of course, he misspoke, being nervously drilled by an actual white house press corps, something we haven't seen since the hummer years in dc.
we at skippy international headquarters watched the cnn broadcast of the white house press briefing upon the release of pay records for awol. one cnn journalist, we don't know his name, was relentless in his insistance on an answer to the question "where was bush in dec. '72, jan. and feb. '73, and why didn't he take his physical during those months?"
white house spokesman scott mcclellan, trying hard to stay on point ("bush fulfilled his obligations, that should be enough for everybody!") stumbled badly in the face of actual questions from actual journalists, and said, and we heard it: bush was dishonorably discharged.
stupid us, we didn't record the conference, not thinking ahead that mcclelland would actually be so stupid as to make a freudian slip. and we doubt strongly that it will be recorded on the transcript as such.
however, when the transcript is available, we recommend everybody read it, because it is a beautiful sight to see real journalists asking real questions again.
the white house is hoping the awol issue is put to rest with the release of an illegible email of a photocopy of awol's pay stubs, and boy, we wouldn't put it past the media to roll over on this one again.
but it doesn't seem to be doing so. kevin drum tells us that kmov tv (registration required) is reporting that awol's records have been recently removed from the records archive in st. louis and moved to the pentagon:
for more than three decades those records have been locked away at the federal military records center in overland. the center director tells news 4 that the records were removed from a vault at that facility just a few days ago and sent to the national guard headquarters at the pentagon in washington.
the records are at the heart of allegations that bush did not report for service with the air national guard in 1972.
and richard cohen in the
washpost, recounting his guard days, says that he was able to do, for all practical purposes, nothing, and still make it look like he was on active duty:
in my case, it was something similar -- although (darn!) i was not rich. i was, though, lucky enough to get into a national guard unit in the nick of time, about a day before i was drafted. i did my basic and advanced training (combat engineer) and returned to my unit. i was supposed to attend weekly drills and summer camp, but i found them inconvenient. i "moved" to california and then "moved" back to new york, establishing a confusing paper trail that led, really, nowhere. for two years or so, i played a perfectly legal form of hooky. to show you what a mess the guard was at the time, i even got paid for all the meetings i missed.
[ephasis, and smirk, ours].