this
newsday article lead us to
bob fertik's column on
democrats.com, which exhaustively analyzes what we know so far about a
wol's records, or lack thereof. bob writes:
why would bush's superior officers treat bush with such favoritism? the answer to that is simple. bush's entire national guard career was the product of favoritism:
- his admission to the guard despite a national waiting list of 100,000, thanks to string-pulling by friends of his powerful father, then the congressman from houston
- his assignment as a pilot, despite the lowest possible grade (25%) on the pilot aptitude exam (yet another example of "affirmative action" for a rich white kid, but that's a different story)
- his commission as a lieutenant, despite the lack of all qualifications such as prior military service, rotc, or a medical degree
thus, it would be completely consistent for bush to be given an "honorable discharge" that he did not earn - or deserve.
bob winds up calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the scrubbing of awol's military records. but skippy has issued an internal memo to his staff here at skippy international, instructing everyone not to, quote, hold their breath, unquote.
the christian science monitor has some observations:
"one of bush's strengths is he seems to be a straight shooter, and his ratings on integrity and honesty are still pretty good," says john mueller, a political scientist at ohio state university. "if you can chip away at that, that's obviously good for the democrats. if he's been lying or clintonizing, that would be the ultimate coup de grace. he might even lose some republican votes that way."
finally, the csm decides, this issue could be very important, very unimportant, or somewhere inbetween:
in the end, the relative import of questions about bush's military service during the election boils down to how voters in the center of the political spectrum perceive the issue. and there are several ways to perceive the question, says stephen wayne, a political scientist at georgetown university. "for some, it will be a patriotism issue, for others a credibility issue, and for others, it happened too long ago to matter," he says.
we're thinking that considering awol led hundreds of americans to their death chasing phantom wmd's, it might be a smidge more important than "too long ago to matter."
cross-postd on the american street and our own very important, very unimportant or somewhere inbetween blog.