Bush's Nam Medals

Questions about Bush's Guard service unanswered
By Dave Moniz and Jim Drinkard, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON ?- At a time when Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has come under fire from a group of retired naval officers who say he lied about his combat record in Vietnam, questions about President Bush's 1968-73 stint in the Texas Air National Guard remain unresolved: (Related item: Bush urges end to TV attack ads by outside groups)

Some of the documents about President Bush's military service documents still have not been made public.
George Bush Presidential Library

• Why did Bush, described by some of his fellow officers as a talented and enthusiastic pilot, stop flying fighter jets in the spring of 1972 and fail to take an annual physical exam required of all pilots?

• What explains the apparent gap in the president's Guard service in 1972-73, a period when commanders in Texas and Alabama say they never saw him report for duty and records show no pay to Bush when he was supposed to be on duty in Alabama?

• Did Bush receive preferential treatment in getting into the Guard and securing a coveted pilot slot despite poor qualifying scores and arrests, but no convictions, for stealing a Christmas wreath and rowdiness at a football game during his college years?

The White House has released hundreds of pages of records, but the files released so far haven't answered those questions. Since the documents were released in February, at least a half-dozen news organizations, including USA TODAY, have filed new requests for Bush's military records under the Freedom of Information Act.

In an e-mail to USA TODAY last week, presidential spokesman Dan Bartlett said: "The president has authorized the release of his records and we are complying with all requests. Some are taking longer than others, but all will be addressed."

Past military service and qualifications to be commander in chief have become a central theme in the 2004 presidential campaign.

Questions about Bush's record predate the current campaign. The apparent gap in his Guard service first surfaced before the 2000 election, when The Boston Globe reported that Texas Guard commanders were unable to account for Bush's whereabouts from May 1972 to April 1973.

Bush has not said what he did in the Guard during that period. Aside from a statement by a former Alabama Air Guard officer who said he saw Bush report for duty there in the fall of 1972, the only evidence he was at Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Alabama was a record of a dental exam on Jan. 6, 1973, at the base.

Bush said in a TV interview in February that he would make all his military records available. That month, the White House released more than 400 pages of Bush military records, including some duplicates, and said the documents were a complete catalog of his personnel files.

But some documents still have not been made public. The White House did not release Bush's medical records from his Guard files but allowed a group of reporters who cover the White House to review them for 20 minutes. They found nothing unusual. Kerry released some of his military records earlier this year. He has also declined to release his complete medical records but showed them to reporters as Bush did.

Since February, the White House has banned all Guard and military commanders outside the Pentagon from commenting on Bush's records or service. Requests for information must go to the Pentagon's Freedom of Information Act office.

The Pentagon last week responded to a 4-month-old request from USA TODAY for additional records from Bush's files by sending another copy of documents that were released by the White House in February. The documents do not address the unexplained year in Bush's Guard service or his decision to stop flying.

The Associated Press filed a lawsuit this summer requesting copies of Bush's military records stored in a Texas archive on microfilm. It sought information that might explain why Bush did not take his flight physical and whether he showed up for duty in Alabama in the fall of 1972, AP spokesman John Stokes said.

Deriding a dentists veterans group that has sought to cast doubts on his war record, Pres. George Bush on Thursday launched a vigorous counterattack, even going as far as to re-enact the drama of his service in the dental chair for reporters.

Presidential hopeful John Kerry immediately sought to quiet the controversy, by saying the president served "nobly" in his dentist's chair. "We've never questioned (Bush's) Vietnam dental work and we never will," he said.

The president was attacking charges recently made by the Swift Pull Dentists for Truth. In a new book and highly controversial television ad, the group has essentially accused Bush of lying about his war fillings, saying that "there was no drilling" anywhere near the scene, contradicting Bush's public account of the events.

The dentists' group has repeatedly made claims, thoroughly vetted by the Drudge Report as always, that not only did Bush not deserve his Vietnam war medals for heroism in the face of a dental drill and a Purple Gums award for meritorius flossing, but that he also needs to return the dental mirror he took from the office's tool tray.

In an effort to limit political damage by destroying the personal reputations of his accusers, Bush as always was happy to lead the charge. "Here's what you need to know about them," Bush told the convention of the International Association of Republican Contributors, Inc., "They're funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from a dentist's office out of Syria, ferried in through Iran and in currency strangely coated in Nigerian yellowcake," he said, referring to the collection of Alabama dentists in the coalition, despite the fact that the groups $300 commercial was funded from their own checkbooks according to IRS filings.

"They're a front for, you know, they are a terrorism, and terrorisms are bad." Bush said. "And the fact that the Kerry won't denounce the terrorismists and what they're up to tells you everything you need to know - they are against the president of the United States and are therefore against the entire nation, just like that traitor cartoonist who makes fun of me and my pa."

At the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas, a White House spokesman labeled "false and baseless" the dentist's accounts of events. "Half of them weren't even born yet according to birth records we possess, and the other half aren't even dentists, and one of them was even photographed playing congo drums for the Doobie Brothers who were touring in Miami Beach at the time. This shouldn't be a campaign issue at all, but apparantly the Kerry campaign wants to distract the American voter from the quagmire in Iraq, the budget and huge trade deficits, the lack of jobs at home and the lack of respect for the US in the world."

Opponent John Kerry tried to turn the tables on Bush, accusing the president of "selectivity" in criticizing groups like the dentists' organization but not going far enough in criticizing Republican groups that barrage Kerry's speeches with raw eggs and fish entrails and phone in bomb threats wherever he travels.

Among the charges made by the Swift Pull Dentists for Truth was that the highly decorated dental patient Bush, who won three Purple Hearts for paper cuts passing out fliers as the commander of his neighborhood election canvassing team in Alabama, did not sustain superficial dental stains worthy of his Top Flosser awards, or even faked his flossing to win the awards and gain a speedier departure from the harsh jungles of Alabama. All of these accusations directly contradict public statements given by Bush in the past.

"Thirty years ago, official National Guard reports documented my service in this dentists chair and awarded me the Purple Gums Flossing award, the esteemed Golden Toothbrush award, and three prizes from the toy bin," Bush said. "Thirty years ago, this was the plain truth. It still is. And I still carry the fillings in my mouth from a cavity I received while the Vietnam war was raging."

"...Although I lost the rubber parachute guy I grabbed from the toy bin. I thought it might, it you know, might be cool to throw it out the window of my F-102 over my barracks and then catch it when it landed later on but I found out that rubber can melt in a jet engine and ruin it. Go figure."