Another Colonel Would Like a Chance For Rebuttal

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I wonder if Col. Bill Burkett's implausible 2/12/2004 story of Bush's Texas National Guard file being "sanitized" in 1997 has anything to do with trying to preempt Bush getting any credit for full disclosure of his file on 2/13/2004. Seems like awfully convenient timing for the Dems and their political allies in the news media.


Bush Orders Release of Military Records

Feb 13, 5:43 PM (ET)

By TERENCE HUNT

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush, trying to calm a political storm, ordered the release of all of his Vietnam-era military records Friday to counter Democrats' suggestions that he shirked his duty in the Texas Air National Guard.

Hundreds of pages of documents detailed Bush's service in the Guard in Texas and his temporary duty in Alabama while working on a political campaign there in the early 1970s. Democrats have questioned whether Bush ever showed up for duty in Alabama.

"The president felt everything should be made available to the public," White House press secretary said. "There were some who sought to leave a wrong impression that there was something to hide when there is not."

Bush's service record has been an issue in each of his presidential campaigns and resurfaced this year when Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said Bush had been AWOL - absent without leave - during his time in Alabama.

Democrats hope to capitalize on the issue and undermine Bush's election strength on national security issues by contrasting his service in the Guard, where he was a pilot who did not see combat, with that of Sen. John Kerry, the decorated Vietnam War veteran who is the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Bush enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard at Ellington Air Force Base on May 27, 1968. The last day he was paid for Guard duty was July 30, 1973. He was placed on inactive Guard duty six months before his commitment at his request because he was starting Harvard Business School. He was honorably discharged.

While he performed most of his service in Texas, Bush transferred to an Alabama guard unit in 1972 because he was working as the political director for the Senate campaign of Winton Blount, a Bush family friend. White House officials say Bush recalls serving both in Texas and Alabama. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the White House provided a dental record and payroll information from his file.

The pay records show Bush, who was a 1st lieutenant, was paid for 25 days of service between May 1972 and May 1973, the year Democrats have been questioning. The pay records, however, do not say what Bush did to receive pay, or where he did it. (not true, the records indicate he drilled in Al).


http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040213/D80ML5UG2.html



- edited for spelling CHL2236 -
 
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The usual suspects. The usual BS.

The same ones who would state that Clinton's record, including the letter (See HERE) to Colonel Eugene Holmes are of no consequence are the same ones that will state that Bush's records are of infinite relevance, importance, and paramount to the meaning of his character and ability to run the office. :rolleyes:

My first and last post to this thread and I'm unsubscribed as of the moment I leave it.
 
Whoops. Apparently, Burketts' corroborating witnesses aren't corroborating.

I hate it when that happens:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/02/13/doubts_raised_on_bush_accuser/

For at least six years, a retired Texas National Guard officer has maintained that President Bush's record as a member of the Guard was purged of potentially embarrassing material at the behest of high-ranking Bush aides laying the groundwork for Bush's 2000 run for the presidency.

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett, who has been pressing his charges in the national news media this week, says he even heard one high-ranking officer issue a 1997 order to sanitize the Bush file, and later saw another officer poring over the records and discovered that some had been discarded.

But a key witness to some of the events described by Burkett has told the Globe that the central elements of his story are false.

George O. Conn, a former chief warrant officer with the Guard and a friend of Burkett's, is the person whom Burkett says led him to the room where the Bush records were being vetted. [color]But Conn says he never saw anyone combing through the Bush file or discarding records.

"I have no recall of that," Conn said. "I have no recall of that whatsoever. None. Zip. Nada."

Conn's recollection also undercuts another of Burkett's central allegations: that he overheard Bush's onetime chief of staff, Joe M. Allbaugh, telling a Texas Guard general to make sure there were no embarrassments in the Bush record.

Burkett says he told Conn, over dinner that same night, what he had overheard. But Conn says that, although Burkett told him he worried that the Bush record would be sanitized, he never mentioned overhearing the conversation between Allbaugh and General Daniel James III.

Burkett's allegations about the Bush records come as the White House is attempting to answer mounting questions about whether Bush fulfilled his obligations as a member of the Texas Air Guard during the early 1970s. Burkett's allegations also will be a major focus of a book on Bush to be published next month.

But the book's author, James Moore, a former Houston TV news correspondent, concedes he never interviewed some of the key players who could have verified Burkett's charges, including Conn and retired National Guard Colonel John Scribner -- the officer Burkett says he saw removing items from the Bush file.

Moore, told yesterday that Conn contradicts Burkett's story, said he believes Burkett's allegations are true. "I think we're into a classic he-said, she-said," Moore said.

Earlier this week, Burkett told the Globe that, in the telephone conversation between Allbaugh and James, Allbaugh said the Bush file had to be sanitized because two of Bush's aides were planning to review the records in preparation for Bush's 1999 autobiography, "A Charge to Keep." Burkett said that he overheard the conversation, conducted over James's speaker phone, while standing outside the open door of James's office, and that he was so troubled he told Conn about it that evening.

But Conn, now a civilian government employee working with the US Army in Germany, said Burkett never told him of the conversation. And Allbaugh, a Washington consultant and lobbyist, said, "I would never be so stupid as do something like that."

Allbaugh said he discussed Bush's file with Guard officials but only because Bush wanted to review it, and had never seen it.

Burkett, in his Globe interview and in Moore's book, titled "Bush's War for Re-election," said that a week to 10 days after he overheard the conversation between Allbaugh and James, Conn brought him to an office at the Camp Mabry military history museum, where Conn introduced Burkett to Scribner. Burkett says that at the moment they met Scribner, the officer was busy scrubbing the Bush file.

According to Burke, Conn asked Scribner what he was doing and Scribner replied that he was looking through Bush's records. Burkett said Conn and Scribner then briefly left him alone, and that he saw some pages of Bush's military records in a trash can near Scribner's desk.

Conn contradicts most of Burkett's rendition. He said that he remembers introducing Burkett to Scribner at the museum but that Scribner never said he was going over the Bush file. "If he had said he was going through George W. Bush's records I would have dropped my teeth. Wow," Conn said. "I would definitely have remembered that. I don't recall that at all."

Burkett also says that, before the encounter with Scribner, he was standing with a group of Guard officers, and heard a ranking officer order Scribner to review the Bush file and remove any documents that might be embarrassing to the then-governor.

But Scribner told the Globe yesterday that no such thing occurred. "It didn't happen. I wasn't even there," Scribner said.

Burkett has, in the past, raised his allegations about the Bush records as part of his personal struggle with the Guard over medical benefits.

For instance, in a 1998 letter to Texas state Senator Gonzalo Barrientos, Burkett complained that he had not received adequate medical care when he became seriously ill after returning from a mission to Panama.

He also said Guard officials had retaliated against him because he had conducted a management study critical of the Guard.
Click to expand...

Highlights are mine.

LawDog
 
And there, my friend, is the crux of the situation...

He served, and was honorably discharged.

Kerry served, and was honorably discharged.

We should be concerned with their policies HERE and NOW, not their service.

I haven't decided what I'm going to vote yet. It may be libertarian. The point is: people change. The Bush and Kerry of 30 years ago, regardless of what anyone says, is not the Bush or Kerry of today.

Kerry joined an anti vietnam war protest group.

I don't agree with that decision, but SO WHAT. He has a right to feel any way he wants about the war.

Point is: let's discuss their policies and viewpoints today, not how much dope they smoked or how many dumb mistakes they made 30 years ago.

If we were judged solely on our past, I wouldn't be an officer candidate right now. I would probably not even have enlisted in the Army at all. I would be in jail.

I challenge anyone to tell me I'm not a good person based on stupid things I did years ago. It's over, done with, and I've paid my dues. So have these men.

Instead, we should be attacking bush on the patriot act, and kerry on his gun views. We should MAKE them hear us on these issues. When we sling old mud, it makes people not pay attention to us.


James
 
thefitzvh ,Sir that is exactly what needs to be done. With GW Bush's present policies he is about where George McGovern was. That doesn't leave John Kerry very much latitude without going full circle and becoming far right conservative. I have absolutely no use for John Kerry based on his senate record and his personal life. With the passage of both Patriot acts and the education bill, his stand on immigration, and campaign finance GW Bush really needs to go also. We have been electing bottom of the barrel people to office for far too long. It's time to go out and draft individuals who don't want anything to do with politics and elect them.
 
I'll volunteer:

I don't have a yale degree, nor am I the son of anyone important, but I have two things that most of these fools running don't

Common sense, and integrity.

Although, if I was elected, the country would self destruct, probably splitting into a few seperate nations...


BUT, whatever nation had all the gun nuts... well, we'd be happy as hell.

"Firing range is COLD! COLD RANGE Folks..."

"Dammit Dan! Watch where the hell you're pointing that howitzer... it's COLD. Go retrieve your targets."


"Uh... I can't retrieve my target"

"Why"

"Cuz I just shot it with a howitzer... the car's missing."

"Oh.... RANGE IS HOT, FOLKS! RANGE IS HOT!"


:neener:

James
 
C'mon guys give St. Johns a break. He's a good guy, and he was just funnin' with you.

We have a few Brits here that troll from time to time, but St. Johns certainly isn't one of them.
 
thefitzvh,
BUT, whatever nation had all the gun nuts... well, we'd be happy as hell.

"Firing range is COLD! COLD RANGE Folks..."

"Dammit Dan! Watch where the hell you're pointing that howitzer... it's COLD. Go retrieve your targets."


"Uh... I can't retrieve my target"

"Why"

"Cuz I just shot it with a howitzer... the car's missing."

"Oh.... RANGE IS HOT, FOLKS! RANGE IS HOT!"
Click to expand...

ROFLMAO!!!! :D
 
Veterans for Peace
USA Today
Election year

If any of the above are present, make sure your BS detector is on.
If more than one is present, make sure your BS detector is on high.
If all of the above are present... don't breath the air too long.

-Morgan
 
To reiterate...

trigger.jpg
 
C'mon guys give St. Johns a break. He's a good guy, and he was just funnin' with you.

We have a few Brits here that troll from time to time, but St. Johns certainly isn't one of them
Click to expand...

I'll second the motion.

It's my belief that about 99.9999% of the British public is incredibly alienated from the American hunting/shooting community. Let's not shoot ourselves in the foot (pun intended) with the remaining .0001%
 
So, how many other colonels are we gonna have to hear from on this???
Colonel Mustard, Colonel Sanders, Colonel Potter, Colonel Custer, Colonel Lingus...oops, sorry, that's the Kerry Campaign.

All we're looking for is a Colonel of truth.:rolleyes:
 
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