, and suddenly that is gone."
But Mr. Moore said the president could still authorize the release of other withheld records that would shed light on his service record.
Among the issues still disputed is why, according to released records, Mr. Bush was suspended from flying on Aug. 1, 1972. The reason cited in the records is "failure to accomplish annual medical examination."
Mr. Bartlett, the White House spokesman, said in February that Mr. Bush felt he did not need to take the physical as he was no longer flying planes in Alabama. Mr. Lloyd, the retired colonel who studied the records, gave a similar explanation in an interview.
But Mr. Lloyd said he was surprised to be told of the destruction of the pay records that might have resolved some questions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/09/p...U7zp293QBfWCP5g |
Yeah, I know, a non-issue, but this wreaks of cover-up to me. He is unaccounted for during a certain period of time, and somehow his records get destroyed in attempts to retrieve them? Gimme a ing break. |
|
|
| anuneventrade |
| Funny, because yesterday the Bush Administration was questioning Edwards real roll in the military, and now, somehow parts of Bush's records are missing. :rolleyes: |
|
|
| tubby |
| could they be that stupid as to deliberately destroy the records and think people wouldn't assume it is a cover-up? maybe if what those records would show is really bad. or they thought that we would think they couldn't be that stupid, and so it was a genuine accident. Then again, it is bush, so you can never rule out stupidity |
|
|
| imokruok |
Not as if it matters. The issue has already played out, and it would be to the detriment of both parties to raise it again.
To those who immediately scream "conspiracy," (i.e. increasingly, the entire Democratic party), the military loses records all of the time and in various manners, simply because there are so many records.
The records of my grandfather were destroyed in a massive warehouse fire in 1973, which destroyed the records of over 20 million veterans. My uncle's records were lost in a similar microfilm accident, although I don't know if it was the same one as occurred here. |
|
|
| Q5echo |
"The destroyed records cover three months of a period in 1972 and 1973 when Mr. Bush's claims of service in Alabama are in question."
"But Bryan Hubbard, a spokesman for Defense finance agency in Denver, said the destruction occurred as the office was trying to unspool 2,000-foot rolls of fragile microfilm."
You people are out of control, seriously.
spin, spin, spin. it must suck.
...and opus, you've become an accomplished propagandist. keep up the terrible work. |
|
|
| Yoepus |
| Nader did it!:whip: |
|
|
| NYCTrancefan |
| I'm amazed that Shrub ever had a military record in the first place. |
|
|
| biznology |
well it appears that the Pol forum on a Canadian Trance site is becoming as retarded as US politics in partisan terms.
get a clue| |
|
|
| ResonantDrag |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
"The destroyed records cover three months of a period in 1972 and 1973 when Mr. Bush's claims of service in Alabama are in question."
"But Bryan Hubbard, a spokesman for Defense finance agency in Denver, said the destruction occurred as the office was trying to unspool 2,000-foot rolls of fragile microfilm."
You people are out of control, seriously.
spin, spin, spin. it must suck.
...and opus, you've become an accomplished propagandist. keep up the terrible work. |
oooo, can i join the propoganda machine?
http://www.informationclearinghouse...article4115.htm
this video was done before the pentagon destroyed bush's records.. it has a little blip on what happened to the hard files in texas:thepirate |
|
|
| ResonantDrag |
| quote: |
George Wins the Lottery
Hustler, September 2003
Wednesday, July 9, 2003
The Bush family daisy chain of favors, friendship and finance goes way back to Dubya’s “War Years.” Junior Bush was a fighter pilot during the war in Vietnam; not in the United States Air Force, where one could get seriously hurt, mind you, but in the Texas air force, known as the Texas Air National Guard. Texas’s toy army, an artifact of Civil War days, is a favorite club for warmongers who are a bit squeamish about actual combat. Membership excused these weekend warriors from the military draft and the real shoot-'em-up in ’Nam.
During the war, Senator Prescott Bush and his son, Congressman George Bush Sr., were more than happy to send other men’s sons and grandsons to Southeast Asia. However, there were not enough volunteers for this suspect enterprise, so Congress created a kind of death lottery: If your birth date was picked out of a hat, off to the army you went. But the Air Guard flyboys were exempted from this macabre draft lotto.
When tested for the coveted Air Guard get-out, young George W. tested at twenty-five out of one hundred, one point above “too-dumb-to-fly” status, yet leaped ahead of hundreds of applicants to get the Guard slot.
Now, how could that happen? Only recently could I get a glimmer of the truth, a by-product of an Observer investigation of a New Jersey company called GTech. This firm holds the contract for a far less deadly and far more lucrative lottery operation than the one for the military draft: the Texas State Lottery.
Follow the money. It’s 1997. Top-gun George Jr. is governor and GTech is in deep doo-doo with Texas lottery regulators. Texas is the nation’s biggest, most lucrative lottery and GTech was about to lose its contract, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The state’s lottery director was sacked following revelations that GTech had put the director’s boyfriend on the company payroll while he was under indictment for bribery. A new clean-hands director, Lawrence Littwin, ordered an audit, terminated GTech’s contract and put it out for rebid. Littwin also launched an investigation into GTech’s political donations.
Then a funny thing happened: The Texas Lottery Commission fired Littwin.
Almost immediately thereafter, the Bush-appointed commissioners canceled the bidding for a new operator, though the low bidder had already been announced to replace GTech. The commissioners also halted the financial audit, ended the political payola investigation and gave the contract back to GTech.
Why did the Texas government work so hard at saving GTech’s license? A letter to the U.S. Justice Department – I have obtained a copy – provides some fascinating details. The writer points to one Ben Barnes, a lobbyist to whom GTech paid fees of $23 million. Way back in 1968, according to the whistleblower, an aide to Barnes – then lieutenant governor of the Lone Star State – quietly suggested to Air Guard chief Brig. Gen. James Rose that he find a safe spot in the Guard for Congressman George Bush’s son.
Whether the Bushes used their influence to get young George out of serving in Vietnam was a big issue during George Jr.’s neck-and-neck race for governor against Ann Richards in 1994. Bush’s opponents, however, did not know of Barnes’s office’s contact with General Rose, so the story died.
The letter ties Barnes’s knowledge of Governor Bush’s draft-dodging to GTech’s exclusive deal with the state: “Governor Bush . . . made a deal with Ben Barnes not to rebid [the GTech lottery contract] because Barnes could confirm that Bush had lied during the ’94 campaign. During that campaign, Bush was asked if his father, then a member of Congress, had helped him get in the National Guard. Bush said 'no'...George Bush was placed ahead of thousands of young men, some of whom died in Viet Nam...Barnes agreed never to confirm the story and the governor talked to the chair of the lottery two days later, and she then agreed to support letting GTech keep the contract without a bid.”
The whistleblower remained anonymous, but offered to come forward later to authorities. Fingering Barnes, a Democrat, as the man who put in the fix for the Bushes with the Air Guard seemed wildly implausible. The letter remained sealed and buried. No investigation followed, neither Barnes nor the letter writer were called by the Feds.
But then in 1998, Littwin–the discharged reform lottery director–filed a suit charging that the millions GTech paid for lobbyists bought them contract protection. He subpoenaed Barnes. In 1999, facing a grilling under oath Barnes admitted in a sworn statement to the court, that it was indeed him who got George W. into the Air Guard.
Amazingly though, he claimed to have done this nice thing for young George without any contact, direct or indirect, from the Bushes. How Barnes knew he should make the fix without a request from the powerful Bush family remains a mystery, one of those combinations of telepathy and coincidence common to Texas politics.
Littwin asserted that other witnesses can verify that the cash bought the governor’s influence to save GTech’s license. GTech responds irrefutably that it terminated its lobbying contract with Barnes before the 1997 dismissals of the lottery directors–but not before the blackmailing alleged in the anonymous letter. And, although the company denies it maintained the financial connection to Barnes, GTech’s chairman, Guy Snowden, was a partner in a big real estate venture with Barnes’s wife. (In 1995, Snowden was forced to resign as chairman of GTech when a jury found he tried to bribe British billionaire Richard Branson.)
What did GTech get for their $23 million to Barnes, the man who saved Dubya from the war? Can’t say. In November 1999, GTech paid a reported $300,000 to Littwin; in return, Littwin agreed to seal forever Barnes’s five-hour deposition transcript about the Bush family influence on the lottery and the Air Guard.
I’m not complaining, mind you. After all, the Bush family has given us the best democracy money can buy. |
http://www.gregpalast.com/printerfriendly.cfm?artid=233
edit: i know this has nothing to do with him going awol.. it's just a little more fuel for the fire;) |
|
|
| Galapidate |
| Bush is such a ing tool. He ticked me off when he commented the difference between Edwards and Cheney was that Edwards can't be president (referring to if the president were to die), yet Cheney has no political experience except for his vice presidency and he's got that heart condition. As if he could take over :rolleyes: |
|
|
|
|
